The status of the Trustees' Initiative on Student Life will be showcased at a town meeting tomorrow night at Alumni Hall, marking another incremental step towards solidifying plans for a restructured social and residential life at Dartmouth.
The town meeting should shed some light as to which direction the 16-member steering committee on student life is heading. Committee Co-Chair and Trustee Susan Dentzer '77 said the committee is expected to share "key issues" that the members have been discussing throughout the summer.
The committee is also expected to announce a finalized timetable for the Student Life Initiative, according to Dentzer.
Currently, the committee plans to present their proposals to the Board of Trustees by the end of Fall term and the Trustees are expected to vote on them sometime during the Winter term.
Much of the discussions took place over Summer term, as the steering committee -- made up of Dentzer, Co-Chair and Trustee Peter Fahey '68, four undergraduates, three administrators, a graduate student, three alumni and three professors -- was not finalized until the end of Spring term.
Dentzer and Fahey had previously told The Dartmouth that possible suggestions for changes would be presented to students when they returned for classes in the fall.
She said that the issue of continuity in residence halls is something that could be presented at tomorrow night's forum. Ideas for encouraging more continuity, such as freshmen housing, could be presented to the audience for discussion.
The forum is a chance for all community members, including faculty, alumni and administrators as well as new and returning students to give the steering committee feedback, Dentzer added.
"When we announced the process, a lot of people got confused and thought we were announcing something that was done," Dentzer said. She said the forum will help to make "clear that this is a process and what the status of the process is."
The forum comes at the end of a summer marked by much speculation about what the steering committee was doing during the term.
At the July 10 steering committee meeting in Hanover members began discussing the more than 250 page report from the Task Force. Dentzer told The Dartmouth in June before the July 10 meeting that the values emphasized in the committee discussions would be parallel to President James Wright's comments on changes in Dartmouth's social life.
The Initiative "calls for the system to evolve and change," Dentzer said. "[It] should be substantially coeducational, and I emphasize 'substantially.'"
During the summer, Dentzer and Fahey also announced that fall rush for the Class of 2002 would not be affected since Fall term would bring the introduction of "an array of possible alternatives" to the College for discussion.
Greek life dominated parts of the July 10 meeting when steering committee members toured almost all of the Coed Fraternity Sorority Council's houses. Greek opinions varied widely about the receptiveness of the members who toured the houses.
Many houses met the committee with newly-painted walls and jazz music and answered questions about programming, community service and alcohol use in their houses.
Fahey and Dentzer offered few details about the second steering committee meeting held at the end of July, other than to say they met with many students with different experiences in the residence halls and many students unaffiliated with the Greek system.
Fahey and Dentzer declined to name students that they met with at all summer meetings, saying that in order for students to feel like they could speak candidly, they should remain anonymous.
The committee is still willing to talk with any member of the Dartmouth community about any issue they may desire, saying the committee has "an open door."
"There is no way that this process can be considered anything other than open," Dentzer told The Dartmouth in July.
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.
William DeJong '73, director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, spoke at length with the steering committee during its July 22 meeting.
Greek houses, dormitories and off-campus accommodations have all been identified by DeJong and the committee as places where "heavy drinking" takes place, Dentzer told The Dartmouth.
In July Dentzer declined to present solutions for the drinking problems at Dartmouth but mentioned DeJong's work at the Higher Education Center and his 190 page report, "Setting and Improving Policies for Reducing Alcohol and Other Drug Problems on Campus: A Guide for School Administrators."
The report, though written as a general guide, specifically cites Dartmouth as a college under a heading, "Drinking is a Long-Standing Tradition."
"One source of ambivalence is that some school officials see student binge drinking as a long-standing tradition that is resistant to change," DeJong writes in the report.
Previously, both Dentzer and Fahey declined to comment on whether they think alcohol abuse is more prevalent at Dartmouth than at other comparable institutions, with Dentzer saying "our job is to look at what is here at Dartmouth, so we're frankly not spending a lot of time trying to figure out whether a third of your students reporting a black out is a higher level or a lower level [than that of other schools]. I think we'd all agree that, whatever the rate is, that it's higher than we'd like."
At its annual retreat August 21-22 at the College's Minary Conference Center, the Trustees were briefed about the progress of the steering committee but made no decisions about the Social and Residential Life Initiative and did not alter the Initiative's previously-announced timetable.
"The Board was extremely encouraged by the breadth and depth of the information, suggestions, creative ideas, thoughtful approaches and the time and effort that has been put into [the Initiative] within the student body, alumni groups, the faculty and others," Trustee Chair William King '63 said. "Everyone seems to be pitching in with the right kind of spirit."
