Dartmouth College is the definition of old school. Founded in 1769, it sits in the center of Hanover, New Hampshire, a hamlet two and a half hours northwest of Boston in the Upper Connecticut River Valley. On the east side of the seven-acre town green stands Dartmouth Hall, a three-story colonial-style building; commissioned in 1784, it has twice been destroyed by fire and rebuilt. At 6 pm every day, bells in the tower of Baker Library, the imposing white edifice at the north end of the green, chime out "Alma Mater," Dartmouth's school song. Each homecoming night since 1920, members of the freshman class have built a towering bonfire at the center of the green, running a lap around the pyre for every year of their graduating class (the class of 1999 did 99 laps; not to be outdone, the class of 2000 did 100). And while the administrators of most other Ivy League colleges have long since managed to relegate fraternities and sororities to the margins of campus life, Dartmouth's two dozen Greek houses — one of which, Alpha Delta, was the inspiration for Animal House — are still very much the arbiters of the school's party calendar.
...the Baker Library bells change their tune. It's the theme from Star Wars.
More than 500 Wi-Fi antennas, most about the size and shape of a fraternity paddle, cover roughly 200 acres.
Amid all this time-honored heritage, Kimo Johnson approaches a wood and iron bench beneath the bell tower and sits down. Johnson, who recently earned a master's in electro-acoustic music and is pursuing a PhD in computer science, pulls an iBook from his backpack and opens it on his lap. He waits for the final chimes of "Alma Mater," then starts tapping some keys. Three hundred feet above him, the Baker Library bells change their tune. It's the theme from Star Wars.
Johnson happens to be ringing the bells from this bench, but he could be pretty much anywhere on campus. A look into the drop ceilings, projection rooms, and maintenance closets of Dartmouth's 161 buildings reveals a significant new architectural wrinkle: a campuswide wireless network. More than 500 Wi-Fi antennas, most about the size and shape of a fraternity paddle, cover roughly 200 acres — more or less the sound range of the library tower's bells on a breezy day. Silently flinging and absorbing millions of airborne bits of data every second, they are what makes Johnson's open-air performance possible. The strangest thing about the scene may be that fellow students don't even find it strange. It's commonplace. Johnson does this kind of thing all the time, and even takes email requests.