thoughts on winter carnvial

Niral Shah's article in this issue of the Dartmouth Free Press documents Winter Carnival's unexpectedly interesting history. The misogyny and racism of earlier years should be surprising to no one (see for example a WWII era sculpture depicting a Japanese man carting a US Marine in a rickshaw). What is more surprising is a history of progressive activism during Carnvial. In 1979, students spray-painted the sculpture red, green and black to protest low minority enrollment. It was spray-painted again in 1991 to protest the Gulf War.

I don't know why Carnvial is not the target for activism that it used to be. Maybe because, thanks in part to a movement of conservative alums, "tradition" has regained the moral authority to trump questions of social justice? Maybe because we are too eager for the drunken catharsis of three nights of unrestrained raging?

Many students see these sort of holidays as the moments when the entire College comes together. Such is, afterall, the reassurance of tradition -- that there is a worthy community which is created and reaffirmed in these rituals. In the spirit of challenging the hegemony of tradition, though, let me just note that Carnival these days does give occasion for another, quieter form of activism: in small but significant numbers, students who feel alienated by a culture centered on drinking and partying are simply slipping away, ducking the cultural Mack Truck that is Winter Carnival. It's not quite the same as protesting the institutionalization of white privilege, but maybe they have a point.

(links to the article and pictures will be posted once this issue of the DFP is put online)