To the Editor:
I, too, was disturbed by the conduct of the recently concluded trustee election -- not by "the tenor of the debate" among the candidates, which was civil and proper, but by some of the outrageous statements hurled at the petition candidates by the Association for a Strong Dartmouth crowd. Your implication that Robinson and Zywicki were responsible for intemperance is without foundation. What, specificly, in their campaigns do you fault for its "tenor"? Or is all disagreement ipso facto to be condemned as "contentious"?
You cite "the alarmist discourse" regarding speech codes, yet the question of toleration of "offensive speech" on college and university campuses has stirred a national debate. Whether Dartmouth does or does not have a speech code strikes me as a legitimate subject for dispute. You are troubled by "exaggeration and factual distortion" committed by those who "place high value on the advancement of their own political agenda." But who are these malfactors, and what is their arch-agenda? You reassure your readers that "the College is not falling apart," but who said it was? Or are you just distorting and exaggerating for effect? You close your editorial by suggesting that the election was unfairly won through the efforts of retrograde old alumni. This is nothing less than calumniation of the previous generations who laid the foundations on which today's Dartmouth rests. Perhaps the gravest problem besetting our College is its penchant for waging war against its past; your editorial exemplifies that destructive tendency.
Contrary to your sneer, I know of no drive among the older alumni to recreate the past. (As Heraclitus -- I think he was a year or two before me -- famously said, "No man steps in the same stream twice.") Certainly, Robinson and Zywicki did not wage a reactionary campaign. While not everything about the College's past was good, not everything in the present is an improvement. To raise objections should not bring castigation for espousing antediluvian notions.
Dartmouth has historically enjoyed an extraordinary level of alumni involvement. That is one of its major strengths. I applaud your desire "to shape the College in [your] own way." I hope that ardor will continue past your graduation -- and especially, many lustra into the future, when you become that sorry thing, "older alumni."
