Heated debate on the Greek system, rallies against racial intolerance, visiting Republican presidential candidates and imploding hospitals were some of the incidents dominating the 1995-96 Dartmouth year.
Although the College includes less than 5,000 students and is located in a small town distant from large cities, Dartmouth still experiences a wealth of controversies, politics and outrageous incidents to fill this newspaper daily, and last year was no different.
To begin with in September, Dartmouth welcomed the arrival of the Class of 1999, the first freshman class to include more women than men since coeducation began in 1972.
Also during the autumn months, the College's place among the premier universities of the United States was reaffirmed by U.S. News & World Report's annual guide to colleges and universities, which ranked Dartmouth first in teaching quality.
Republican primary
As soon as students started showing up on campus, so did the Republican presidential candidates. New Hampshire is the first state in the nation to hold its presidential primary elections, so like any other election year, every candidate campaigns heavily in the state, and most of them visit the College.
By the end of Winter term, the College hosted candidates ranging from businessman Morry Taylor to former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole as they sought the support of Dartmouth students.
Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas), publisher Steve Forbes, Senator Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), radio talk-show host Alan Keyes, former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander and commentator Pat Buchanan also spoke to students.
Music Television's "Choose or Lose" campaign, replete with Tabitha Soren and the stylish Choose or Lose bus, showed up to cover Dole's speech, which he made from the porch of Alpha Delta fraternity in January.
Attempt to change Greek system
Although the presidential campaigns caused plenty of discussion, campus issues provided the background for most of Fall and Winter terms' debates.
Several events generated controversy over the Greek system and its role at Dartmouth.
The attempted screening of a video taken of a "Hell Night" initiation at Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity during the 1980s, the airing of an audio tape of Alpha Delta fraternity's own initiation, and continued debate over an offensive poem read at a Beta Theta Pi fraternity meeting during the summer of 1995 caused many members of the College community to question the values promoted by the Greek system.
Others defended the fraternity system and said it was unfair to brand all its members because of a few examples.
The so-called "Beta poem" contained racist and sexist material, while the Hell Night tapes depicted pledges performing dangerous activities and dressing in potentially offensive costumes.
Meanwhile, Kappa Chi Kappa fraternity's decision to return to its original name of Kappa Kappa Kappa prompted concern from those who felt the name was offensive because its initials resemble those of the Ku Klux Klan. House members argued that they did not plan to use the initials "KKK" to refer to their fraternity and that no connection exists between the names of the two organizations.
In February, an anonymous group of students dumped heaping piles of manure on the lawns of Alpha Chi and Beta in protest of the poem and the surfacing of an allegedly sexist script written by Alpha Chi pledges for one of their initiatory ceremonies.
The same anonymous group then distributed a flier containing what was claimed to be a copy of the Beta poem with names edited out. The flier also made allegations about several other incidents of hate, intolerance, racism and sexism on the Dartmouth campus.
About a week later, Alpha Chi discussed the pledge script in an open community forum. Several students expressed anger and disappointment with the script, and in response the officers of the fraternity apologized and said they were considering changing their constitution in an effort to rid the house of offensive speech and behavior.
About 150 sorority, fraternity and coed society members held a vigil on the Green to promote tolerance and condemn the recent incidents. At the prompting of the sorority presidents, the members of the Coed, Fraternity, Sorority Council signed a pledge to improve the Greek system.
Later in the Spring term, a long-discussed desire for a new sorority led to the beginning of the creation of the College's seventh Panhellenic sorority.
Interested women from the Class of 1999 signed up to join the new sorority, which has not yet been formally founded.
College regulations against freshmen joining Greek organizations mean that the new sorority will not be able to officially organize itself until this fall, when the '99's will be sophomores.
Adding to the competition for social space, the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance, the College's gay, lesbian and bisexual student organization, announced plans to request affinity housing for non-heterosexual students.
Controversy over intolerance
Several incidents of vandalism directed first at homosexuals, then students of color, incited many students to angrily speak out against intolerance on campus.
In the fall, pro-gay rights signs were torn or vandalized in residence halls and dirt was thrown at a dormitory window displaying the banner of the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance.
During the Winter term, two Asian-American students living in the Choates residence hall cluster and two living in off-campus housing discovered racial slurs written on their doors.
The issues raised by these incidents led to the formation of Colors, a new student group composed of the leaders of several ethnic minority organizations.
Colors and the Student Assembly, the representative organization for Dartmouth's student body, held meetings to discuss the significance of these acts for the Dartmouth community. The most successful was a town meeting held in the Collis Center in early February. Almost 400 people attended the town meeting, which Assembly President Jim Rich '96 moderated.
The following day, Colors organized a rally against intolerance in front of Parkhurst Hall, the main administration building. Despite two hours of arctic temperatures, again nearly 400 students listened to over 40 speakers -- including students, professors, administrators, and community residents -- speak out against intolerance.
Many students felt that the incidents demonstrated the need for a hate speech code at the College, while others felt a mandatory class about tolerance would help reduce such incidents in the future.
Although administrators have expressed interest in a diversity education course, the implementation of a hate speech code seems unlikely.
Trustees approve Supercluster
During its Winter term meeting, Dartmouth's Board of Trustees, the College's chief governing body, agreed to implement Dean of the College Lee Pelton's Dartmouth Experience plan, which aims to increase the interaction between the intellectual and social sides of College life.
As a result, $600,000 has been spent to renovate the East Wheelock cluster and equip it to become a test for this new residential concept.
The cluster will have two resident faculty members living in an adjacent house, a cluster dean, a snack bar and a $25,000 programming budget.
As a result, East Wheelock has earned the nickname of the "Supercluster."
The College appointed Sociology Professor Steven Cornish to serve as cluster dean, while French and Italian Professor Marianne Hirsch and History Professor Leo Spitzer will be the faculty associates.
Of the 235 beds in the cluster, 100 will be for upperclass students, while 135 are reserved for first-year students.
The shortage of campus housing prompted the Office of Residential Life to recommend that the College build more residence halls to help alleviate the housing crunch, which hit students especially hard in the Fall term.
At its spring meeting, Dartmouth's Board of Trustees announced that Stephen Bosworth '61, a former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia and the Philippines, will replace John Rosenwald '52 as chairman of the Board.
Assembly makes a difference
Members of the Student Assembly served quite productively, a contrast to the vicious political infighting of previous years.
The Assembly got off to a slow start in the fall and focused on organizing itself under a new constitution, ratified the previous Spring term. While Assembly President Jim Rich '96 worked to reorganize the Assembly and clean up its bad reputation, caused by political turmoil of recent years, some other services customarily carried out by the Assembly were delayed.
By Winter term, the Assembly was up and running strong. Over the course of the year, the Assembly: put on the World Wide Web its course guide describing student opinions about many Dartmouth classes, formally petitioned the administration to revamp the student advising system, helped ensure Federal Express would continue to make deliveries to student mailboxes and took an active role in promoting discussion on the many controversies regarding tolerance and hate speech in the Dartmouth community.
In the Spring term, students elected Jon Heavey '97 to be president of this year's Assembly and Chris Swift '98 as vice president.
College expands itself
The College continued to expand and remake its physical plant throughout the year.
In June, ground was broken for the Roth Center for Jewish Life, which will house Hillel, the College's Jewish students' organization.
The building's location on Occom Ridge Road, next to Delta Delta Delta sorority, sparked controversy after 70 local residents objected to the project and submitted a petition to the College asking that the building be located elsewhere.
They expressed concern over potential parking and traffic problems, the design of the center and its "scope of services."
Baker Library, a centerpiece of Dartmouth's campus as well as its library system, will soon undergo construction, as the College begins work on Baker's Berry extension.
Not scheduled to be completed until after the turn of the century, the Berry Library will ease the burden on the existing stack space in Baker and will also contain technological classrooms of the future, some academic computing functions currently housed in the Kiewit Computation Center and a cafe/study space, among other features, according to the proposal by the Library Building Committee.
To enable construction efforts such as the Berry Library, the College destroyed the old Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in September.
The hospital, whose functions had been moved to newer facilities, was removed in order to make way for the College's ambitious North Campus expansion plan, which calls for extensive development of the area north of Baker Library.
The College's long-running Will To Excel capital campaign, part of which is used to fund efforts such as the Berry project, surpassed its goal of $500 million in fundraising in June.
