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(08/10/10 2:00am)
In the last few weeks, the 4,500 college graduates who entered Teach For America after graduation have finished their intensive five-week teacher training crash course. Training for this year's TFA corps, which includes 20 members of the Dartmouth class of 2010, coincided with the release of a new study which found that in their first two years, TFA-trained teachers do "significantly less well" in raising reading and math test scores than beginning teachers with traditional teaching certifications. The finding adds fuel to an already heated debate about whether TFA actually benefits underprivileged students.
(07/09/10 2:00am)
In a room built solely for the purpose of administering exams, 228 students sit hunched over computers. A security camera monitored by a test proctor scans the room. As one student moves his jaw, the camera frantically zooms in and a program takes a screenshot of his latest computer activity. The camera reveals that the student is not wearing a wireless earpiece capable of transmitting test answers, but a proctor nonetheless rushes into the room with a trash can and orders the suspect to spit out his gum.
(05/27/10 2:00am)
"They want us to fail," he told me. "We have classes where the average score after a five point curve is a 65. And it's not because people are stupid."
(05/13/10 2:00am)
I particularly take issue with his column's complete misrepresentation of the potential health risks that Adderall carries. Contrary to Jennings' absurd claim that Adderall can be compared to Advil, the U.S. has classified Adderall as a Schedule II drug meaning it is considered to have a high potential for abuse and/or severe psychological dependence. Its active ingredients are amphetamines, which work on the central nervous system, and the same chemicals that compose Speed, an illegal drug with similar stimulant effects. The drug information for a common brand of extended release Adderall warns that misuse can lead to "sudden death and serious cardiovascular adverse effects," as well as the "emergence of new psychotic and manic symptoms."
(04/29/10 2:00am)
This year has been a roller coaster ride for Hanover Police alcohol policy. After unveiling a proposal for "sting operations" in February and backpedaling several days later, Hanover Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone announced last week that police officers will no longer automatically arrest underage, intoxicated students who are taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Instead, they will give students seven days to enroll in the Alcohol Diversions Program, and only after a failure to do so will a citation be recorded on students' records ("Police shift policy on arrests for drinking," April 16). In less than three months, Hanover Police has seemingly gone from enforcement zealot to benevolent caretaker.
(04/14/10 2:00am)
When most adults talk about unhealthy behaviors among children, they often speak with a sense of removal and helplessness. Through a veil of nostalgia and carefully edited memories, they perceive the youngest generation as a perverse alien species, with values, interests and desires that they never experienced while growing up. In the case of childhood obesity, adults throw up their hands at a generation that would rather play Halo than tag or basketball, and that would rather starve than eat a green vegetable. This focus on how kids and their environments differ from past generations allows adults to deflect responsibility for an epidemic that is entirely of their own making.
(03/31/10 2:00am)
No one tells you how much harder it is to be on campus when your friends are off than it is to be off campus when your friends are on. I spent Winter term in Washington, D.C., acting like a real person who packs brown bag lunches, commutes to work and uses the word "e-mail." I missed my friends back in the land of DBA, bicycles and "blitz," but the real world was an exciting place, and the new experiences I was having left little time for thoughts of those I'd left behind.
(01/05/10 4:00am)
I approve of government bailouts for too-big-to-fail banks. I sincerely hope that the final health care bill includes a public option. But if the Transportation Security Administration meddles with airport security procedures one more time, you can find me at the local tea party movement headquarters painting posters about big government, misuse of tax dollars and Barack Obama's Big Brother tendencies.
(11/19/09 4:00am)
Last year, sizable budget cuts were implemented by the Dartmouth administration, with little noticeable impact on the quality of student life. The newest round of reductions, which may total $100 million, will likely not be as painless. Although some easy cuts may still remain, these easy fixes will not be enough to make up the entirety of the budget shortfall. The time for difficult decisions has come. These cuts will require us to look inward as an institution, deciding which values are fundamental to our mission, and which are negotiable. However, the fact that these decisions must be made on the basis of more essential considerations about Dartmouth's core values does not preclude us from turning to outside experts for some advice.
(11/04/09 4:00am)
Nothing in journalism class had prepared me for it. The source I had been interviewing for my very first high school newspaper assignment had just pulled my notebook out of my hands and ripped out the pages containing our interview, shouting that if I wasn't going to report impartially, then he wasn't going to talk to me. I did the only thing I could think of I left, carrying my notebook with jagged margins where my notes had been.
(10/27/09 3:00am)
Coming up with a catchy name for our generation is a task that has long stumped journalists and sociologists. Proposals have been made Generation Y, the Me-First Generation but nothing has ever stuck the way Baby Boomers or the Greatest Generation did. I'd like to suggest a moniker that I think now more than ever is proving itself distressingly appropriate: the Anonymous Generation.
(10/23/09 2:00am)
Members of the Class of 2013, your Dartmouth brainwashing is almost over. The carefully designed indoctrination program that you have been undergoing since the first day of DOC Trips will culminate in a pagan-esque ritual involving fire and the chanting of certain ritual recitations on the evening of Friday, Oct. 23. If all goes well, from this point forward, you will forever be loyal Dartmouth devotees, with green blood and all the granite of New Hampshire in your veins.
(09/30/09 2:00am)
Harvard, Stanford, Duke and Oxford universities, along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may all be considered among the most exclusive universities in the world, but you no longer have to be a valedictorian, an All-American athlete, the founder of a successful not-for-profit or even a high-school graduate to attend one of their classes.
(05/26/09 2:00am)
The gay rights movement has scored a number of major successes as of late. Same-sex marriage is gaining momentum, as state legislatures from Vermont to Iowa vote to legalize, and even Miss California USA recently found out that opposing gay rights is no longer a socially "safe" stance to take (a discovery that likely cost her the Miss USA pageant crown). So perhaps it was a testament to the great strides the gay rights movement has made (or maybe just to my naivete, as a straight individual), that I was so surprised to find, at last Wednesday's blood drive, that the American Red Cross mandates that any man who has "had sex with another man even once since 1977," is not allowed to donate blood. My immediate reaction was disbelief could there really be a rule that effectively prevented gay men from giving blood? Shouldn't someone have contested it by now? It turns out that the restrictions aren't entirely without scientific basis. Male-to-male sex was responsible for half of all new HIV diagnoses in America in 2004, and according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, HIV prevalence among men who have had sex with men since 1977 is 60 times higher than that of the general population. A closer look at other eligibility requirements, however, shows that the FDA's policy of permanently deferring men who have had sex with men is not consistent with its policies for other high-risk populations. All of the other sexual risk behaviors, including having sex with a prostitute (with the exception of being a prostitute), require only a 12-month waiting period before donors are allowed to give blood. All donated blood is tested for HIV and other infections before being distributed. These tests produce a false negative less than once in every one million samples, as long as the infection occurred more than 21 days before the test. This three-week period after infection, when the body has not yet developed a strong enough immune response to be detected in testing, is known as the "window period." Requiring potential donors who have engaged in risky sexual acts to wait 12 months before donating blood therefore eliminates the possibility that a detectable immune response has not yet been generated. According to the American Association of Blood Banks, an umbrella organization whose members are responsible for collecting 80 percent of blood donations in America, "t does not appear rational to broadly differentiate sexual transmission via male-to-male sexual activity from that via heterosexual activity on scientific grounds." In other words, there is no discernible scientific reason why risky heterosexual sex should result in only a 12-month deferral period, while homosexual male sex results in a permanent deferral. The tests are no less effective for gay men, and the window period in gay men is no longer than in straight individuals. My biggest problem with the policy, though, is that it assumes that all male-to-male sex is risky. It does not make exceptions for men who have always used safe-sex practices, or who are in long-term monogamous relationships and have been tested for STDs. It is illuminating to note that one-half of all new HIV diagnoses in America in 2004 (the same percentage attributed to male-to-male sex) were found in African Americans. Yet no one would ever dream of declaring that all sexually active African Americans were ineligible to give blood. We would instantly recognize the irrationality (and the underlying prejudice) of assuming that all African Americans are engaging in unsafe sex practices. At the very least, the deferral period for those who have had male-to-male sex should be reduced to 12 months indeed, this recommendation was made to the FDA in 2006 by the American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks and American Blood Centers. At best, though, the FDA should develop a new set of screening guidelines that would better separate the risky potential donors from the non-risky. The reality that many Americans don't see is that we don't have the luxury of turning away potentially healthy donors. Blood shortages are a very serious concern in the U.S. with only 5 percent of adults donating blood and the FDA's commitment to protecting patients who receive blood transfusions, while admirable, has resulted in overly stringent and illogical eligibility requirements. There are ways of protecting transfusion recipients that utilize the population of healthy potential donors more fully, and that move beyond baseless homophobic prejudice. The FDA owes it Americans to implement these more nuanced policies.
(05/13/09 5:08am)
Contraception hasn't changed much in the last 40 years. Since the FDA approved the birth control pill in 1960, sexually active individuals who want to prevent pregnancy without permanently terminating their ability to reproduce have had essentially three options -- abstinence, condoms, or some form of contraception ingested or inserted by women. A recent announcement from Chinese researchers, however, suggests that we could soon be adjusting to a completely changed contraception landscape, one in which hormonal forms of birth control are no longer just for women.
(04/28/09 2:36am)
Lately, it seems like every other day the government applies a temporary patch to yet another leak that has sprung in our capsizing economy. In their frantic efforts to stay abreast of these immediate crises, lawmakers sometimes seem to have lost sight of what should be their ultimate goal -- making fundamental changes to the way business is done in America, so as to leave the country with a sounder infrastructure than it had going into the recession. However, an immigration bill called the DREAM act that was recently reintroduced into the U.S. House and Senate shows encouraging signs that some legislators are thinking creatively about ways to set America on a better course for the future.
(04/06/09 8:33am)
The other night, I wincingly answered a phone call from my mother, expecting to be chastised yet again for neglecting summer job applications, or questioned for the hundredth time about Parent's Weekend. As it turned out, the purpose of her call was to proudly inform me, "Emily, I got a Twitter account!"
(03/09/09 7:17am)
We made it -- 09W gasps its final frigid breath. Classes are ending, shorts and flip-flops have been sighted all over campus and the sun stays out until 6 p.m.
(02/24/09 9:18am)
The annual Harris "heroes" poll, released again last week, asks Americans, "Who do you admire enough to call a hero?" Number one on the list? President Obama. Number two? Jesus. Ronald Reagan, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., George W. Bush, Abraham Lincoln, John McCain, John F. Kennedy, Chesley Sullenberger and Mother Teresa round out the top 10.
(02/10/09 9:48am)
With the recent introduction of a bill that would lower the state drinking age to 18 years of age("House holds drinking age debate," Feb. 6), the New Hampshire legislature has reignited the perennial drinking age debate. In 1984, when the federal government established 21 as the national drinking age, it seemed that the issue had been decided once and for all.