On April 30, 2004, I was faced with the most difficult decision of my life. Sitting in my kitchen with my parents on either side, I stared, terrified, at two empty envelopes symbolic of the two divergent paths confronting the next four years of my educational career. One envelope read Dartmouth College Admissions Office on the front, the other was addressed to The Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Next to each envelope lay a three-by-five inch ticket to the future. I took a deep breath, picked up my pen, and officially became a member of the Dartmouth Class of 2008. I didn't get much sleep that night.
I had fallen in love with politics ever since my first episode of The West Wing in 1999. Most every night I would fall deep into the wonderful world of dreams imagining myself striding powerfully through the hallowed halls of Congress as a civil servant. While boyish and arguably nave, my political fantasy undeniably dictated my early action application to Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. Yet when my acceptance from Dartmouth came in the mail, I realized that enveloping myself completely in political science and international relations as a wide-eyed, inexperienced 18 year old was not the most appropriate direction for me, and I packed my bags for Hanover.
I made this decision, however, knowing full-well that if my plans did not change over the course of my first few years in school I could spend the Spring term of my Junior year in Washington, D.C. Indeed, I was one of those aggravating freshmen who knew exactly what he would major in from day one, and the government department's FSP to our nation's capital was my safety-net -- until it was so illogically snatched from under me by the Committee on Off-Campus Activities.
According to Lisa Wallace of the government department, COCA nixed the Washington FSP mostly because of a discrepancy with Dartmouth's policy regarding academic credit for internships. Not only is the reasoning behind such a policy inherently flawed, the manner in which the program was canceled is simply unacceptable and demonstrates a continued trend of failures by our Off-Campus Programs Office.
For a college that shoves corporate recruiting down our throats like it's cough syrup, to maintain a stringent policy of no internships for credit is mind-boggling. There is irrefutable hypocrisy in the policy of passionately promoting internships as the ideal supplement to classwork through a seemingly never-ending on-campus recruiting process, while simultaneously rejecting any notion of academic benefit by canceling a program which based its educational premise on experiences in a professional environment.
Would Dartmouth call programs to Washington, D.C., through schools like Cornell, Stanford, and Penn (to name a few) which give credit for internships illegitimate? I think not. What, then, is the impetus for the College's negation of its own program, something that has been as highly regarded by participating students and faculty as any other FSP the school has to offer?
Dumping the D.C. program on the basis of its internship component without at the very least exploring Dartmouth's abhorrently faulty policy towards internships for credit is an absolute disservice to the student body. COCA, with the support of Dartmouth's administration, is blindly and irrationally limiting the academic pursuits of students who pay far too much to find their options restricted.
The geography department's FSP to Prague features four weeks of "field trips" and once-per-week "research meetings" in lieu of class time, yet because there is no internship, credit for the program is not in question. The College gives credits to exchange programs in New Zealand where students have more than a month of vacation during their ten week stays, yet does not blink an eye at canceling a program as admittedly strenuous as the government FSP to Washington. Are we to say students reap significantly greater benefits from programs in New Zealand and the Czech Republic as opposed to the D.C. FSP which features full-time working experience in a variety of government offices, complemented by a research paper, a weekly seminar meeting, and a series of guest-speakers? Of course not.
At first COCA requested the program be reviewed in January. During a casual conversation with Wallace in February, I was told that despite the review, the 2007 D.C. program was still on as planned. Accordingly, I did not apply for the government department's FSP to London this upcoming fall. Now, as a rising Junior, I am stuck without recourse, without a way to ameliorate the failures of COCA, a bureaucratic organization which has proven time and time again that it is in need of a major administrative shake-up.
The Off-Campus Programs Office handed down the final decision to cut the 2007 Washington FSP in March of 2006, a month past the deadline for 2006-07 study abroad programs. Showing a complete disregard for the needs and desires of government majors and minors, as well as all others interested in the D.C. program, COCA offered students waiting for the Washington FSP's November deadline no alternative for the coming year.
Finally, the way in which this cancellation was communicated to the student body was abominable. For all intents and purposes, there was no communication. As an active government major, I found out about the cancellation by clicking on a description of the D.C. program three weeks ago only to see in small font that it had been canceled for 2007. Off-campus studies remains one of the College's most promoted selling-points, yet incoming freshmen will still read about the D.C. program in brochures advertising educational opportunities beyond Hanover. If the school is going to abandon programs as enriching as the Washington FSP, the least they could do is update their literature.
As Dartmouth students, we deserve better from our school. We deserve every opportunity to enhance our education and to not have our college desert our scholastic pursuits. I truly feel academically violated by a school I let myself fall in love with.