Last spring, the student body voted down Andrew Smith '94 in his bid for Student Assembly President, thereby breaking the hold on the Assembly that started with Brian Ellner '92, continued with Tara McBennet '92 and ended with Andrew Beebe '93. When this happened and Nicole Artzer '94 emerged as a new and different presence, one would have thought the Assembly would take a road away from the politics of years past, towards substantive results that benefit the students.
Unfortunately, the politics of the past have ballooned into an even bigger monster than before. Yes, the Assembly is no longer discussing condemnations of every politically incorrect group nationwide, but the arrogance we witnessed in previous "regimes" has swelled to a frightening level.
The SA has been discussing the monopoly that Dartmouth Dining Services has here on campus. They can overcharge us and force freshmen to spend hundreds of dollars more than necessary. So the Assembly took a position that Artzer did not like, which involved a boycott of DDS. Artzer refused to take part in a two hour meeting with DDS Director Pete Napolitano.
The reaction was fierce and quite overzealous. Several members of the Assembly (most prominently, co-chairs of the Nominations Committee Matthew Berry '94 and Mark Waterstraat '94 and Vice-President Steve Costalas '94) authored a letter which called for the resignation of Artzer and threatened impeachment.
At the Assembly meeting on Feb. 8, they indeed tried, unsuccessfully, to impeach our SA President. Following this was a reaction in The Dartmouth that called for the resignation of the group that called for Artzer's resignation.
So what remains now of our Student Assembly? Its credibility has been adversely affected and many wonder if the apparent personal problems present in the SA will allow it to accomplish anything this year. The blame for all of this must fall on those who started the entire fiasco - the Berry Brigade.
Artzer was wrong in trying to block the negotiations with DDS.
There is very little argument there. What was truly wrong in this situation, however, was not the inappropriate act of our SA President, but the ridiculous response to that act which was engineered by Berry and Company.
Let's put this in perspective. This is the Dartmouth College Student Assembly. Their job is to get us more soda machines and public-access Macs. If Berry and Company did not like what Artzer was doing, they should have tried to resolve their obviously large personal differences rather than pretending they were on the U.S. Senate floor and calling for her impeachment.
Kenji Sugahara '95 signed the letter which called for Artzer's impeachment but before the Assembly meeting, he conducted an informal poll and found out just what I've been saying - that all of this is ridiculous and a departure from what the Assembly is truly supposed to do. So Sugahara voted against the impeachment. He realized that the Assembly is here for us, not so the Berry Brigade can play White House, and he turned to the students for their advice. Berry and Company would do well to follow Sugahara's lead.
