This past week, Stephen Smith '88 announced his petition candidacy for the Board of Trustees. To launch his campaign, Smith circulated a press release that outlined his three primary issues in the election.
The petition candidate insinuates that a speech code still exists on campus and is supported by the College administration. No institutionalized speech code exists at Dartmouth. Even if some unwritten speech code does exist, the source of the "de facto speech code" lies solely in the opinions and values of the Dartmouth student body, not Parkhurst. As witnessed last fall, the Dartmouth community rose up against hateful speech that students loudly deemed unacceptable. In Smith's press release, he wrote that College President Wright demonstrated the existence of a speech code when he called the speakers of "offensive" messages "bullies." Isn't it ironic that someone would criticize Wright for enforcing a speech code by exercising his own right to free speech? When T.J. Rodgers '70 ran on the same platform in 2004, it was relevant. Now it's not, even if it is an effective political talking point.
At the same time, Smith should be lauded for his critique of the draconian Committee on Standards process. The number of suspensions that Dartmouth handed down as part of the student disciplinary system dwarfs its Ivy League peers. As advocated by Student Assembly's COS Task Force, the broken process requires reforms that will ensure greater transparency and guarantees of due process for students.
In his press release, Smith also campaigns on a platform of keeping Dartmouth a college, not letting it slide into a university. "Students shouldn't be shut out of the courses they need for their majors," he wrote. But implicit in his argument is the existence of a group of Dartmouth people bent on turning the College into a university, a group that desires large classes, more bureaucracy and a departure from its undergraduate focus. Smith's rhetoric is a classic example of a straw-man argument; he is inventing a mythical opposition. It is, in fact, exactly the type of campaigning -- simplistic, exaggerative and divisive -- that Wright warned against when he said he feared trustee elections would devolve into political horse-races where "electability" reigned supreme. If Smith wants to show that he can make meaningful contributions as a trustee, he needs to choose nuance over simplification, reality over alarmism and logic over absurdity.
