Who are these grad students, anyway? Are they mostly sketchy alums? How many are we talking? Why did they choose Dartmouth? Where do they hang out? These questions are truly intriguing and inspired me to undertake the most exciting of on-campus journalistic endeavors: a foray into the nebulous world of graduate students.

This first question on my list led me to the Dartmouth website. Graduate school at Dartmouth is actually not just for people who don’t want to leave. Graduate Admissions has a highly selective application process, which suggests that most grad students can’t simply be sketchy alums or academic soils just in it for two more years of socially-sanctioned public vomiting. Grad students at Dartmouth make up one third of our population - roughly 2,000 out of 6,000 students on campus. These 2,000 students consist of aspiring Grey’s Anatomy-type medical school students, Tuck Business School wannabe-ballers, Thayer engi-nerding students, liberal arts MALS students, and students in various small graduate programs in the sciences. Rarely are these weighty intellectuals spotted chugging beers on frat row or scarfing down Billy Bobs in DDS establishments, and they are certainly not at campus-sponsored events or involved in our extracurricular activities (for the most part).

So then, what do they do besides “work”? Like us, they hardly even ever have class.

Engineering student Mike Holliday did stay the extra two years at Thayer to attend grad-school. Why? “Already had a sweet advisor and it was easier than finding a job or applying somewhere else,” he said. That applying to graduate school can be prompted by laziness certainly struck me as an amusing irony. Mike’s housemate and another continuing Thayer student, James Joslin, interjected to point out that the program is also entirely paid for by Thayer—many undergrad ENGS majors do this lucrative program that allows them to get their Master’s in a year and a half. Additionally, Hanover may not be cheap for the Upper Valley, but it is cheap in comparison to living in a city where many other comparable university programs are.

Mike and James, like many graduate students, live off campus with other graduate students. They hang out mostly at other off-campus houses and like to grab a slice at Ramunto’s. They also enjoy typical hobbies like kayaking, rock-climbing, skiing, snowboarding, video-gaming, and even unicycling. Once a term, they host a “porn party” that attracts a fair number of undergrad students - earning them, specifically, the reputation as those sketchy graduate students. When asked how their love lives were, both responded, “Desperate,” but emphatically drew their dating limit at the ’09 class. Either “in a relationship” or “desperate” seems to be par for the course among interviewed graduate students, which isn’t surprising considering the lack of options in a town of 10,000 where most of their choices are either illegal or their parents’ age.

In order to learn more extensively about the graduate student population, I decided to investigate their natural hangout habitat: India Queen. India Queen is popular for its social atmosphere among continuing education students here at Dartmouth (the “official” term for grad students). I questioned the staff about their clientele. “We get mostly engineering students,” says one employee. “A lot of them come down for our parties like the monthly Nice-up, a reggae dance party where we sell more beer than any other time…sometimes the Tuckies come in and get a little obsessive-compulsive and rip up napkins into tiny pieces which they then spread all over the floor and leave for the waiters to clean up.” Eccentric, to say the very least.

Grad students are by all means an odd bunch. As way of example, my friend, Erick Lambert, a recent graduate of the MALS program, makes Guinness ice cream as his hobby. Of all the graduate programs, the earth science one might possibly sport the most entertaining of all the graduate students. I received report from one undergrad that the earth science grads are foosball champs and that one Nate Hamm “can throw down.” They also have a Friday beer club—but beer drinking is encouraged at any time. The earth science graduate students have offices where they hang out, gossip, and work (the third one a “maybe,” adds one undergraduate). Like all Dartmouth students, graduate students are involved in the outdoors in one way or another: usually Frisbee, climbing, or biking. The earth science department, however, can also boast its very own graduate student iron-man and one-graduate-wonder who picks up tarantulas with his bare hands.

So, on the whole, who are these secret citizens of Dartmouth’s other world? In the end, they’re a lot like your typical Dartmouth undergrad – but just a whole lot quirkier.