Dartmouth alumni tend to know a little something about money (see Timothy Geithner '83, Henry Paulson '68), but Alfred Valerie '01 seems to be an exception. In case you missed his recent guest column ("Best for Whom?," 10/15/10), Valerie was a victim of the Financial Aid Office's systematic campaign to generously enable poor students to attend an absurdly expensive private college. He was required to sign away years of his life in servitude, years he would spend repaying an institution maliciously intent on "saddling unsuspecting kids with onerous debt." After four years, his tab totaled "roughly $20,000," nearly 15 percent of the sticker price. No wonder they call us the Big Green.
Adding insult to injury, the loans included in Valerie's financial aid package were the kind you actually have to pay back, instead of the magically disappearing loans favored by leprechauns, teachers unions and Bernie Madoff. Not one to "shy away from controversy," he made a valiant attempt to shirk his financial responsibilities by simply not paying, and what did he get in return? Roughly $10,000 in interest charges and a garnishment. But is Valerie bitter? Of course not. Though cruelly compelled to pay his bills like an adult, he overcame "a lot of anger and sadness" to call Dartmouth out on its usurious financial aid policy.
Apparently, nothing less than a free Dartmouth education will do for Valerie and similarly "deserving students." Back home in rural Tennessee, we call this "a grossly inflated sense of entitlement." Let's break it down a bit. First, does anyone "deserve" a Dartmouth education? With an admissions rate below 15 percent, we're all lucky to be here. Just ask one of the roughly 800 qualified applicants who get waitlisted every year: they're living proof that, as far as Admissions is concerned, we are all replaceable.
None of us "deserved" admission, at least no more than several hundred other applicants, and if no one is entitled to come to Dartmouth, it follows that no one is entitled to come to Dartmouth for free. Clearly, Dartmouth is an exceptional opportunity which none of us secured independently and the generosity that Valerie enjoyed in being admitted and having his education financed could have gone to some more appreciative individual.
But if one alumnus' narcissism, sense of entitlement, ingratitude and whining were the end of the story, I could let Valerie slide. Unfortunately, the inflated sense of entitlement that he embodies has real world negative consequences. For example, he freely admits that he stopped paying his loans. It seems he feels entitled to enjoy his whole income, even at the expense of his erstwhile benefactors. A friendly reminder: borrowing without repayment is called "stealing." When truant borrowers like Valerie have their wages garnished, justice is served. Putting his individual interest ahead of his obligations to others and then ignoring the implications of his own bad faith is the real "unsustainable moral proposition" in Valerie's story.
But looking beyond its material harms and closer to home, I also want to point out that an inflated sense of entitlement undermines the goal of liberal education. College President Jim Yong Kim is inordinately fond of Former College President Dickey's saying, "The world's troubles are your troubles." While Kim and I probably disagree on how to interpret and achieve this end, the underlying principle of Dickey's aphorism is that liberal education is meant to equip students for responsible citizenship. Clearly, Dartmouth failed at least one member of the Class of 2001 in this regard.
Students should learn to be grateful for the privilege of a liberal education, and that gratitude should motivate them to make the most of the opportunity and inspire them to pursue responsible, charitable citizenship. But currently, Dartmouth fosters a collective sense of entitlement with programs like Alcohol Diversions, which unduly benefits lawbreakers, and such seemingly innocuous practices as grade inflation.
The bottom line is that the College needs to indulge its students less, disabusing them of any false sense of entitlement. If we are to take responsibility for the world's troubles in the future, we students need to take responsibility for our own decisions in the present, and the College shouldn't undercut its own efforts to equip us for productive independence by catering to our every whim.
