An article published in The Dartmouth on the results of the Student Assembly budget survey ("OPAL, Hood Museum ranked low in survey," Jan. 9) reported that "[m]any offices whose mission pertains to small segments of the Dartmouth community, such as OPAL and the Native American Program, were ranked particularly low, but this may be a reflection of the low number of students that are directly affected by those offices, the published results of the survey suggest."
This led me to wonder whether students were asked to say whether they, personally and directly, benefited from the programs in question, or whether they thought the programs served an important function in the institution (perhaps by directly benefiting students other than themselves or benefiting the institution as a whole in the long run). A student who is not Native-American, for example, might not personally experience any significant and direct benefit from the Native American Program, but might, nonetheless, recognize the crucial importance of such a program to Native American students (current, prospective and alumni/ae) and to Dartmouth's interest in attracting -- and serving the needs of -- such students.
So I asked Student Assembly President Molly Bode for the public summary of the survey, which she kindly and promptly sent me. The survey summary (dated Jan. 8) states: "Respondents were asked to 'Please rank each item on a scale of 1-5 on how important you perceive the item to be to your Dartmouth experience (1=not at all important, 5=very important)'."
We may never know the extent to which asking students to focus on their own Dartmouth experience in evaluating the importance of programs affected the results of the survey, but it's worth noting that another way to frame the survey questions would have been to ask students to reflect on how important something is to the good of Dartmouth as a whole. Perhaps this occurs to me because, when I bought a house in Thetford, Vt., some years ago and registered to vote there, I was required, as are all Vermonters who choose to vote, to take the "Freemen's Oath" (which was redubbed the "Voter's Oath"). It is this:
"You solemnly swear (or affirm) that whenever you give your vote or suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the State of Vermont, you will do it so as in your conscience you shall judge will most conduce to the best good of the same, as established by the Constitution, without fear or favor of any person."
I was quite struck by the fact that, in order to vote in Vermont, I had to swear to abide by a particular theory of democratic voting, one that required me to vote, not out of perceived self-interest or "fear or favor of any person," but with the aim of furthering the common good. (No other state, incidentally, requires voters to take an oath of this sort, or of any other sort, for that matter.) Now, I'm not suggesting that Dartmouth students are -- or necessarily should be -- required to vote (or complete surveys) on the basis of what they take to be the common good of the College. But I suspect that, had they been instructed to do so (or, at any rate, not instructed to vote out of perceived self-interest), many of them would have given different responses than the ones they gave on the Student Assembly budget survey.
It is important to note that the recommendations from the Student Assembly, Palaeopitus and the Class Councils to the administration (in a letter dated Jan. 5) based on the budget survey did not include cutting funds for programs such as OPAL and the Native American Program. I would not want readers of The Dartmouth to get a different impression of what one ought to conclude from this survey.
