A school year is a long time. It is a long enough time to build a house (if you have the proper help and equipment), to write a novel (if you write quickly) or to conceive and bear a child (if you have someone on hand to assist you with the conception part). It is also a long enough time that, by the end, you might have begun to forget the beginning. Now that the 2005-2006 school year has come and almost gone, and now that much of it seems like part of a somewhat murky past, a look back at its most memorable moments seems appropriate.

Dartmouth kicked off the 2005-2006 school year in high dudgeon, thanks to the shoehorned-in evangelical message of Student Body President Noah Riner ‘06’s convocation speech, delivered to most of the ‘09 class on September 20. Most of Riner’s speech seemed innocuous enough: it was flattering, verbose, and structured as homage to an abstract, intangible quality, namely “character.” And, yes, Riner did veer into an anecdote about a Dartmouth alumnus sexually assaulting a fifteen-year-old, but only once, and he made it clear that he didn’t approve. Then, about two-thirds of the way through his speech, Riner broached Jesus Christ as “the best example” of character, which seems like damning the son of God with faint praise. Things only got worse from there, and Riner wound up explaining to a rapt freshman class that

“Jesus’s message of redemption is simple. People are imperfect, and there are consequences for our actions. He gave His life for our sin so that we wouldn't have to bear the penalty of the law; so we could see love. The problem is me; the solution is God’s love: Jesus on the cross, for us.”

The resulting flood of alternately angry and defensive editorials in every Dartmouth news outlet lasted approximately forty days and forty nights. Riner was alternately crucified by some who did not wish to hear his message and praised by others who saw him as being martyred by an overly secular political machine, with a few choosing to wash their hands of the whole matter. Eventually, Riner’s speech died as a topic of campus interest; however, following the election of a new SA president, who must write his own potentially controversial convocation speech, the issue has been reborn to relevance, as was foreseen.

The prolonged debate over Noah Riner’s convocation speech demonstrated how much time Dartmouth students are willing to spend debating an issue that has grabbed their attention; the Programming Board-sponsored Vanessa Carlton show, on the other hand, demonstrated how little time Dartmouth students are willing to spend attending a Vanessa Carlton show. Only 325 students went to the October 4 show, participating in a total audience of 381 in 900-seat Spaulding Auditorium. According to The Dartmouth’s coverage of the show, Carlton was apparently going through a bit of an existential crisis, too. Once on stage, she explained that one of her songs was written about “someone who didn’t know what he was missing,” played another entitled “C’est La Vie,” which she translated as “fuck it,” and complained about her label’s inadequate promotion of her latest album, all before ending with “A Thousand Miles,” the song that made her career, and that, she lamented, she would be playing “for the rest of [her] goddamn life.” Dartmouth’s Programming Board settled on Carlton as a good choice after, among other things, searching Dartmouth students’ Facebook profiles and finding precisely five who listed her music amongst their favorites. Following the debacle, students, not for the first time, mocked the Programming Board and questioned its legitimacy as an organization. Undaunted, PB struck back a little more than a month later with a marginally better-attended and more successful performance by comedian Jamie Kennedy.

This was also the year that another idea that seemed good at the time, the much-hated Student Life Initiative, basically died, a new era of Greek-administrative détente taking the place of the administrative strictures and Greek rebellion that had characterized the SLI years. What changed the Wright Administration’s mind? Did it realize that, after seven years, its attempts to curtail Dartmouth’s heavily entrenched drinking culture clearly were not working, forcing it to fall back rather than lose more face and credibility with the Dartmouth community? Or did President Wright simply stop hating fun? It depends who you ask.

One person who hasn’t stopped hating fun: a certain Norwich resident, who, in the summer of 2005, approached the Norwich selectboard with complaints about Tubestock, the popular Sophomore Summer event. Mr. Resident was angered by the inadequate job students had done cleaning up from Tubestock’s past, and managed to get the town of Norwich, the town of Hanover, and the New Hampshire state legislature on his side. Students now face the task either of raising tens of thousands of dollars to insure the event, or attempting to get it sanctioned by the College, which would necessitate changing the name, banning alcohol from the event, renting out life vests to students, testing rafts for seaworthiness, and instituting a dress code of blazers for the boys and ankle-length skirts for the girls. Resistance movements have sprung up, but Tubestock appears likely to be canceled for this summer.

This was also the year that Dartmouth hemorrhaged faculty and administration. Acclaimed Shakespeare professor Peter Saccio retired at the end of the fall term, at the same time that superstar psychology professor Michael Gazzaniga left for the University of California, Santa-Barbara. Three other psychology professors left, as well, as Gazzaniga’s departure precipitated the collapse of the nascent Dartmouth Center for Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience. Long-standing music professor Jon Appleton is retiring at the end of this year, citing differences with the administration. English professor and perennial student favorite William Cook is retiring at the end of the year. Dean of the College James Larimore is leaving for Swarthmore. Former President of the College James Freedman died.

However, even if Dartmouth lost many of its most engaging minds, it gained a social conscience, at least for several days in May. In the wake of the Congressional reexamination of US immigration policy, Dartmouth played host to a fairly large-scale immigration rally on May 1, during which around 200 students skipped class and marched across campus bearing signs with messages such as “No human is illegal.” They were opposed by right-wing elements of The Dartmouth Review, who actually paid money to have an airplane fly over the Green towing a banner with the message “Illegals are criminals. Send them home.” At the end of the day, lawmakers were still deadlocked on the issue, but had resolved never to sleep with any Review staff member.

Finally, the yearly cycle came full-circle, more or less, with the election of 2006-2007 SA President Timothy Andreadis ‘07. Andreadis, who ran as a write-in candidate (much like the successful candidates in Dartmouth’s recent trustee election), ran a controversial campaign, in which he attacked The Dartmouth and focused on surprisingly hard-hitting issues, most notably rape. Different parties have accounted for Andreadis’s success in a variety of ways, from accusing him of fear-mongering to explaining that he represented an alternative to the insubstantial “mainstream” candidates. Also cited were Andreadis’s successful mining of (and possibly creation of) a student sense of antipathy toward The Dartmouth, and his campaign’s attractiveness to the anti-rape vote, which included, at last count, everyone.

Well, there you have it. The 2005-2006 school year, in slightly more than a thousand words. Having lived through the last year yourself, you might feel inclined to disagree with the contents of this list, and feel that x event should have been included or y event should have not. If so, you should write your own list, because this one’s done like a microwave dinner at the center of the sun. Besides, a small list is better. That way, when people come up to you and reminisce about the year and you don’t know what they’re talking about, you can point out that the story they’re telling isn’t on the list.

“What do you mean?” they’ll say. “This happened three weeks ago. You were there.”

“Sorry,” you can say. “Got this list.”