2001-2002
The 2001 academic year started morosely in the shadow of both a national and local tragedy. While investigations into the Zantop murders were still ongoing, the events of Sept. 11 shook the nation, and the ensuing war in Afghanistan held the attention of students throughout the year.
The Sept. 11 attacks led to significant discussion and interesting in the Middle East. Panel discussions about the attacks and their aftermath drew crowd of over 200. Enrollment in courses relating to the Middle East and Islam, such as Introductory Arabic and Intro to the Islamic World, skyrocketed. In the Spring term, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave speeches to large crowds in Spaulding Auditorium.
Concerns about terrorism also ended the spring art history foreign study program in Florence, Italy. Five Dartmouth students returned to campus after the State Department warned that Florence was a potential terrorist site on Easter Sunday. The threats never materialized.
The annual fall housing shortage was exacerbated when an unusually high percentage of the Class of 2005 matriculated. In order to alleviate the problem, ORL constructed six temporary dorms, know as the Tree Houses, near the River Cluster. The Tree Houses are still standing and in use.
With national economic slowdowns contributing to a negative return on the endowment, Dartmouth announced campus-wide budget cuts of 1.5 to 2 percent, to impact every area of the College. At the same time, the Board of Trustees raised tuition 4.5 percent to $27,600, the largest increase in four years.
The Greenprint printing system also made its debut during the 2001-2002 academic year, replacing the old Berry printing window.
Greek news was more positive than previous years. The GLC decision to allow freshmen at Greek parties was met with widespread approval by both students and administrators. Some Greek organizations have continued to keep their doors closed during some parties, however.
The year 2001 also marked the first year of winter rush. That decision was reversed in 2004, allowing the Class of 2007 to rush during Fall term.
That winter also featured a conjunctivitis (pink eye) epidemic of unusual virility. An estimated 400 students contracted the disease, bringing representatives from the New Hampshire Center for Disease Control to campus. Public Blitzmail terminals used by most undergraduates provided the disease with a viable pathway to quickly spread around campus. Warnings against unnecessary eye contact and bottles of disinfectant were dispensed in an attempt to combat the outbreak, which continued into the spring.
Finally, security concerns prompted the installation of electronic door locks on all campus residence halls in the summer of 2002.
Dean of the Faculty Jamshed Bharucha stepped down and was replaced by Michael Gazzaniga.
2002-2003
Due to a shaky economy and an underperforming endowment, the Fall term of 2002 was marked by budget woes, as the College announced further across-the-board budget cuts.
The first to feel the hit was the library system, which had $1 million sliced from its budget. The library cuts forced College Librarian Richard Lucier to integrate Sherman Art Library into the Baker-Berry complex and turn Sanborn Library into a reading room. Despite student protests, the library budget cuts remained.
The student body, however, would not be ignored when budget cuts to the athletic department led to removal of the swimming and diving teams. Administrators decided it was better to cut one team entirely than hurt every team by cutting a little from each. Students didn't agree.
The day after the cuts were announced, hundreds of students marched through campus chanting in protest before staging a midnight rally in front of Dean of the College James Larimore and College President James Wright's houses.
Students and alumni responded in force, gathering donations to help reinstate the teams. Students, alumni, parents and administrators reached an agreement in early January allowing Dartmouth's swimming and diving program to continue. The John C. Glover Fund for the Support of Swimming and Diving will provide over $2 million in funding to keep the team alive for at least the next 10 years.
Departmental cuts also forced some departments to downsize course offerings, despite Wright's firm insistence in a speech to the faculty that the academic integrity of the College would not be compromised.
To further compensate, the Board of Trustees again upped tuition by a record percentage, increasing it 4.9 percent, the highest increase in at least five years.
In Greek news, winter rush was extremely successful for fraternities, sororities and coed houses, but was particularly important for Phi Delta Alpha fraternity. Phi Delt had been suspended in 2000 indefinitely, but ORL granted the house colony status in winter 2003 to pledge its first class in three years. Over 50 Phi Delt alumni returned to host rush events for the fraternity. The situation offered prospective members the singluar opportunity of joining an empty house.
New revisions to the alcohol policy that required all alcoholic events of over 40 people to be registered with the College, and limited each house to two registered events per week were met with criticism.
While some restrictions remain in place, the College recently relaxed restrictions on kegs for such events.
Budget woes continued into Spring term with even more cuts. Having lost its funding, the human biology department shut its doors at the end of Spring term. Dartmouth Dining Services discontinued the Big Green Bean entertainment area in Collis, though the College and the Student Assembly assured students that no jobs would be cut.
Incumbent Student Body President Janos Marton '04 won a landslide victory, garnering 74 percent of the vote and becoming the first two-time Assembly president in College history.
Despite worldwide fears of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Dartmouth pledged not to impose quarantines on students traveling from infected areas because of racial profiling concerns. Even so, College health officials remained wary, sending mass e-mails to students warning of the effects of SARS and how to detect the symptoms. SARS worries did lead the Off-Campus Programs office to cancel the Foreign Study Program in Beijing over the summer. Other universities, including Yale, also cancelled programs in the region.
At the beginning of the summer the U.S. Supreme Court decided in two cases involving the University of Michigan's admissions policies. Earlier in the year the College had filed a brief with the Court defending Michigan's use of race as a factor in admissions. The decisions handed down by the court confirmed this tenet of higher education admissions, but struck down the University of Michigan's specific points-based system.
2003-2004
As the New Hampshrie Democratic primary neared in January 2003, the Dartmouth campus became occupied with national politics, with student leaders rallying support for several candidates. Democratic presidential candidates -- including Sen. John Kerry, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and Sen. John Edwaards -- came to campus to rally support in the weeks leading up to the nation's first and most-watched primary.
As the New Hampshire primary drew closer, four major Democratic candidates visited campus during spring of 2004. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the front-runner for much of the race, unveiled his national higher education plan in a November speech. Dartmouth also saw visits from Gen. Wesley Clark, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and eventual victor Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
On Jan. 25, Dean, Lieberman and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich took the stage before a crowd in Moore Theatre to debate women's issues at a forum sponsored by Lifetime Television and ABC's "Good Morning America."
The Board of Trustees voted to significantly reform themselves, adding six new seats to the Board over the next 10 years. The move, which will increase the Boards's size from 15 to 21, was only the second size increase of the Board in College history.
The Student Assembly's search for a new College mascot, which began the previous spring, ended in failure this fall.
The Assembly was attempting to replace the esoteric Big Green with something more accessible and concrete. However, the majority of students polled by the Assembly expressed their disapproval of the moose, which had previously emerged as the most popular choice for a new mascot.
Nic Duquette '04 and Chris Plehal '04, both of the Jack-o-Lantern humor magazine, responded to the Assembly's mascot search by creating Keggy the Keg, whose appearance at the Homecoming football game made him an overnight sensation. Keggy's popularity earned it a mentione on ESPN, Playboy magazine and other national news outlets.
As winter and spring rush again proved successful for most Greek houses, the Spring term saw the re-recognition of Phi Delt as a College fraternity.
College administrators and Greek leaders also agreed to move rush to the fall beginning this year.
Finally, the College continued to be one of the most selective institutions in the country, accepting only 18.3 percent of the nearly 12,000 students who applied. The students matriculating for the next year's freshman, the Class of 2008, had an average SAT score of 1460.
2004-2005
Last year saw the Dartmouth campus transformed into a hotbed of national politics as both President George W. Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry toured New Hamphsire trying to tip the swing state in their favor. Meanwhile, student political groups worked at a feverish pitch to drum up support for their party's man, showering the Big Green with leaflets and mobilizing their organizations.
The Democratic and Republican parties clashed on the state level over voter registration, which had created headaches for students who tried to take advantage of New Hampshire's same-day registration. In order to vote in New Hampshire students were required to claim New Hampshire as their domicile, leaving many student confused whether they would lose scholarship money or need to apply for a New Hampshire drivers license. Republicans stressed these prospects and encouraged students to vote in their home states, while the Democrats aggressively urged out-of-state students to register in New Hampshire.
Popular get-out-the-vote campaigns contributed to New Hampshire's Democratic success, the only state to switch party support from 2000 to 2004. Its four electoral votes, however, would not be enough to sway the overall outcome.
Fall 2004 also witnessed the beginning of several construction initiatives long planned by the College. Two new dormitories -- the McLaughlin residential cluster and the Tuck Mall residence halls -- promise to increase dormitory capacity by 500 beds. The added capacity will alleviate the fall housing crunch, which in recent years has caused sophomores to live in dormitory social spaces for as long as two weeks. The new beds will also allow the College to renovate older dormitories, starting with Hitchcock Hall. When renovations to existing dormitories are complete, the net gain to Office of Residential Life housing will be 125 beds.
The dorms are projected to be completed by the Fall term of 2006.
Despite the increased capacity, the administration has "no plans to increase the student body" and the construction will have "no impact on the D-Plan," according to Adam Keller, executive vice president for finance and administration.
Other construction projects include a new Engineering Sciences building slated for completion this spring, and new math and science buildings -- Kemeny Hall and the Haldeman Center --slated for completion next summer. The new facility will pave the way for the eventual destruction of Bradley and Gerry Halls, widely considered the eyesores of campus architecture.
Big Green football became the center of campus attention as Fall term came to a close. The Athletic Department fired 13-year head coach John Lyons on December 13 after a woeful 1-9 season. Lyons led the team to two championships early in his Dartmouth career, but failed to replicate that success in his last six years at Dartmouth.
Just a few weeks later Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg would find himself at the center of a major uproar after a local newspaper printed a private letter he wrote to Swarthmore President Alfred Bloom four years ago, commending him for cutting his college's football program, which Furstenberg termed a "sacrifice to the academic quality and diversity of entering first-year classes." When the correspondence surfaced it unleashed a torrent of protest from student-athletes and the Dartmouth community.
As the controversy raged on, Buddy Teevens '79 was tapped as the new head football coach. Teevens returned to the helm of Dartmouth football after a five-year stint as head coach from 1987 until 1991.
The year saw a more congenial relationship emerge between Greek leaders and the administration. The College relaxed two of the key conditions placed on the Greeks by the Student Life Initiative. In response to community unrest over the disparity in numbers between the six of sororities and the 13 of fraternities, the Board of Trustees lifted the moratorium on the creation of additional single-sex, selective and residential organizations.
As Spring term came to a close, two members of the Board of Trustees retired, setting up one of the most contentious trustee elections in recent memory. Petition candidates Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88 emerged victorious over four administration-sponsored candidates.
The two ran a campaign that was largely anti-administration and emphasized the need for Dartmouth to refocus itself and rexamine its institutional mission.
"The College needs to rededicate itself to excellence in undergraduate education," Robinson said in a spring interview with The Dartmouth.
Despite a record-low acceptance rate this year, the Class of 2009 matriculated in the spring at a rate of 50.4 percent. Almost 31 percent of students from these high schools will graduated at the top of their classes, while another 10 percent will finished as salutatorians.
SAT scores for the Class of 2009 hit all-time highs, with an average score of 1437 -- up five points from last year -- and a median score of 1470.
