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FactsSlang
- Cushies - Large, circular couches in the HUB, a popular meeting place for students.
- Deli-C - Deli Creations, the 24-hour convenience store and deli down the street from campus.
- D-Park - Dickinson Park, an athletic field half a mile from campus owned by the College
- DPS - Dickinson Public Safety, the certified police officers that patrol the campus.
- Flex In - Using the Flexboard meal plan to let someone else into the cafeteria. This is frequently used toward the end of the semester when students begin to run out of points
- Red Zone - A contest between upperclassmen to hook up with as many freshmen as they can between the beginning of the school year and fall pause.
- The HUB - The Holland Union Building. This is the main student center on campus and houses the cafeteria, the Underground, the Devil’s Den convenience store, the Union Station, and the bookstore, as well as many offices.
- The Quarry - The café on College. This is the favorite coffee shop and popular student hangout on campus.
- The Snar - The Union Station. Short for “snack bar,” students love the Snar because it has a huge variety of food.
Things I Wish I Knew Before Coming To School
- How big the Greek scene is
- How hard it is to get into the core requirement classes
- That everyone dresses the same
- That everyone knows everything about everyone
- That it rains a lot
- That the facilities would be so crowded during peak hours (i.e. the caf 6:00-7:00 and the fitness center 3:00-6:00)
- That there are only four places to use your meal plan
Tips to Succeed
- Buy books online, it’s a lot cheaper than in the Book Store.
- Don’t skip classes. Professors notice.
- Get involved. The people you’ll meet in clubs and organizations are the ones you will see around campus on a daily basis.
- Go to office hours and develop relationships with your professors, they can be a huge asset to your academic success.
- Learn how to write. Writing is a big component of academics at Dickinson, and the faster you learn how to give a clear, concise argument in a paper, the better.
- Participate in class discussion. Class participation is often worth 10 percent of your final grade in any given class.
- Stay at school on the weekends. Getting into the habit of going home at the end of the week will make you miss a lot socially, and you’ll start to feel left out of everything.
Urban Legends
- Dickinson has many ghost stories, but the most popular relates to the Weiss Center for the Arts. Before it housed the art department, Weiss was home to the school’s fitness facilities, including a pool. Legend has it that a swimmer on the Dickinson swim team was training for the Olympics and given exclusive access to the pool at any hour. The story has it that the young man drowned, but that his ghost still haunts the art building today. Students practicing late at night often claim to hear strange noises, smell chlorine, and see wet footprints on the tile floor.
Traditions
- Dickinson College Logo - The college logo is a newer, more modern symbol of the school. It began with President Bill Durden in ’71 and looks much like a compass rose.
- Signing In - Upon the start of their first semester, freshmen are welcomed to the school at a convocation ceremony, wherein the college president speaks about the incoming freshman class. After the ceremony, freshmen are lined up in front of Old West, the oldest and most ceremonial building on campus. Each student walks up the stone steps into the lobby and officially “signs in” to the college by signing their name in a large book. They then exit through the side doors of the building, because at graduation, students walk down the front steps of Old West to receive their diplomas. The rumor goes that if you walk down the front steps before you graduate, you won’t make it through school! Hence, students avoid exiting Old West by the front steps like the plague!
- The Mermaid - Mermaids certainly have no place in Pennsylvania, but there is a mermaid on top of West College. When Benjamin Latrobe was designing the bell tower for the building, he wanted to model it after the ancient Greeks and decided to have the Greek god Triton atop the tower as a weathervane. Unfamiliar with the myth of Triton, and misinterpreting the description he received, the coppersmith made a mermaid by mistake, but the figure still spins on top of West College today.
- The Seal of Dickinson College - The school motto, “Religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty,” is found on the school seal, along with a liberty cap, one of the hats worn by the Sons of Liberty. The seal was designed by John Dickinson and Benjamin Rush in 1783.
School Spirit
Because the idea at Dickinson is that academics come before athletics, school spirit and student attendance at sporting events is less than stellar. The Student Senate has recently formed a “spirit committee” to solve this problem, and spirit is slowly on the rise among the student body. This is not to say that Dickinson students don’t take pride in their school, because we do. Students wear their Dickinson gear regularly, and many cars can be seen parked on the street displaying the Dickinson College logo.
Most Recent Contributing Author
Name: Rachel Warzala
Hometown: Somerset, NJ
Major: English/Political Science Rachel is a campus tour guide and a member of the Orientation Committee. So if you decide to come to Dickinson, either to visit or to stay, make sure you say hi Contributing Author Internship  College Prowler is actively seeking talented students to be "Contributing Authors," and assist with updating
the College Prowler guide to their school. This is a great opportunity for a student to gain internship experience, be a part of a nationally
recognized company, gain tremendous exposure, utilize new media techniques, and share advice with high school students about what life is
really like at your college. Read more about the internship.
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