I really didn't want to start this year off with another column about the Trustees or their Initiative since it seems like that was all I wrote about for much of last year and there's only so many jokes you can make before getting hit with a libel suit. But everything else is boring and I'm on a deadline, so here goes:
At the Initiative Update meeting the other week, the Trustees, when they weren't busy contradicting themselves or rolling their eyes at the students, spoke about a common house system.
They were pretty vague describing what they envisioned as the implication of a common house system at Dartmouth, so I have to only assume that they meant a system of common houses with decentralized residential, social, and dining spaces similar to the one currently in place at schools like Harvard.
The great thing about Harvard is that it is Harvard. Everyone knows Harvard, everyone respects Harvard, everyone wants to have Harvard over for dinner. In all the rankings and statistics in books and magazines, Harvard is near or at the top. Every time I watch "Good Will Hunting" or "Dharma and Greg" I'm reminded that Harvard is a household name synonymous with success; Harvard is something special. Every time I go down to Boston to catch a Sox game with some friends, we invariably end up going to a Harvard bar to "Beat up some smaht kids." So it's a well-known fact that Harvard has name-recognition as being one of the finest institutions in the entire world. Personally, I think Harvard sucks.
And that's the biggest fault the Trustees are making when they look to a Harvard-esque social situation like the common house system. If we're going to emulate anything about Harvard, for the love of all things good and holy, why emulate their social system? Granted, every year Harvard churns out some of the legitimate future leaders of America, people who wind up being influential writers, politicians, educators, lawyers, doctors, or whatever. But let's face it, Harvard doesn't exactly have the reputation of being a warehouse for well-adjusted, socially comfortable human beings. Now I have no raw data to support any of these claims, but since that doesn't seem to slow down the Trustees, I hope you'll forgive my reliance on reputation and rumor. All I know is that Harvard graduates a lot of well-educated people with bright futures ahead of them who are absolutely miserable, socially-stunted, and completely unprepared for the real world (which is a fairly accurate description of what the Trustees think Dartmouth students are dangerously close to becoming). Maybe Dartmouth's reputation for graduating a lot of underachieving, alcoholic I-bankers isn't any better, but a common house system like Harvard's is no solution.
Even Harvard students, usually quick to defend their oft-mocked social situation, are beginning to admit severe flaws in their common house system. In his column in the Harvard Crimson this past week ("House Community in Jeopardy" 28 September 1999), junior Hugh Leibert wrote about how the common house system further fractionalizes the campus. The only time when intra-house socialization is common is when the houses hold open theme parties; events which seem a little like watered-down frat parties.
If the common house system were adopted here, the end result would, not coincidentally, seem like a watered-down Dartmouth. While Harvard students might trade a little social freedom for name recognition, Dartmouth students are in a position to enjoy the best of both worlds. If the tens of millions of dollars the Trustees and President Wright seem so willing to throw around were used effectively, in a few years Dartmouth could become an institution with the academic clout of a Harvard while retaining and improving upon its already superior social scene. It's impractical to spend the money on emulating Harvard's environment (try as we might, Hanover's not going to start resembling Boston anytime soon), and imprudent to spend the money on emulating Harvard's social life set-up (trying to copy a Harvard student's social life is like trying to eat dog food -- sure, you could do it, but why on Earth would you want to?). So spend the money on trying to get Harvard-quality equipment and facilities. We have Harvard-quality professors and students, so spend the money on taking better care of them.
If the Trustees are so hell-bent on getting rid of what we have here (and what seems to work out nicely for an awful lot of people), can we at least pick a better system to copy? After all, we all chose to come to Dartmouth, not a watered-down Dartmouth and certainly not a Harvard-North.
