A BlitzMail message sent on Monday from the Scholarship Office sent to the top 25 percent of the Class of 2008 garnered more attention than usual, but not because of its subject. Scholarship Advisor Bridget Thomas sent out the blitz without suppressing the recipient list, enabling recipients to see who fell into this elite category of students.
When the Scholarship Office was contacted regarding the unsuppressed recipient list, Kristen O'Rourke, one of the scholarship advisors, responded, "We send out blitzes all the time to prospective applicants and 99 percent of the time the lists are repressed. It was just an error that doesn't usually happen."
When asked whether there was a certain order to the names on the recipient list, O'Rourke replied that the order was of no interest or importance to the Scholarship Office.
"We asked the registrar, in this particular instance's requirements, for the top 25 percent of the class in no particular order, so I'm not interested in what rank somebody is as long as they fill the requirement [for scholarships]," O'Rourke said. "We receive blitz lists for various things that we request from the registrar. Sometimes they're determined by major, by year, by standing in the class. We usually don't enter them in into system; we just copy and paste."
"I don't want people to think that scholarship advising is paying attention to class rank, because we're not," she added.
The Dartmouth also spoke with numerous juniors who received the blitz. The order of these juniors' names corresponded with a descending grade point average, with the first few students on the list having a 4.0, and the last few having roughly a 3.65.
The general consensus by those juniors interviewed was that the unsuppressed recipient list was simply a common mistake and not of great concern.
However, a few students believe that the list infringed on students' privacy.
"Personally, I don't mind it all that much. I don't think its going to change how hard people work. Dartmouth is a pretty noncompetitive place to begin with. If you're in the top 25 percent of an Ivy League institution, you're probably not ashamed nor should you be embarrassed," Adam Levine '08, a student included on the recipient list, said.
Brian Lloyd '08, who also received the blitz, sympathizes with those students who have the highest GPAs because their peers now know their academic standing.
"I wouldn't want to be one of the first couple of people because I'd probably feel some pressure if I were them. So I actually feel sorry they're in [this] situation," he said.
However, Elizabeth Dupuy '08, another recipient of the blitz, does not think that her peers will be alarmed by the situation.
"I don't think anyone will be upset about it, I don't know. Maybe people who are really concerned about their rank in the class," she said.
Staff reporter Joanna Patterson contributed in reporting for this article.
