Undergraduate Advisor is a position that entails a great deal of power on this campus. Like teachers, professors and other mentors, we UGAs have the ability to have a positive impact on minds equally bright, though less experienced than our own. It is a position that should be held with the utmost regard, for the power a UGA is capable of wielding is considerable.
An Undergraduate Advisor should be someone who can serve as an information booth for his or her freshmen, a confidante and a role model. So what happens when a UGA exercises bad judgment? What happens when a UGA gets arrested? In the case of Jeremy Segal '97, who was arrested for allegedly smoking pot on the Green during Dartmouth Night, the UGA got fired.
When a UGA is thought to have made such an extreme mistake, obviously it summons a response from the College. However, there are no rules on the action an Area Director must take in a case such as this one. There are no set guidelines. The Area Director has discretion in a matter of this kind. In this case the AD is Chris Foley.
There are 91 UGAs. Because it is difficult for the ADs to know us all well, I decided to have a conversation with both Chris Foley and the other Area Director, Chris Chambers. It was lengthy and fairly productive, I thought. I enumerated and explicated all of my reasons why Segal should be allowed to remain in his position. They explained to me all of their thoughts on the situation. The Office of Residential Life's "prime directive" is education. So the ADs were looking to uncover the conclusion they thought would teach Segal and his freshmen the most. Of course they also wanted a decision that would reflect well on ORL.
Obviously, a UGA with a criminal record is not the ORL ideal. We are supposed to be upright citizens, representatives of ethnic and cultural diversity, paragons of tolerance, pillars of respect. But UGAs are college kids too. What separates me from my freshmen is only a year's experience and a lot of training. We are still fallible. And our freshmen know this. As everyone keeps telling us, the Class of '99 is the brightest yet. I am sure that they are smart enough to figure out that a UGA involved with a marijuana "scandal" does not necessarily make drugs or getting arrested okay, or cool. No one needs Nancy Reagan to reappear in our lives telling us to "Just Say No."
As I told the ADs, their decision would have been an easy one had Segal been a drug-wielding junkie who shuffled into their office and offered them a hit. Who Segal is overall needs to be taken into account. This should have been one of the determining factors. As it happens, Segal's image hardly conveys delinquency.
Instead, he is a sweet-natured, unfailingly unpretentious guy who takes care of friends and strangers alike, who wears a paint-spattered hat and often plays a white plastic saxophone in the Dartmouth College Marching Band. So even if Jeremy did not have so many credentials as both a person and a musician, it is the end of October: this character has already forged a bond with his freshmen. He is excellent at his job as their guide and mentor. They would learn a lesson from his mistake whether he were removed or not. The same can be said for Segal himself. He is facing criminal charges; he would have to deal with the consequences of his actions even if he were retained as a UGA.
This is not to say that I believe any UGA in the same predicament should be treated the same way. But let's face it, by word of mouth, one way or another, many of the UGAs know what kind of job the other UGAs are doing. Segal has been a positive influence on his freshmen's lives. Hopefully he will continue to be, even from his new location on campus.
I cannot help but believe that Segal, even with his arrest, helping to make his freshmen's years smoother and happier, is preferable to Undergraduate Advisor X who is quietly going about his or her own business and doing a terrible job.
Firing Jeremy Segal discards many of the core values that the UGA program and ORL propound. Even worse, Chris Foley's decision does this in the name of parading these same values. UGAs are taught to recognize and teach "tolerance" and a "respect for diversity ." An atmosphere where mistakes are not forgiven goes against the UGA litany: "flexible dialogue" among the members of a community and "tolerance for differences" within that community. I am sure that Segal is not the only student in the echelons of ORL who has allegedly used marijuana. He is simply the only one recently who has gotten caught.
I cannot completely dismiss the Area Directors. Throughout our conversation I felt that they were not only listening to me, but also really hearing what I had to say. Foley does, of course, have some valid points to substantiate his excision of Segal from the UGA program. And it is true that keeping Segal would have been a decision which they would have had to be prepared to staunchly defend -- and a decision that would necessitate a public explanation. But it could have, and should have been done, regardless of the fact that it would be the more arduous choice.
I respect Foley's decision, but I do not agree with it. Even prison communities, arguably a less expected seat of enlightenment than an Ivy League institution, attempt rehabilitation. Why can't Dartmouth do the same?
