In the past, I've written a few columns that might seem a little negative about one aspect of Dartmouth or another. A lot of loyal readers take the time to respond to my columns, letting me know how they feel about my opinions. And I thank you both. The most common response that I get, aside from various Trustees challenging me to the Dome, is from students who wonder why, if I seem to hate Dartmouth so much, I don't either transfer or do something positive to enact change. The answer, friends, is that I'm far too lazy and incompetent to do anything besides complain. Also, this belief that I hate Dartmouth is a myth. I'm actually very happy to be here; there are a lot of things about this campus that I love.
I love how Dartmouth students are far too busy with their lofty academic pursuits to get all wrapped up in this social activism stuff that seems to be sweeping across the country, inflicting students at lesser schools with the idea that they can actually make a difference in the world. For instance, look at the recent controversy stirred by sweatshop workers. How can those people withstand such horrible conditions? I'm talking, of course, about the college students who have to try to study or sleep with all those loud protesters making such a fuss with their ceaseless chanting at all hours of the day. It's inhumane!
In the past, I've alluded that College President Wright is trying to recreate Dartmouth in the image of a school like Harvard or Yale. I've complained a lot about President Wright and the changes he's proposed. However, that doesn't mean I don't like the man. I just think he's a little misguided. The Student Life Initiative was a very ambitious move by a new president, but I think we all realize that it's already not what it could have been. (Remember when Wright came out and said making Greek houses coed was his big platform? Read anything about that in the Trustees report a year later? Didn't think so.) So maybe Wright and the SLI misfired a little bit. But give the guy a break; he's new to this. I think we're all willing to give Wright a mulligan. Let him take a do-over. We'll pretend that the whole SLI false start never happened and let Wright reassess the situation. If you want to pattern Dartmouth after a school like Yale, then copy what's good about a school like Yale -- not its social scene.
So what is a good thing to copy from a school like Yale? What should Wright be throwing millions of dollars at? For lack of a smooth transition (this column is already jumpier than Keri Strug on amphetamines), I'll tie in the previous paragraph about student activism. Recently, Yale was plagued with a bout of student activism. People protested everything from sweatshop sweatshirts to the treatment of Elian Gonzalez. But the one thing that stood out, the one good thing to be gleaned from this rash of useless activism, was a protest that occurred last Thursday, when Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball, attended a Yale tea.
Selig is perhaps best known for upholding the lifetime ban from baseball that Bartlett Giamatti imposed on Pete Rose, the all-time Major League career leader in hits, hustle, and bad haircuts. A small group of Yale students sat in the courtyard of the building in which the tea with Selig was held, berating him with posters and bullhorns, demanding that he reinstate Pete Rose. In a letter that was forwarded to me from a Yale friend of mine, the student organizing the protest aptly wrote, "[Pete Rose's] exclusion from the Hall of Fame is one of America's great travesties of justice."
I admire James Wright's ambition as a new president, but his tee shot was a little errant. Maybe our image as a "work hard, play hard" school doesn't sit well with the administration, but we don't want to become known as a "work hard, attend politically-correct, socially-engineered events hard" school, either. So I implore President Wright, a man who doesn't seem shy about stealing ideas from other Ivy League schools, to pick up the gauntlet that has been cast down by the Yale students. Wright's a baseball fan, and the reinstatement of Pete Rose is perhaps the one issue that can unify the entire Dartmouth community. Forget the SLI. It's not really going to solve any of the problems that need solving. Instead, Wright should take the many millions of dollars he would have spent converting buildings on Webster Avenue into juice bars, and use the money to launch a nationwide campaign to get Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame. Giving Hank Aaron an honorary degree is a step in the right direction. But if Wright really wants to unify the campus and cement his legacy as Dartmouth President, he needs to devote all his time, money and efforts to the Pete Rose cause.
