A New Year

The 2000 Directorate would like to welcome you to the bicentennial year of The Dartmouth's publication. As the only independent daily newspaper on campus, The Dartmouth is firmly committed to providing the best coverage possible of on and off-campus events. Toward this goal, we have instituted some changes to try to improve our service to the College community. The Dartmouth will now be available for delivery to your door, whether you are living on-campus or off. We hope this will make The Dartmouth more accessible to the entire community. Also, we have made a dramatic expansion in our coverage of Arts & Entertainment through the addition of the new Weekend Access section, which will appear as a pullout every Friday beginning this week. This new section will contain reviews of movies, books and music, as well as an expansion of Hopkins Center and national arts coverage. We will still be offering the same superior news and sports coverage including the Sports Extra every Monday. The purpose of The Dartmouth is to address the informational needs of the College community, and the 2000 Directorate is committed to upholding that purpose. Mere Distribution The manner in which the Campus Crusade for Christ planned to give out the book Mere Christianity was inappropriate and they were correct in their ultimate decision to hold off distribution. Protection for students against solicitation by campus religious groups is necessary, since its absence would potentially breed an environment of religious competition which would be detrimental to all students. It would be one thing if the book being distributed was purely informational, but C.S. Lewis' work specifically deals with the subject of conversion. It is therefore solicitous in nature. Still, attempting to distribute the book would have been acceptable if it were not done in a way which forced the material on students. The CCC crossed the line into forced solicitation when they planned to send the book to Hinman Boxes. Rather than offering the text in a public place and giving students the option of accepting Mere Christianity, the CCC planned to give them only an option to reject it, and one which was not publicized. Distribution of Mere Christianity through Hinman Mail would have invited religious rivalry rather than the religious education that the CCC claims to desire and the cooperation that the community needs.