Participants in a panel discussion last night called "Dartmouth Undying" lashed out against the College's current liberal arts education and offered visions of the future.
Religion Professor Susan Ackerman, Senior Class President Doug Chia, English Professor William Cook, Susie Lee '94 and Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia comprised the panel, which often focused on how much emphasis the College should give to traditionally marginalized academic voices.
Jay Heinrichs, editor of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine and moderator of the event, opened the panel by saying that while the traditional liberal arts concept has changed, it still focuses on the national elite.
Lee said there is a syndrome of "preaching to the choir" at discussion events like last night's panel. She said events dealing with race relations are attended mostly by minorities and women's issues events are attended mostly by women.
Last night's discussion attracted about 40 people.
Chia said he disapproves of the way the College gears students toward corporate America, money and the easy way of life. Students should aim to contribute to society, such as through public service, Chia said.
He said alumni at their recent council meetings complained that advising for students at the College is "abysmal."
Ackerman questioned the separation of academic disciplines into departments as arbitrary and antiquated. She said she supports the new curriculum's requirement that students take an interdisciplinary course.
Cook spoke at length about the need to "rethink curriculum" in light of new knowledge, ways of thinking and new understanding. He said we have not and never will arrive at a canon of core texts to study, and that an attempt at such a canon is always being redefined by the times.
Panelists offered ideas about what a Dartmouth liberal education should accomplish.
Sateia called for changes to heighten student unity. Echoing former College President John Sloan Dickey, she said to ask "not what students shall do, but what students should be."
She said Dartmouth needs to create an environment that is hospitable and attractive to minorities.
Her vision includes sensitization of professors' teaching styles to a diverse student body, the end of the quarter system enrollment pattern in hopes of concentrating resources, and the creation of an equitable social atmosphere. She said the current social scene leads students to think "here are the real events and here are the alternative events," she said.
Responding to Lee's call for more emphasis on special interest studies such as Asian studies, Nicole Artzer '94, the Student Assembly president-elect, said such a move might be divisive to the community.
Artzer said because she has not taken women's studies classes, students who have are reluctant to engage in discussions with her on women's issues.
Cook said the national myth that America is like a melting pot is flawed. "It's not an 'either or' situation," he said. "People learn to deal with other human beings" and their differences, Cook added.
