Congratulations from abroad, Dartmouth. I've been watching you from afar during my two consecutive off-terms, and I'm relieved to see another Board of Trustees election has passed, and that power will change hands peacefully. It is the mark of a healthy and stable nation that a rancorous and vitriolic election occurs without the College being overrun by an angry mob (save for Collis after 12s). This election was significant because I believe the gentle optimism of its winners belies an uncertain future for the College. For our beloved Dartmouth nation, though, this vote for harmony may be a stepping-stone to stagnancy.
I wrote a recommendation this Winter on behalf of Joe Asch '79, the petition candidate for one of the two alumni seats on the Board of Trustees. He didn't win. Take note, my fellow Dartmouth students, before you plan on harnessing my legendary prose for your future campaigns for public office.
I met Asch as many students do, in a Dartmouth class, surprised that there was an older fellow in our group. As I got to know Asch by arguing with him, I noticed he possessed the confidence of an unabashed contrarian. His detractors probably call this hubris. It is possible to disagree with him just as it is possible to eat FoCo pizza neither choice often leaves one very self-assured. Asch was the gadfly the College needed, but unfortunately not the one it wanted. He might not have been invited for drinks after the Trustees' meetings, but he would have left the board room having prioritized the undergraduates and faculty of Dartmouth above all else. The Board will miss his insights.
Luckily for Dartmouth, this election was not a choice between good and evil, but between distinguished and distinguished. The Board has received two immensely accomplished alumni to serve the College as Trustees. Trustee-elect Morton Kondracke '60 stated that this election was so decisive that "the wars of the past are over." ("Replogle, Kondracke elected to the Board of Trustees," April 9). With no disrespect to Mort, I hope he's wrong. I'm not asking the Phrygians to begin their "Punching in Windows for Parity" campaign or for the immediate creation of my political action committee, "Dartmouth Undynamic" (don't worry, the next elections are closer than you think). I simply hope that if not Asch, someone will take up the mantle of divisiveness. It keeps opinion columnists employed and protects the College's future.
Ignore the jeremiads concerning the "damaging" politics of Dartmouth elections. If you cannot ignore them, relish them. Ours is a nation that cares enough to clash. Alumni, faculty and students alike have their concerns, interests and distinct vision for Dartmouth. The administration is every fiscal conservative's favorite whipping boy: part-USSR and part federal government, its bloat and inefficiency and lumbering pace makes criticizing it downright cathartic. Liberals can paint the same administration as the ugly stepchild of academia and capitalism, with College President Jim Yong Kim as its heartless padrone who throws the community's most vulnerable into the streets. We all love it here, strangely enough. This divisive mess is the stuff of brilliance.
Consider the Western canon, for a moment, that inspirational bedrock of Western thought and civilization. One does not read it as the intellectual tradition of timid philosophical agreement. We revel in its inheritance, a world with unprecedented notions of liberal democracy, human dignity and individual rights. The intellectual legacy that it produced is, to put it gently, a bloody mess. This Western tradition was built upon fundamental disagreements about the best life and the greatest good. To Marx, Burke was a vulgar bourgeois puppet. To Churchill, he was the foremost apostle of liberty. Only by accommodating discord can we have it both ways, and thereby reap the harvest of excellence.
Dartmouth nation could be an idyllic refuge from those vocal minorities and uncomfortable quarrels of the democratic world outside Hanover, a society set apart. It would be insulated not only from the world's problems, but its progress. If our new trustees really believe in Dartmouth's singularity, its ability to go where our rivals cannot, and, dare I say it, our manifest destiny, they must avoid this temptation. To paraphrase E.E. Cummings, we might bear colossal faults, and we might be going to Hell, but at least we aren't standing still.
