Shaun Stewart '10 recently attacked trustee candidate Stephen Smith '88 for dishonest and vitriolic writing ("Smith, Creationism and Frats. Oh my." April 16), yet he seems all too eager to employ the very same tactics in support of his own agenda. As an environmental and evolutionary biology major, I would have been thrilled to read a well-researched, well-reasoned rebuttal to Smith's glib characterization of evolution as the unsubstantiated emergence of a "material Adam and Eve" from the chance confluence of "slop" and "stuff." Instead I was treated to an embarrassing collection of half-truths, unsubstantiated insinuations and quotations taken out of context that undermined the few legitimate arguments the author saw fit to include.
Stewart claims that Smith "rails against academia, the American legal system, fraternity members, [and] women ...," among others. While Smith most certainly uses strong language in describing an "academic elite that cares little about truth," no person who carefully read the piece would confuse arguments for the importance of theology in an academic setting with a characterization of the Dartmouth faculty as "God-hating atheists" who "willingly and deliberately lie to their students." Similarly, Stewart chooses to forget that Smith's article is in fact a book review, interpreting a restatement of the author's views on one Supreme Court decision as an attack on the legal system as a whole. Finally, he takes two rather tame jokes about frat boys and feminists, inflates them into a generalized hostility towards women and the Greek system, and then turns around and cites Smith's defense of Greek organizations as evidence of further misogyny. Such twisted reasoning only makes sense when viewed as a rather transparent device for negatively associating Smith with hot-button campus issues.
Most disturbingly, Stewart's column includes at least two assertions that are not simply misleading but factually untrue. Smith's review was not written for a "fundamentalist website," but was reprinted on Catholic World Report from the newsletter of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization with chapters in all top law schools and major legal markets. Stewart would have known this if he had bothered reading the article all the way through. He also would have known, if he had done a modicum of research, that the internal newsletter for which Zeta Psi fraternity was derecognized in 2001 did not "publish date rape techniques," it satirically referenced the inclusion of such tips in a not-to-be written future issue. A tasteless and inappropriate joke? Yes. A "how-to" guide for violence against women, aided and abetted by Stephen Smith? I don't think so.
Stewart is entitled to his own views about Smith's character and qualifications, and I applaud his initiative in making the effort to express them in a public forum. I only hope that others who choose to do the same take care not to imitate the "dishonorable" tactics they undertake to criticize.
