The word "change" is everywhere, as are people who claim to be "working for change." But is it possible for individuals and well-organized groups to improve the world or at least, Dartmouth? Yes, as the saying goes, they can. To do so, however, they need to understand how change works.
There are two basic routes to creating change politics and entrepreneurship. Neither path is easy. Political change is difficult because government officials have to deal with many entrenched interests. They have to worry about the future of their careers just as much as advancing whatever cause brought them into politics. Entrepreneurial change is challenging because, unlike a politician, an entrepreneur does not have the government at his disposal. He has to find people who will voluntarily pay him to improve the world.
There are clear analogs to politics and entrepreneurship when it comes to improving Dartmouth. Political change takes the form of urging the administration to do things differently. The appeal of this approach might lie in the fact that the administration, like the government in national politics, can do a lot of things that we can't as students. I'll use the tired example of the social scene here, but the same lesson applies to any issue.
A proponent of gender-neutral social spaces might ask the administration to force some or all Greek organizations to go co-ed, but a petition to the administration would face problems familiar to activists in national politics. First, like any old bureaucratic organization, the College is not amenable to quick change. Backlash from the proverbial "crazy alums" would be likely if the administration demanded sudden changes to organizations that have been a part of this school for over 150 years. Second, as I have argued in the past ("Hayek in the Basement," Nov. 3), pushing change from the top-down runs the risk of serious unintended consequences. For example, who knows how many people would want to rush a house if it turned coed?
Fortunately, the entrepreneurship model gives us an alternative. To change things at Dartmouth entrepreneurially, we have to do what the founder of a new company would do: either (a) develop a product and find a market for it or (b) pick a market and figure out what kind of product it demands. This could be something as big as starting a new organization or as small as coming up with new ideas for existing organizations.
Friday Night Rock is a perfect example. It started with the simple observation that there was enormous unmet demand for live music in Hanover. The same success happens every time that a fraternity or sorority social chair tries something different that works. The market separates the wheat from the chaff. If the idea is bad, then no one shows up.
Viewed objectively, the truth about changing Dartmouth is obvious We need good ideas, nothing else. Those of us who have been around Hanover for at least three years have seen a few pushes for change come and go with nothing to show for it but the same dull, humorless arguments. Perhaps that is because our approach has been too focused on institutional politics. The recent delay in forming the Organizational Adjudication Committee is just the latest example of the administration's natural sluggishness. We can file that away next to the Alcohol Management Policy while we watch the College struggle with a host of other problems, most notably a $100 million budget deficit.
The student body does not have to stay mindlessly trapped in their routines while the administration dithers. Just as students have already done on the social scene with innovative programs like Friday Night Rock, let's come up with as many ideas as we can that don't require administrative action, and then let the students choose the winners.
