TFA: TRIALS OF TEACHING // 3

POETRY IN THE AIR // 2

MIRMIR R R R R RORORAPRIL 12, 2013

THE CHARM OF WOODSTOCK // 8

REBECCA XU // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

TTLG: NOVELIDEAS AND POETIC PEACE // 6

MIND IF I SMOKE? // 4

EDITOR’S NOTE

BY MARY LIZA HARTONG

MIR ROR

ANTI-FEMINISM

OVERHEARDS ’16 Boy at Jones

Media Center: I would like to rent the first Twilight movie,

please.

Psychology pro-fessor: My whole life is a halluci-nation punctu-ated by meals.

CS prof: Just pretend you’re on acid...that came out wrong.

’15 Boy: I see myself Good-

Samming myself.

Blitz overheards to mirror@thed-artmouth.com

MELISSA VASQUEZ //THE DARTMOUTH

MIR ORR2//

follow @thedmirror

DIANA MING FELICIA SCHWARTZ

Students have many opportunities to expe-rience spoken poetry on campus. On Thurs-day, John Murillo read from his poetry col-lection, “Up Jump the Boogie,” at an event hosted by the English department.

’13 Girl: Honestly, I think he likes my bed more

than me.

’14 Girl: I really like my new backpack

but it’s really brightly colored, and I don’t want

people to think I’m a Kappa.

FINDING A POETICPRESENCE

MIRROR EDITORS

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

PUBLISHER

EXECUTIVE EDITORS

AMELIA ACOSTA TYLER BRADFORD

JENNY CHE

GARDINER KREGLOW

ALLISON WANGGRAPHICS EDITOR

Spring is in the air, and so is poetry. In middle school, your teacher probably began the month of April by writing an inspirational stanza on the blackboard and performing a passionate read-ing of Walt Whitman. As she clutched her dog-eared copy of “Leaves of Grass,” you probably listened with rapt attention on the edge of your seat thinking, “Gee, I wonder what’s for lunch today.” Whitman, you assured yourself, would be around for a while. The waffl e fries would not. Then again, you might have been that kid sitting at the back of the classroom reading along in your own dog-eared copy, hoping by some miracle you would become Whitman, or at the very least, write a passable limerick. Now that you’re at Dartmouth, you probably aren’t pounded over the head with villanelles any-more. No one forces you to observe the sanctity of National Poetry Month. This news comes as a relief to many. But, for those who revere the written word, the divide between those who roll their eyes at poetry and those who keep it by their bedside is concerning. Fortunately, Dartmouth is no “West Side Story.” While there are poets and non-poets, Sharks and Jets if you will, no one gets stabbed over whether poetry is worth celebrating. A variety of student groups and English department initiatives promote the proliferation of poetry among both enthusiasts and skeptics. Whether you’re a poet, listener, reader or just a supporter, there is a way for you to experience poetry on campus. Of these groups, Soul Scribes is arguably the coolest. Nothing against any other poetry-loving organization, but these folks simply radiate cool. It could be because of their tendency to snap instead of clap, or maybe it’s the way they can render you speechless after a reading. Whatever it is, Soul Scribes reigns as the only spoken word group on campus. They competed at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational in New York City earlier this month and though ther didn’t bring home any medals, president Anna Winham ’14 called it a successful trip. “The best part of CUPSI was comparing ex-periences with people from different schools,”

Winham said. “Every school has its own style. The Northeastern schools have similar styles, but Dartmouth has a distinct voice.” While she admitted to becoming “poetried out” after hearing over 30 poems each day, Winham said the team learned a lot both about other schools. “You have to audition for the team and then you get groomed for four years,” she said. “At Dartmouth, it’s an egalitarian form of art.” The team stopped by Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a sharing space for professional spoken word artists. After being invited to Nuyorican’s own slam, the team earned second place. Audiences in New York obviously enjoyed the Soul Scribes’ work, but what about here on cam-pus? Winham said fi nding the right listeners can be diffi cult, especially when most performances take place in fraternities and sororities. “In the past few years I’ve typically performed for drunk audiences, which can mean having to tailor your poems,” she said. “However, it’s an audience that maybe doesn’t listen to poetry normally so I guess it’s a good thing.” Soul Scribe Simone Wien ’16 attributed the importance of poetry to the powerful emotions spoken word can evoke. “The fact that someone can connect on such an emotional level with someone they don’t know is amazing,” Wien said. “It’s the control of human emotion. That’s the highest art form.” Another prominent creative community on campus is the Stonefence Review. The literary magazine, one of the oldest of its kind, fi nds its home in the basement of Sanborn Library on Tuesday nights. In the words of editor-in-chief Naomi Elias ’13, “We don’t reserve the space. We just haunt it.” And what wonderful ghosts they are! Each term, Stonefence publishes an online volume of poetry, prose and art, and often compile a print edition of the entire year’s work. In addition to publishing students’ work, Stonefence partners with Left Bank Books to promote writing in town. Their annual winter reading event at Left Bank Books, complete with romantic ambiance and

an assortment of cheeses, is not to be missed. “We’re trying to get poetry out there,” Elias said. “People assume Stonefence will be preten-tious because you have to submit, but it’s really cool. We want to make people comfortable with poetry.” Getting a poem to the fi nal edition of the magazine involves plenty of editing, a process that helps to create a dialogue between writer and editor, Elias said. “Poems we get often focus on love, platonic, romantic, wanting it, losing it, having it,” she said. “People write about wanting to meet people at Dartmouth.” Editor Mitchell Jacobs ’14 agreed, citing the dissatisfaction with the hookup culture as a fre-quent subject of so-called “Dartmouth poems.” “Sometimes you get a poem that takes on the entire world and some take on just one night,” Jacobs said. As students work out the problems of ado-lescence in poetry, so does professor Cynthia Huntington, whose poetry collection, “Heavenly Bodies,” was a fi nalist for the National Book Award this year. “Most people’s fi rst book is a coming-of-age collection,” Huntington said. “I guess I skipped that. When you’re writing about your adolescence in your fi fties, you have a different perspective. I wonder if all these years of teaching fi nally made me write about it.” As for poetry month, Huntington waxed humorous. “Most poets have a genial hatred for it,” she said. “It speaks to the marginalization of poetry. We’re in great demand for a short amount of time.” For those interested, Dartmouth boasts events from poetry readings to the Creative Writ-ing Awards ceremony in May. This year’s guest judge is John Jerrimiah Sullivan, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and southern editor of The Paris Review. To those brave souls who bare their hearts in poetry through spoken word and published work, I tip my hat, and my dog-eared copy of “Leaves of Grass,” to you.

Hanover springs are a tease. When we think of spring term, we often fast forward to Green Key days, forgetting the rain, and snow, that make spring the wettest season of all. Sixty-degree days are dangled before us, then snatched away. Shorts season begins, but never offi cially. By the time the sun is out to stay, it’s the fourth week of May and reading week imminent. Like with so much else at Dartmouth, we hold off on the present for the sake of the (near) future, leaving ourselves little time to appreciate the mud for what it is. We’d do well to remind ourselves that it doesn’t have to be a perfect, sun-fi lled day for us to make the most of the season. Nearby hiking opportunities call our name, Jurassic Park is playing at the Nugget, in 3D no less, and gelato tastes good on any day. In this week’s issue we explore an Up-per Valley gem and investigate Teach For America’s widely criticized organizational structure. We inquire about smoking culture at Dartmouth, and refl ect on the lack of poetic breathers we take as students, constantly overwhelmed by commitments that perhaps matter less than we would have ourselves believe. As looming exams and harsher weather take a toll on our initial springtime euphoria, let’s take a moment to appreciate the now instead of just jumping ahead. One day the sun will come out for good and the Green will be green, but until then, the gray skies will just have to do. Happy Friday!

TRENDING@ Dartmouth

THE TRIALS OF TEACHINGTeach for America has admirable goals, but has received criticism for parts of its structure. BY MAGGIE SHIELDS AND LINDSAY KEARE

SUNDRESSDAY

Has it come? Are we still waiting? Does it count as sundress weather if you

can’t actually see the sun? Cheers to the brave few who raise hemlines even when temperatures don’t

match.

REASONS MY SON IS CRYING

From Dartmouth students’ facebook

newsfeeds to Humans of New York, one father and his moody toddler have swept the nation

with crying justifica-tions like “The milk

isn’t juice.”

COMPLANING ABOUT COLLIS

Despite a term’s worth of renovations, lots of lunchers are still

relegated to overflow seating, and no one knows quite where

to stand when you’re ordering eggs.

MIR ORR //3

CHUCK

ADDefinitely not the

fraternity. The cult hit “Arrested Develop-ment” returns for a fourth season on

Netflix May 26.

SA

TAPS

Dartmouth has a country band? Stay

tuned for more.

By definition, teaching is the opposite of learning. We think of it as an action that we do unto others. But as many Teach for America corps members have discovered the act of teaching itself is a learning experience. Teach for America gives recent college graduates two year as-signments in under-served rural and urban neighborhoods. Emma Routhier ’12, who is teaching at a charter school in New York City, explained that TFA appealed to her almost immediately. “I was struck by how awesome of an opportunity it was to dive really deep into really purposeful work after graduating,” she said. Members of academic circles as well as TFA and alumni have criticized the program. It has admirable ideals: to encour-age under-resourced students to achieve by providing highly educated, enthusiastic teachers. But several problems arise in its structure. How much impact can a teacher make in two years, critics ask? How will the constant turnover of teachers effect educational attain-ment in these already struggling districts? Some have proposed extending the service period to five years, giving more time for teachers to adjust and make an impact. The longer commitment may weed out applicants simply looking for a resume booster and attract those who seek a career in education. By involving more career teachers, the hope is that long-term education reform will occur. Michelle Shankar ’12, who is currently teaching chemistry at a public high school in Oakland, Calif., said that a significant part of TFA’s mission is to educate college graduates about the education

gap, which might not require an increase in program length. If TFA graduates move to other careers and use their influence to bring about education reform, TFA’s mission will be realized. Angela Callado, a program recruitment manager for Dart-mouth, explained that though only one in six corps members originally plans on a career in education, more continue in the field after their experience. “Over 61 percent of the corps ends up staying for a third year,” she said, “One-third of all alumni end up staying as classroom teach-ers, so again that really speaks to the broader experience.” Katie Renzler, a 2010 Brown University graduate, served in the greater New Orleans corps and plans to go to law school and work in community development and juvenile justice. Many of her friends in the program have con-tinued working with their schools after the two-year requirement. “I have friends who are writing curriculums,” she said, “I have friends who started after-school programs and now run those, so maybe they’re not traditional classroom teachers, but they’ve still wound up doing stuff that they never thought they would before.” Another criticism of the cur-rent system is the lack of training. Although participants are some of the brightest in the nation, they are not always adequately trained to deal with many of the situations they face. Their stu-dents’ educational experiences are often complicated by dif ficult home lives or other environmental factors. They may act out in the classroom, and TFA employees are often unprepared to handle these cases appropriately. Addi-tionally, corps members receive

the same training regardless of the grade levels and subjects they teach. “My training was effective inso-far as I definitely had a foundation on how do you create roles for a classroom, how do you make a lesson plan,” Renzler said. “But content-wise I was over my head and also just overwhelmed behav-iorally by my classroom.” Shankar believes that the best way to learn how to deal with dif-ficult situations is through experi-ence. TFA gives her the support she needs, and the rest is part of a learning curve. Callado af firmed the idea of learning by doing. “We are a two-year training program,” she said. TFA’s targeted recruiting poli-cies have also been a source of controversy. “They’re very aggressive and it’s almost annoying,” she said, “Within those schools they target

so-called leaders, like a president of a frat, a president of a journal, anyone who exhibits leadership skills.” Critics say that teachers who grew up in similar situations have less dif ficulty managing under-privileged classrooms and are more likely to continue serving low income communities. Shankar notes that because of a dearth of qualified teachers willing to serve in challenging environments, en-thusiastic college graduates are the best some schools can hope for. “Who better to do it than young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed college grads,” she said. Callado added that the disparity of experience forces corps mem-bers to reflect on societal issues. “I’m just really appreciative of the fact that we’re pushing our corps members to think about identity and privilege and class,” she said. “We want to consider how all intersects within our class-rooms so that you can empower our students to end generational cycles of poverty.” Scouring the Internet, I found many accounts of success sto-ries. Several current teachers were former students of TFA par ticipants,inspired by their teachers to get a college education and pursue teaching themselves. They admit that although the turnover was dif ficult, teachers are always replaced by equally enthusiastic educators. Each successor had something new to of fer to the classroom, and many cited the inspirational role these teachers played in their lives. TFA is not a perfect system. The teachers are not per fect, the structure is not perfect and the support is not perfect. Cal-lado explains how TFA takes the criticisms seriously, and is always looking to improve. “Ever y single summer we tweak and we tweak to make sure that we’re becoming more and more ef fective every time,” she said. “I think that’s something that I do appreciate about the organization, they’re very recep-tive to feedback. You really want to know what they can do better.” TFA is an important ef fort to close the education gap in under-privileged communities. It of fers college graduates an opportunity to continue learning and contrib-ute to the learning of others. For teachers, this may mean bringing their knowledge and passions to other professions, while continu-ing to fight to fix the wrongs they witnessed during their time in the corps. For students, the hope is that they are inspired to persevere and overcome their educational situation to attend college and to realize the joy of learning.

MULIN XIONG// THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

PATTON LOWENSTEIN//THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Information courtesy of The Washington Post

Teach For America CEO Wendy Kopp spoke at last year’s Commence-ment, urging students to make a permanent impact on the world.

MIR ORR4//

MIND IF I

SMOKE?BY MYREL ITURREY AND ERIN LANDAU

At first, her de-meanor betrayed no sign of mind-ing the 10-de-gree wind chill. She stepped out bravely from the double doors that guard the 1902 Room just

as I shuffled out of Sanborn’s back exit, my chin tucked as far into my scarf as humanly possible. In a sweeping and practiced motion, she extracted an open pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her back pocket, tapped the cardboard carton to her palm, and brought a small, white roll to her lips. She muttered an exple-tive as she turned her back to the wind and used her hand to cup the flame that

A

nybodygo

t a lig

ht? “THERE USED TO BE A SAYING: IF YOU WANTED YOUR KID NOT TO SMOKE, YOU SHOULD SEND

HIM TO COLLEGE.”TODD HEATHERTON

MIR ORR //5

ALLISON WANG // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFFPhotos Courtesy of Modern Mechanix and Vintage Advertising

curled atop the lighter. I walked past just slowly enough to notice she had trimmed her knitted gloves to not lose dexterity in her fingers while keeping them warm. She was no stranger to the winter cigarette break. If you were to sit on the steps that lead up to the very same overhang and count the students who stepped out of the library for a quick smoke throughout the course of a day, you would likely watch the sun set before hitting double digits. The girl I passed on my way into the library is just one member of a minority of students on Dartmouth’s campus who are likely to identify themselves as “smokers.” Even fewer would go so far as to identify themselves as “chain-smokers.” Yet, puff-ing through a pack a day, Eli Rachovitsky ’13 openly acknowledges his place within this category. He also recognizes that the average Dartmouth student smokes “far less” than he does. “There used to be a saying that if you wanted your kid not to smoke, you should send him to college,” said psychology professor Todd Heatherton, who has col-laborated on research regarding tobacco use in adolescent youths. “As smoking went down dramatically in the ’80s and ’90s, it became really uncommon to see college students smoking.” Like many campuses across the coun-try, Dartmouth was quick to respond to the urgent warnings about the health risks of cigarette smoke. A signed no-tice by College President Ernest Martin Hopkins, who served from 1916 to 1945, requested that “smoking be avoided in

recitation rooms and recitation halls.” In 1975, students favored the prohibition of smoking in the classroom two-to-one, with approximately one-third of the un-dergraduates represented in the vote. “Very few Dartmouth students back then smoked cigarettes,” John Donaghy ’75, a writing professor, recalled of his undergraduate years. Until recently, most campuses have been satisfied with a regulation to ban smoking in shared work areas. Yet over 1,000 colleges have come to adopt policies that forbid smoking anywhere within their campus borders, even in public areas, Fox Business recently reported. When asked whether smoking should be banned at Dartmouth, Noah Smith ’15, a nonsmoker, responded that instating such a policy could enable the College to set more invasive decrees in the future. “It sets a precedent of the school decid-ing what is bad for your health,” Smith said. Alex Velaise ’15, agreed that students should have the freedom to decide their own behavior. “America is in a trend where it’s not socially acceptable to smoke anymore, but it’s a matter of principle,” Velaise said. “We’re all adults, so we should be able to make our own choices.” Heatherton mentioned that the jus-tification for smoking bans on college campuses often has less to do with pre-venting students from smoking of their own will then creating an environment that respects non smokers’ rights to not be harmed by toxic tobacco fumes.

Maggie Tierney ’14 rolled up her sleeve to expose two pink cigarette burns she received on her right hand during a night out at Bones Gate fraternity last Wednesday. “I’m not gong to be of fended if you’re smoking outside the library because I can avoid you,” Tierney said. “But when you choose to smoke in a basement or any type of enclosed space, and you then elect to flail your arms around and accidentally burn the people around you, it’s just not okay.” Like Tierney, many students inter-viewed indicated that they had certainly encountered inconsiderate cigarette smokers while at Dartmouth. However, these episodes pale in comparison to the insensitivity of European smokers. Velaise, who spent his winter term working at a bank in Europe, noted that most adolescents there smoke inces-santly. He described how half of the men and women he worked with took regular, hour-long smoking breaks sanctioned by the bank, as each floor was evenly divided into designated smoking and non-smoking areas. “Coming back to Dartmouth, I noticed that smoking isn’t ingrained as a part of American culture,” Velaise said. Smith, who spent winter in Paris on the French Foreign Study Program, agreed with Velaise’s assessment. He noticed that smoking is less stigmatized in Europe than in the United States. “It was completely different. In France, even people who looked like they were 14 smoked,” Smith said. “If you see of-age

people smoking on campus, you just look at them funny.” In fact, at least some of the stigma that he refers to was born right here at Dartmouth. Since the mid-’90s, Heather-ton has collaborated with Geisel School professor James Sargent to document the portrayal of smoking in popular Hol-lywood films and its influence on adoles-cents. The study revealed that 95 percent of 600 popular films from 1988 to 1997 featured tobacco use, and adolescents who routinely watch these movies are more likely to smoke themselves. Heatherton theorizes that the national attention directed at similar findings in-directly led to the decline of smoking in movies in the last decade. A more recent study published by the researchers in the Journal of the American Medical As-sociation indicated a drop in adolescent smoking in accordance with the drop of tobacco use in film. For reasons that aren’t entirely un-derstood, through there may be fewer frequent smokers than in past decades, there appear to be far more “occasional” smokers than ever before. Some students, like Tierney, are strongly opposed to “social smoking,” but many more don’t see the harm in lighting up every once in awhile. “We have smart people here who know that it’s not the case that having one cigarette is going to kill you,” Heatherton said. “But that one cigarette makes it so much more likely that you’ll have another one, and another one... and we do know that will probably get you.”

MIND IF I

SMOKE?

Through the Looking GlassA NOVEL IDEA AND THE PEACE OF POETRY

BY MADDIE LESSER

Looking back on her Dartmouth experience, Maddie Lesser ’13 encourages us all to take a moment to appreciate the opportunities around us.

MIR ORR6//

CIRRUS FOROUGHI // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

CIRRUS FOROUGHI // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Anyone who knows me well knows that I discovered this quote by Stephen Dobyns last week — “Writing a poem is to engage with the world; writing a novel is to escape from its immediacy.” A poem arises from an intense emotional response. A novel arises from escap-ing your own emotional life, instead choosing to inhabit the emotional life of someone else. Of course, I don’t wholly agree with Dobyns. A novel can make you feel your own life deeply. Novels often stem from their author’s emotional life. More importantly, poetry and novels inhabit far more interconnected spheres than Dobyns suggests. Yet what struck me so intensely about his observation, what caused me to find an excuse to bring up his words with anyone unlucky enough to cross my path last week, was its ac-curacy as a metaphor for Dartmouth. Dartmouth writes novels. Let me explain what I mean here. Have you ever walked through the 1902 Room during finals? And you see someone you know, and you say, “Hey, how’s everything going?” and she re-sponds, “Not great, but it’ll be over soon

enough!” Have you watched someone walk into a tree while checking his email on a phone? We so often daydream ourselves away from Dartmouth, whether it’s to the weekend, the next break, the next of f-term or even to memory, that we forget we are here. We are busy writing the novels of our lives. We research our characters via Facebook. We think of the time spent studying for an uninterest-ing class, or going to meetings that we never wanted to go to, as already dead. What we refuse to acknowledge is we are the ones with the knife, stabbing at time with the finely sharpened point of an obligatory lunch date. I should know. At risk of extreme pretension, I’m going to quote a few lines by the poet James Wright that I went around repeating for about a week some time ago now: “Annie, it has taken me a long time to live/ And to take a long time to live is to take a long time/ To understand that your life is your own life.” As linear as it sounds, my understanding of Wright’s words provides a distinct divide for my time at Dartmouth.

Before: Sitting in of fice hours with a professor during my sophomore fall, I gush about how lucky he is to eat, sleep and breathe poetry. I love the professor, and I love the class. I even love his of fice: a dim lamp, armchair, rows and rows of books. After talking a while, he asks me why I’m pre-med. I explain that I think I’ll like the end result. And, instantly, his slow nod, a sad, knowing look. I spend a night in a dark, crowded lonely basement. And another, and about a hundred more after that. After a phone conversation with my father, which consists of him repeating “Well, what are you going to do with your life?” over and over again, I experience my first panic attack. I write down all my extra curricular activities in the back of my planner, and wonder what I should join to lengthen that list to five. After: A series of long, empty after-noons. Noticing the bird nest outside the window. Cooking, reading, writing, walking — doing things that “count” for nothing. Deep, deep peace. I think this trajectory is pretty similar for many upperclassmen. As your time at Dartmouth goes on, you finally real-ize that you can do whatever you want with it. Many of my favorite people here are those who understood this all along. For me, and again, I think this is true for many Dartmouth students, this realiza-tion stemmed from an of f-term. When my planned job fell through, I found myself with unscheduled, unmediated time. I walked around. I read in the park. I knew no one in a city. I learned to love solitude. I remembered the wide, wide world that exists outside of Dartmouth. And when I returned, I didn’t so much realize that my

time at Dartmouth didn’t matter. I realized that it mattered profoundly, because fiction writing can become an infection. When do we stop writing ourselves somewhere else? On the day we graduate? The day we get the job? When do we write the poem? How can we deeply feel our own lives as they exist in this moment? What I’m proposing here is the upside of apathy. Quit. Quit doing things that make you bored or unhappy. Quit mediocrity. Quit the sloppy paper for a class you never even went to. Quit spending free time on Facebook, and quit FOMO. Quit the club with those people you never liked. Quit your iPhone, and please quit your resume. Do join the Gospel Choir, Prison Project or whatever it is that makes you feel something. Get more lunches with the friend from freshman year who you miss. Above all, do nothing. Schedule nothing. Take time to find peace. And I don’t mean senior spring YOLO. I don’t mean the fourth game of pong. I mean true feeling and thought. I mean poetry. I realize that I have hated unabashedly on the novel throughout this article. But I love novels and the escape they of fer. Life is a novel. Any good poem has a plot. And life should certainly not be limited to deep emotional experiences. Sympathizing with the friend working frantically to finish a final, laughing with your roommates over bad telvision — the frequency of these experiences is as important as the time spent meditating. Keep writing the novel. But, occasionally, write the poem. Think about where you are now and what you are doing. Do the things you love, and learn to love doing “nothing.” I promise it will love you back. For Lesser, the differences between a poem and a novel provide an im-

portant way to conceptualize a greater sense of internal peace.

Dear Gardner and Kate,

I don’t understand One Wheelock. Is it acceptable to hang out and talk there during the day or is it more like the eighth library?

— Whispering Wanda ’15

Gardner: I’m writing this in One Wheelock and just witnessed an il-lustrative example of why you should treat it as a quiet and not social space during the day. Two ’16s who seem to be lost and think they’re sitting in Col-lis Cafe apparently don’t notice that everyone is working and are loudly having the following conversation: “I have a bid to Psi U locked up already.”“Isn’t it a little early to know?”“Yeah, but I know a lot of brothers and they like me a lot. I beat two of them in pong too, so I’m not worried.”“Cool, I’ll just hang out with you when we go there”Well played, boys. See you at the rush event.

Kate: I have found my most perplex-ing One Wheelock situations to occur at the twilight hours. Many a time I have enjoyed “working dinner” in One Wheelock, stewed in my lack of friends and acquaintances willing to eat with me. Suddenly, the mostly non-operational, student-run study space transforms into the most alternative of social scenes. Is it appropriate for me to partake in microbrewsm, Lou’s pies and spoken word poetry when these nuggets of happiness are clearly not meant for the anti-social gremlin studying in the corner? The best solu-tion I’ve found is to grab what I can, put in some Bose earphones and snap my fi ngers in encouragement when-ever the speakers, singers or Taboo players look particularly enthused.

Dear Kate,

What’s on your Dartmouth bucket list your senior spring?

— Lauren Vespoli ’13

Kate: My number one bucket list item is completing my thesis, so I don’t have time for your senior spring shenanigans, Vespoli. However, I do have a list of things that someone, preferably someone with a column dedicated to such tomfoolery, should complete in the coming term: Tattoo “Live Free or Die” across your back. Take a shot in all seven libraries on campus in under an hour. Interview everyone you’ve hooked up with at

Dartmouth to learn what areas need improvement. Elope. And fi nally, get every frat, sorority and coed to interrupt their party, pong scene or empty basement to play the master-piece “Booty Wurk (One Cheek At A Time)” by T-Pain (featuring Joey Galaxy). I can defi nitely take a study break for the last one, so blitz me.

Dear Gardner and Kate,

My friend is really sad that his girlfriend broke up with him, but it was clearly his fault. How do I deal with this?

— Perplexed Pete ’14

Gardner: Breakups: where you get to keep telling someone that they’re awesome despite ample evidence to the contrary. Unless he was broken up with over something particularly egregious, you owe him three things: the occasional “Yeah man, that sucks,” a standing offer to buy him a beer at Murphy’s and a half-hearted attempt to fi nd him a semi date.

Kate: I’m all about telling your friends any number of half-truths and lies in the name of love. Start small by as-suring him that his ex is “clearly in the wrong” and he can do so much better. Then, rebuild his confi dence: “I bet she’s regretting breaking up with you now,” “I can defi nitely tell you’ve been working out,” “Don’t worry, you’ll get a job.” Continue to reassure him that her new man is a total scrub and that single life is so much better than a loving, emotion-ally fulfi lling relationship until you both believe it. Also, to any of my friends reading this column, I would never lie to you and you are all liter-ally perfect.

Dear Gardner and Kate,

I’m trying to prevent my days from getting repetitive. Do you have any suggestions?

— Mundane Michael ’16

Gardner: You should fi nd small games to play with yourself through-out the day. You can take time to come up with your own. Coming from what I like to think of as the south, I made up a game called “How much sugar is it possible to dissolve into my KAF iced tea?” I play every day. I always win. Others possibilities include the “Like, Um, So Game” during class presentations, i.e., counting the number of times the presenter uses

each, and shooting frisbees out of the air over the Green.

Kate: Variety is the spice of life, baby. Alternatively, spice is the variety of life. Utilize the trays of random herbs and spices in Collis and FoCo to make your omelets, vegetarian stew and casserole creations more appealing. Every other aspect of your life will immediately improve.

Dear Gardner,

I’m running for Student Assembly president and wanted to know if you have any campaign advice?

— Anonymous Amanda ’14

Gardner: Congratulations on seek-ing out the position with the highest possible ratio of power on a resume to actual power. You should target your campaign solely at freshmen. They are the most likely to vote and yet have no idea what they’re doing. Freshmen redefi ne lack of institutional memory. You can easily convince ’16s that your plan to send delegates out to student groups is a fresh way to connect campus and empower the Assembly instead of the same plan that has been proposed in the last four elections. And don’t worry too much, you need a maximum 20 percent of the student body to vote for you in order to win.

Please send any questions in need of advice to gardnerandkate@gmail.com or tweet at @low_sinks and @kate_h_taylor.

COLUMN

MODERATELY GOOD ADVICECOLUMN

THE BUCKET LIST

BY

LAUREN VESPOLI

WITH GARDNER DAVIS ANDKATE TAYLOR

MIR ORR //7

Jump on the AT for

There’s an oft-neglected AT that passes through Dartmouth. An AT that Bill Bryson didn’t write a book about and that is not visited by two to three million people every year. I’m talking about Advanced Transit, the free bus system servicing the Upper Valley that students, by and large, tend to ignore. Occasionally, ingenious and desperate freshman will take one of the white and blue buses from the River Cluster to Baker-Berry Library, but you generally hear less about students using Advanced Transit to get around the Upper Valley and more about people asking to borrow a car or catch a ride. It seems we prefer the convenience or privacy of our own or a friend’s borrowed car to the AT, whose Red Line stops at Walmart, Shaw’s and BJ’s in West Lebanon. I fully admit to being one of those personal vehicle drivers, taking for granted the ability to go exactly where I want when I want. But we should make more of an effort to take the AT. It’s free, it’s much more environmentally friendly than driving our own cars and it links Hanover to Norwich, Lebanon, West Lebanon, White River Junction, Enfi eld and Caanan. The AT, was created as part of the 2000 Upper Valley Transit plan and was intended to reduce traffi c, “help preserve the small-town char-acter of communities” and increase access to jobs. In a 2008 survey, 13 percent of 572 respondents said they were Dartmouth riders, and of these, 19 percent were undergraduates. When I boarded an Orange Line bus to White River Junction from the Hanover Inn on a recent weekday afternoon, I was the only under-graduate on board. The number of riders stuck close to an equilibrium of about fi ve, shifting at the route’s West Lebanon stop. Most of the passengers, including a middle-aged man who boarded in West Lebanon with shopping bags and a middle-aged woman who couldn’t remember her usual stop, knew the driver’s name: Dave. Dave remembered her usual stop at the Sunset Motor Inn on Route 10 and asked her how her knee was doing. I realized that not only did many of the passengers know Dave’s name, but they knew Dave and Dave knew them. “How’s the back feelin’, Dave?” a man asked. “Where’s your friend from yesterday?” a young man in a bright green Dartmouth Dining Service polo called. “That was ridiculous. I mean, how many times do you have to tell the woman you didn’t know the stop she wanted.” A woman, perhaps slightly batty, became disruptive when Dave didn’t make her stop. Another man wearing a Dartmouth baseball cap, sunglasses and a long tan coat boarded the bus to Hanover in West Lebanon. I had seen him before at Dartmouth, sitting on Collis porch. He knew another female passenger, and the two talked all the way back to Hanover. They both helped out at the same church din-ners. I learned that there had been a series of robberies on one of the streets off of Route 10 at 6 a.m. this past Sunday. When he grew up in Thetford in the 1950s, people left their doors unlocked. “But you can’t do that anymore,” he said. The AT may not run on weekends, but it’s reliable and convenient, and you never know what you might hear. It’s no city bus, either. Dur-ing my commute, everyone said hello to the driver as they boarded and thanked him as they departed.

Alternative Transportation

hop.dartmouth.edu | 603.646.2422 Dartmouth College | Hanover, NH

FILM

SAT | APR 13 | 7 PM SPAULDING | $8 | DARTMOUTH ID $5

“If to see it is to know it, this film delivers measurable, tangible hope that the world

can be healed and helped to a better future.”

Meryl Streep

TYLER BRADFORD // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

MIR ORR8 //

PROFILE

TakingStock InWoodstockWoodstock is one of the Upper Valley’s most

popular tourist destinations BY LILY FAGIN

Courtesy of Woodstock Vermont Area Chamber of CommerceWoodstock offers a variety of retail establishments for tourists and locals alike.

It’s hard to use the word “quaint” in earnest until you’ve seen Woodstock. The two main streets, Central and Pleasant, host exactly the right number of shops, galleries and restaurants to fi ll an afternoon of aimless wandering. Mountains and streams provide the requisite pastoral backdrop, and there is an entire store dedi-cated to fl annel. No visit to Woodstock is com-plete without a trip to the Ver-mont Flannel Company, if you’re not deterred by the strangely realistic, child-sized, fl annel-clad mannequins sitting on the porch outside. Inside is truly something to behold. Flannels in more col-ors and shapes than one could possibly expect fill the racks, while shelves o f b l a n k e t s , pajama pants, scrunchies and boxers line the walls, begging to be grabbed a n d r u b b e d against one’s face. In one cor-ner of the store, there is a col-lection of “Ver-mont’s Secret Vongs,” thongs made entirely of, what else, fl an-nel. People do in fact buy said fl annel thongs, though “not the kinds of people you would want to see in them,” an employee said. At the Vermont Flannel Com-pany, it’s fairly obvious what goods you might find inside. Other stores, however, are harder to tell: they’re marketed as “nostalgia”

or “gifts and souvenirs,” but offer only items that no one could pos-sibly need, and probably not want until at least the age of 60. These are the places to snag a last-minute wind chime or get that glass squirrel you’ve been lusting after. Downtown Woodstock has more of these stores than it does stop signs. There’s Stop in Unicorn, Clover Gift Shop or the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation store, dedicated exclusively to Coolidge-related nostalgia if you want to make purchases you will regret and then learn to appreciate again 40 years from now. Despite lacking a clear reason for existing, these wares are generally fairly expensive. The line between these

and the antique or artisan crafts s tor es sca t -tered up and down Central Street is hazy, though the lat-ter err more to-ward furniture or other items that one could theoretical ly justify spend-ing money on. T h a n k f u l l y, there are also t h r i f t a n d consignment stores for those of us who don’t deal with buy-er’s remorse as

well. Who is Sylvia has an impres-sive collection of vintage clothing, hats and lace. One sherbet-colored argyle sweater vest caught my eye in particular, though I could not bring myself to fork over $25 for a likely one-time wear. The hats are probably my favorite things in the

store — they’re colored, beaded, feathered and ridiculous. I wish there was a reason why someone might ever wear one. In the midst of all this kitsch, F. H. Gillingham and Sons general store was a refreshing dose of reality. While it had a few touristy necessities like maple syrup and moose-patterned pajamas, the store had a lot of things people use, like tools or food. Beyond the front room, the store is a network of endless rooms housing a random assortment of produce, toys, cloth-ing and gardening equipment well worth a meander. I picked up some cheese from nearby Sugarbush Farm, a few local apples and some maple sugar candies in an attempt to be as Vermont-y as possible. Woodstock’s galleries aim for authentic Vermont as well,

showcasing local artists’ photo-graphs, paintings, drawings and crafts. In the Woodstock Gallery, photographer Jon Olsen’s prints are impossible to miss, as they look remarkably like paintings. One of my favorite galleries, de-voted exclusively to famous wood carving artist Stephen Huneck’s cartoon-esque paintings of dogs, unfortunately closed its storefront in town. If you are really motivated, though, the gallery and the Dog Chapel at the ar tist’s private home, Dog Mountain, is only a moderately far drive away in St. Johnsbury. Across the street from Gillingham’s, Bentley’s, a ’50s-style diner fi lled randomly with the Victorian decor that I loved when I was little, is now also “closed until further notice,” according to a sign in the window. Thankfully, the

Village Butcher, Melaza Bistro, Pi Brick Oven Trattoria and Mon Vert Cafe offer viable alternatives, and picnicking is always an option. After Gillingham’s, a bench in a particularly sunny spot was calling from the green, just in front of the beautiful Victorian town library. Nearby, a tourism information kiosk touted skiing at the Suicide Six Ski Area, bike or fl y-fi shing trips and nearby historic sites, one of which was smack dab in front of me. A wooden-covered bridge, complete with spots of snow on the roof, spans the Ot-tauquechee River. Though it was in the opposite direction, I made sure to drive over it on the way home, munching on maple syrup candies, listening to Vermont Public Radio and wishing I was wearing fl annel.

Flannels in more colors and shapes than one could pos-sibly expect fi ll the racks, while shelves of blankets, pajama pants, scrunchies and boxers line the walls, begging to be grabbed and rubbed against one’s face.

Gillingham’s General Store offers everything from fresh produce to tourist necessities.

Courtesy of Woodstock Vermont Area Chamber of Commerce