The three “Moving Dartmouth Forward” working groups, tasked with examining current policy and proposing changes to administrators and campus leaders, will be submitting proposals to the College in the coming weeks.
The working groups were formed as a part of College President Phil Hanlon’s “Moving Dartmouth Forward” policy initiative and are comprised of two chairs and parents, faculty members, students and other interested parties.
Assistant dean and director of case management Kristi Clemens and Taylor Watson ’16 chair the social event and alcohol management group, which is examining alcohol policy for the college alongside expectations for social events. Collis Center director of student activities Anna Hall and assistant director of Greek Letters Organizations and Societies standards and management Sam Waltemeyer chair the student organization standards and review working group, which will set standards and expectations for student organizations. Judicial affairs director Leigh Remy and computer science department chair Thomas Cormen chair the community citizenship working group, which is creating a statement of values for the College.
Watson said that his working group meets every Thursday for an hour and a half. At each meeting, the group discusses their homework assignment for that day. Examples of such assignments include looking at alcohol policies of other schools and examining specific components of alcohol policy, such as how different policies define social events.
The group has examined schools that also have a large Greek presence and are working on issues that the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” policy targets, such as high-risk drinking. A different component of social event management procedures policy is addressed at each meeting.
The goals for the proposal will include increasing registration participation rates, safety and oversight. These goals were created in order to address current criticisms of SEMP policy, such as on-the-fly party or event registration or its complicated nature.
The group has been making a lot of progress as the members of the group are experienced with similar conversations, Watson said. In drafting the proposal, the working group has been trying to find a middle ground between the desires of administrators, who want compliance with the hard alcohol ban, and students, who want to address issues that might arise from the hard alcohol ban, such as increased inclusivity in Greek houses, Watson said.
There are no faculty members in Watson’s group. It is comprised of unaffiliated and affiliated students, administrators and Safety and Security officers, Watson said. Clemens is the liaison to the President’s Office for the group. The working group will be submitting their draft policy in three weeks and will also present it to a variety of groups, including the Panhellenic Council, the Interfraternity Council, the Greek Leadership Council, undergraduate advisors and any other group that is affected by its content, with the intent of gathering feedback.
Cormen said that his group has met three times and has a draft of a proposal, which will soon be sent to stakeholders including Hanlon, Provost Carolyn Dever, interim dean of the College Inge-Lise Ameer, dean of the faculty Michael Mastanduno, students and a variety of faculty committees. Each meeting is scheduled to be two hours.
Cormen is the only faculty member on his working group. There are also students, including one graduate student, one parent and several staff members. Cormen said that he joined the group after the President’s Office asked because he wanted help to improve the environment at the College, adding that he has known students negatively affected by the behaviors he hopes to address with the proposal. The group has tried to keep the proposal short, and it currently is around three paragraphs long.
The purpose of this statement, Cormen said, is to create values that will be affirmed periodically. Cormen said that these values will answer questions such as, “Why are you here?” “What do we expect of you?” and “What should you expect of yourself?”
“By people seeing it frequently, they will remember ‘Oh yeah, this is really what I should be doing,’” Cormen said.
At the first meeting the group made a laundry list of the issues they thought should be in the statement. During the second meeting, Cormen drafted a statement and then each member submitted their own version to Cormen. The third meeting consisted of working out the details of the statement itself.
While Ameer said in a previous interview that she wants “these working groups to be inclusive and have students participate in them in a productive way,” several students interviewed said they were unaware of the working groups and lacked a familiarity with their work.
The Dartmouth could not reach either of the chairs for the student organization standards and review working group for comment by press time.
