Regarding the recent slanted coverage of the Trustee Steering Committee developments, I feel the need provide your reading public with the opportunity to see in print a side of the issue other than the one presented by America's Oldest College Newspaper.
I am prepared to hold the staff of The Dartmouth in part responsible if, when visiting the campus in five to 10 years, substantial and meaningful change has not occurred at the institution. Even the graphic that you have chosen to accompany every article connected to Committee events is misleading and false; your use of Greek letters as a background to the "Five Principles" logo only serves to perpetrate the campus-wide misconception that the Initiatives are only about the Greek system. This daily misrepresentation is only contributing to the fog of misinformation that surrounds the student perceptions of the Five Principles, only one of which can be clearly connected to the Greek system. The fact is, the Initiatives were set out to encompass a culture, to provoke thought and action from each and every Dartmouth student.
But each and every Dartmouth student doesn't have a voice in the discussion, your editorial of a few days ago seemed to whine without providing any suggestions for an alternate mode of going about things. Not only was your editorial needlessly accusatory, but it was devoid of any constructive criticism; instead, it heaped all responsibility on the Committee. As a student said at the town meeting a few nights ago, the steering committee cannot knock on each and every dorm door in Hitchcock and Mass Row and the Fayers in order to get individual feedback. Moreover, it is not necessary. Students were invited to submit proposals, and many did. Students were invited to speak before the committee during the summer, and many did. Students were invited to the open forum, and many did not bother attending. Clearly the idea of a representative committee is alien to your editorial-writing staff, who would like a 4000+ committee of the current student body. The students who fear that the Greek view is not well-represented should look at the voices who speak for them: look at the male alums on the committee. With their dates of graduation spanning from the '50s to the '80s, do you really think they have no house loyalties? And would it make sense for them to sign a death warrant for the houses of which they were once a part? If the answer is yes, perhaps the bonds of brotherhood don't last as long as has been professed. I would like to think differently, in which case it seems obvious that the committee does not have a hidden agenda, or even committee-wide agreement.
Your article, "Trustees seek input on Initiative" of Monday, September 20, 1999, attempted to craftily incriminate the procedure of the committee, first quoting co-chair Susan Dentzer as saying, "There is no way that this process can be considered anything other than open," and then following that with a paragraph that began, "Those students who went before the committee were expected to not talk about their discussion with the committee, and the committee would not discuss it publicly." As far as I can tell, you subversively criticized the committee when they spoke with a cross-section of students behind closed doors in order to provide for complete honesty and confidentiality, and then criticized them when they had an open forum discussion with microphones set up. The entire campus was blitzed, notices were set up in food court, and an ad was taken in your publication. (Notably, in the very same issue you pulled out your crystal ball and predicted a low attendance rate at the event.)
Let's take Dean Jim Larimore's suggestions at the town meeting to heart. Let's not wait for a committee to make all of the changes. There have been issues with the Dartmouth status quo for years, and the number of past committees with the task of re-evaluating Social and Residential life is large. We have five principles in front of us; none of them give specific guidelines and none of them are too much of the Trustees to ask. Changing the status quo will of course provoke fear, hesitation. But kicking and screaming is pointless; institutions across America are looking around and seeing how diverse -- regionally, racially, philosophically -- student populations of the future will be, and they are taking steps to accommodate -- and learn from -- that diversity in new and exciting ways.
Students, do your politics fit between the headlines of The D? And do you think trying to improve Dartmouth -- not just for current students, but for faculty, administrators, alums, and future students -- could be so simple as to be contained in a sound bite? Are the issues so black and white that this committee could possibly have a scret, hidden agenda? Have they spent their summer weekends coming up with demolition plans for the Greek houses? It would be easy if it were so simple as to state that such and such percentage of the school supports the Greeks, therefore the initiative is null and void, but that wouldn't even begin to settle the various debates implicit in the five principles. These are complex issues, as Dartmouth has a complex history. I know I thought about it a lot before choosing to attend here, and it makes me feel good that there is a committee of dedicated Dartmouth community members willing to think about it as well. Any institution that began as an all-male, all-white institution some 200 years ago obviously has some evolving to do if it is going to compete with national standards of excellence. That is in part what the trustees are challenging us to do: to continue the evolution.
And so, to The D, I implore you: look at your obligations to the school, to journalism, and to the students. Disregard none of them.
