Ah yes. That could indeed be the case. I had assumed the dip switches were for "configuration", not something for "runtime".
Anyway, he'll also have a problem that the last iteration of the for loop determines var. It looks like he is attempting to count the number of set switches, irrespective of their position, to determine the value of var.
I guess then it should be something like this:
//here is the loop I'm using to verify the dip switch state
//but seems to run just the first time the void loop runs
var = 1 ;
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++){
if(digitalRead(dipPins[i]) == 0){
var++;
}
}