What was striking about these three speakers was that they each advocated for vigorous dialogue and debate in policy discussions despite their various ideological commitments. Each recognized that at least part of their agendas were somewhat countercultural, and emphasized the need to convince people of the value of their ideas.
On Tuesday, most of campus opened The Dartmouth to find a column by Andrew Lohse decrying the lack of that very attitude on our campus ("A Corporate Stranglehold" Aug. 2). Lohse seemed to decry the kind of groupthink that leads hundreds of Dartmouth students to apply for hedge fund internships rather than a career in public service like Reich and Geithner at least, not without a pit stop at Goldman first.
I recognize Lohse's complaint, and in many ways I agree. Groupthink is as alive and well at Dartmouth as it is at any Tea Party rally or MoveOn.org house party. All the 4.0 students I know tell me that the key to doing well is to, above all, tell the professor what he wants to hear. But I think the major reason why so many Dartmouth students don't seem to care about making the world's troubles their own is that they simply lack easy opportunities to do so.
Take the recent round of winter internship recruiting as an example. While the number of organizations participating in the resume drop was certainly more limited than what it is during other terms, the list still consisted almost entirely of private companies, most of them in the finance or consulting industries. We Dartmouth students have made a life of taking whatever opportunity next falls into our laps. It's no wonder that Dartmouth sends so many of its students to finance companies when the process for applying to those jobs is so much simpler and easier than the process for applying for more service-oriented work.
Instead, if the administrators really want to send out talented Dartmouth grads to improve the world through a lifetime of public service, they need to make it a more mainstream option. The Tucker Foundation and the Rockefeller and Dickey Centers already offer funding for service internships, but the fact that students have to look for those opportunities on their own while there are private companies sending them emails every day means that too many go the corporate route simply because it offers the path of least resistance.
A better policy would be to reach out to government agencies or nonprofit groups and encourage them to participate in campus recruiting during sophomore summer. While it's easy to click a button to send your resume, whether to the State Department or to an i-banking firm, it's harder to seek out diverse opportunities on your own, especially when all of campus is talking about who got second-round interviews at consulting and finance firms.
I don't believe that the private sector is any "worse" intellectually, morally or spiritually than the public sector. Indeed, there are plenty of public service jobs that are less mentally stimulating and less productive for society than some investment banking positions. It is certainly noble for people to insist that Dartmouth has a special duty to send more graduates into academia or nonprofit work. But I think the College has a different duty, and that is to encourage us to try new things and experience a diverse array fields. There are people leading productive lives outside of Lower Manhattan. The trouble is that most Dartmouth students don't realize it.
