After almost three years here at Dartmouth, I'm beginning to figure out what exactly I should have known starting as a freshman. Out of the amorphous blob that has been my life plan have come vague outlines spectral ideas of what exactly I want to do after graduation. It's been a long process even getting to that courses in government, philosophy, English, computer science, education, physics, psychology, religion, sociology, French and geography have all led me this way and that to where I am today. Which is screwed.
Finally having found what could be my passions creative writing and education I have realized that, mathematically, I won't be able to graduate with the major and minor it took me so long to settle on. "Why?" you may ask. After all, this is Dartmouth the main reason it exists is to assist students in finding an academic passion and help them to pursue it. In my educational search, I naively believed I was satisfying the spirit of my distributive requirements so long as I was exploring different corners of academia. The problem, however, is that though I was fulfilling those requirements, the courses I took didn't formally "count" for distributive credits. Additionally, there is absolutely no mechanism within College dogma that allows a student to challenge the distributive designations made by the faculty and Committee on Instruction.
The process for determining distributive designations, according to the ORC, goes like this: "Departments and programs must propose their courses for such credit and have the proposals approved by the faculty Committee on Instruction." These decisions, "which may be somewhat arbitrary," must be followed unequivocally "there is no appeal of this decision, nor may students petition (then or later) to have a course count for them in a category other than the one selected by the department or program." So an Education Across Cultures course, originally designated as a generic SOC distributive, cannot be petitioned to count as a Cultural Identities class, even if the professor who designed the course believes the material completely satisfies the CI requirement. A Zen Buddhism class, originally counted as a TMV, cannot be petitioned to count as a non-Western, no matter how much that makes sense and philosophically satisfies the requirements of the College.
Though my gripe with this inflexibility is obviously motivated by my own situation, the College's rigidity on this issue is concerning and damaging to the educational process in a larger sense. Distributive requirements exist rightly, in my opinion to force students to explore academic areas they otherwise might miss. Following these rules for the rules' sake, however, becomes dangerous when inhibiting and punishing students who have been exploring and following the spirit of distributive requirements of their own accord. By not allowing any flexibility and sticking to a philosophy of "sorry, those are the rules," the College is contradicting its own goals and is preventing students from benefiting from the very idea they champion in admissions brochures.
Allowing students to petition course designations would have other benefits than merely giving them a chance to, say, finish a minor they've come to love. For those more proactive in their fulfillment of distributive requirements, having the option to challenge the established designation would be liberating, providing students a greater opportunity to follow their varied interests in courses that may, for example, have arbitrarily been designated as a SOC instead of an International distributive. The resulting academic freedom would be more closely aligned with the purported goals of the College than its current regulations.
I don't presume to know the inner workings of the College (though we all should be able to), but I fail to see any reason why there should be no mechanism by which students have a chance to petition course designations. Whether it comes down to a lack of trust in the student body not to abuse such a system or simple administrative laziness is irrelevant. What is important is that there is a change that needs to be made in our system, a change that, even if it only comes to affect a small percentage of the student body, would provide each new incoming student's ability to find and pursue a path of study they truly love.
