I wonder if people really think about decisions or just arbitrarily dictate.
DarTalk. Enough said. Well for a change, that is instead of complaining about how DarTalk continually screws students in every manner possible, let's examine how it works. DarTalk was established by the Trustees and is owned and run by the College. Then why do they make us prepay our own phone bills? This is quite ridiculous and one of the most obnoxious aspects of life at Dartmouth. We are allowed to run huge debts for tuition, food, and even concerts, but God forbid that we're 31 cents in debt on our phone bill!
The College could very simply act like any normal phone company and send us bills. I'm not asking for competitive rates -- which would be nice -- or honesty -- which would require major changes -- but simply common courtesy.
Let me elaborate on honesty and DarTalk. Two winters ago it was discovered that DarTalk had "accidentally" set their clocks slow by 10 minutes. This means that when the rates change at 6pm, they didn't really change till 6:10, so any call made between those two times was charged at a higher rate for the entire duration of the call. At a school so computerized that your computer will remind you about daylight savings time and automatically reset itself, how can any computer's clock be "accidentally" slow?
So the question that naturally follows is what can we as students do about this? Well for DarTalk, let me suggest one simple possibility: a strike.
The entire student body should simply abstain from making any long-distance calls using DarTalk for one month, say May. Buy a phone card, or call home collect for one second and have the person call you back. Probably, flying home for an hour conversation would save money compared to DarTalk. At least you could put that on credit. This would accomplish a host of objectives at once. First it would force DarTalk to listen to students' complaints and problems. With any skillful negotiations, DarTalk would be forced to reduce their rates, and change their ridiculous and offensive policies. Second, this strike would be the first example of a united student body since I've been at Dartmouth. All I have ever seen are various factions of the student body, mostly based on race, religion and politics fighting each other for the scarce resources that are allocated to them. A strike against DarTalk, an office that takes advantage of the entire student body, could show everyone that the old motto "United we stand, divided we fall" is truth.
I realize that this is a far fetched notion that could only succeed with the backing of a large majority of the campus, but the rewards would justify the fight. I have picked on DarTalk not because it is the only evil at Dartmouth, in fact it is far from the worst. However it is one that affects all students who live on campus, and all others have experienced it. I can see no political, racial or religious lines that could divide us. The only question is whether we are strong enough, smart enough and possess enough leadership to accomplish this.
