The Right to Offend
To the Editor:
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To the Editor:
Alexandre Dumas once proclaimed, "I'm a Dumas." Dartmouth administrators have continued in this tradition to the point that this column is so saturated with topics to address that it can no longer attack just one egregious error in judgment. In the last few weeks Dartmouth has seen yet another awful prospective student weekend, the death of the oldest liberal art, expenditures for 800 Nalgene bottles to assist in the creation of anti-alcohol propaganda, the ballooning of the women's sensitivity budget and the literal silencing of free speech. These subversions of common sense are the latest pieces of evidence of the Wright administration's glaring incompetence.
The Student Assembly has proven to be an ineffective and oftentimes incompetent body. The new Assembly President is faced with the task of bringing relevance and influential power to an organization that has largely epitomized mediocrity. Student government is usually not taken very seriously. People argue that the positions have no power regardless of who is elected. If students want their representatives to have influence, they themselves need to take elections seriously and demand that candidates effectively support their views.
Unlike Odysseus' tale, the most significant part of this odyssey is that it is not unique or remarkable in any way. What is real is that many students endure a long and arduous journey to get into classes, usually to find the ones they wanted in the first place. The frustrations to be articulated happen every term, and in some way occur to nearly every student at one point or another, usually more often than not. My academic interests are in no way a statistical anomaly. I major in government, one of the most popular in the school, and I'm a junior, which should put me on the top half of the priority deck. These setbacks have all occurred since the debate over class sizes gathered steam in this publication.
Dartmouth has forgotten its identity. Social engineering seems to be the paramount concern of this administration. The commitment to providing the best liberal arts education possible is secondary to the social engineering agenda. Class sizes, curriculum quality, housing, athletics and free speech have all taken a back seat. Increasingly it becomes clear that this administration cannot see the obvious. Its values are in such stark contrast to those held by the majority of people who have attended Dartmouth that a drastic shift can only be made from the top down.
An article in The D titled "At Six Year Mark, SLI Impacts Less Drastic Than Expected" (Feb. 14) stated that "current student opinion is far from the outcry that resulted when the [Student Life] Initiative was announced in 1999." This column seeks to refute that point, and make very clear that the SLI is indeed despised on campus today, and to beg every person who has at one time been associated with Dartmouth not to give money to the College until a radical redirection has occurred. It is the only way that every single member of the alumni can have their displeasure heard, and it is really the only thing that even handpicked trustees can only ignore for so long.
In weeding through the opinion pieces over the last few weeks, it is easy to see that there are many areas at Dartmouth in need of better funding. Two pieces in particular stand out. The first was written by Welton Chang on Jan. 24 and is titled "Supporting Those Who Serve." Chang makes a strong and supported argument that there is not nearly enough funding for the ROTC program at Dartmouth, and it is floundering compared to its peers as a result. The second was The Dartmouth Editorial Board's "Verbum Ultimum" of Jan. 28, where the Board points out that there is a need for more professors.
Several months ago a member of the College administration mentioned to me in passing that he was involved in the planning committee for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. He explained that they were organizing several significant events in recognition of the holiday, and that many were involved.
When John Lyons was fired as head football coach and Buddy Teevens was simultaneously let go from Stanford, I was fairly certain of the abilities of the Dartmouth administrative forces to screw things up. I began to envision the likely successors. I was supremely confident that we would have the first transgender, native Eskimo with a doctorate in electrical engineering and a Nobel Prize in applied physics ever to coach football, a promotion from his/her prior position as the Sarah Lawrence broomball team coach. This would be hailed as a great step in achieving the SLI (which is Dean-speak for the "No Fun Ever For Any Reason Initiative").
Apparently 93 percent of Dartmouth students have not missed an academic deadline for alcohol-related reasons, and the typical Dartmouth student on a Friday night is reminiscent of a 12-year-old looking through a microscope. I can't imagine you missed the sign I'm talking about. This statistic is troubling because it seems to be a gigantic lie or a very twisted perception of the truth. It also employs a tactic of reverse peer pressure, which seems to imply that you should do as everyone else in this case, but not others. Frankly, I'm tired of seeing my tuition dollars wasted. Why do we employ people whose purpose is to produce this miserable, asinine propaganda?
To the Editor:
"I hate the word welcoming." This was the proclamation of Harvey Silverglate at a speech he gave Tuesday at Dartmouth. He uses this statement to introduce his beliefs about when, why and how free discourse vanished from college campuses. Never have I heard an argument that more poignantly encapsulated my disgust with the Dartmouth administration than Silverglate's speech. His lecture and book "The Shadow University," is the type of conversation about freedom of speech that we are sorely missing on this campus. The mass quantities of civil liberties violations and resulting reverse discrimination are testaments to this.