As certain as the leaves will change colors this fall, the march of students through Dartmouth's halls continues. Where we go after leaving Dartmouth is a question that requires deep introspection and self-questioning. Although options after graduation are nearly limitless, a disproportionate number of people choose to go into the corporate world and practice corporate law.
During and after the 1970s, many of the best and the brightest chose business pursuits over national service. Dartmouth students were no different, a condition typified by the choice of Jeffrey Immelt '78, CEO of General Electric, as last year's commencement speaker. People in the international humanitarian world, in government bureaucracy and in politics point to the allure of the corporate world as a factor in draining away talented people from a life of service to others.
I have felt an immense pull in the direction of service during my brief stay at Dartmouth. My own personal convictions aside, the classes that I have watched leave Dartmouth have been filled more and more with people who want to help others, rather than people who want to help themselves. The numbers of teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and government workers that make up graduating classes appears to be on the rise. That pull in the direction of service may be the start to a new historical trend: a turn away from selfish pursuits towards selfless ones.
There pervades throughout Dartmouth a feeling of anti-corporatism; that the career choice of many of our classmates is tied too intimately to plush luxuries, expensive cars and cruise vacations, all earned in the name of the unfeeling profit-motive. It may have more to do with perception than reality. Career Services certainly places a greater emphasis on corporate recruiting than on other occupations, and job availability through the alumni network lends itself as a great promoter of the corporate cause. Dartmouth's career help makes it easy for those who want to join the corporate world, but does little to streamline the transition into charitable and service organizations. As a senior friend who had just finished an internship at Human Rights Watch recently relayed to me, "I got no help from Dartmouth in getting my job, it was all up to me."
This essay is not meant as an anti-corporate diatribe but as maybe a way to get people to rethink just what is making up this anti-corporate feeling. The most probable causes of this feeling are corporate malfeasance and reprehensible behavior on the part of heads of corporations. Anti-corporatism may even be self-defeatist, as much of the money that powers philanthropy and governments comes from large corporations. But certainly reintroducing some semblance of ethical behavior (avoiding accounting fraud, paying a fair share of taxes) in corporations is not. Neither is avoiding unnecessary waste. Maybe a Mercedes Benz isn't an absolutely necessary decoration piece in the garage. Rolex watches may also fall into this category.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." We live in the midst of an age when many of the most influential people in the world live in the realm of obscene comfort and convenience, while billions of other people live lives of daily deprivation. Those in power know only the little they read in the papers about these appalling conditions. It may be too late to influence the current career decisions of half of my classmates who are participating in the corporate recruiting process, but hopefully a small seed of doubt was sown by the words uttered by Dr. King.
As Dartmouth students, we carry with us the potential for change, an influence that we inherently have after graduating. To ignore the power that comes with this influence is irresponsible.