Most Important Member of Dartmouth Community Announces It’s Hot Outside

Jim Beekman, ’20, showed up to his Astro 2 class sweating last Monday.

“It’s really hot outside,” Jim informed his class as he sat down. “Like, really hot.”

The class appreciated the alert. “Where would we be without Jim?” Alicia Summers, ’20, gushed. “I would have literally no way of knowing what the temperature was without his morning announcements.”

“He also tells us to drink water, and put on sunscreen,” Larry Henderson, ’20, noted. “No one else in my life tells me to do either of those things. Who knew?”

Jim is, by default, one of the most popular students on campus. While Dartmouth’s complicated social structure is usually too intricate to make such a blanket statement, the community’s dependence on Jim’s observations is clear.

“I ran into him this morning,” says John Johnson, the star-struck custodian who cleans Jim’s floor. “I asked him, ‘How are you?’ And he just chuckled and said, ‘Trying to stay cool!’ That jokester!”

A member of the football, swimming, and lacrosse teams, Jim is also a tour-guide, an RWIT tutor, a notetaker, and a volunteer for the Hanover Fire Department. “But by far the most important contribution he makes is those weather observations,” said Dartmouth College President Phil Hanlon, ’77.

When asked for a quote, Jim told us that he hopes to expand to other arenas of commentary in the future. “I’m hoping to really break out of the whole ‘weather’ thing. After the heat wave passes, maybe I’ll tell people to look out for all the campers in FoCo.”

– CC ’21