A year after the Committee on Diversity and Community at Dartmouth released its report, it is difficult to judge the report's impact. There have been few tangible changes, but several administrators said the report has been a catalyst for the College to think more about diversity.
The 39-page report, titled "Managing Diversity," said Dartmouth did not need sweeping changes, but instead called for the College to continuously work on managing diversity.
Trustee Stanford Roman, who chaired the CDCD, said in an interview Tuesday that there is no "magic bullet" solution to the problems of diversity. He said people need to be constantly thinking about it.
The Board of Trustees is scheduled to review the report in the spring.
Committee members said the report's most important recommendation was for the College to give one individual responsibility for dealing with issues of diversity.
To this end, the College did appoint Mary Childers, director of the Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Office, as the administrator in charge of coordinating issues of diversity and community.
Childers said she thinks it is important to have someone overseeing the ongoing efforts to improve diversity at the College. But she said her office is working under budgetary constraints that make it difficult to sponsor every program.
Although the CDCD report "has reinvigorated our commitment," Childers said, "reports don't have significant impacts, budgetary allocations do."
The CDCD report also said the College's Greek system has a negative influence on diversity, and called for the College to examine the system immediately.
Dean of the College Lee Pelton admitted that the College has made no effort to work with Greek leaders on the issues mentioned in the report.
College President James Freedman sent a letter to the College community last June saying the College would hold off on examining the Greek system until a decision had been made concerning the report of the Committee on the First-Year Experience.
In general, Pelton said the College is making efforts to discuss and think about diversity. But he also said Dartmouth still does not think about diversity enough.
"What I think is absent from Dartmouth and other institutions of higher education is ongoing conversation between students, faculty, and staff about diversity issues," Pelton said.
"We, in this nation and college, have a long way to go in improving what used to be called race relations."
The CDCD report called for the College to continue efforts to increase the number of minorities in the College's faculty and staff, and also urged the College to examine with "special care" those departments that had never had a minority professor.
Despite reports of continuing progress in minority faculty recruiting, the recently released Affirmative Action Plan said several large departments -- like Chemistry and Government -- lacked any minority professors in tenured or tenure-track positions as of July 1, 1994.
Childers said some of these shortfalls could be a result of the small number of minorities holding Ph.D.s in certain fields.
Hosea Harvey '95, a former CDCD member and the intern in the President's Office, said the College has improved its minority faculty recruitment, but said he felt the admissions office has not fully addressed the needs of Latino and Asian-American students.
Roman said it is too early to gauge the report's impact on admissions.
He added that the College is focusing on maintaining current efforts to increase the minority population.
He highlighted the importance of need-blind admissions as "a tool to maintain economic diversity and quality," despite the financial pressures it places on the College.
Another significant recommendation of the CDCD report was a reexamination of the freshman year, and Pelton formed a committee to look at the first-year experience right before the report came out.
The College is also reevaluating the allocation of the Council on Student Organizations' funding in an effort to determine if ethnic organizations need more funding.
