Four weeks ago I criticized President Kim for pursuing policies that I considered "counterproductive." It's only fair to now elaborate on what I meant by providing a list of simple policies I think might help to transform his presidency policies that should be relatively uncontroversial, pose few logistical problems, and, if implemented properly, provide the greatest good at the lowest cost.
1) Make ROTC an independent on-campus program. If that's not possible since doing so requires full faculty support and tremendous resources expand the current program. Dartmouth ROTC is currently run through Norwich University. The program is so modest that people sometimes mistake cadets' military training outfits for Halloween costumes. "Student cadets have their character tested by a College that pretends that they don't exist," Mike Breen '02 said on the ROTC website. "At Dartmouth, it's all on you."
This problem should have been addressed years ago. With the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, many colleges are now re-investing in their programs. We owe it to our country, our founding mission and our student body to provide our cadets with a supportive environment for their training. Honoring their commitment by trying to increase enrollment and awareness is the least we can do.
2) Put selected Dartmouth Courses on iTunes U. iTunes U is a service run by Apple that manages and disseminates educational audio, video and PDF files. Member institutions are given their own iTunes U platform, accessible via iTunes, upon which they can upload course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours all of which are free to download. Dartmouth is now the only Ivy not yet registered with iTunes. There's no reason for this. Students deserve to be able to re-listen to their lectures, catch up on material they've missed due to illness, audit classes they don't have time to attend in person and explore future course options by browsing real class materials online. Furthermore, iTunes U allows students access to materials for courses they are not currently enrolled in, whereas Blackboard does not.
3) Fix distributive requirements by amending the NRO. This isn't the president's job, per se, although Kim can certainly push the idea forward. In fact, in discussions I've had with Kim, he has indicated that he's working on this issue. If a student receives an NR in a class, he cannot use that class to satisfy major or General Education requirements. As a result, students usually take notoriously easy classes to fulfill their distributions. Instead of forcing us to make connections between our expertise and more unfamiliar subjects, the current General Education policy reinforces timid course selection. If we knew that an NR could count towards our distributive requirements, however, students would take more challenging courses.
The obvious objection to changing NRO policy is simple: Students who NRO classes tend not to work as hard and therefore don't learn as much. But my solution is equally simple: Allow students who earn the median grade or higher to count an NR towards a distrib, and ensure that every academic department has to follow the same rules with regards to NROs.
4) Fix Green Print. Although Green Print is, in theory, an excellent system, in practice it is inefficient, expensive and unnecessarily cumbersome. The main problems here are that there aren't enough printing stations in general, and the dearth of printing stations puts excessive stress on the convenient ones. This overuse causes them to break frequently and work slowly. Every dorm or dorm cluster should have its own Green Print station. Broken stations should be fixed more rapidly.
There are undoubtedly many other policies like offering students continuous housing that could be substituted or added into this list. But that's not the point. What's key here is that these policies aren't designed to significantly change the "The Dartmouth Experience" in the ways that the new dining plan or the inveterate quest for "alternative social spaces" are.
I've chosen to focus on these four policies precisely because I think they're student-oriented and potentially feasible, and because they can yield immediate benefits. These are the kinds of things I think Kim should be considering. I'm confident he wants to win back student support and can. A more responsive policy agenda is the first step in doing so. I wish him the best of luck.
