Members of the nonprofit Dartmouth Change, a group of concerned alumni and faculty, have been advocating for more direct involvement in student life issues, concentrating their efforts on sexual assault prevention and education programs.
According to members of the organization, the College administration has pushed back against their further involvement. They cited long delays in communication with administrators, rescheduled meetings and exclusion from campus groups like the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault and the Committee on Student Safety and Accountability. Alumni added that they offered to fundraise for additional sexual assault programs on campus, but that the administration was not interested in using their money for such initiatives.
Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson denied that there was any organized action from her office or others to limit alumni and faculty involvement in student life issues.
"Meetings get rescheduled sometimes," Johnson said. "If a meeting or two is rescheduled, they should not have taken it as a refusal to work with them."
The College already has sufficient funds to implement additional sexual assault education and prevention programs if it chooses to do so, she said.
MEETINGS WITH JOHNSON
Members of Dartmouth Change began calling and meeting with junior and senior administrators in spring of 2011. About half a dozen members had two meetings with Johnson in fall of 2012, one in October and one in November, to propose specific recommendations for ways the College could augment and improve existing sexual assault prevention programs.
Many of these recommendations overlapped with those proposed at the first symposium on sexual assault that spring, a meeting of over a hundred students, faculty and staff organized by SPCSA. These included forming a violence prevention center on campus that centralized the College's services and implementing mandatory sexual assault education programs for students.
Members of Dartmouth Change said they experienced reluctance from Johnson and others to work with their group. Susy Struble '93, founder of the nonprofit group, said that "the conversations didn't go anywhere."
"You don't say things are being mishandled until you know what's going on," she said."The College made extremely clear to us they had no interest in working with us."
Johnson said this was untrue, adding that a number of the group's recommendations have been adopted. The Sexual Assault Advisor Program coordinators' offices have been moved to a more accessible location, and the College has implemented more education and prevention programs including bystander intervention training, she said.
"Dartmouth Change feels very passionate about Dartmouth," she said. "We all do. But the fact is that we have a process and have to work within it. The fact is that we cannot accept every recommendation, but that should not be taken as a refusal to work with the group."
Johnson said her office and relevant committees are in the process of reviewing further recommendations from Dartmouth Change, such as implementing a zero tolerance policy for perpetrators of sexual assault. Her office is also expanding incoming student education programs about consent, she said.
"To view Dartmouth Change in context, we get advice all the time, from students, faculty, staff," Johnson said. "We listen and take that into consideration, but we're adopting programs based on impact and best practices. Some recommendations are great, and some are not things we're inclined to do."
Suggestions like a violence prevention center and seats for alumni on SPCSA and COSSA were not taken up because comprehensive services are already in place, Johnson said. She added that alumni have other means to engage in discussions about sexual assault, such as through involvement on the Alumni Council.
"[The recommendations] moving forward are pretty good evidence that we're listening," Johnson said.
Summer SPCSA chair Sophia Pedlow '15 said alumni opinion is taken into account when the committee forms its recommendations, and she did not see an obvious need for alumni involvement on a student-led committee. She said alumni could become more directly involved with student life through other means, such as mentorship programs.
NEED FOR GREATER TRANSPARENCY
Johnson said that there is not one comprehensive review process for recommendations that the College receives, but that different committees and staff are assigned to look into the efficacy of proposals. The College does not publicly announce its decision on each proposal because of the large volume of recommendations it receives and instead makes periodic announcements on the COSSA website, she said.
Members of Dartmouth Change said the College's lack of regular announcements about its decisions fails to build trust in the existing system.
Bob Wetzel '76, an advisor to Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, member of Dartmouth Change and participant at the fall meetings with Johnson, called the lack of transparency problematic.
"There was never clarity about why these proposals couldn't be done, nothing that was stated to me," he said. "This was something we consistently pushed for, why can't this be done? But we never got a direct response for that."
Jim Reynolds, a community member who is a part of Dartmouth Change and a participant in the meetings, said his impression from conversations with Johnson was that the administration is not being proactive enough in implementing new programs and policies.
He cited concerns of legal retaliation as a reason the administration might be slow to implement recommendations like a zero tolerance policy for sexual assault or programs to identify repeat offenders.
"Dean Johnson was saying you can't change the campus' culture overnight, but I said Yes, yes you can, I've seen corporate culture change overnight,'" Reynolds said. "I've heard from male students that they wouldn't send their daughters to Dartmouth. Why wouldn't you support these changes?"
Biology professor Lee Witters, a member of Dartmouth Change and participant at the fall meetings with Johnson, said that while there are a lot of "well-meaning" people at Dartmouth, the SPCSA reports and Dartmouth Change recommendations point to a lot of overlapping areas for potential improvement.
He said he did not understand the administration's decision not to create a violence prevention center to centralize its resources for addressing sexual assault.
"What I felt from them was that we're doing a lot already and see what we're doing now as sufficient,'" Witters said. "I basically saw it as a way to really accelerate things, but I think others didn't feel the need for acceleration at that point."
Former SPCSA chair Dani Levin '12 said she was unaware of what the review process was for SPCSA's recommendations but had experienced administrative "foot dragging and stonewalling" in her time on the committee.
Former SPCSA chair Elizabeth Hoffman '13 said that administrators were "always doing something," even if they were not articulating the full scope of their actions publicly.
"People are unhappy because they aren't constantly giving updates about improvements, but people are doing good work," she said.
MEETINGS WITH BEATTIE
Members of Dartmouth Change also met with vice president of alumni relations Martha Beattie '76 about planning regional alumni events that included discussions on campus life issues such as sexual assault.
One of the group's proposals was to show a filming of "Undue Influence," a dance production organized by theater professor Peter Hackett '75 that was inspired by student experiences of sexual abuse on campus.
According to Struble, Beattie said she would not support these events because "Undue Influence" was an artistic interpretation of sexual assault and not based on facts. Beattie said that she was in support of such programs, but wanted the film to be shown "in the right context" with a panel of experts to lead a discussion with alumni about the film's content after screenings.
Hackett, also a member of Dartmouth Change and a participant at the fall meetings with Johnson, recalled multiple meetings with senior administrators before and after "Undue Influence" was performed in spring of 2011 and 2012. He called the administrators' response to the show "appalling" because it focused on managing how the event would be received by alumni, parents and outside media.
In addition to the show, Hackett wrote letters to the Valley News about his research into sexual assault incidents on campus, which in spring of 2011 prompted former senior vice president and chief of staff David Spalding to plan a meeting to discuss his "misconceptions" about the administration's handling of sexual assault. A letter Hackett wrote in spring of 2012 prompted a similar response, he said.
"Both conversations were initiated by the administration and were the result of public statements I made," Hackett said. "No one said I couldn't speak out, but they said I was mistaken and had misconceptions, that I was wrong and they needed to straighten me out."
Beattie said that since the "Undue Influence" film is available on YouTube, alumni clubs do not need College funding for screening if they choose to show it without a panel. Clubs are independent entities and can plan their own programs without College funding if they choose to do so.
The film was shown with a panel of experts at the Alumni Council's annual meeting in the spring.
REACTING TO THE TITLE IX INVESTIGATION
Wetzel said that in the three years he has been advocating for the administration to take a more active approach against sexual assault, there has not been enough action by the administration. He said he hopes the Title IX federal investigation will help speed up real changes. Struble also said she is hopeful that the federal probe will provoke change.
"I hope the investigation is really a lynchpin for the College to address these issues, to dig deep and be completely transparent about it all," she said.
Witters said that because campus attention on issues such as sexual assault comes in spurts, he hopes the investigation will be a "catalyst" for change.
"If you take the number of assaults that probably occur a year, that's indefensible, it's absolutely indefensible," he said. "I want this problem eliminated and a lot of things need to be on the table to do it."
