Dartblog

Of all the absurdities of modern-day Dartmouth, Consent Day, with its widely publicized slogan “Consensual Sex is Hot,” ranks at the very top. What is the argument behind this seemingly positive assertion: that rape is not hot? (is that news?); that consensual sex can be good? (as if we didn’t know). Someone seems bent on making a point, but what an awkward elocution.

How about a real statement, one that resonates over the history of man and woman (and beyond): that romantic love is one of the deepest expressions of the soul — and when that expression is consummated, there is little in the course of human events as joyous, profound, stirring, and meaningful.

The English Department might have something more eloquent to say on the subject, an observation that has escaped the notice of our lumpy administrators with their degrees in communications or advising:

William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Quite a counterpoint to yet another drunken hookup in a basement, n’est-ce pas?