To the Editors:
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Having grown into somewhat of a skeptic after my years in Hanover, it humors me to no end that the College has chosen to take an issue that is very clear in its needs and resolutions and politicize/bureaucratize it. The Administration's decision to review BlitzMail (The Dartmouth, Feb. 24) is part of a much larger issue that plagues our College at all levels; the administration, staff and student body. Whenever an issue arises that requires investigation and resolution, we form committees and commence dialogues. In an effort to represent all factions, we invite members to participate in this dialogue whose specialties lie elsewhere. In building this beautiful representative beast, we are left with a nightmare layered in bureaucracy and bias. The result is always the same. Far too much time, money and effort is spent in landing at a decision which is usually flawed. Profitable, competitive businesses that focus on execution don't run like this. They take a very small pool of the most skilled and proven people within a domain, charge them with making a decision and then hold them accountable not only for the decision but the efficiency of the process in reaching it.
How exactly an English professor becomes the mouthpiece and head of a subcommittee on computing escapes me. It's pretty clear, at least to me, that you could stick eight of the College's most skilled and proven computing programmers and planners in a room for the day, have them discuss the issues, costs and resource needs, and very easily come out with the right decision on this matter. Why? Because it is their job and we pay them to be experts. Instead, we have individuals heading groups that have no domain expertise trying to analyze, interpret and filter information and make decisions about it. Seems to me the probability of someone making an oversight in translating information into decision in this scenario is pretty strong.
And what is the legacy of all this? We are teaching poor habits to students. Now, every time there is any form of disagreement on campus, our students form large-scale committees and hold public discourses. Sure, they have become experts in the art of scheduling meetings, but they are becoming apathetic because little concrete results ever come out of these public dialogues and committees. We teach our students how to create committees but never teach them how to put in place structures that lead to effective decision making and execution. Frankly, if the College wants to proceed as is that's just fine with me. But let's at least be consistent. I'd like to see the boys over in Kiewit invited to the English Department's next curriculum planning meeting for the Fall term's courses.
