Two nude men are featured in this three-panel photograph, entitled Daybooks (2009). Photo courtesy of David Hilliard.

David Hilliard is the current Artist in Residence here at Dartmouth, creating photographic polyptychs: multi-paneled art praising ordinary life. Hilliard grew up in rural Massachusetts, and now creates photographs that are detached and isolated, much like the landscape of New England, from which he draws inspiration. This week, I got the chance to sit down with Hilliard and ask him a few questions about his recent exhibition, Highway of Thought, which was on display in the Hop a couple of weeks ago.

DFP: So your exhibition is called Highway of Thought, which I found it to be an aptly named collection. How did you come up with the concept of Highway of Thought, and how did you end up naming it that?

DH: Well it’s named after one of the pieces in the show, which is a portrait of my father’s—I call it his journal, but it’s not really his journal—it’s a book of quotations that he keeps. My father’s a kind of atheistic historian, so there are different quotes and Highway of Thought came from one particular quote in that journal. The photograph is my father’s book open with this beautiful penmanship. He has this incredible handwriting that he tries to perfect. And then on either side—it’s a four-panel photograph—on either side are just his big hands, which are working class hands. My father was a factory worker, never went to college, but is enlightened and self-taught, so I was interested in this kind of juxtaposition of those hands that seemingly couldn’t have written those words. I like that disconnect between the two, and that’s where the title came from.

But in general, the exhibition, which I think is 15 photographs, is a kind of overview. It was an opportunity coming here to Dartmouth for me to look back at my work and choose a series of pictures that show different ways in which I create pictures formally, that touch upon different themes in my work.

But Highway of Thought seemed like an apt title because it was like an overarching theme—if this were a show in New York or at a gallery, it’d be work made within the past year and it would be much more thematically cohesive. This is a bit of a stretch; I like to think the show is comprised of various portraits of people engaged in a search—a kind of journey, a spiritual journey, a sexual journey, a search for identity, people longing to forge their way in the world. And I know that’s a big net to throw around work, but that’s a portrait of free thinkers. The pictures range from my mother sitting on the beach in southwest Florida reading the Bible, two men together in a Connecticut cabin reading art books, a couple engaged in a kiss on a bed, a pregnant teenager with her boyfriend. It’s all a journey that everybody’s trying to figure out as it goes along. It’s a little touchy feely, but I like it; it seemed cohesive in that way for me.

DFP: How do you explore the diptych or triptych form, which a lot of your work features. Do you ever branch off from that or do you like the way you’re able to talk about space and time?

DH: Although I studied cubism, really my roots are in performance theatre and film. And I love narrative and I love narrative writing and fiction. But for me it’s like storytelling and it’s a way to link photographs together with shifting focus that allowed me to kind of move through a space. So it is very much about cinema. Although I love the triptych form, it’s really just about gathering pictures. You could say, “Why can’t you do that in a single photograph?” Maybe, but I don’t think you could point in quite the same way. It’s a combination of photography meets cinema: the still image meets the moving image.

DFP: Are you influenced by a certain geographic area or some other kind of space?

DH: I’m interested in this thing. The official term is environmental portraiture, which is quite simply the figure of a space, and the figure informing the space and the space informing the figure, so the two are in dialogue with on another. I’m definitely interested in the New England landscape. I’m from New England. I love the kind of gentle nature of the New England landscape. It’s not particularly grand; there’s a lot of subtlety. It’s softer; the weather isn’t particularly dramatic for the most part. But its subtlety— I like that.

DFP: I noticed that many of your photographs feature raw sexuality. Part of what appeals to me about your work is its discussion of being gay, especially in Daybooks, where there’ s this physical and emotional distance between two men. Could you tell me more about that?

DH: In that same exhibition, on the other side, there’s a picture from way earlier (in 1994) where you have a blatant kind of sexual moment where one man is bending down kissing the other man. And there’s also nudity, there’re testicles, there’s kissing. So it’s not just sex, it’s also love. And I made that a while ago. And that was a different time. Not that I was an angrier artist, but I was, as far as my politics, maybe pushing a little bit harder to be in-your-face about it. And that photograph is totally voyeuristic. You’re in a doorway looking at something. So depending on your politics or your point of view you’ll either walk by that door, close that door, so it implicates the viewer.

And then years later, quite recently, I make Daybooks, which is still about love between two men. There’s a physical distance between them, maybe an emotional distance, but I like the idea that they’re two men, they’re both undressed, they’re in the same room by the fire so it’s highly unlikely that they’re arguing. They’re just in their own space. They’re together but they’re not together and that’s another beautiful part about being in a relationship. It’s not just about the sex and the kissing; it’s also about being together but in your own space.

And it’s not just that I identify myself as a gay man. Yes, I make queer art. I’m politically active. And you know, it’s funny that you talk about Daybooks. One person who came into the gallery said, albeit nicely, that I was perpetuating stereotypes. And I said, “Well, you know, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I would just say that for me it’s quite political. I’m just standing up and being counted. These moments happen.”

There’s something very political about making this fireside, almost Edwardian, photograph of two men together. I don’t see a many pictures like that. As a graduate student, I set out to make work righting that wrong. I want to make beautiful photographs of men together languishing in landscapes and kissing and holding and I want to fill all those voids that exist in the history of art where [gay men] were shamed and avoided. At the same time, I make other work. I don’t put the pressure on myself to address every major topic, but I think being a gay man and standing up and showing normal sides of a lifestyle is very political. And if someone sees that as perpetuating a stereotype, then that’s unfortunate.

DFP: But it’s interesting how, in Daybooks, the image of two men involved romantically is not just sexualized, but seems to be going something beyond that to something more taboo.

DH: Yeah, maybe it’s taboo. Well you’re a smart guy; you’re at Dartmouth. I’m going say something you probably already know: the reason it’s interesting for me to have the picture of two men kissing, and across from it is Hot Coffee, Soft Porn. It’s two photographs that represent two men each engaged in something that is decidedly personal, private, like two men in a bedroom kissing, making love, and then the other photograph—it’s two brothers eating crappy food and watching porn together. One isn’t better than the other. It’s a personal choice. At the end of the day, it’s the choices that we make and I could keep going. Many of my photographs dealt with that.

I had a whole body of work about that (and some of the pictures are in the show). I was making pictures down in Florida with my mother, who’s a born-again Christian, and she has her crazy lifestyle. It makes her happy, it keeps her going everyday. She gets out of bed and reads the Bible, I get out of bed and I do something else, and you get out of bed and you do something else. I love the idea, that in that picture, in those two photographs are men engaged in their own kind of personal choice and moment. Sometimes it’s funny to see who takes issue during First-Year Family Weekend; it’s funny to see who wouldn’t look at what, who got a chuckle. There are issues of taste in that show that are brought up.

DFP: It is very homoerotic. When I saw that picture, I thought about the possibility of this pseudo-incestuous relationship going on.

DH: Oh you mean the homoerotic between the two brothers? Wow (laughs), I love that.

DFP: It’s not quite like they’re together but then it is.

DH: That’s a very interesting read. It is intimate because it’s not a bunch of men. It’s two men watching porn and they’re sitting on a couch together. Whether it’s homoerotic or not, it’s definitely an intimate photograph; it’s more intimate than a lot of men would get with one another.

DFP: And I guess a lot of it goes back to defining masculinity, because I know much of your work also does that.

DH: There are definitely rites of passage. Of course, I’m a man; I’m a gay man. My world was decidedly masculine. I address the feminine in my work, but it’s very different, it’s somewhat distanced in a way. But men fascinate me. Straight, gay, old, young, boys becoming older boys, becoming teenagers, becoming young men, becoming middle-aged men, becoming old men. All of those phases of your life have their complications. You’re 20-something and I’m 40-something. At 19, I had very different issues than I have now and I love that.

There was a time, when I was 19, that I wasn’t making my artwork—but it was a time like the Kiss photograph. That’s me in that picture. I was young, that moment was real. And now in some of my photographs, it’s more like an older man looking back and remembering. It’s funny getting older as an artist. I make work in real time about being 40. And this is to answer your question about the rites of passage: the evolution of men is great. I love that there’s a subtext to my work on masculinity.

Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA) serves those who wish to question faith from a non-theistic perspective and discuss secular humanism and scientific inquiry. There has always been a significant non-theistic discourse at Dartmouth, especially in the classroom, where many people assume a secular viewpoint no matter their spiritual beliefs. Yet for years non-theistic people at Dartmouth have been discussing their beliefs outside of any organization, only engaging their beliefs with others whenever the topic comes up, such as when someone writes a fundamentalism-fueled rant against abortion or women’s rights on B@B. Those who define themselves as religious embrace group solidarity around loving the same gods. There needs to be a community for like-minded secular and non-theistic thinkers at Dartmouth, just as there are communities for religious and theistic thinkers

As a deist and humanist with a love of science and reason, I came to this school wondering why a group like AHA did not already exist in what seemed like such a liberal, progressive or at least moderate political environment. Upperclassmen attendants at AHA meetings report that there have been gatherings in the past but no organized community or discussion group under the Tucker Foundation. After all, where does a non-religious group fit into a religious institution? Directors of the Tucker Foundation have expressed positive feedback for making an official secular organization, and if AHA is any indication, the many voices of the non-theistic community have been waiting for such an outlet.
AHA meetings in Fahey McLane ground floor lounge are held every Tuesday at 8 p.m. This past meeting on May 4th, group founder Siyue Liu ‘13 led a discussion on the non-theistic view on death and the afterlife. The meeting started with an SMBC cartoon of the Ten Commandments, portraying God’s original commandment as simply: “Don’t be a dick.” Then the talk turned to whether the non-theistic view subscribes to an afterlife, and if a religious belief in an afterlife offers solace from the very human fear of death. Later, the discussion branched out to touch on how there is still a societal taboo surrounding the label “atheist,” whether there is an objective morality tied to any one religion or an innate morality built into humanity as a species and finally whether science is a “faith” or not.

I arranged to have an online chat with Siyue Liu ‘13 who has orchestrated this success.

SR: What inspired you to found AHA? How do you feel about starting the first atheist and agnostic religious group of its kind at Dartmouth?

SL: Before the establishment of AHA at Dartmouth, there were more than 25 religious organizations on campus, but none for students with explicitly non-theistic worldviews. I feel that it’s important for AHA to represent the non-theistic community on campus, as well as provide a voice to students without religious belief. We also hope to engage in interfaith-dialogue, while promoting greater understanding of worldviews of students without religious faith. Through constructive dialogue, we hope to encourage more open discussion concerning questions of religious faith and morality, while enabling the voices of non-theistic students as well. Ultimately, our community aims to provide a safe and civil ground to socialize with like-minded individuals, while engaging students in dialogue about faith and ethics from a non-theistic identity.

SR: I imagine religious freedom in all its forms is important to you. Would you like to say more to that effect?

SL: Of course. People are free to practice their own set of beliefs, and people who reject those beliefs should be free to do so as well. However, in many parts of the world (even more so in America), there still exists a negative stigma on the word “atheist,” and many people are still hesitant to “come out” to their religious friends and family about their non-theistic worldviews. Unfortunately, a lot of people have only vague ideas and misconceptions about what non-theists or humanists believe, so increased discussion would promote greater awareness understanding of the worldviews of students without religious faith.

I think that because Dartmouth is such an intellectual environment with its cultural roots in religious doctrines, we need to engage in more open and critical discussion of questions concerning faith. Despite the uncomfortable stigma surrounding these issues, religion is not immune to critical analysis, and both theists and non-theists should treat it as a subject for evaluation and multi-faceted dialogue (like politics).

Liu then related an anecdote about a question a fellow student had recently asked her on the nature of secular humanism. The student answered by noting that secular humanism is a popular stance for atheists to take. But said student found here a philosophical inconsistency: namely that you cannot be an atheist and still assert that people are good and should live moral lives.

After letting this sink in for a few seconds, Siyue started animatedly, “Of course you can be good without God!” Liu believes we do not need the threat of burning in hell for eternity to do good things. In fact, Liu insisted that she would question the sturdiness of someone’s beliefs if they felt like they need the idea of someone constantly watching and judging them, in order to live a life of decency and morality.

Liu argues that there is absolutely no basis on judging someone’s morality on the premise of whether they believe in a supernatural entity or not. Secular humanism is not a religion, but a life stance that specifically rejects supernatural and religious dogma as the basis of morality, while focusing on how human beings can lead good lives without an overseeing god. Ultimately, Liu concludes, we should love not God, but humanity and ourselves.

While planning future meetings of AHA, Liu is currently working on securing group recognition for AHA from the Tucker Foundation. She is confident that once a proposal is submitted, Dean of the Tucker Foundation and College Chaplain Richard Crocker will be willing to acknowledge the importance of discussions on spirituality and morality from a non-theistic perspective, relying on reason and experimental evidence that enhances, rather than taking away from human wonder in awe of a complex, beautiful universe.

To my surprise, many students at Dartmouth are of a different opinion. The most common response of Dartmouth students, when asked about the approval of a new non-theistic group on campus was “Why would anyone want to join that group?” The real question here is why would an atheist—a person who does not believe in miracles or fate—be impassioned by the absence of faith? What would they talk about?

We all know the stereotype of the disillusioned atheist who has become alienated from religion and regressed into apathy. Many people who hear phrases like “The First Atheist Church”—which does actually exist and has ordained 2523 ministers—would consider it an oxymoron and assume that no such thing would exist.

All stereotypes aside, there are still those impassioned atheists who may not believe in God but who nonetheless believe in some higher purpose, whether it be achieving enlightenment or protecting the health of the planet. They can change their beliefs no more easily than religious people can change theirs. Although atheism is not technically, a religion, the fact that the Tucker Foundation has already adopted 25 affiliated religious groups and yet has not included the non-theists in their debate seems incongruous with their stance on diversity. Why is it that we have overcome the days of shunning “non-believers” as with people of different faiths, but we have not yet overcome our fear of allowing theist and non-theists to sit down next to each other?

I remember when I was in third grade, I would argue with a girl in my class over the existence of God. My parents had not yet explained to me that the subject was “taboo,” especially coming from seven-year-old. I would ask her over and over, “why do you believe in God if you have never seen him, if you have no proof?” And she would simply respond, “At least I believe in God!” To say the least, the conversation didn’t get very far. After having turned this poor girl’s face beet red numerous times, she finally offered one justification that made some sense to me: she needed no proof, and that was why it would always be true. They were simply people of faith and I was not.

Alas, I discovered that as an immature atheist, conversing with a religious person about morals and religion was nearly inconceivable. There is simply no way to hold a worthwhile conversation about religion, I thought, when you are missing the key ingredient: faith. Soon however, as I met people who practiced religions other than Christianity and Judaism, such as Daoism in East Asia or Santeria in Cuba, I realized that despite vast cultural and geographical differences most religious people obey many of the same basic principles. Though every faith may believe in a slightly different version of our creator and the afterlife, we all face virtually the same consequences for our actions here on Earth such as guilt, physical harm, or imprisonment. As many atheists have argued before—and Siyue Liu ’13 reiterates in her interview inside—you don’t have to have faith in a certain deity in order to have morals or even to consider yourself “religious” by a loose definition. By now, I would hope that this fact has become widely accepted amongst educated people if not a platitude.

Yet the reason that so many people are uncomfortable talking about religion with non-theists is not that they see them as immoral, but rather precisely because they do not have faith, at least in the traditional sense of the word. So we are back to the old wall of faith (or lack thereof). Having an honest, level discussion with others about religious issues, especially if they do not subscribe to the same religion, takes some mutual understanding of faith, and what it means to defend your beliefs instead of merely rejecting the beliefs of others. But this has to work both ways, and ignoring the voice of non-theists is no different than dismissing the faith of religious groups.

The idea that atheism is about disagreement is a misconception that has stunted ethical and moral discourse at Dartmouth for years. Something tells me that the members of AHA are not merely out there to start arguments. If this were the case, then why would the members participate so enthusiastically for years without official recognition? Even non-theists have beliefs of their own. Ultimately we are all searching for answers to the same basic questions, and whether we choose to believe that the universe began 15 billion years ago or a few thousand years ago is irrelevant. What matters is that if there are people out there who share a common system of beliefs, they should be permitted to hold a civilized discussion with each other and bring their discussion to a public forum.

Bishop Robinson is described as humble by his diocese in New Hampshire. An effective speaker, he spoke with me last November, at DGALA, the annual gathering of Dartmouth LBGTQ Alumni. Like the last time, He did not fail to impress.

Robinson began his talk by emphasizing the importance of a Pride Week even in a place like Dartmouth, which on the surface seems absent prejudice. Pride Week is a celebration of how far LBGTQ people have come, but it also serves as reminder that even in places like Dartmouth or New Hampshire, there remains work to be done. Visibility is a public and political statement that not only strengthens the LBGTQ community but a community as a whole.

He then opined that other great civil rights movements of the past, such as those for racial and ethnic minorities, women, the elderly and the disabled, truly gained momentum when members of the dominant majority—whites, men, the young—joined forces with the oppressed and helped bring about justice for all. Civil justice becomes more attainable once all realize that discrimination negatively affects both the oppressors and the oppressed. The need and appreciation for straight allies is more important to the LBGTQ community than ever before. He stated that when people know at least one gay or lesbian, they are less likely to discriminate. When someone says, “that’s so gay” to refer to something lame or stupid, a face pops up. That is why Robinson stresses the adage of the late Harvey Milk: “Coming out is the most political statement you can make.” Today, most of the younger generation may know someone who is gay, but people from Robinson’s generation, contemporary lawmakers and politicians, may not. So for him, visibility is vital.

Yet coming out, for some, can be a difficult process. Here, Robinson delved into the religious side of LBGTQ issues. He described how most moral justifications for gay bashing and hate crimes originate in the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran, illustrating how a sense of religious alienation pervades the LBGTQ community. For instance, Robinson once led a workshop for LBGTQ youth who all came from fairly secular households. However, every one of them was aware of the word “abomination” and its perceived reflection on their lives.

Despite this intimidating precedent, Robinson does not feel that spirituality and homosexuality are incompatible, and in fact argues the opposite. His problem instead lies in how the seven or so verses that condemn homosexuality in the Bible are interpreted, and he He outlines three ways in which LGBTQ people can reinterpret those verses.

First, many if not all of supposedly anti-gay verses are taken out of their cultural context. For example, the most explicit condemnation of homosexuality in the Bible, Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination”) occurs only a couple chapters away from Leviticus 15:16-18, which condemns the “sin of Onan”—better known as “spilling seed” (in Genesis 18:8-10, Onan pulls out before ejaculating while having sex with his wife and God slays him. This passage has historically been used to condemn male masturbation and birth control). Robinson then questions, then, why society at large turns a blind eye to the sin of Onan but not to a similar passage condemning homosexuality. These two parts in Leviticus must obviously be taken together; spilling seed, whether by pulling out or through homosexual acts, was prohibited within the young Hebrew nation, which prized male sperm as a means to increase population. Also, those verses condemning homosexuality operate on the assumption that all people are heterosexual. People living at the time had no conception of homosexuality, so any person, any heterosexual, was going against his or her nature by engaging in homosexual acts. The Bible doesn’t prohibit homosexuality per se, but instead the act of going against one’s nature.Second, verses condoning slavery and sexism have already been reinterpreted within their cultural contexts, and preachers no longer invoke them according to original understanding. Should the verses condemning homosexuality be treated any differently? Robinson doesn’t believe that the living God presented us with a religious text that was only culturally relevant through the first century. No, the living God continues to work with humanity, helping it to gain a greater understanding of what it means to have justice and equality for all. Robinson quoted John 16:22, in which Jesus says to the disciples, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…he will shew you things to come.” The message of Jesus was culturally and politically revolutionary for its time. The disciples did a good job of absorbing the controversy of “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but throughout the resulting centuries we still struggle with a full understanding of what it means to love all regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientation and presentation. Robinson feels that the living God still continues to sends the Holy Spirit to guide believers to a greater acceptance of all God’s children, whether gay, straight, and everything in between.

Third, Robinson encourages members of the LBGTQ to no longer fear or shy away from religion. Too often LBGTQ people feel terrible pain when their faith communities reject them, barring them from attendance or refusing to marry them in synagogues, churches or mosques. Yet LBGTQ people must learn to see religious texts as their texts too. Although there are no (so far as we can tell) openly LGBTQ Biblical heroes, LBGTQ people can still feel empowered by Bible stories. For example, Robinson sees the Exodus as biggest “coming out” in history. He compared being in the closet to being enslaved until a great person comes and leads you out. When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, Robinson feels Moses’ parting of the waves was little less dramatic than presented in the film The Ten Commandments. Instead of clearing a giant boulevard across the sea, Moses had to embark in faith, and with each step of faith just the right amount of land for a dry footfall was cleared. Robinson feels the process of coming out is just as gradual and terrifying. It involves stepping out in faith, stepping out into the unknown, without seeing what lies ahead. And even when the other side is reached, there’s still a long trek to the Promised Land.

The LBGTQ community has yet to reach its Promised Land. Although there is greater awareness of LBGTQ people and issues than ever before in history, homophobia still pervades the discourse in many more circles than we’d like to believe. Robinson prefers the term heterosexism as opposed to homophobia; linguistically, he argues, homophobia is the fear of homosexuality. It’s a prejudice, but as Robinson points out anyone can have an irrational prejudice against anything. What’s truly troubling is an “-ism,” a linguistic construct according to which a prejudice is no longer simply a prejudice, but is paired with the power to actively silence and discriminate by way of its recognition. We are aware of racism, prejudice paired with power favoring white people, and sexism, prejudice paired with power favoring men, but what we know as homophobia is really heterosexism, prejudice paired with power favoring straight people. When a minority is denied basic civil rights, the majority is actively and/or passively using its power to oppress said minority. The members of said minority are second-class citizens—it’s as simple as that.

The kind of acceptance that enables Pride Week snowballs into greater awareness and acceptance. As LGBTQ people continue to empower themselves politically, socially and spiritually, more people will begin to see that LGBTQ awareness is here to stay and that such powerful voices cannot be silenced. Robinson notes that some people may wonder if a there is need for Pride Week at a place as open and diverse as Dartmouth. but acknowledge the need to celebrate the strides made by the flourishing LBGTQ community here and, more importantly, the strides to come.

Gay Pride Parade. Photo courtesy of iwona_kellie, Flickr.

Whether you’re Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Allied (LGBTQA) or anything else (XYZ), this week has certainly been a spectacle of sexuality: men dressed as women, women dressed as men, androgyny, genderbending. Once again Dartmouth has had an educational, fun-filled, and successful PRIDE Week. Our celebration here in Hanover was not a part of a national PRIDE holiday—Ally Week, Day of Silence, International Drag Day, and National Coming Out Day—so considering our independent effort, the full schedule of Dartmouth PRIDE Week was something of which we can all be proud. Despite the inopportune weather, our rainbow-spangled banners were still there looking better than ever. Can’t rain on this parade!

This year’s PRIDE week events ranged from the inspirational Bishop Robinson talk, the fabulous gender-bending fashion show TransForm, and the hilarious Drag Bingo Night, to the slightly underwhelming Dartmouth CookOUT and 24-hour SpeakOUT chat, to the downright deplorable Denis Dison’s keynote address. PRIDE week had its weaknesses, and sure, Frank Karger may not triumph in his campaign to become the first gay president in 2012, but just like Jesse Jackson before him—or any pioneers for that matter—we all have to start somewhere. Without a doubt, continuing these pioneering traditions will lead to important advancements for the LGBTQ and straight communities of this College and the nation.

Here at the DFP, we support the LGBTQ community in its quest for equality. The goal of PRIDE Week at Dartmouth is to allow the students and faculty to evolve and develop into a more inclusive community. Bishop Robinson said it best: PRIDE Week is not only a celebration of how far the LGBTQ community has come, but also a reminder of how much work there’s left to do. PRIDE Week promotes visibility and discussion of LGBTQ issues.

The College has hosted numerous famous speakers in the past—Urvashi Vaid of the Arcus Foundation and writer and trans activist Kate Bornstein—and it added New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson this year. These speakers had distinct voices, and have shared their ideas for making the world better for LGBTQ people by offering real solutions.
The Dartmouth PRIDE committee also hosted an online chat that was designed to create an open, anonymous environment for students’ opinions on queer topics. Unfortunately, the chat was poorly designed, and the premise of anonymity, while it certainly allowed people to speak freely, interfered with any focused conversation. For the first hour, most of the contributions were either egregiously homophobic or whimsical remarks about lesbian porn. We should not assume that people wouldn’t want to participate in a forum just because they must be responsible for their own opinions. The LGBTQ community is brave, and we should have let its members speak for themselves. Anonymity, here, sent the wrong message about the confidence and pride of today’s LGBTQ community.

As tough as it is discussing these issues at Dartmouth, a college with a long history of lagging behind in gender/sexuality issues and a Greek System that lives and breathes heteronormative values, we must insist on pushing the discourse into the open. With the exception of one or two sororities and fraternities that have begun to support the PRIDE movement, we have yet to see any large-scale participation by Greek organizations. Even if these organizations think they are separate from PRIDE issues and do not consider themselves “alternative social spaces,” they are still responsible for representing their LGBTQ membership, which is present whether they acknowledge it or not.

Even students who are convinced they hold no responsibility for gender equality and sexual freedom for others can benefit from educating themselves of the values and motivations of the gay community. Is the LGBTQ community more concerned with acceptance or changing society? Where is the modern gay rights movement heading? What is the ideal vision of queer people within society? These questions concern queer and straight people alike, and the queer community cannot answer them alone.

It’s unfortunate that this year’s keynote speech with Denis Dison was so poorly attended. Dison is the Vice President of External Affairs for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee that helps train LGBTQ political candidates. We admit that the Victory Fund is not very well known, and we don’t necessarily agree with the Victory Fund’s blanket support of LGBTQ candidates. Nor do we claim that his speech would have produced any goosebumps or sudden changes of heart. But potential audiences couldn’t have known this beforehand, and the meager attendance therefore hinted at our campus’ disinterest in having a discourse about the emerging role of LGBTQ people in politics.
There is still much work to be done. Bored at Baker is full of homophobic comments. The 24-hour SpeakOUT blog was host to numerous trolls spewing anti-gay remarks. The Greek system at large is still too heteronormative and gender exclusive. But we should be able to recognize and rectify these issues while celebrating the achievements of the LGBTQ community: the addition of gender-neutral housing, for instance, or the formation of an LGBTQ mentor program, OUTreach. This week, we can celebrate: dress in drag, play bingo, and dance. But come Monday, we must continue the push to raise LGBTQ awareness on campus. We’re here, we’re straight and we’re queer, so get used to it.

The excitement around Jason Derulo stems from his recognizable name. Compared to some truly obscure artists who have performed at the HOP like Anat Cohen or Bill T. Jones, Derulo is practically Chris Brown. Understandably, the isolation of Hanover can make students desperate for any type of entertainment. There is also an apparent lack of interest in the lesser-known artists. So it’s only natural that a second-rate performer would garner attention, even if his fifteen minutes are almost up.

It’s true; most Dartmouth students are usually overburdened with school, work, and extracurricular commitments to squeeze in that fairly obscure flutist playing at the HOP. When most Dartmouth students think of the reasons for going to the HOP, they are usually related to the many non-art related things, like picking up a package or getting food from the Courtyard Café. Students are only likely to attend a HOP event if their friends are performing in it. The Dartmouth Gospel Choir events, which usually sell out, have a high percentage of student attendants. The same is usually true from other events like Glee Club and Orchestra. Visit any other event at the HOP and you will soon realize that it’s one of the public campus-owned places; elderly townie couples run rampant.

The reason for low student attendance at certain Hop events can also be attributed to logistical reasons. Students are less likely than an older patron to buy their tickets in advance, making it impossible to attend a show. “I know I would lose a ticket if I bought it too early,” said Renee Scott ’13.

While it may seem unfortunate that students would choose a one-hit wonder over some of the world’s most distinguished performers, it’s probably unrealistic to ask most college students to develop such mature artistic appetite. I suppose students already spend a lot of time pondering social injustice and expressive modes in class during the week. Still, its worth taking your evening off to see something new at the Hop this term.

David Bradley, born in the U.S., educated in London, specialist in Asian minority languages, and now based in Australia, has a personal accent that sounds part English and Australian and part completely foreign. It is the speech of someone who is knowledgeable in English, Burmese, Thai, Chinese, French, Italian and a variety of Asian minority languages including Lahu, Gong, Lisu “and so on” and has written numerous dictionaries and phrasebooks. His guest lecture, “Resilience Linguistics: Revitalizing Indigenous Languages” on April 6th,” highlighted an almost-extinct language, Gong, with only 50 fluent speakers in Thailand, all over the age of 60.

Gong is swiftly breaking down in what Bradley calls the “release phase” of his four-phase system for indigenous languages: growth, conservation, release, and reorganization. Many other languages are also found in this precarious situation of losing their linguistic heritage. Pursuing such needs such as land, health, education, and economic and social progress almost always necessitates an indigenous community to operate in the national language.

Other unique factors have also played into Gong’s endangered status. The ethnic Gong were largely uprooted by the government and resettled from western Thailand to two villages in the more easterly Uthai Thani and Suphanburi provinces. Yet many ethnic Gong in various other villages have been submerged and the language was lost there there. Moreover, in the construction of a Gong writing system, Thai government policies again came into play, as minority scripts must be based on Thai script to be officially recognized. The lack of /g/ in Thai phonology marks a problem of orthography for the /g/ rich Gong phonology. Also, changing verb intonations do not exist in Thai as in Gong, and Gong accent markers are often omitted in the Thai script. The influence that Thai has had on Gong speakers has changed the way that younger speakers now pronounce their language, with a convergence toward Thai phonology.

Bradley created a Gong Thai-based script in 1982, in conjunction with Gong elders and Mahidol University, in Bangkok. But because of the convergence toward Thai phonology, maintaining a maximally traditional phonology within the writing system has become unrealistic. It is this type of bittersweet problem linguists must face as they catalogue indigenous languages. Can they alter a language’s probable path to extinction? Would it be unethical to not to try?

But now we segue back to the idea of “dangerous languages” and add another language to this group, Lisu, a surprising addition since it is an indigenous language that is replacing other indigenous languages. The Lisu are a 1 million-strong ethnic group spread across southwest China, northern parts of Burma and Thailand, and northwest India. Lisu assimilates outsiders easily, often through marriage—; Bradley gave the example of a number of Lisu having Mandarin names due to the intermarriage of Han Chinese men and Lisu women.

The Lisu language may be stable, but there are several aspects of traditional Lisu culture that are currently endangered. Literacy in Lisu is associated with Christianity in many areas, and so Lisu is losing traditional religious oral texts, medical knowledge, and other aspects that are often considered inappropriate by literate Lisu.

But the term “literate Lisu” can be confusing since Lisu live in four countries, use four different national languages in education, and have more than four different writing systems. The Lisu prefer a 1914 script introduced by Protestant missionaries, which accurately represents Lisu phonology but looks somewhat unusual with upside-down and quasi-latin symbols and punctuation marks. Other Lisu orthographies use Chinese, Chinese Pinyin, and Thai scripts.

As a linguist in South Asia, Bradley deals with both thriving and dying languages. What his work comes down to is cultural preservation, whether describing a Gong man basket-weaving, or recording oral Lisu religious stories, giving an ethnic group a living identity even when the traditional language is gone. Globalization has many victims. Languages may not be high on the list when we think of things endangered by modernity. Whether or not we should actively try to save these languages can be debated—but what therse is no question of is that the world will have lost something special when they are gone.

Yes, it’s the season of renewal: by the time you read this issue, new members of the Board of Trustees will have been elected and the Student Assembly elections will be underway (the latter will be covered in a special DFP “SA Elections” issue).

Some of the new changes are a little hard to grasp. For the first time in decades, we may no longer be sending “blitzes”. Instead, as Parker Phinney explains in his article on email server change, we are most likely going to be sending, well, emails. Though for many of us, the idea wrenches the heart at its very mention—we will all miss that iconic dog-attacking-the-pixilated-mailman—we can rest assured that the change is all for good reason. It will make communication more efficient and reliable, and hopefully our Darmouth Experience will be purer: the more memory we can store in our email server, the more we space we can clear in our minds.

As Liz Klinger notes in her article, this summer Thayer Dining Hall will be closed for demolition and renovation. But before you storm the steps of Parkhurst, look on the bright side—at least Collis will be open. What’s more, if things go according to plan, the construction of “The Class of 1953 Commons” will provide a whole array of new-age common spaces to complement those already in nearby Robo and Collis. Who knows, it might even have a catchy nickname.

Meanwhile, in national news, magic mushrooms can cure depression, The Census is going gay (hopefully) and the healthcare Bill was passed over spring break. Zach De covers the census in his article, and some of the Health Care Bill’s more exact dimensions are clearly enumerated for our readers in Sora Ryu’s article on Health Care Reform.

Universal Health Care is one of those ideological shifts that for many seems overly technical, like the email server change, and so is reduced and boiled down until it is no longer a debate of Health Care Reform vs. no Health Care Reform but instead Socialism vs. Capitalism, or even charity vs. responsibility. This is simply not case—the two paradigms simply are not that different. There is no inherent reason why health care cannot share properties of both, and meet the needs of all parties.

Turning this idea on its head, as Sora Ryu writes in her article on Dambisa Moyo, helping the less fortunate is not—indeed, should not—be a matter of charity. It is hard for us, sitting around our coffee tables, eating our delicious Novak food, talking on our cell phones, to ever take the stance that helping starving children is not the right decision. We can’t see where our money is going or how it is being used; all we know is that we can’t stand for doing nothing. The problem with this mindset is that we are at the center, and once we drop our money through the slot or send our check in the mail, we have already achieved that feeling of moral satisfaction, whether or not it has benefitted anyone. Exploring this principle on the ground in Ghana, James Wang explains that the correct way to approach poverty in Africa is with investment and microfinance. If we can trust the people of Africa with the ability to repay small loans, new monetary freedom will stimulate the economy.

While the new Editorial Board at the DFP is looking forward to investigating these topics in the coming term, it is important to remember that even at a time like this (looking outside), not everything is like bunnies and sunshine.

The SEIU and staff cuts seem to have faded into the background, and the six-figure success of our Haiti relief effort is certainly a cause for celebration. Ethan Wang ’13, in a recent opinion article in “The Dartmouth,” chirped a familiar tune, writing “These two causes [Haiti and the staff] have generated a lot of attention on campus — but perhaps a little too much”. These “buzzwords”, as Wang writes, have become obsolete fashion statements, and the programs the college has enacted to address these issues “do little more than unnecessarily drain resources.”

Ethan Wang argues that we should not have taken in two Haitian immigrants for term at Dartmouth, because such an experience “will give them a fleeting taste of our privileged academic environment before returning to their impoverished country”. Wang concludes that they are not “Making the most of their experience.” But how can Wang make claims like this without having spoken to the students himself? I am sure you would find they are far from disappointed or bitter with their experiences here. As leaders in the Haiti relief effort, it is also the College’s obligation to uphold its, and our, image in the academic sphere by showing that we are willing to do more than publish photographs of our experts getting off of planes with fancy equipment. We are embracing the problem here as our own.

Labeling words like “Haiti” and “Staff” as buzzwords so that we can feel more comfortable about dismissing them does not show any well-formulated opinion. When there are no better alternatives, sometimes the most meaningful thing to do is to offer “a kind gesture” rather than embrace a colder, more financially “efficient,” logic.

One of the themes of this issue is that we have to know when charity is productive and when it becomes “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” In both cases, of course, the intentions are good, but the difference (or, perhaps, the devil) is in the details. Whose hands touch the money before it reaches its destination? When we choose to help one group of people, what more needy groups are we ignoring? Are we really making a difference?

As we prepare for a new term and the discussions to come, we have to make sure we keep in mind the consequences of our decisions in the future. We do not make decisions just to win or lose in the moment of disagreement, just as we cannot forget the struggle that got us here on issues like Haiti and the Staff. In the same way, we must consider how we look back on things like Blitzmail and Thayer Dining Hall as different people. If we remain open to change now, we will thank ourselves later.

Thankfully, the college is planning on renovating Thayer beginning this summer, and will be renamed to the Class of 1953 Commons when it opens. That may mean that sophomores will not be able to eat at FoCo during their sophomore summer, but hold your groans, for Collis will remain open. Moreover, in the long run, this renovation can potentially reinvent the facetime rat-race that is the Dartmouth dining experience.

Although the Thayer renovation seems recent in our minds, it’s actually a part of a 10-year plan that began with a proposal to expand north campus by constructing the Class of 1953 Commons (separate from the future Class of 1953 Commons that is currently Thayer/FOCO), which would act as Dartmouth’s second major dining hall, house ORL’s Office and Dartmouth’s first graduate suite/headquarters, among other purposes. The Commons would have temporarily replaced Thayer as the main dining hall while Thayer was to be demolished and rebuilt. However, these plans were delayed several times, and the Class of 1953 Commons construction has since been canceled amid budget cuts.

In planning stages, designers had considered possibilities of a completely new Thayer dining hall; however, because they have started a new proposal to renovate the existing Thayer, the designers are now limited to working with Thayer’s existing skeleton. The schedule gives them just about one year to finalize the proposal, get permits, and finally start the physical renovation. Although there is a decade of off-and-on preliminary plans behind them, there still seems to be no precise plans on how to best use the existing Thayer, including how to make it more sustainable, though the redesign commits to reducing energy consumption.

With everyone involved in finalizing proposals, now seems like the best opportunity to have a say in Thayer’s renovation. If the plans follow the timeline, they would directly affect the ‘12s, ‘13s and ’14s, and it’d be something that we ‘10s and ‘11s would be coming back to in future visits to our alma mater.

The current renovation plan features an increase in Thayer seating from 700 seats to 1000, a change from the original plan to decrease the number to 600 seats. It has yet to be illuminated whether this change will improve the dining experience, or if the new plan will make it easier for people to work and cook. Maybe it will just turn into a suffocating zoo like our favorite morass, Collis, where the staff must constantly retrieve food from downstairs, and where we must constantly bump and spill coffee on other harried students.
One Collis is enough, thank you.

Also, there seems to be no official plan for the basement and 2nd floor, two potentially cool new social spaces. The Thayer basement—particularly the area with the ping pong tables—has a kitchen that is rarely used. I mean, there’s already a kitchen down there, and it would not involve drastic renovations. Plus, pubs are fun. I’m not thinking that it should be another Lone Pine necessarily—it was difficult to have a conversation there, too. I’m thinking more along the lines of Wellesley College’s Punches Alley and The Hoop—fun, relaxing, a good place to hang out with friends and, of course, a good place for face-time.

The main floor of Thayer could easily be divided and refurbished to look more welcoming and satisfying, or they could throw in a bunch more chairs and call it Class of 1953 Commons. The designers may have years of technical experience, but they don’t know what it’s like to eat at Thayer every day for four years; there exists no open forum between the designers and the staff and students. Parkhurst, where’s the line of communication? Let’s talk.

The switch makes a lot of sense in light of budget cuts; running our own mail servers and maintaining our own custom email software is expensive. By switching to Google or Microsoft, the school will save some money and we students will likely enjoy more storage space and an email client that feels more modern.

Nonetheless, there’s something sad about the switch away from Blitzmail, and not just because it represents the death of a part of our beloved “Dartmouth experience.” To me, the Internet represents a place where there is room for everyone—a place where Walmart will never be the only store in town. Only on the Internet is the cost of entry so low, and the accessibility of niche communities so high that every single mom and pop can set up shop and find success, whether that success is measured in dollars or Twitter followers. The Internet is a place where we can escape the cold, impersonal behemoth of American capitalist monopolies.

And yet Google and Microsoft, the Walmarts of the Internet, are replacing a home-grown email system that we just don’t have the money to maintain any longer. It’s time to move on to the shiny new corporate-controlled email 2.0. It’s probably for the best. I’m ready to accept the future, but I still think we should take a minute to realize that we have given up on claiming a distinct space on the Internet. We’ve given the world just a bit more reason to stop chasing the dream of a decentralized, community-maintained cyberspace.