In a September 29th op-ed for the D entitled "Peace, Love, and Respect," Nina Maja Bergmar theorized, "It is highly unlikely that all students will sign up for a WGST [Women and Gender Studies] class sometime during their Dartmouth career."

Nice.

Most students probably missed that line. That's because most students probably stopped reading after the author reduced her argument to the evil of "that's what she said" jokes and an implied solution of "peace and love" - all before the third sentence. (And boy was that third sentence a doozy: "At Dartmouth, few escape the social and cultural domination of males." Hu-ziiiiing!) Clearly, this person was not interested in building bridges; at the very least, she had absolutely no conception of how her brand of stale feminist tropes pisses people off and alienates potential allies.

Bergmar doesn't let up, calling pong a "mating ritual in which guys are fully in control" - the ability of females to not play, not drink, and not hook-up afterward is not discussed. She asserts that our community's skewed gender dynamic is a result of our college's relatively late co-education, seemingly suggesting that upon matriculation, freshman males abandon all prior notions of how to interact with women and somehow inherit new ones from the historical collective unconscious of Dartmouth. She finds the degree of male power at Dartmouth illogical, apparently forgetting that the editor of every major campus publication (the D, Review, Free Press, and Independent) is a female, as is the student body president.

She continues her triple-spaced, inch-wide tirade (I had to paste it into Word to read it) by suggesting that Smith, her idea of the anti-Dartmouth, is so progressive because of its sizable homosexual population. Or cuz there are no dudes. Apparently, if we can't eliminate guys altogether, the solution lies in homosexual affirmative action; Designated Homosexuals could line every frat basement as "alternative pong partners," lest the doe-eyed Dartmouth woman be subject to the aforementioned agency-seizing techniques of the straight male pong athlete.

But wait, she has another solution! "We need to integrate the two sexes in discussions of how we perceive each other, and, more importantly, how we wish to be perceived." Who knew that, with a couple more forums in Collis Commonground, we could put our gender problems behind us! Dartmouth's biggest chauvinists will fill the seats; women will reveal their long-hidden feelings about how they want to be treated; everyone will drink hot chocolate, cuddle, decide to replace the frat system with nightly games of gender-integrated red rover, and finally realize that it's "all about peace and love." Nina, pass the joint.

Or maybe it will go something like this:

Generic Female, advertising Dean Crady's Forum on Gender Relations with a line from Bergmar's piece: "Through dialogue, guys will learn that many women like playing pong -- without the intention of getting laid after the game."
Generic Male: "Ok."
Generic Female: "So let's have a dialogue."
Generic Male: "Ok."
*Cut to Dean Crady's Forum on Gender Relations*
Generic Female: "Many women like playing pong -- without the intention of getting laid after the game."
Generic Male: "Ok."
*People eat pie from Lou's, play board games, go to frat row to get hammered*

Why can't we get beyond Bergmar's let's-just-talk-about-it kind of thinking? It's the same mindset McCain exhibited in Tuesday night's debate, when asked about his healthcare plan: we know what the solution is, and it's to put a bunch of really smart people in a room and have them figure it out. Somehow, people continue to delude themselves into thinking that the root of every problem is ignorance. It's not that perpetrators of sexual abuse don't know their victims are hurt by their actions: it's that they don't care. And no amount of Collis pow-wowing will solve that. As for "learning how to coexist in a Dartmouth world without offending, hurting and disrespecting each other," I think most Dartmouth students, male and female, have the intellectual capacity to figure that one out on their own.

But I'd be remiss not to address Bergmar's grand finale, where she gushes excitement over her proposal of mandatory WGST classes for everyone. Insisting that, "If Dartmouth is to change, we need to teach our students some basic manners about living in a co-ed world," she seems to confuse WGST with cotillion. People need to learn respect, not engage in deconstructive readings of how Antigone secretly wants to bang Creon. Access to WGST isn't "limited," as Bergmar suggests - people just don't want to take the classes, and coercion isn't typically a good way to spur genuine, interested dialogue.

Ah, but Bergmar retorts, the glowing example of AlcoholEdu! At this point in the article, the reader realizes that Bergmar was the only person in the school who didn't put the thing on mute and watch funny YouTube videos; also implied here is that Bergmar considers our alcohol problems solved, with thanks due to our student body's knowledge of the geography of the brain. You think frat parties are bad now - imagine if the brothers hadn't learned about the medulla oblongata!

Surely, Bergmar offers evidence that her WGST solution would work, right? After all, her entire argument hinges on it. Luckily, she gives us her personal assurances: "I am certain that WGST courses would benefit less aware students just as much, if not more." Phew. It is not stated whether she thinks all students should also be compelled to take classes in African and African-American Studies, Native American Studies, Jewish Studies, and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

What may be most troubling is how Bergmar completely absolves herself, and women in general, of responsibility for the problem. After demonstrating a complete lack of self-awareness by calling for a deconstruction of traditional gender roles (pot-calling-kettle-black alert!), she finishes with a statement that might be more revealing than she realizes: "I hope...that future generations of daughters of Dartmouth don't have to learn their lessons the hard way. In fact, I hope they don't have to learn them at all." Reconciliation is rarely a one-way street, Nina.