To the Editor:
The videotape record of the March 7 orientation for participants in the Committee on Standards hearings for CS 4 will presumably include Dean James Larimore's rather bizarre injunction to all participants "to be as truthful as you are willing". More bizarre is that the committee's members apparently were less willing to acknowledge the truth than some of the accused, who, according to Marcia Kelly's statement to me in a March 2 meeting with Dean Larimore, had already confessed to their misdeeds.
While two tutors apparently did offer so-called "help" to students far beyond what I could have imagined at the time I submitted my allegations, the evidence I presented focussed on obvious electronic exchange of written work, in clear violation of a clear policy included in the course syllabus. The Committee's failure to punish in some way -- even if only by formal reprimand -- each and every student to whom the preponderance of evidence ascribed culpability represents a gross neglect of its duty to maintain academic standards. The Committee's appeal to "fairness" as an excuse is nothing more than an obtuse unwillingness to acknowledge the commonly understood truth that some of the guilty will be overlooked in every venue of adjudication prior to the Last Judgment. One may now argue with impeccable consistency that it can never again be "fair" to punish a Dartmouth cheater after the CS Seventy have been let off scot free.
As a short-term visitor to Dartmouth, it is ultimately of no great consequence to me if Dartmouth chooses to keep company with the many academic institutions with lax academic standards. My own professional reputation, however, is another matter, and I cannot leave uncountered Dean Edward Berger's assertion in The Dartmouth's recent extra edition that I "may have mishandled" the CS 4 cheating cases.
When a student approached me after class on February 7 with the rumor that some Gamma Delts had downloaded and circulated my homework solution, I went to Professor Drysdale's office for advice even before returning to my own. Professor Drysdale was informed of and, as I understood him, he concurred with every step I took from that point in time until the cheating was revealed to the class on February 10. Professor Drysdale reviewed all of the evidence I presented and concurred with my allegations in all but one or two cases. If the allegations were mishandled -- and I do not believe they were -- then Professor Drysdale is no less in need of better orientation to the Honor Code than I.
In his zeal to free Dartmouth College from the public-relations nightmare created by the brothers of Gamma Delta Chi and others, Dean Berger has exhibited an unwillingness to be truthful about my diligence in executing an extremely distasteful professional duty that other visitors might have shirked. His statement appears designed to appeal to the arrogance of that segment of the Dartmouth community that let me know from my first day at the front of the Filene Auditorium that Ivy Leaguers deserve to be taught by other Ivy Leaguers. In short, his statement is scapegoating, part and parcel of the hogwash that must accompany every whitewash.
