In December 2000, Dartmouth Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg sent a now-well-publicized letter to Swarthmore College President Alfred Bloom congratulating Bloom for cutting Swarthmore's varsity football program and expressing the opinion that "football, and the culture that surrounds it, is antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours."
Also in the letter, Furstenberg extended his condemnation of football programs to other sports as well.
"A close examination of intercollegiate athletics within the Ivy League would point to other sports in which the same phenomenon is apparent," he wrote.
The publication of Furstenberg's letter sparked controversy in the Dartmouth community, as many alumni aggressively voiced their disgust with the College's handling of athletes via online message boards.
The storm of debate surrounding the proper place for athletics on this campus led College President James Wright to reiterate Dartmouth's full support for its athletic programs.
"Dartmouth is proud of its student athletes and all that they accomplish on and off the field. They are an integral part of our community," Wright wrote in a statement published in December 2004.
However, despite the administration's stance that athletics represent a fundamental aspect of the Dartmouth community, many students notice a divide between athletes and non-athletes on this campus.
Four-year varsity football player Chris Dodds '05 said that other students have demonstrated skepticism towards him because they know of his athlete status.
"The main source of tension is there are a few athletes who go out and do stupid things and all athletes get associated with those athletes," Dodds said.
Recently, a few athletes have been major players in high-profile campus scandals such as the case of cocaine-trafficking and the underage drinking charges leveled against Theta Delta Chi fraternity.
Dodds said, however, that most of the divide between athletes and non-athletes at Dartmouth is due to the fact that social groups are largely self-selecting based on interests. According to the senior linebacker, his group of friends gravitated toward each other not necessarily because they were athletes, but because they had similar interests, which in their case happened to focus on sports.
"It's the same type of person who wouldn't go to a speech at the Hop or go to see the Aires sing," Dodds said of his social circle.
Varsity squash player and former lightweight rower Scott Kennedy '05 concurred with Dodds that groups of friends coalesce based on common interests, but claimed that this self-selection is not unique to athletes.
"I think everyone is trying to find their niche here," the history and honors English major said.
Kennedy, a former undergraduate advisor and member of the Paleopitus senior society, said that he has very rarely felt underestimated because of his athlete status and that he often feels that being an athlete provides a social advantage.
"There's a very high social capital to being with or hanging out with athletes here, particularly with some teams," Kennedy said.
Many male students report that they often steer clear of the athlete-heavy fraternities because they feel that girls go to those establishments primarily to hang out with athletes.
"On a night that I'm going out and am looking for girls, why would I go compete with those guys?" Michael Sloan-Rossiter '08 asked.
Others notice that many non-athletes tend to make snap judgments about the personal characteristics of athletes in threatening social situations.
Philip Rehayem '08, a singer in the Cords a cappella group, attributes this tendency to pigeonhole athletes to people's natural insecurity that comes from intimidating social atmospheres, such as fraternities.
"Especially when people feel threatened, they will resort to stereotyping and I think such stereotypes of athletes include being a meathead or being overly confrontational, being a bad sport, quick to anger," Rehayem said.
The divide between athletes and non-athletes seems less pronounced with female athletes than with their male counterparts, however. Perhaps because the fraternities, not the sororities, serve as the epicenter of Dartmouth's social scene, female varsity athletes feel less distinguished from female non-athletes in social settings.
Varsity basketball player Jean Cullen '06 said that about 50 percent of her friends at Dar tmouth are athletes, but that at the same time she has not experienced a significant social separation between athletes and non-athletes.
"The guys probably notice it more than the girls," she said.
Although many students do notice some sort of divide between athletes and non-athletes in social settings, perhaps the biggest divide occurs in the classroom. A lot of non-athletes said that they tend to approach athletes with more skepticism in the classroom than they would others.
"The impression I get about athletes at this school is that some of them probably got a boost by the admissions office because of their athletic ability, but I'm sure there are some, like many people at this school, who are talented at many things," Broughton Hansen '06 said.
It is well known that the Admissions Office makes academic concessions for many recruited athletes, especially in the highest profile sports such as football and hockey.
Ivy League regulations, for example, allow each school to accept nine football players whose academic records are further than 2 standard deviations below the class academic mean every year.
Dodds said that students will rarely openly doubt his academic abilities, but that he often detects signs of condescension from his peers.
"It's not as much overt comments; it's more subtle quips or just the looks you'll get," he said.
In Dodds' experience, however, athletes face more intellectual skepticism from the faculty than from other students. The economics major took issue with a situation in which an economics professor, while discussing the economic concept of Marginal Utility, commented that the football team provided zero utility.
"If he were to make a comment like that about the gay community everyone would be up in arms," Dodds said.
Both Dodds and Kennedy also emphasized how underappreciated the difficulty of being successful both as a varsity athlete and as a student at Dartmouth is.
"There are a lot of demands on athlete's times," the squash player said. "You're averaging 20 hours a week in practice plus travel."
Kennedy, who is writing his senior thesis this term, pointed out that writing a senior thesis is especially difficult for winter or spring varsity athletes. Since Kennedy had little time in the winter because of squash, he had to forego classes his senior spring so that he could focus solely on his thesis.
Although it seems that some students at Dartmouth are inclined to make assumptions about the academic and intellectual abilities of athletes, many also do not.
Many students find similarities between varsity athletics and other extracurricular endeavors. Both are time consuming and difficult activities in which excellence is impressive.
"I think in general [athletes] are considered just another Dartmouth student," Nicholas Ortiz '08 said.
In many ways, athletes live very different lives at Dartmouth than do non-athletes. Athletes spend tireless hours in practice and at games, and then have to go to college on top of that.
Dodds pointed out that the requirements for admission to Dartmouth are not easier for athletes; they are just different. With slightly looser academic requirements come fairly steep athletic requirements.
"People think were getting a free ride and it's not the case at all," Dodds said. "It's a group of people that worked just as hard as other people did to get into this school."
