"The Assembly lacks legitimacy because the students don't respect it and the administration doesn't care about it." And another quote: “Student Assembly in the last few years has been inefficient in providing direction for the College. We need someone who is going to provide a new direction and a coherent direction." Relevancy in SA? Sounds like these sound bites are the opinions of Paul Heintz or Noah Riner, commenting on the vital importance of the 2005 SA elections. They aren’t though; these are the fightin’ words of Aleph Henestrosa and Jim Rich. What, never heard of these campus celebs? Well, don’t bother facebooking them—they graduated Dartmouth nine years ago.

Yes, SA is celebrating its tenth (at least) anniversary of student inability to care less about it, and, indeed, a trip through the annals of The D circa spring 1995 does elucidate striking similarities between Dartmouth Then and Dartmouth Now. Frats passed out bracelets to twenty-one-year-olds. A guy was arrested for running naked across East Wheelock Street. Hanover High students were described as “randoms” (though today “rando” suffices), one having been interviewed after returning “from buying a new skateboard.” The new ‘99s were the smartest class “ever.” There was even talk of demolishing the Shower Towers.

Before you say, “Golly, if we still had ‘Bob’s So Dartmouth,’ this place would be identical to Dartmouth Then,” however, consider the radical differences that are belied by these surface coincidences. All-freshman housing was an administrative wet dream opposed by 4/5 of the student body; it would have entailed housing students by their seminar choices in order to “increase intellectualism.” SA candidate (and Beta Theta Pi brother) Phil Ferrera ’96 advocated sustaining need-blind admissions, which is far from an issue of contention now. “Women’s equity” was a hot-button topic then, as the student body still lacked gender equilibrium, several serious sexual assault cases were under investigation, and a furor brewed over Playboy coming to campus—to recruit models, not accountants. And those “smartest-ever” ‘99s? Their combined admitted average SAT scores of 1362 fell a bit short of our next worst class ever’s 1461, who dealt with a 16.8% admissions rate, instead of 21.6%. Dartmouth’s football record was 7-2-1 and would be 10-0-0 the next season.

Also, in 1995, they raged anymore.

The extent of what transpired in the interim between Dartmouth’s Now and Then could certainly be interpreted as a premonition of our next ten years, but I believe that Dartmouth Now and Dartmouth Future have the potential to diverge much more. The seeds are now being sown for a different College. Sure, she’ll still have her lone pine above her and her loyal ones who love her, but mine and your future alma mater will be a physically, socially, and even intellectually different place.

These ten years will be momentous for Dartmouth, and we are right now at a turning point, a fork in a road whose path is obscured by the nebulous haze of a future much more tenuous and hesitant than the administration’s assertive capital-letter Initiatives, Campaigns, and Goals would lead one to believe, for the administration is but one part of the ultimate composite (or compromise) of interests that will be Dartmouth Future. What will the direction of Dartmouth be? We’ve seen several hypothetical models conjectured about: a Princeton Lite of sorts, an undergraduate focused institution that should nonetheless expand its world-class research facilities and court the same charity-founding student council presidents (and, perhaps, research-focused professors) that the rest of the Ivy League does. That is Buzzflood, that is virtually every Dimensions Weekend event (“Study Secrets” Tour?), that is the entirety of dartmouth.edu’s prospective student website. Then again, there’s the highly-intellectualized, halcyon oasis of learning and community envisioned by deans of the past fifty years - a quiet, Swarmoresque liberal arts bubble. That is the Student Life Initiative, the creation of FUEL, and the two-thousand-square-foot space for “parties” in the new McLaughlin cluster.

There’s also the endangered Dartmouth plan (more over a reaction, really, to most anything this administration proposes), which frets that Organization Kids are replacing Men of Dartmouth, ambiguous and insipid quasi-mascots are replacing fun racially-insensitive ones, and, of course, that nobody rages anymore—the implicit suggestion being that the ideal Dartmouth Future be more like Dartmouth Then And Then Some.

Now, before you blast me for being reductive and simplistic, I’ll say this: of course no one’s suggesting that we become a PC-strangled pseudo-Harvard or revert to a time when “raging” meant throwing napalm-doused bricks at Parkhurst—or women—but Dartmouth has proven it can balance. It can succeed as an institution that treads a unique path, not an Amherst, not a Princeton, not a Harvard, but simply a Dartmouth that can viably endure as such. What’s actually going to happen? I can only conjecture based on past and current administration and alumni imperatives and the student responses. No one can say how each group will continue to interact with the other two, but here are the changes I observe and feel on campus now—and what these changes will inform what becomes of the College on the Hill down the road.

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When I come back to Dartmouth in 2015 in my mind-operated laser hovercraft, a timeworn and wizened ’08, the most marked physical addition will be, in fact, a subtraction: that of the Choates, a cluster—nay, institution—combining all the best elements of a frat and a prefab neighborhood (and a space lounge, or something, at least according to its architect). Expect the Choates and the River to finally pass out within the next five to ten years. The physical feel of the campus will be very much altered in many other ways by 2015 as well though (for more on this, read The Review’s March 11 issue), with the construction of the Tuck Mall and McLaughlin dorms underway, as well as a new math building, a new home for the Dickey Center, a new dining hall, a new arts center, a parking garage, and an addition to the Thayer School of Engineering. Without going into architectural details, I can say that Dartmouth will feel bigger, newer, and - judging by the models I have seen - more generic. It seems as though, with the exception of MacLean Engineering Sciences Center addition to the Thayer School, all the new buildings are aesthetically “safe,” bland homages to Old Dartmouth. While few will criticize these, I think it unfortunate that they will be typical inoffensive rural-college buildings, eliciting little discussion (or good-natured derision). Certainly daring and innovation can result in aesthetic failures like the Choates or the architectural freakshow that is MIT, but no one will mistake these new buildings for being prominent - certainly not the way the vaulted facade of the Hop is.

More important, though, is how the dynamic of the campus will change in the context of these additions. While there are no plans to increase enrollment here the way Princeton has, there will be a significant migration of students to the east side of campus. The 668 beds of the Choates, River, and Treehouses will be gone (hopefully), which means that about a quarter of the students on campus at any given time will be gradually relocated - many to the McLaughlin Cluster. Consider how that Dartmouth convenes to eat: Thayer is the catalyst for the commingling (or at least, co-acknowledging-with-an-awkward-half-nod) of all students of all stripes today. By 2015, however, East Wheelock and McLaughlin students will be eating at the new “world-class” facility, as well as studying and hanging out (most likely not in the euphemism-for-binge-drinking way) in new areas designated for such activities: the entire first floor of the McLaughlin cluster is supposed to be devoted to social spaces. If the administration fashions the new cluster as another East Wheelock (i.e. intellectual and quiet), the campus could very easily bifurcate. The divide between Mrs. Four Classes and Mr. Sweet Kegstander could become a segregated student body.

But what sort of student body would this be? As evidenced by the fact that every class seems to be the best class ever to come to Dartmouth and also by the ever-increasing pool of applicants, Dartmouth will only continue to get stronger - academically. The admitted ‘09s are 27 SAT points ahead of the admitted ‘05s (1461 to 1434), and while I can’t project the scores of the ‘19s because of the crazy new SATs that make 1461 look about as impressive as your average Cornell admit’s score, I can promise that, assuming the admission rate continues to drop at the rate it has over the last five years, 2010 will see only an elite 12% of applicants gaining Dartmouth acceptance. While one must account for socio-cultural factors like the late-‘80s baby boom that has fueled the last few years’ rise in applications, one cannot deny that Dartmouth, especially with the upgrades in facilities, will continue to become more and more attractive to elite students.

The question then rests with the admissions department and, indirectly, Parkhurst at large: what kind of elite student should Dartmouth cater to? The Review likes to invoke former President Freedman’s ideal “creative loner” who “plays the cello, translates Catullus, and solves mathematical riddles” (interestingly, this was articulated even before 1995) and President Wright’s rightfully-maligned Student Life Initiative in bemoaning Dartmouth Future. Indeed, if the campus were to split, the current administration would augment the cello side and curtail the other—possibly even with the truncating of our extensive sports program (keeping the Furstenberg brouhaha in mind, of course). Were the ideas of 1999-2000 realized rather than shouted down by alums and students, Dartmouth would already be well on its way to being just a bigger Middlebury with fewer hippies.

The biggest question at stake in this tenuous balance of interests, of course, is what will become of our most influential, or at least the most visible, Dartmouth tradition - our Greek legacy? The Greek system will almost certainly be intact ten years from now, but in what form? If Wright’s successor is a Son of Dartmouth, if alumni involvement stays strong, if students continue their Hellenic love affair, and if Greek performance in class and not in court continues to match GDI standards, the Greek system will more or less remain as it is, perhaps even on paradoxically better terms with the administration. The new SEMP policies, the College’s recent guarded praise of Greek success stories, and the rekindling of the Zete debate (a house which, if this trajectory of Greek/College relations continues, will probably see re-recognition) speak well for this possibility of Dartmouth Future remaining the best university in the world to maintain a thriving Greek presence.

The catalyst for a much-reduced Greek scene, on the other hand, would be a student death (as it was in 1996 for Bowdoin’s frat abolition). Sadly, this is not unlikely. For instance, someone jumps out of a window of third floor Bissell and is not saved by the sheer luck or drunken limberness. Near-tragedy has become Guy and Fellow comedy a striking number of times in this one year alone (the last time a Dartmouth student died in such an incident was 1991)—but do the math: two defenestrations a year over ten years? With a school that prides itself on the pretense of drinking just as moderately as other schools, a student drinking death would herald a radically different Dartmouth, and a very restricted Greek presence.

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It is admirable that Parkhurst strives for academic excellence and serious scholarship, and even to compete with the rest of the Ivies—after all, a singular Dartmouth doesn’t have to be an insular Dartmouth. Canning Keggy and discouraging spirited Green fans at hockey games are the wrong way to achieve these goal, though. Dartmouth attracts mature, diverse, active kids already, some of whom got dropped by Harvard, but many of whom matriculated because of the inimitable confluence of fun, community, and intellectuality that is Dartmouth and only Dartmouth. It would be ridiculous to say that President Wright does not realize this, or even that Wright will be the guiding force behind the extent to which it is appreciated in the next ten years (he is 65). But the College, over the whole span of its history, has undeniably progressed towards the more subdued and acquiescent. Yet, perhaps, with its unparalleled alumni support and its unquantifiable, elusive Green community, the future Dartmouth can build itself not into the 4th best university in the nation, or the best liberal arts college, but into a unique fusion of intellect and independence. Perhaps, to paraphrase a certain rap song, Dartmouth may reach that fork in the road and drive straight.