Every year, around 1,000 students choose to attend Dartmouth over other schools. For that reason alone, why is it not obvious that they might actually like it here? Unfortunately, a cabal of alumni -- and their student lackeys -- hold the misguided notion that a majority of students currently at Dartmouth are dissatisfied with the state of the College.
Even worse, they're peddling their misinformation to win big in the current political battle among Dartmouth alumni. But their rebel cry is barely a whimper in the wilderness. It lacks all credibility. Worst off, the illusion they are trying to paint for the alumni is designed to rouse a clamor to defeat the vote for the new alumni constitution to suit their own ends, not the students'.
The truth is that the student body has been hoodwinked by a group of parading hens chirping a pretentious slogan: The Lone Pine Revolution. Don't get in their way or they'll accuse you of impinging on their right to free speech. In actuality, they're nothing more than Lone Whiners, bitter that Dartmouth isn't as oppressive -- I mean, conservative -- as it once was.
Their motives become clearer when you realize that they hold strong affiliations with the Dartmouth Review. More recently, they've created the Hanover Institute to act as an administrative watchdog for disgruntled alumni, the Phrygian Secret Society to make their sycophantic students feel special, and voxclamantisindeserto.org. The latter is an "independent" website that reads like The Onion, with headlines like "Student Under Attack."
Laughable headlines aside, the Lone Whiners contend that the new alumni constitution is in collusion with the Administration. Both are equally as pernicious to the future of the College. It's an age-old trick: foment resistance to authority by telling students that the Administration doesn't care about what they think. And the new constitution, apparently, is abetting the destruction of democracy.
But how? I actually read the constitution and -- as a Dartmouth senior soon to be an alumnus -- I agreed with everything in it. For one, it allows for a larger, more representative Alumni Assembly that can more accurately speak to the constituencies currently attending Dartmouth. It also conveniently consolidates two separate previous constitutions and strengthens alumni-trustee communication with the creation of an Alumni Liaison Board. Most importantly, the new Constitution creates a fairer alumni trustee election process, a point its detractors have devilishly spun to reflect everything they think is wrong with the Administration, and by extension, Dartmouth.
Their version is that the new constitution doesn't allow for democratic dissent because it requires petition candidates to the Board of Trustees to declare their intention to run before the Alumni Association releases its slate of candidates. But if a group feels strongly enough that a particular person is qualified for the job, why would that person be afraid of announcing his or her candidacy?
In other words, those most vociferously against the new constitution aim to silence all sane and sensible voices in order to further the illusion of an ever-widening schism between the Administration and alumni. Why can't these people win without resorting to manipulation? The new constitution allows for head-to-head races that produce clear and fair outcomes a la "may the best candidate win."
Students need to wake up and realize that the debate over the new alumni constitution matters. The future of Dartmouth is, in fact, on the line if enough alumni allow the anti-constitution charade to continue. Students should question whether the previous three petition candidates to the Board, leaders of the Lone Pine Revolution, aim to "strengthen Dartmouth" with our best interests in mind or whether they are simply ciphers for an ideology that claims to know what Dartmouth "should" be without ever asking us? One of them, T. J. Rodgers '70, ran on a platform that accused the College of spending too much on diversity issues and advocated that funding to be taken away from ethnic studies programs -- a slap in the face to women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and LGBT students.
The Lone Whiners have pulled a quickie to make it look like the entire student body has joined their destructive cause. They have managed to trick "liberal" leaders on campus into co-authoring opinion pieces with more "conservative" ones to show how student sentiment around the new constitution is bi-partisan. But aside from the four people this includes, I haven't seen any campus-wide polls. As long as these articles are forwarded to unassuming, apathetic alumni, the masquerade will continue.
Why are we letting a small number of alumni and an even smaller number of students conjure forth a behemoth of dissent? I would encourage all alumni to vote, but to please first consider what propaganda you've been fed. Then again, I hope that anyone educated at Dartmouth would know that already.
