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The Dartmouth
July 11, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Student Assembly Does Its Best To Represent Diverse Dartmouth Student Body

To the Editor:

In your editorial concerning the Student Assembly ["Less Talk, More Action," The Dartmouth, Feb. 18], you insinuated that the Assembly has done little of substance this year and that what it has not done has been masked by florid rhetoric. I am not a member of the Assembly, and I do not agree with most of its initiatives. However, I submit that your newspaper has failed to realize the reasons behind the Assembly's inaction.

Perhaps the two most criticized efforts of the Assembly have been its response to the CCAOD report and its "Visions of Dartmouth" project. It has been accused of failing to represent students and failing to collect student opinion in the proper fashion.

Maybe we should entertain the possibility that these failures stem not from the Assembly, but from the nature of Dartmouth's student body. Assuming that within a student body of over 4,000 students there are differences of opinion, how can we expect the Assembly to represent the opinion of that body?

The student body is not monolithic. To pretend to be its voice is either naive or deceptive. Neither is satisfactory. Every student dissatisfied with the CCAOD results can point to the Assembly and claim not to have been represented. However, no student can honestly say they represent "student opinion."

In terms of "Visions," your editorial criticized the means by which the Assembly has attempted to collect student opinions. One would be hard pressed to find a student on campus who has not been provided with ample opportunity to have their say. Everyone has BlitzMail, a Hinman Box, and most live in dorms. All of those have received some form of "Visions" communication. The day "Visions" notices came to the Hinman boxes, the recycling bins turned green, the notices' color. That many students choose not to give their vision -- a completely valid choice which I have, to this point, made -- is not the Assembly's fault. Nor is it indicative of student apathy. It is simply a choice. The Assembly's responsibility was to allow students the opportunity. That it has.

While students may be dissatisfied with the Assembly's progress this year, one should not jump to conclusions as to where blame is due. One should also recognize that no student body shares a collective vision. Dartmouth is too complex for that kind of thinking.