Letter to the Editor: Criticism Countered
To the Editor:
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To the Editor:
The details of Dartmouth's administrative overspending -- and where to cut waste from the budget -- are there for everyone to see, if you just know where to look. Let's start on the College Controller's Office web page, where you can review Dartmouth's annual accounts.
Board of Trustees Chair Ed Haldeman '70 and presidential search committee head Al Mulley '70 have invited the entire faculty to meet with them this Friday to discuss the search for Dartmouth's next president. But how useful will this session be? Do Haldeman and Mulley really believe that professors will stand up in public and give unguarded opinions about the reforms Dartmouth needs? Parkhurst has a reputation among many faculty for punishing its critics, and nobody wants to be on the outs with the administration. Yet frankness is what the trustees need most now because the two sides in the trustee-alumni conflict are separated by a disparity of information.
To the Editor:
Where do we go from here? With President Wright leaving office in 14 months, the procedure for choosing his replacement merits close scrutiny. As is so often the case at Dartmouth today, the selection process will appear fair, but the details will tell the real tale. We should watch for a search committee biased in a certain direction and signals from Jim Wright to those picking the committee and to the searchers themselves.
And you thought nothing could be more wrongheaded than Dartmouth's policy on alcohol?
All of these governance changes just to save one president's job...
To the Editor:
After last year's defeat of the anti-petition-trustee constitution, it was only a matter of time before another attempt would be made to stop the election of the College's popularly elected petitioners.
Director of Safety and Security Harry Kinne's response ("Alcohol infraction numbers require more context," Feb. 20) to my guest op-ed ("Thirsty for a Reasonable Alcohol Policy," Feb. 16) contains statistics that shed little light on the reasoning behind Dartmouth's punitive alcohol policy.
The College's war on alcohol continues unabatedly; zero tolerance seems to be the order of the day.
Jacob Baron '10 seems to argue for the impossibility of attracting researchers to Dartmouth ("The Rural University Paradox," Jan. 16). His position is inaccurate on its face: One only has to look for proof at the groundbreaking work that has been done at the College (artificial intelligence and chaos theory come to mind; along with innovative work in virtually all the other disciplines). And today, this supposed rural/urban divide is less important than ever, given the ease of communication between scholars.
Last week's Verbum Ultimum (Feb. 24) accurately described the contrast between Larry Summers' role as intellectual provocateur at Harvard and James Wright's bland political posturing at Dartmouth. However, this distinction stops short of a more important point: the president of an educational institution is the central engine of its evolution.
Trustee Chair Bill Neukom was following the Administration's media playbook when he said in an interview in the January/February Alumni Magazine that Dartmouth graduates are "superbly prepared." In the area of writing, this statement is just not true.
If you were faced with a difficult new task, say, writing a constitution, how would you proceed?
"When the people are unhappy with the government, in America they try to change the government; in the Soviet Union, the government tries to change the people." " Old Soviet joke.
To the Editor:
This brings to a conclusion my ideas, begun in Wednesday's issue of The Dartmouth ("11 Ideas for a Better Dartmouth," May 11).
The recent Trustee election campaign and student complaints in The Dartmouth have finally focused attention on the shortcomings in undergraduate education at the College.
Alex Tonnelli's piece ("Step Two: Electing the Petition Candidates," March 9) perceptively describes the Wright Administration's "all is well'"public relations campaign. As President Wright recently said to the Chicago, Denver and Florida alumni clubs: "Let me give you my assessment. The College is in great shape."