In his annual address to the faculty yesterday, College President James Freedman set goals for the coming years and identified positive and negative trends in the composition of the student body and faculty.
Freedman touted the merits of the Class of 1998, citing that median scores on Scholastic Aptitude Tests have risen 50 points in four years and that the percentage of women is greater than ever before.
"Dartmouth will be a better, livelier place when parity [between the sexes] is reached," Freedman said during his speech, which lasted about 45 minutes.
According to Freedman, student matriculation statistics indicate that the gap between Dartmouth and some of the other top schools has narrowed during the last seven years.
In 1987, 85 percent of students accepted to both Dartmouth and either Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or Brown chose not to attend Dartmouth, Freedman said. This year Dartmouth lost only 60 percent to these other schools.
Dartmouth's prestige is increasing, Freedman said, and Dartmouth "stereotypes just no longer hold if they ever did."
Freedman identified 10 of what he called KPANs -- things that "Keep the President Awake at Night."
Among these concerns was the opinion that Dartmouth should be more of an "international crossroads" and should work to maintain its "pinnacles of excellence" -- those particularly strong departments that bring the College recognition.
He praised faculty attempts to sponsor international conferences like the Holocaust Conference held Oct. 22 - 24.
Echoing an aim stressed throughout his presidency, Freedman identified a need to make student life more intellectual by recruiting what he called "creative loners -- students who will be different, who will take risks ... and who will make contributions."
But Freedman said the College's residential life is not in synch with its intellectual life and called fraternities and alcohol "Dartmouth's secondary curriculum."
Financial concerns such as limits on revenue and the expense of need-blind admissions were a major focus of the speech as well. He indicated that federal regulations may bring new problems in the near future.
Freedman said recruitment of minorities was another of his major concerns. Although the percentage of minority students is increasing at the College, Freedman said Dartmouth still lags behind other Ivy League schools in terms of percentages.
In addition, Freedman said that although the undergraduate College leads the Ivies in the percentage of female and minority faculty members, Dartmouth's graduate schools have "narrower minority prospects."
