Stuff Dartmouth People Like #6: The Overheards

The overheards represent everything about Dartmouth. They encapsulate everything that Dartmouth people not only like, but also love.

Dartmouth people like the overheards first and foremost because they’re all about perpetuating stereotypes. They serve as a weekly reminder that our perceptions have and never will change. Tridelts only care about baking and blowjobs, Sigma Delts are all jacked lesbians and BGs spend at least 20 hours a day partaking in or talking about drugs. Do you remember that one overheard by the Phi Delt who spent an afternoon reading to underprivileged children? Me neither, because it didn’t get printed.

A good overheard can take one of three formulas, all of which we find hilarious. It is a ’14 demonstrating that they have no idea what’s going on, a member of a greek house perpetuating a stereotype, or anyone talking about how much they drink. Dartmouth students love that shit.


The overheards also represent how little we care about what’s actually going on around campus. Students openly flaunt that they don’t care at all about campus issues when they proclaim that they only read the overheards. When was the last time you were sitting in Collis reading an opinion piece about sustainability aloud. I didn’t think so. But you always hear “wow check out this overheard about how a Sig Ep would rather play Frisbee than hook up with a girl.”

Sure maybe you read that article when some Mirror columnist went rogue a couple weeks ago, but for the most part you're picking up the D once a week solely to read the overheards. There are hundreds of students working to produce the D everyday, yet students who have no part in this write the only part that we read.

The overheards cater to every student’s sense of self-importance. People seem to think for some reason that many things they say are newsworthy. Your random musings do not need to be read by 2,000 people but you still grab a paper every Friday hoping that someone noticed your clever quip about how your chicken nugget was shaped like Florida.

Imagine having to read all the submissions to the overheards. First of all, you know half of them (read: the good ones) are made up and fit one of the formulas mentioned above. But on the whole, you would have to deal with the fundamental disconnect between how funny Dartmouth students think they are and how funny they actually are. No, I don’t find that your musing that “the new foco looks like a prison kitchen” is exactly newsworthy. Yeah I like easy classes too but your philosophical notion that “Easy classes are like pizza. They’re both awesome!” definitely doesn’t need to be followed up with “someone should send that in to the overheards.” Maybe try bored@baker next time.