College to Offer Gold Star to Students Who Graduate Without Taking Gut Classes

One of the constant temptations of Dartmouth is for students to take “gut” classes, i.e. classes with optional attendance and a forgiving curve. Although there are factors that discourage students from taking gut classes, like a conscience and thousands of dollars of wasted tuition, many students still find themselves taking classes such as “WGST 34: Bein’ a Bro”, “NAS 60.1: Nodding Your Head”, and “Astronomy 4: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. Many students who do not indulge in gut classes complain that their GPAs are unfairly punished by taking what they call “real” classes, which have “exams” and “learning” and nonsense like that. To compensate these students for their extra effort, the College will give non-gut graduates a “super-awesome” gold star to make up for the countless extra hours they spent in the library.
“We understand that there is a fundamental difference in the quality of diploma offered based on the difficulty of courses taken at Dartmouth,” said Dean of Academic Justice Mary Larson. “Chem[istry] majors come up to me all the time and ask if there isn’t any way for them to get credit for taking ridiculously hard classes with low median grades. I’ve never had a proper answer for them before. But now we can make everything better by giving them a gold star for being the good boys and girls that they are.”

Nearly all of the students interviewed who had previously felt marginalized said, “This totally makes up for everything.”

“I refused to swallow my pride and take any guts,” said Lane Alexander ’11. “Sure, I spent all my Mondays and Wednesdays in the library. Sure, I decided not to rush because I couldn’t balance three non-guts each term with hanging out. Sure, my GPA isn’t that high. But then the College gave me a gold star and everything was A-OK.”

Students who did not qualify for the gold star said that they were disappointed, but none could be bothered to give a quote in full-sentence form. One offered that he was “hungover.”

Given the success that the gold star program has achieved already, the College is making plans to develop gold stars as a reward for other behaviors. Activities that can win gold stars are criticizing someone for wearing an Indian t-shirt, hosting a forum, never stealing from DDS, going to office hours at least once during every course, being a member of DREAM, having a best friend who is a minority, and hosting a prospie. One administrator suggested extending the gold star program to a cappella groups, but this idea was unanimously vetoed.