John Sloan Dickey once said, "The terrifying truth is that young men learn responsibility by being permitted some opportunity to be irresponsible."
President Dickey's famously candid reflection on human development remains just as true today as it did 40 years ago. The terrifying fact that young men and women need a moment in their lives for irresponsible expression is one that even the most puritanical educator would grudgingly admit. Yet the Trustees of today's Dartmouth seem to have concluded that the educational benefits of irresponsibility no longer outweigh the more negative consequences of such behavior. Undoubtedly, the controversial Social Life Initiative announced last February reflects this concern.
As one might expect, such concerns about youthful exuberance are not new. When the first four graduates of Dartmouth College received their diplomas in 1771, Eleazer Wheelock was horrified to discover that his cooks were incapable of roasting the celebratory ox because they had passed out from a rum binge. Unable to locate any S&S officers in the vicinity, President Wheelock took matters into his own hands and had the drunken men whipped against a post.
Successive administrations thankfully abandoned the whip, but have nevertheless remained vexed by the interesting problems posed by hell-raising 20 year olds. Indeed, many presidents have struggled to keep this "rage" phenomenon in check, and it might behoove the Trustees to examine their predecessors' records before formulating their own social life recommendation. In particular, they might learn a lot from President Dickey.
Dickey was one of those "Great Men" who remains unsullied by historical revision, a larger-than-life figure whose legacy continues today. In addition to his impressive physical stature, Dickey amazed contemporaries by wielding a gigantic intellect and speaking with overpowering language. In many ways he reminds me of his friend, Dwight Eisenhower, an eminently likeable figure who seemed to embody the enthusiasm and confidence of post-war America.
Dickey approached the question of student behavior in a manner characteristic of his personality. He placed all matters pertaining to student life in the hands of the students themselves, and gave them the institutional authority to both define and enforce acceptable patterns of behavior. The Student Assembly, Palaeopitus, and Judiciary Council undertook responsibilities unthinkable today, and in return they were given a real say in matters of college policy and administration.
Of course, such an arrangement was made much easier by the cultural climate of the '50s. In Dickey's day, students with names like "Buzz" and "Red" played tag on the Green, and a "crazy" night might involve drinking rye whiskey while singing around the fraternity piano with some co-eds from Smith. The rebellious '60s effectively dismantled Dickey's legacy and, for the most part, student life has since been characterized by an "Us vs. Them" dichotomy, with students rebelling against persistent administrative attempts to assert more control over their lives.
Throughout his life, John Dickey was a champion of student accountability, a fact that helps explain his embitterment when the Vietnam era swept away his beloved peer-regulated systems. However, I think his lessons are instructive today. It seems to me that the Trustees, most of whom attended college during the politically controversial years of the '60s and '70s, have spent a good deal of time looking for "top-down" solutions, best described by Trustee Dentzer as "structured choices."
I don't blame the Trustees for acting in this manner; it is, after all, very difficult for peers to regulate peers. But if the '50s were characterized by restraint, and the '60s by excess, the '90s fall somewhere in between. Correspondingly, the Trustees' social recommendation should seek a balance between the extremes of personal freedom and institutional guidance. If they're going to demand better behavior, then we should demand the institutional authority to define and enforce such behavior. A gesture of this sort might include a student on the Board of Trustees, or perhaps a Judiciary Council that means something. By doing so, Dartmouth will go a long way towards creating a culture of responsibility that will be more effective in regulating behavior than any "structured choice."
The upcoming Trustee announcement will undoubtedly demand that we, as students, become more accountable for our actions. Perhaps our Saturday nights will be a little more structured, and maybe this will be a good thing or maybe not. But if the history of the College teaches us anything, it's that Hanover will always be a great place to act like a debaucherous 20 year old. Buzz, Red, and the drunk cooks all knew it, and so do I. It is a terrifying truth.
