Dartmouth Trustee Diana Taylor '77, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion, was named as one of nine new directors of the troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae, according to a Dec. 24 release. Taylor, managing director at the strategic consulting and investment firm Wolfensohn and Company, previously served as New York State Superintendent of Banks from 2003 to 2007, the release said. She is also currently a director of Allianz Global Investors, Brookfield Properties and Sotheby's. Taylor was a founding partner of the investment banking firm M.R. Beal and Co. and served as vice president of KeySpan Energy, according to her Dartmouth biography.
Dartmouth was among eight American colleges and universities to receive a "Green Light" rating in the 2009 "Spotlight on Speech Codes" report, a publication of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization. FIRE's mission is "to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities," according to its web site. The organization evaluated 364 public and private institutions nationwide in the 2009 report and assigned the ratings of "Red Light," "Yellow Light" or "Green Light" to 356 of them. The ratings are "based on how much, if any, protected speech their written policies restrict," according to the report, with "Green Light" ratings given to institutions with policies that do not "seriously imperil" speech. FIRE criticized universities for broadening the classifications of "threats," "incitement" and "obscenity" to prohibit what they consider to be constitutionally protected speech outside of campus. The report expressed a slight improvement over last year's survey, claiming "the state of free speech on campus has been so poor for so long that FIRE considers any improvement in the situation to be significant." Dartmouth was upgraded from a red to a green rating in 2005.
Approximately 20 Dartmouth students and alumni hiked Mt. Moosilauke on New Year's Day to kick off a year-long celebration of the Dartmouth Outing Club's 100-year anniversary, DOC treasurer Rebecca Vogel '11 said in a press release. Coordinated by Max Friedman '10, the DOC Centennial planning chair, the hike was the first of several centennial events that are scheduled throughout the year and are open to the student body. The next Centennial event will be held during the DOC's Winter Weekend and will include free skiing, snowboarding, ice skating and snowshoeing lessons.
