All of us here at the Nation's Oldest College Newspaper are greatly disappointed in you, Dartmouth students! Quite to our annoyance, all the hoopla surrounding the Student Life Initiative has already begun to die down! How many big stories do you think we are going to get this year, people?
Indeed, we at The Dartmouth (motto: "Riding Those Oh-so-Newsworthy Stories Like a Rented Mule Since 1799") were quite excited in the weeks preceding the unveiling of controversial yet titillating Student Life Initiative. This was going to be it: Greeks vs the administration for final control of the fruited Hanover plain, mano a mano, there can be only one!
I mean, we were counting on protests on the Green, angry mobs marching on Parkhurst, barricades being thrown up on Webster Avenue, S& S in riot gear clubbing students, and so forth. But no, you lazy college kids! You were content to attend your discussion group meetings and raise your concerns like civilized human beings. You were happy to write your intelligent, lucid, insightful commentaries and submit them to various student publications. Like writing for the Dartmouth ever got you anywhere!
Since the SLI obviously failed to inspire any suitably newsworthy insurrections the first time around, we have elected to compile some particularly inflammatory passages regarding changes to the CFS system and campus alcohol policy and reproduce them here.
"Recommendation 4: Make Major Changes in the CFS Organizations
"(1) Limitations on Number of Organizations. Contrary to popular misconception, the Greek System will not be entirely removed from campus. The number of Greek organizations, however, will be reduced through a program entitled "Attrition by Bulldozer." We anticipate that in the aftermath of this program the number of CFS organizations will have been reduced to the more manageable number of approximately one. This CFS organization will not hold rush, and members will typically join following their senior year of high school in a coed pledge class of approximately 1100 members. The physical plant of this organization will consist of a number of dormitories, some of which are quite ugly and far from campus. Responsibilities for continued membership will include taking classes and paying dues, which are $35,000 a year.
"(2) Parties. In order to prevent problems at large gatherings while endeavoring not to overly burden students organizing small informal parties, the committee proposes a three-track system that could be thought of as 'green light,' 'yellow light,' and 'red light,' as with a traffic signal. 'Green light' gatherings would consist of one student or less, and would not need to be registered with Safety and Security. 'Yellow light' parties, consisting of two or more students, are contrary to the educational mission of the College and will not be permitted. 'Red light' refers to a district that shall be constructed on the site of the former River Cluster.
"(3) Alternative refreshments. 'Attractive' non-salty food and non-alcoholic beverages must always be served at a registered social event. Safety and Security officers not sufficiently aroused by the attractive nature of such non-salty alternative refreshments shall have the authority to shut down offending registered parties.
"(4) Serving hours. The committee proposes that alcohol service at any social event be required to end by 2:00 a.m. on any day with no classes the next day. Serving hours shall begin at 2:15 a.m. Therefore, organizations wishing to serve alcohol will be required to provide a time machine capable of holding all party participants as well as college-trained non-student servers. Only during this 15-minute reverse-time window shall alcohol service be allowed. S&S officers shall have access to the machine at all times.
"(5) Education, intervention, and counseling. Our goal for alcohol education is to consistently offer the best professionally designed programs on any campus in America. To that end, all academic departments will be abolished and replaced by a single new department entitled Alcohol Studies. Students will be required to complete thirty-five alcohol studies credits in order to graduate. They will bring valuable skills to the work place such as being able to read those charts to determine how many drinks a 155-lb male can consume before his BAC is 0.10.
"(6) Licensed servers at registered events. At any registered social event, a number of activities which Dartmouth students were previously believed to be intelligent enough to handle on their own will now be carried out by College-trained non-student servers. In recent years, for example, the College has had a number of incidents of poor personal hygiene resulting from students' failure to wipe properly. To ameliorate this situation, trained wipers will be stationed in rest room stalls at all registered social events. An associated non-student employee will check the IDs of all students wishing to use this service and place wrist bands on those of legal wiping age."
See now Dartmouth students! You mean to say you're content to respond to all of this like the bright articulate students you are, by learning about the issues and voicing your opinions intelligently? Come now! We here at The Dartmouth want some action! Get out there and raise a ruckus!
Please alert the press before you do so.
