I have a confession to make - I have never opened an orgo book. I have no idea what happens when alkenes undergo polymerization. For that matter, I don't know what an alkene is, and if I ever did, I've long since forgotten. The last time I took a chemistry test, I was a sophomore in high school. And yet, despite all the recent talk about the relationship of the sciences to the greater Brown community, something is being overlooked.
As a University, there is very little that can connect every one of us to one another - with the exception of walking throught the Van Wickle Gates, there are very few experiences that all of us share. Except, that is, for the heavy drama that descends upon campus during every organic chemistry test.
Strange? Perhaps. But perhaps not. After all, the community that is Brown University isn't formed by support for our sports teams, as it is for many other schools. We have some genuinely incredible athletes here, and there have been some spectacular games in the last few years - games which are noted on the back of The Herald, briefly on the Daily Jolt and nowhere else. Most games attract friends and families of the players, and while they are personally significant to those involved, they simply do not have the type of cross-campus attraction they might have if we were another school. Brown simply will never have 100,000 people attending a football game, as Penn State had several weekends ago. It's just not us.
We're not even a school that is bound together through politics. True, the day after the presidential election last year, a morose cloud visited Brown - but that was the only time I've seen any sort of even semi-unified political feeling at the University. Beyond that day, we're a bunch of broadly liberal, but often apathetic students - politics are discussed occasionally and we care about them sometimes, but, with the exception of perhaps 10 percent of the students, those views and opinions don't consume us. Most of us know what we believe, but few of us know who holds the title of Speaker of the House. The world may see us as a beacon of liberalism, but, while liberal, we're generally not active.
Are we united by our parties? No. Sure, Sex Power God regularly makes the college guides, but it's a once-a-year event. The intermixing of semi-naked body and portraits of Brown's former leadership is an amusing dichotomy, but ultimately, it's just a student group holding a dance in a nice room. Spring Weekend? It's fun, and it's a nice break before finals. But, as with SPG, it's a party (albeit a 72-hour one), and I find it difficult to define a whole school by something that focuses on a Ben Folds concert and a whole lot of free alcohol.
But there is a time when hundreds of Brown students are united in a common mixture of fear, anticipation, eagerness and outright horror: an orgo exam. Those ubiquitous blue textbooks show up at the Ratty, in the Scili and on the Main Green. Talk of "their spectroscopy indicates a carboxylic acid" and Prof. Zimmt's problem sessions end up permeating our collective consciousness -that of those enrolled in Chem 35, and those of us who have never set foot in MacMillan. By the time the exam rolls around, almost all of us know, simply by the mood on campus, that something is happening, and anyone with a friend in the course knows exactly when, and often where, judgment will take place.
Why is it only orgo class? Despite their size, Econ 11, Engin 9 and even Chem 33 don't quite have the same presence - or at least those taking the class aren't nearly so vocal. I'm not sure why; maybe it's the pre-med nature of the course, or maybe its enrollment is over some sort of critical mass. Either way, orgo students don't suffer silently, and with the rest of us being forced to bear witness to their suffering, we have a genuinely special phenomenon at work.
So finally, Brown has an experience that its entire student body can share in. Thank you, orgo students. In your misery, we all can all finally be united.
Joey Borson '07 was told what an enantiomer was and promptly forgot.
