"Jesus is a good example of character, but He's also much more than that," Riner told the audience in September. "He is the solution to flawed people like corrupt Dartmouth alums, looters and me."
Following the speech, the Student Assembly found itself mired in a public battle over Riner's sectarian references, seen in an eruption of opinion pieces in campus and national publications as well as the resignation of Student Life Committee Chair Kaelin Goulet '07, who deemed the speech "an embarrassment."
The controversy contributed to the Assembly's reputation as a body plagued by bickering.
A negative opinion of the Assembly had existed before Riner's administration, but a feeling of apathy within the body itself grew as the year wore on. Winter term was marked by such low attendance that a quorum had to be forcibly called during a February meeting so that the body could pass resolutions. Ultimately, despite good relations with administrators and alumni, Riner's tenure was characterized by a tenuous connection between the Assembly and the student body. His image as a conservative and religiously-driven president overshadowed many of the Assembly's accomplishments and paved the way for the election of a radically different Assembly president this spring.
Also in September, professor Michael Gazzaniga -- who directed the College's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, was named to the President's Council of Bioethics and is widely considered the father of cognitive neuroscience -- announced that he would be leaving Dartmouth at the end of Fall term to assume a position as the head of a new interdisciplinary center for the study of the mind at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he began his career as an assistant professor in 1967.
He and a team of Dartmouth researchers had received a $21.8 million National Science Foundation grant in April 2005 for the College's new CCEN, but the NSF revoked the grant in April 2006, citing differences between how the College and the NSF wanted the Center to be undertaken. Gazzaniga's departure is assumed to be closely linked with the Center's downfall, even though he had postponed leaving Dartmouth until the winter because he wanted to make sure the program got off to a good start and said that he was planning to continue overseeing the project on occasional trips to Dartmouth over the next few years.
Despite assertions that differences with the Dartmouth administration did not play a part in Gazzaniga's departure, the loss of one of the College's most renowned professors led many to question the administration's goals and why the College could not retain such a prestigious staff member.
In early October, students, faculty and staff gathered for a memorial service honoring the life of Meleia Willis-Starbuck '07, who was murdered in Berkeley, Calif., last summer. Homicide hearings for the case began in February, but the defense attorney representing Starbuck's accused killer announced in April that he will not take the case to trial as was previously expected. Starbuck, revered by many for her dedication to community service, was also recognized posthumously by the The Martin Luther King Celebration Committee with the Emerging Leadership Award at the Fifth Annual Social Justice Awards.
The end of Fall term marked the end of Buddy Teevens '79's first season as the Big Green varsity football head coach in over a decade. Teevens accepted the position, which he had held from 1987-1992, to revamp a sputtering program which had been marked by controversy ever since a letter to Swarthmore President Alfred Bloom in which Dartmouth Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg called the football program a "sacrifice to the academic quality and diversity of entering first-year classes" surfaced in December 2004.
When Teevens took the helm of the football program, he consciously set out to better integrate his athletes into student life and academics. While the success of those efforts is difficult to gauge, the team did emerge from the season with a disappointing record of 2-8.
The start of Winter term saw the first homicide in Hanover since the double murder of professors Suzanne and Half Zantop by Vermont high school students in January of 2001. On January 17 of this year, 43-year-old Kevin Descoteaux died at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center after sustaining a blunt trauma wound to the head during a fight Descoteaux reportedly started with fellow construction worker Robert Hanna. Descoteaux and Hanna were staying at Hanover's Chieftain Motor Inn while working at a site in the area. This spring, the incident was ruled not to be a homicide because the force of Hanna's punch was classified as self-defensive and non-deadly; Descoteaux's fall to the ground after the hit was deemed to be the direct cause of death.
Early March brought the news that Tubestock, Dartmouth's beloved celebration on the Connecticut River during sophomore summer, will likely be cancelled if students cannot change the weekend enough to be able to obtain permits for the event. Hanover town manager Julia Griffin said that these permits would be necessary since the state would likely pass legislation before the end of its term prohibiting congregation on a state waterway. In order to obtain the necessary permits, however, the Greek Leadership Council would need to purchase and insurance policy covering not only Hanover but Norwich, Vt., the state of New Hampshire and the College. The GLC said that it is improbable they will be able to afford the policy, which would likely cost about two million dollars, this summer.
The announcement of the event's impending cancellation provoked an eruption of student outrage. Tubestock became a focal point of discussions across campus and "saving Tubestock" later became a popular phrase on candidates' posters during the Student Assembly elections this spring.
Early March also saw the announcement that Alpha Phi will become Dartmouth's seventh sorority, and thus will be the first new Greek organization at the College since the Board of Trustees lifted its 1999 moratorium on new Greek organizations last June. The call for a seventh sorority has been repeated, loudly, for years due to frustration with the large pledge classes in the current sororities and the disparity between having 13 fraternities and only six sororities. While Alpha Phi will not have a house when it officially begins at Dartmouth in the fall, it will be incorporated into standard rush events for the Class of 2009.
The Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, on the other hand, was denied recognition by the Interfraternity Council for a second time this spring. IFC president Alex Lentz '07 cited logistical difficulties as the reason for turning down the fraternity, saying "the Greek community can simply not sustain another fraternity at this time."
Proponents of AEPi cried foul play and asserted that some IFC members voted in their own interest, out of fear that a new fraternity would draw pledges away from their own fraternities. AEPi's advocates stated a need for a Jewish-oriented fraternity at a college that traditionally has had a smaller Jewish presence than other Ivy League universities, while others criticized the concept of a religiously-concentrated fraternity as self-segregating.
The discussion over AEPi sparked the IFC to place a moratorium on accepting applications for sponsorship until January 25, 2007 due to a need to "re-examine and reflect on its criteria for expansion," according to a statement from the IFC.
College President Emeritus James Freedman passed away over spring break at the age of 70 after a 12-year battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Freedman, one of only three presidents in the College's history not to have attended Dartmouth, championed intellectualism, gender parity and ethnic diversity during his presidency, which lasted from 1987 to 1998.
Freedman, who declared in his now-famous inaugural speech that he wanted the College to become more welcoming for "those creative loners and daring dreamers," was chosen as president in part to reform the College's well known "Animal House" reputation and focus attention on academic life, according to Norman McCulloch '50, the chairman of the Board of Trustees at the time it conducted its search for a president.
The day after Freedman's death, the administration announced the resignation of Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Ozzie Harris. Harris, who had tendered his resignation in the Fall, admitted that his decision stemmed from "philosophical differences," while the Administration, in an official press release, attributed Harris's pending departure to his wish to spend more time with his ill father.
The disconnect between the two statements led many to wonder about the real grounds for Harris's resignation; students criticized the administration's tight-lipped policies and the Student Assembly even issued a statement condemning the administration and calling for an investigation into the true causes of Harris's departure.
The new Fitness Center opened on the first day of Dimensions Weekend in April as hoards of admitted students arrived on campus. The 14,000 square-foot center, which had been under construction for a year, houses 64 cardiovascular machines, 42 circuit machines, new dumbbells and free weights. Students had expressed frustration with the limited machine availability and general cramped quality of The Fitness Center's predecessor, Kresge Fitness Center, and the Student Assembly drafted a proposal for a new one during the 2004-2005 year.
Spring term also brought the excitement of the annual student body elections, which were driven this year by a write-in candidate for the first time. President-elect Tim Andreadis '07, who ran a campaign based on decreasing sexual assault and protecting diversity within the faculty and the student body, marked the first write-in candidate to be elected student body president in Dartmouth's history.
Andreadis won by 356 votes -- a shockingly high margin given the fact that the past two Assembly elections have been decided by narrow margins. Riner won by a 29-vote margin while the 2005 president, Julia Hildreth, secured the presidency with a single vote two years ago.
Andreadis promoted himself as the alternative candidate throughout his campaign and campaigned with mass e-mails saying that "Dartmouth is in TROUBLE." The president-elect ran a radical campaign after having openly criticized Riner in the fall for his comments about Jesus, saying that Riner failed to properly label them as merely his own personal beliefs.
The Boston Globe picked up on Andredis' election because the president-elect is openly homosexual. The Globe's article noted that the Andreadis's election represented a break from Dartmouth's perceived "conservative streak," which the paper attributed to Dartmouth's late turn to coeducation and The Dartmouth Review's presence on campus.
In May, Dean of the College James Larimore announced that he will leave Dartmouth to become the Dean of Students at Swarthmore College in August. Larimore, who became dean in 1999, sought to increase the administration's transparency and relations with the alumni and student body as he strove to increase diversity, improve the Greek system and add residence halls. In his time, Larimore improved relations between the administration and the Greek system and became a prominent figure on campus.
On the cusp of bidding farewell to the Class of 2006, the College looks toward welcoming the arrival of the Class of 2010 in roughly three months. This year Dartmouth admissions reached an even higher level of selectivity, with only 15.4 percent of applicants admitted. The Class of 2010 will also have the highest ever proportion of women of any incoming class, at 51.6 percent. International students will also reach a record high, as 71 plan to enroll next year. Academically, the rising class of freshmen has continued the upward trend the College has seen in recent years; 91.4 percent were in the top 10 percent of their graduating class, while the incoming class's SAT scores are similar to those of the Class of 2009.
