Student Assembly presidential and vice-presidential candidates discussed the “Freedom Budget,” Bored at Baker and building community at Dartmouth in a debate hosted by the Inter-Community Council last night. The debate was held in Cutter-Shabazz Hall and attracted an audience of around 40 spectators.
Presidential candidates Casey Dennis ’15, Jay Graham ’15, Jon Miller ’15, Yesuto Shaw ’15, write-in presidential candidate Sophia Pedlow ’15 and vice presidential candidates Frank Cunningham ’16 and Harry Qi ’17 took part in the debate. Vice presidential candidate Matt Robinson ’15 did not attend the debate because he chose to focus on outside campaign events, his running mate Graham said.
Pedlow, who decided to run on Tuesday evening, said she felt that the slate of official candidates did not represent all perspectives on campus.
“I felt it was important for someone to step up,” she said in an email. “A lot of students, especially women, didn’t feel represented by the perspectives of the official candidates.”
Inter-Community Council co-chairs Karima Ma ’14 and Bennie Niles ’15 moderated the debate.
Candidates were asked for two points they agreed with in the “Freedom Budget” proposal and one they did not support.
Graham, responding first, said he agreed with the document’s call to increase the amount of financial aid awarded and require exit interviews for departing faculty, but disagreed with the ways in which students protested the College’s reaction to its demands.
Dennis said he believes the College needs to increase recruitment of students and faculty from minority backgrounds and bolster the transparency of its financial aid policy. He disagreed with the call to make new departments at Dartmouth, adding that he believes increasing the amount of minority faculty at the school should come before new departments are created.
Pedlow said she agreed with the call to lower the cost of transferring credits, factoring the work of faculty and staff as mentors into tenuredecisions and renovating Cutter-Shabazz. Pedlow said she did not understand the rationale behind some of the recommendations, specifically the call for more language programs, which she said the administration proposed in the past but had not succeeded.
Miller agreed that departing faculty should be given exit interviews and that the College should offer pro-bono legal and financial assistance to undocumented students. Miller said he disagrees with the proposal of a 10-percent admissions quota for students from certain minority groups, which he believes should fluctuate based on the demographics of applicants.
Shaw said he believes Dartmouth should boost faculty diversity and work to attract students with lower socioeconomic status, and also disagreed with the admissions quotas.
Candidates agreed that the College should better support its undocumented students.
Candidates disagreed about Bored at Baker and whether they would shut it down if they had the power to do so.
Running mates Miller and Qi said they would not try to close the site because doing so would violate students’ freedom of speech, though Qi added that anonymity should be rescinded if something illegal is posted.
While Shaw said he believes Bored at Baker does more harm than good, the Assembly cannot close the online forum down as it is run independently of the College.
Graham said he believes that Bored at Baker represents the campus climate well, though he agreed that posts mentioning illegal activities should be addressed.
Dennis said he does not support a forum in which students are threatened and victimized and would want names to be attached to all posts on the site.
Pedlow said she would advocate banning the use of Dartmouth email addresses to log in to Bored at Baker, making the forum a public site. Pedlow said she believes the site is not consistent with community standards.
Audience members then began to ask questions, inquiring about candidates’ initiatives to reduce sexual assault, their opinions on the presence of racism on campus, Dartmouth Bystander Initiative training, the purpose of camaraderie at sporting events and working with different communities at Dartmouth.
In order to combat sexual assault, Dennis said he would mandate bystander intervention training during Orientation so that, in a few years, everyone on campus will have undergone training. Qi said he also supported the initiative, and added that if he were elected, he would reallocate Student Assembly funding to groups that combat assault.
Graham said he would incentivize the training during Orientation by granting participants a physical education credit. He said would also seek to create a residential expert on sexual assault position within every Greek house.
When asked which candidates had undergone DBI training, Cunningham and Shaw raised their hands. Pedlow, who partially raised her hand, said later in an email that, while she has not been trained, she played an active role in developing the program through her work on the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault. Other candidates said they planned to undergo training in next few weeks.
A member of The Dartmouth’s opinion staff, Miller was asked if he would be willing to work with communities of which he is not a member and has written about previously. Miller responded by saying that he has a long history of working with many student organizations and that he aims to be an advocate for all groups on campus.
Cunningham is a member of The Dartmouth business staff.
The last debate will be held today at 4:30 p.m. in Collis Common Ground and will be hosted by the Greek Leadership Council.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction.
Correction appended: April 11, 2014
The initial version of this story mischaracterized Pedlow's endorsement of the "Freedom Budget." She advocated forfactoring the work of faculty and staff as mentors into tenuredecisions as well as transferring credits from other colleges and universities, not high school credits. The story has been revised to correct the error.
