A column appeared in The Dartmouth by Joseph Asch '79 ("Dear Old Dartmouth?" Feb. 28) that shocked me as the parent of an '08 and as a long-time close observer of the Dartmouth community.
Citing anonymous sources, Asch claimed that Dartmouth students can't write, Dartmouth teachers don't teach and Dartmouth's academic leaders are indifferent to both. I could hardly believe what I was reading. It is belied by everything I know about the College and its current students, faculty and president.
Apparently the rest of the world sees the College that I see, and not the one that Mr. Asch conjures up, for The Dartmouth reports a record number of applications for next year's freshman class ("Record number apply to be '09s," Jan. 26).
Most importantly, the intellectual life of the College is as vibrant and as robust as any college in the world. The opportunities for students to hear and engage different perspectives on political, social and cultural issues are extraordinary, all the more so because Dartmouth remains a small college relative to its Ivy and other peers. And make no mistake about it: Its peers are the best private universities and colleges in the country.
Student publications range from the left-leaning Darmouth Free Press to the literary magazine Stonefence Review to the Dartmouth Beacon, a conservative journal about national politics, for which my son works.
Additionally, of course, The Dartmouth offers a wide array of perspectives, as Asch's own contributions attest. The Montgomery Fellowship, Dickey Endowment, Rockefeller Center and other campus sponsors regularly bring talented, thoughtful (and sometimes controversial) commentators, artists and scientists to the campus, often including extensive involvement with students.
And the classroom itself -- at least if my son's experience is any gauge -- is intense and challenging, with more faculty-student interaction than I experienced in my time at Dartmouth in the 1970s.
The College offers a remarkable number of small, seminar-style courses that deeply engage a particular topic or issue.
This term, for instance, my son is one of 10 students in a freshman seminar on the age of Constantine, for which he is now writing his second or third paper; he has met several times with the professor both on a schedule she requires of all students and at least one session he sought.
Perhaps most revealing is his experience, last term and this, in two large introductory government courses and in introductory history and art history courses. In each, he met with the teacher and received written and in-person comments on his several written assignments and midterms.
In sum, my son has been intellectually electrified by his courses at Dartmouth, and as a mother I could not be more pleased and excited for him
Where not downright inaccurate (for example, Dartmouth does not have a speech code), the concerns that Asch raises are faced by every college in the country, and he is wrong and unfair in targeting Dartmouth. At any given time (including when Asch attended Dartmouth), some athletic facilities are new and beautiful, while others are due for rehabilitation. But does he realize how much has been built and renovated in the last five years and is now being done?
His lament that there are not enough "conservative" professors is a widely-shared complaint about every leading college and university. But the fundamental concern should be that teachers (of whatever personal political persuasion) invite wide debate and convey the importance of rigorous thinking and intellectual discovery.
Teachers at Dartmouth -- who are at the top of their fields, who have chosen to teach at Dartmouth -- know this. From all I have heard and seen, they are professionals committed to open inquiry, who respect our sons and daughters and seek to nurture their intellectual growth.
Finally, Asch's irritation at the College's policies concerning underage drinking, and the underground drinking that may ensue, should be directed at the United States Congress, which used its spending power to force every state in the nation to raise the drinking age to 21, and further conditions its aid to universities on their adoption and enforcement of underage drinking policies.
The one area where, it seems to me, Dartmouth faces a special challenge is continuity in residential living.
The truth is that this problem did not begin "in the mid-1980s," as Asch asserts, but in the 1970s, with the adoption of the D-Plan. That plan provides many benefits and opportunities for students, including summer in Hanover and an unrivaled array of language and other study programs away from campus.
But it does present a problem: When you were away during the Winter term, someone else was in "your" dorm room. Whose room is it now? Dartmouth has tried many different answers to that question, but ultimately the answer has to be more rooms -- and the College has already announced it is building more residence halls. For this we should thank (not take to task!) the leadership of President Wright.
When my son was deciding where to apply to college, we visited institutions up and down the east coast and across the country. We saw many fine colleges and universities. What struck me, however, was that so many of them sought to be what Dartmouth is and has long been -- a school that combines the best of a small college and the best of a top rank faculty, providing students an unparalleled opportunity for scholarship, friendship, leadership, individual attention, and deep involvement in both academic and extracurricular activities.
There is no school with a finer undergraduate education, broadly conceived, or a more appealing and enduring soul.
