I read with interest Sarah Rubenstein's article of July 8, 1999, "Controversial Social Space Ideas Fill Report." Her last paragraph lists the names of those people who submitted Proposal 26 of the Task Force Report, the part discussing single-sex housing. It's a telling list of names. Excepting Earl Jette and Brian Kunz of Outdoor Programs, all of the authors of this proposal are College administrators of one kind or another, most harbouring predictable ideological agendas now outdated and tedious to most people familiar with Dartmouth.
Does the College never learn? To reform the social habits of Dartmouth College, why look to the ideas of career academic administrators who, more likely than not, attended lesser schools than the one they are charged with reinventing? Come on: isn't there a little less creativity available to the drafters of Proposal 26 than to Dartmouth's own student population? What business do academic administrators really have cooking up ideas for Dartmouth students to live by, anyway? It is bleary-eyed, wasteful and wrong.
What is discussed less frequently is how it is also immoral.
Generally, we should all be appalled to hear the Trustees and their administrators invoke "improved gender relations" when selling their latest social initiatives. How cynical of them to exploit the ideals of coeducation when justifying the College's attempt merely to extend its domain to include any land proximate to campus that is privately owned by student organizations and their alumni corporations.
Yes, now that the College's huge capital campaign has been completed, and the cash raked in, the Trustees are "willing to make substantial investments" in the social life of Dartmouth students. To benefit students? To improve the tenor of campus life? To further realize gender equality? No. To acquire real estate. The College is rich; the College is growing, and - as Hanover residents know all too well - the Big Green is getting bigger and greener all the time.
Fraternities and sororities - who cares if they're co-ed or single-sex (the College certainly doesn't) - own valuable houses built on very expensive Hanover land. These houses would make ideal dormitories, and goodness knows the College is pressed for space. The College Planning Office says as much all the time, except they refer to the "fraternity model" in their proposals for "finding" smaller new dormitories. The Trustees' pretentious social initiative is nothing more than a good, old-fashioned capitalist land-grab. The Trustees now have the money to buy out alumni-owned, student-run organizationsm, and so they will.
I have mentioned that academic administrators should not be entrusted with imagining a new social order at Dartmouth. Similarly, the captains of industry, bossy suits, urban planners (in small town New Hampshire?), lawyers (have they read the Dartmouth College Case?) and monopolists on the Board of Trustees -this is a sad irony - should positively not be trusted merely to be stewards of the institution and students in their care. The Trustees are doing what any big company would do with extra cash: they are merging and acquiring. Maybe they are even taking over. Raiding.
Women of Dartmouth are correct to assume that the Trustees do not care about improving campus life for them. Men of Dartmouth know the same disappointment already, and it affects their behavior more adversely than absolutely anything else on campus. I feel sorry for the administrators and for President Wright: they are taking orders from corrupt leaders. As any institution grows, and its wealth increases, there is always the danger that the institution will come to dominate others as it becomes irretrievably, and ruthlessly, self-perpetuating. Dartmouth College will not become a university; but it will become Dartmouth, Inc.-a kind of bureaucratic regime.
Where is the variety, where is the drama, and where is the joy in having everything on (and off) our Hanover campus run by Dartmouth, Inc.? Perhaps Dartmouth students ought to join with Dartmouth alumni and Hanover citizens in organized opposition against the Trustees and their administration's plan to buy up real estate with our money. With all the new wealth they've got, the Trustees should instead devote these resources to improving academic standards and to helping the surrounding community. This assistance is important for ensuring that both students and townspeople shape their own future.
