Last Monday, some of the members of the senior class attended a ring ceremony that can only be described as palpably meaningless. My classmates' creative interpretations of the business casual dress code were an appropriate commentary on the event's absurdity. But things took a dramatic turn when College President Jim Yong Kim made a startling pronouncement. His message: We seniors are really smart and talented and will go on to do great things. Confronted by this new and terrifying vision of our potential, the Class of 2011 dazedly nibbled at some Hanover Inn cookies (made with locally quarried granite) and argued over the oracle's interpretation in hushed tones. Some were dismayed by the contrast with former College President James Wright's address at our Convocation, which, of course, did not state that we are the promise of tomorrow. "You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."
In case you haven't noticed, the affirmation of Dartmouth students' ability and potential is something of a mantra over at Parkhurst. At this year's Convocation, Kim told freshmen, "You are here because of what you have achieved and the promise of what you will accomplish." While it's a bland sort of sound bite, the idea behind it of admissions as quality control should make you a little uncomfortable. It implies that in the meritocracy of higher education your abilities can be commoditized; your whole life can be instrumentalized. If Chuck Palahniuk had written Kim's address (as he did for President Wright, above), he might have said: "Welcome to the machine, Class of 2014. Your talent and ambition will now be melted down, molded, honed, stamped with the Dartmouth seal; until at the end of four years, you will be shipped out, guaranteed to be useful."
Dartmouth's embrace of meritocracy, the rule of the best and brightest, is the reason for these frequent reminders of our potential and expectations for performance. However tired that refrain gets, it is undeniable that selecting society's leadership based on ability or achievement instead of pedigree or inherited wealth has some definite advantages. Meritocracy encourages an egalitarian distribution of social status, and gives power to those most capable of wielding it efficiently. As with all systems of social organization, however, it has drawbacks, and these go largely unaddressed at the College. I've already pointed out that the rhetoric of meritocracy often reduces people to tools for building a better society, whereas I'd much prefer to conceive of people as learning to be a better society than learning to build one. I think Ghandi said something like that once.
Another problem facing a meritocratic institution is the difficulty of measuring any but a handful of merit's forms. Traditional performance assessments might measure an applicant's intelligence, diligence or ambition, but they do a poor job of measuring creativity or curiosity and reveal next to nothing about an applicant's character. Measuring ability and ambition might predict the magnitude of an applicant's impact, but his principles will determine his trajectory. Instituting a more thorough interview process to explore a student's values would be a step toward selecting for merit beyond efficiency and ambition in the admissions process.
A greater and more difficult problem is that the meritocratic system only holds students accountable for how they appear and not necessarily who they really are. Therefore, students can freely compartmentalize their lives into public and private departments. The schizophrenic alternation between conscientious humanitarian and crass hedonist that is acted out weekly by many at Dartmouth is unhealthy for the individual and potentially disastrous for society, because it sets a precedent of duplicity. When a student is judged not by the content of his character but that of his resume, anything is permissible as long as it doesn't leave a paper trail. Treating our private lives like Vegas might sound attractive, but it undermines our need for a stable identity. Moreover, that absence of a consistent identity is at the hypocritical heart of every corrupt, powerful person who puts self-interest ahead of the common good. The only way to address this problem of meritocracy is for us students, through personal reflection and self-discipline, to develop moral courage, confront our own inconsistencies and strive to integrate our public and private selves.
