I thought for more than a moment that it was the joke issue of The Dartmouth. But Jen Taylor's comprehensive article, "Architects Present Proposals" (8/19/99), was all too real.
Apparently, some outfit called Centerbrook Architects has been hired by the Trustees to turn the notorious Social and Residential Life Initiative into lots of new recreational buildings for students. Not surprisingly, these "facilities" offer facile solutions to the difficult problems of student life at Dartmouth. Centerbrook's proposals, Ms. Taylor's article fairly demonstrates, range in design from the bizarre to the grotesque. The marvels include three-story additions to the current student center; a concert hall behind the medical school; a massive atrium and archway joining Collis, Robinson and Thayer; a redundantly new student center by the graveyard behind Mass. Row; and a "32-acre compound surrounded by 5000 parking spaces" to replace Memorial Field. Make way for the first Trophy Campus.
As the article reports, Centerbrook Architects will unveil these wonders to the Trustees at their November meeting. Let us, for a moment, imagine we are in that room to see the proposal unfold. Everyone is giddy. The Trustees ask a lot of questions, interrupt each other, and point to their favorite drawings. "I like that one with the atrium: that's my favorite!" Another ponders, "Now, let me get this right, is it an athletic 'compound', or is it a 'complex'?" A third sounds off with, "Call me crazy, but I like the idea of going underground: there's a new shopping mall like that outside Red Square in Moscow--and it has an atrium also!" Perhaps some plans are finally selected, and the Chairman says, "Thanks, people. Good work." The Social Life Initiative at Dartmouth is made. Then it's back to "moguls braying into cell phones", as Patrick Cooke deftly put it in his recent New York Times op-ed on what it means to be "Hamptonized" (8/11/99).
Oh, I suppose this sort of thing will happen in times of prosperity -- rich people buying (or building) solutions to all their problems, real or perceived. The current Trustees are reflections of their times, times which in America see more prodigality, complacency and display than we can long endure. Though they no doubt serve on many other boards, and though many of them may be more accustomed to working the rodeo of unbridled capitalism, Dartmouth's present Trustees nevertheless have no excuse for running the College like a big business. Maybe in the vast world of corporate America, when management fails, they just call in the outside consultants to fix things up.
It will not work at Dartmouth.
For one thing, the Trustees seem to be starting from a faulty assumption. Dartmouth's dirty secret is not that it offers students a bad social life. Dartmouth's dirty secret is that it has low academic standards relative to all schools it would call its peers. Because Dartmouth College provides so few upper-level course offerings compared to universities, and because its faculty are largely not the very first in their fields, Dartmouth always ranks well below the top dozen with regard to academic reputation. The Trustees would be foolish to think that revamping Dartmouth social life will earn the College greater prestige.
We must sincerely hope that the Trustees quickly realize their error. The Board can bankroll better courses -- especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Board can hire superstar professors to bolster departments. But the Board cannot purchase a more mature social life on campus or better students to go with it: those can be had only at schools with more advanced curricula.
All the money that the Trustees plan to throw away on Centerbrook Architects and Tinkertoys would be better spent on building the ranks of the faculty and funding more upper-level course offerings for our flagging curriculum, rife with "gut" classes and bland survey courses.
Retreating to the Minary on Squam Lake this past weekend, perhaps the Trustees took a look around that particular body of water, if only to see how rich people before them managed to think before they spent.
