From the Dartmouth College Mission Statement (1999):
"Dartmouth has a special character and is committed to fostering the unique bonds that exist between the institution and those who learn, teach and work here. This character is rooted in the following essential elements:
"... A conviction that one of Dartmouth's strengths is providing students with close contact with faculty..."
When students have no voice in determining the future of a highly popular department and a faculty member allegedly storms out of a committee that is charged with shaping the future of student life at Dartmouth, one cannot help but to question the sincerity of an administration and faculty that treat promises to their students so lightly.
Because of this, the administration and faculty of the Student Life Initiative era may find it difficult to strengthen the "close contact" and build a trusting relationship with the students they are entrusted to teach.
Despite repeated calls for increasing student input in the Education Department's faculty search, the process has remained extremely secretive and far removed from the students it affects. This raises questions about the College's commitment to actually fostering the "unique bonds" it claims to value so highly.
The Education Department was recommended for discontinuance just a few years ago, but a student outcry helped keep the discipline alive. Now, however, it appears that the department's hiring committee has either forgotten that or chosen to ignore it. The committee's decision to retract Dean of the Faculty Ed Berger's assurance that a student would sit on the panel serves as just one more reminder of the disharmony between the administration and the students.
Secondly, the reasons behind the decision of professor Randy Testa to leave the recently formed Greek Life Steering Committee prompts further questions about the relationship between the faculty and the student body. With his undignified departure from the committee, Testa -- considered by many students to be one of the most exciting and spontaneous teachers Dartmouth has to offer -- deals another blow to the College's ability to live up to its self-avowed goal of forging a strong relationship between "the institution and those who learn, teach and work here."
Testa's alleged inability to understand or accept students' points of view regarding the Greek system and his unwillingness to work for a compromise between the diverse opinions of the Greek Life Committee's members definitively highlight the tension between the very groups the College strives to unite.
Dartmouth must reassess its commitment and the commitment of its faculty to the lofty yet laudable goals it defines in its mission statement. To attempt to even approach any of these goals in the future, the College must accept and heal the problems of the present with the active involvement of both the students and the faculty.
