Are You Headed in the Right Direction? Dos and don'ts at Dartmouth
Hello, first-year student, and congratulations. Bravo on your acceptance to the least lame Ivy League school and your newfound access to an extraordinary and fun-filled four years.
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Hello, first-year student, and congratulations. Bravo on your acceptance to the least lame Ivy League school and your newfound access to an extraordinary and fun-filled four years.
When College President Jim Yong Kim addressed the issue of alcohol abuse and sexual assault at Monday's termly Faculty of Arts and Sciences general meeting breaking from the trend of focusing on academics and the College's financial standing many professors in the audience appreciated his departure from the budget conversation, professors interviewed by The Dartmouth said.
Pamela Peedin '89 Tu '98 will serve as the College's new Chief Investment Officer, College President Jim Yong Kim announced on Monday.
Dartmouth's connection to New Hampshire extends beyond a mailing address, or even the typical loyalty of a college to its home state. No, Dartmouth and its students, take their affiliation with New Hampshire to an entirely different level, after all, "The granite of New Hampshire / Is made part of them til death."
Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust announced Wednesday that the institution will approve an on-campus Reserve Officer Training Corps unit if the U.S. government repeals the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for military service members, The Boston Globe reported. The ROTC was disallowed in 1969 due to widespread disapproval of the Vietnam War, and the current ban continues solely because Harvard does not permit intolerance in any undergraduate organization, including the gay and lesbian discrimination seen in the military, Faust told the Globe. Currently, Harvard students wishing to join an ROTC program participate in a unit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they receive support and encouragement from the administration at Harvard, according to The Globe. The University also plans to update undergraduate admissions regulations and technology, after discovering that a senior had forged information on his transcript, Inside Higher Ed reported.
For students worried about snooping parents or potential bosses with penchants for Facebook stalking, a new social networking site available only to college students, CollegeOnly, may provide a solution, according to its founder, Josh Weinsten. The site promises an online environment devoid of parents, employers and "other folks that shouldn't see what you are up to on a Saturday night," he said.
"We are working very closely with the Hanover Police Department to get this right," Kim said. "We sit over the table and worry about if we're going to lose one of you [to intoxication.]"
SAM WELCH
Former Brown University student William McCormick III, who was accused of raping a female student in September 2006, is suing the university for the way it dealt with the case, the Associated Press reported. This is "rais[ing] messy questions about the handling the case," according to the AP. McCormick, who denies the allegations, has said that he was pressured by the female student's attorney to drop out of Brown, after which the student's family dropped the charges, according to the AP. Assertions were made that the accuser's father, a Brown alumnus, had influence over the administration, which McCormick said failed to properly investigate the matter. Police were never involved, and evidence was neither collected nor analyzed. After leaving Brown, McCormick enrolled at Bucknell University, the AP reported.
The study group tasked with exploring new e-mail clients to replace BlitzMail has submitted a report on Tuesday outlining their recommendations to the senior administration. Administrators will review the report and come to a decision in early June, according to computer science professor and Associate Dean David Kotz, who leads the Communication and Collaboration Tools for Faculty and Students Study Group.
Since 1899, Dartmouth's Spring term has featured an annual celebration known as Green Key, in which Dartmouth students spend more than three days relaxing outside and enjoying the weather, appreciating friends and carousing on fraternity lawns.
"I think it was the best yield we've had," Laskaris said.
In a soft voice, Kabir Sehgal '05 calmly recalled an experience with discrimination when a visiting musician at Dartmouth called him a terrorist. In the aftermath of the remarks and under the advice of his mentor and godfather, renowned civil rights activist Andrew Young, Sehgal began to respond to such comments with kindness, as recollected in the book, "Walk in My Shoes: Conversations Between a Civil Rights Legend and His Godson on the Journey Ahead," co-authored with Young. The book is scheduled for release May 11.
After a weekend of sunshine and spring weather, I woke up on April 28 to snowfall. Not the beautiful, light snow of January and February, but sloppy, wet globs of half-melted snowflakes. I had already sent my heavy jacket and my snow boots home, and all that remained in my closet was a thin Patagonia fleece that this miserable precipitation would probably destroy. Convinced that God hated me, I rolled out of bed expecting a terrible day.
For New Jersey high school student Chris Given, the decision to enroll at Dartmouth was a based on the College's "down-to-earth" community and number-one ranking in undergraduate teaching, Given said in an interview with The Dartmouth. Californian Chris Logan, however, opted for Yale University because of its strong Korean program. With the May 1 decision deadline fast approaching, students accepted by the College are weighing the academic reputations and social environments of Dartmouth and other institutions as they determine where they will spend the next four years.
Gregory Slayton '81 received the Distinguished Foreign Service Award from the Congressional Black Caucus on April 21 for his efforts to improve relations between the United States and Bermuda, according to a College press release. Slayton served as the U.S. senior diplomat to Bermuda from August 2005 to August 2009. He is now an adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business, where he teaches a class on the global reinsurance industry. During his experience as the consul general and chief of mission to Bermuda, he organized the first official, bilateral diplomatic visit by Bermuda's premier to Washington, D.C. in 2006. The visit now occurs annually, according to the release. Slayton was appointed to his position by both the Bush and the Obama administrations a "rare diplomatic honor," the press release stated.
"I thought [Laskaris] was going to give a speech," Arakelian said. "And then I was really confused as to why there was music playing."
The program was scheduled a week later than in previous years, which could contribute to the increased attendance, Damerville said. Moving the date may prevent Dimensions from coinciding with prospective student programs elsewhere, she said.
In accordance with the rising numbers of applications Dartmouth has received in recent years, many colleges and universities have seen comparable surges in applicants, causing admission rates to drop, according to media reports. The rapidly increasing pool of college-bound individuals who are applying to the same set of institutions means qualified students face heightened competition for positions at colleges that are not growing fast enough to keep pace. In turn, post-secondary schools have been forced to become increasingly selective when admitting applicants.
This article proved to be one of the most difficult pieces I've ever had to write. The problem was not that I lacked resources, or that the assignment required extensive research. The problem was that once I began interviewing the '10s about their complex projects and passionate ideas, I feared my article would not do their work justice. My minimal expertise in the sciences could not fairly describe meticulous lab work and data analysis, and my less than stellar Gov 5 grade can attest to my ignorance in that field. This article hardly scratches the surface of the senior theses mentioned. Although some senior theses are published in specialized journals (to which very few of us if any subscribe), there is otherwise very little opportunity for the Dartmouth community as a whole to hear about these brutal projects that have consumed individual lives for over a year. So, this is The Mirror's effort to publicize the fantastic work done by the senior class a tribute to the grueling process and commendable results of the great ideas generated by Dartmouth students. In the science department, many senior thesis ideas begin as simple labwork. Students frequently aid a professor in research projects, and their senior theses become an extension of that fieldwork. As someone whose scientific interest ended abruptly after dissecting a pig in 9th grade biology, interviewing these science masterminds and translating their laboratory jargon was a struggle, to say the least. My conversation with Andrew Smith '10, an earth sciences major, was very much how I imagined a conversation with Einstein. He spoke very fast, very passionately and about things I did not, and probably will never, understand. I tried to feign geological knowledge, nodding and interjecting "ah yes, sedimentary paleomagnetism, of course," but he saw right through me, and ultimately agreed to send me a dumbed-down abstract of his paper. One reason Smith chose to write a senior thesis was because he wanted to work with a specific professor. "I e-mailed all the professors, and asked them if they had any research projects with a heavy field component and heavy lab component," he said of finding his thesis idea. "They gave me this one."Smith's work focuses on an eight-meter sediment core from Occom pond that dates back 14,000 years. In breaking down the different layers of this sample, Smith has been able to trace millenniums of climate activity in Hanover, specifically the arrival and disappearance of glaciers in the region. "The core is significant because it provides a sedimentary chronology of the deglaciation of Hanover, N.H., through the Holocene," Smith writes in his paper. Ann Elise Debelina '10, an engineering major modified with environmental science, had not planned to complete a senior thesis, until she worked on a mercury project with professor Mark Borsuk last Summer. After serving as a full-time research assistant, Debelina decided to continue the work into the Fall and Winter terms. "In particular we're looking at mercury in the New England area," she said. "What I've been working on over the year is trying to quantify how much mercury is released from electrical generation."From there, Debelina will study how the reduction of energy consumption and the use of green energy options will affect human health.Stephanie Gagnon '10, a Cognitive Science major, worked four years in the same lab. Her experiences there opened doors to papers and studies that ultimately inspired her to write a thesis on different patterns of brain activation stimulated by "contextually associated objects" and "spatial changes.""I wanted to culminate my time at Dartmouth with actually doing something on my own and making everything that I've done my past years at Dartmouth something tangible," Gagnon said.Not every senior thesis requires years of fieldwork and laboratory analysis, however. Departments like Government offer a senior thesis course, which provides instruction on how to write a political science thesis. Micaela Klein '10, a government major, will speak at TEDx on April 17, the conference that will bring together students and staff to present their innovative ideas, about her outstanding, and highly original senior thesis researching terrorist group longevity. "The literature that I'm dealing with on terrorism is pretty sparse," Klein said. "There really is not a lot of work done on it, and the work that has is very recent. It was a lot of sifting through random sources." If you're reading this and feeling extremely inadequate that you haven't done ground-breaking work in a science lab or research field, don't. Not every senior finds his or her thesis soul-mate right away. "The Fall was a bit frustrating in that every time I thought I had found a new topic, it turned out that it was too complicated or had already been done," government major, Robert Hoffman '10, said.Hoffman eventually found an opportunity for original work in researching "how proliferation of Internet access has impacted Democracy worldwide, and all the ways that the Internet has changed the way that governments, leaders, and citizens interact."Hoffman is a member of The Dartmouth staff.Yet finding an idea seems to be the most uplifting stage of a senior thesis, besides handing it in. While most '10s entered the senior thesis process with bright eyes and bushy tails, searching for that "culminating experience" that would embody their academic career at Dartmouth, the project required serious and depressing sacrifices. Senior theses may offer research and fieldwork opportunities, but they turn out to be major fun-suckers. Psychology and government major, Becca Boswell '10, stayed at Dartmouth over the summer to explore thesis ideas. Smith and Klein spent their spring breaks in Hanover to begin writing drafts. "I could be out right now at the Senior Tails," neuroscience and biology major, Jeremy Chan '10, said. "But right now I'm sitting in the library going over my introduction serious hamper on social life."Especially in light of the recent spring weather, many seniors glare at their assignment as a ball and chain. "Right now, it's 80 degrees out and I'm sitting in the 1902 room, so that's kind of terrible," Hoffman said. "It's Saturday morning, and I'm in the library. I was here last night. I just kind of feel guilty when I'm not working on it."Yet even after these social cutbacks, no senior could deny their project was an overall rewarding experience."I think I'm going to be actually proud of it when I'm done, and I don't feel like I can say that about anything else I've done academically," Hoffman said. "It's also cool to feel like you're kind of an expert on something, even if it's just something really small."In that vein, what happens to these papers when they're printed, bound, and submitted? Does anything become of these great ideas, or are they left behind as a Dartmouth memory, or forgotten altogether? While some '10s consider publishing their work, some admit that little will come of their theses besides the valuable life experience. "I think there's just a presentation you give to the department, then you just have the knowledge and the reward of the experience," Debelina said. Hoffman, although originally planning to "probably light it on fire," ultimately agreed. "I don't see myself trying to publish it," he said. "For me it was more about the experience of doing it and getting to answer what a question that I thought was legitimately worth asking and has relevant implications to the real world."