If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then its gate is built from bad assumptions. It has become impossible to express an opinion without inciting outrage, and uncommon to react to one with reason.
The demise of civility in public discourse is one of the much lamented aspects of modern life. The shouting matches that plague the 24-hour TV news stations are predictable byproducts of the binary competition model of American politics. The two-party system and plurality voting method reinforce the notion that "if my opponent is doing worse, I must be doing better." Political debates are thereby recast as showdowns or battles and TV discourse is reduced to left-versus-right, Democrat-versus-Republican.
I would be content to turn off the television and go about my life, but the decline of civil discourse is not confined to cable news and politics. It pervades our campus as well. It erodes our abilities to express ourselves. It threatens diversity of ideas. Almost every letter to the editor in The Dartmouth that is written in response to an earlier opinion invariably begins with an expression of disgust, appall and/or outrage, progresses into hysterical generalizations of the original argument, gives anecdotal (or no) evidence on why it is wrong, and finishes with a snide personal attack on the original author's intelligence.
This hostility comes from many people's inability to separate the sin from the sinner; from the trend of hating the commentator rather than just disagreeing with his or her opinion. Everyone here seems to characterize arguments they disagree with and the authors who write them as "stupid." Most of you illustrious men and women of Dartmouth could get away with thinking that you were so much smarter and well-informed than your high school peers -- as you had standardized test scores to prove it -- but you are in the real world now. You go to Dartmouth now. You live in a place like the Garrison Keillor world of Lake Wobegon where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." No one you will read in The D is dumb.
A big problem with fostering intellectual tolerance at Dartmouth comes from the fact that everyone has been told how special they are for their entire lives. We each have been so used to being correct that we instantly and often mistakenly believe that anyone and everyone who disagrees with us is wrong. We have automatically grown to dismiss one another.
Perhaps even more alarming is the way people approach opinions with all sorts of prejudice, wanting to get outraged. Judging from the mail I have seen in The D and received personally, many people merely read the author's name and topic sentence and infer the rest. They look for hidden agendas in innocent commentary. This is what happened with the Sustainable Dartmouth "smoke pot and have a drum circle" mass-blitz controversy and in Alyson Guillet '08's rage-filled letter to the editor ("Women of Dartmouth deserve less objectivity, more emotion from The D," May 29) in which she curses The Dartmouth for "cherry-picking quotes" in the article it published about the Women of Dartmoth Panel. Alyson, if you have "never before... seen such utter disrespect and disregard" as in that article, you are in for one miserable life! Allyson Bennett '10, the original author and fellow Woman at Dartmouth member, had no secret agenda and was simply trying to do a good job; that much is given.
To bring back free, open dialogue, I propose that we abide by two rules. First, presume good faith on the part of others. Columnists and mass-blitz writers are students just like you and do not have secret agendas to oppress a particular group, to which you happen to belong. Second, instead of insulting somebody or simply saying that someone is wrong, prove why he or she is wrong. Not only can you claim the moral high ground, your arguments will carry more weight.
It is easy to ignore these sentiments as simple glossy nostalgia for a nobler age, but the effects of such tendencies damage the ability for people to hold serious conversations on valid issues. Diversity of ideas is an often-neglected, yet essential part of college life. By presenting and debating more points of view, students can make more informed opinions and the College will be made stronger because of it.
