Like many of its students, Dartmouth has a drinking problem, but doesn’t know it. The Wright administration (and maybe those before it), in its attempts to reduce the prevalence of alcohol on campus, has ignited a controversy over drinking rights, making the debate a matter of politics, technicalities and mutinous impulses and obscuring the problem itself. Dartmouth wraps its social scene around overconsumption of a substance that, when overconsumed, makes people stupid, belligerent, clumsy and sick. Of course, we are not alone among college institutions in having an unhealthy commitment to alcohol—there are probably more colleges in that boat than out of it, although one might make a strong case that Dartmouth is its captain—but sharing a problem with others is not the same as not having one.

Nowhere is Dartmouth’s twisted relationship to drink more apparent than in its startlingly blasé approach to vomit. Scrawled on my hand is the following snippet of conversation, overheard in a rather nice catered reception following a poetry reading in the English department: “Yeah, apparently he came back that night—late that night—and he was covered in vomit and ketchup and mustard.” I later realized that what I found novel was the idea of covering somebody in ketchup and mustard. The vomit thing I’d heard before.

Of course, this is one of the more fringe vomit-related stories I’ve heard, but there are others: of students (Ivy League students, remember) eating “vomelets,” throwing up into each other’s mouths, and sliding down Slip ‘n Slides covered in vomit.

While these examples probably aren’t among your day-to-day Dartmouth nightlife activities, vomiting, in general, is. Recently, I listened to a friend proudly recount “pulling the trigger” in a frat. I have another friend who reminisces about showing up to the first training day of his new job unwashed and reeking of bile after vomiting copiously the previous night. He works within the Dartmouth administration. And many of my male acquaintances have, at one time or another, “domed” somebody else, which, for the uninitiated, involves drinking nonstop until either you or your opponent throws up.

When not evidence of manhood, vomiting is often seen as a fact of life at Dartmouth. Last year, an ‘05 mentioned, during a pong game, that he vomited nearly every time he drank; others talk matter-of-factly about vomiting as a good way to fight alcohol-induced nausea or clear out an overfull stomach. In fact, vomiting is a fact of life at Dartmouth: I am not in a Greek house, go out infrequently, and try not to drink to excess, but I would nevertheless estimate that, among the people I know well, I’ve watched a quarter vomit and heard vomit stories from another half.

Of course, these anecdotes cannot prove a systematic embrace of alcohol-induced vomiting by Dartmouth students as a whole; in fact, no such consensus exists. But they can illustrate the attitudes that have made vomiting an accepted, and occasionally expected, practice for a sizeable portion of campus. How and when did many of us forget that vomiting is a shockingly unpleasant result of being very ill?

I have some speculations. First, I believe that for many of Dartmouth’s minds, the perceived relationship between alcohol and fun is simply one-to-one. Rather than working to maintain a buzz, they drink as much as they feel they can get away with. This is why so many people vomit, black out, get arrested, etc. on “big weekends,” when they feel they can fully cut loose: their idea of cutting loose is getting as drunk as possible. Another answer is that since alcohol has become both the main rite of passage on campus and a perverse indicator of toughness, people drink to the point of sickness because they have something to prove.

Finally, vomit is very funny. To listen to someone recount losing it in a dorm kitchen or on the outside wall of Baker, or to be in a frat and hear, as my best friend did, “Boot in his mouth!” chanted the way crowds sometimes chant “Jump!” to a man perched on a water tower, are unaccountably funny experiences. Vomiting is, in fact, potent physical comedy. Loss of control is funny, as are disgusting body functions, projectiles and being drunk in general; and vomiting up beer rolls all these into one. On some level, I imagine everyone knows that drinking oneself ill is a stupid, pointless, self-destructive thing to do; but the humor of it makes it hard to make that stick.

Whatever its origins and means of perpetuating itself, though, Dartmouth’s vomit culture is an off-putting, puzzling, humiliating symptom of the school’s alcohol problem. The world’s brightest young minds can’t divine that drinking yourself sick is a bad idea; it is a shock that must be seen to be believed.