Millman: This is Our Chance
Throughout this pandemic, there’s been a theme.
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Throughout this pandemic, there’s been a theme.
Last Wednesday, for the first time in college sports history, the NCAA announced rule changes that made collegiate athletes eligible to earn money from sponsorships and other business opportunities without losing their eligibility.
Since November of last year, the Ethiopian military has been at odds with insurgent forces in the country’s northernmost state of Tigray. Stirred by an increasing sense of ethnic nationalism, the current fighting has led many to call for the state’s independence. While the state is functionally independent as is, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front has declared its willingness to formally and permanently part with Ethiopia if the violence continues. However, whether the world will accept an independent Tigray is a difficult question to answer. Self-determination has consistently been the subject of controversy in international relations, especially because the United Nations charter does not contain any clear and certain guidance on the topic. In one section, it claims to support the “self-determination of peoples,” and presumably the right of people to become independent — while in another, pouring cold water on any sort of secession, forbidding infringements “against the territorial integrity … of any state.” These respective articles have been used in the past to justify both pro- and anti-independence viewpoints, leaving conflicts with no clear path to peace. The U.N. Charter must be updated to resolve this contradiction once and for all.
This past June, the Supreme Court handed its latest victory to religious interests in the case Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the most recent in a series of rulings expanding the scope of freedom of religion under the First Amendment. The Court unanimously sided with Catholic Social Services, an organization that did not recognize marriages between same-sex partners and refused to certify them as foster parents, allowing the organization to retain their place as an official foster service provider for Philadelphia. The case is yet another in the trend of organizations, corporations, and individuals using religious liberty to justify discrimination — over the past decade, an unprecedented series of ‘wins’ for religious freedom have threatened some protections against employment discrimination, allowed the refusal of service to LGBTQ+ people and weakened access to reproductive healthcare. We as a society must more specifically define what religious freedom is and is not and combat its use to harm marginalized communities.
This past academic year, Dartmouth students have endured an unprecedented period of hardship and loss. Alongside the pandemic, which forced many students to go through the academic year relatively isolated from campus and their peers, students faced the loss of four of their peers — three of which were the result of suicide, according to reporting from The Dartmouth and the Boston Globe. These losses spurred outrage among students over the lackluster nature of Dartmouth’s mental health infrastructure, which many have blamed for creating an environment that does not adequately support students who are experiencing a mental health crisis.
Dartmouth is experiencing a mental health crisis, but it’s not just us: college students nationwide experienced higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation in 2020 than in 2019. The pandemic has only exacerbated existing strain on college counseling centers. Something has to change.
In the best of times, Dartmouth’s 10-week term is notoriously demanding — it’s nearly impossible for most students to focus on anything other than their academics. In the worst of times, the intensive Dartmouth schedule is nothing short of debilitating. Students’ schedules leave little room for anything to go wrong, so if — or when — that happens, they struggle to balance their personal situations and mental health with the omnipresent pressures of life at Dartmouth. And sometimes, things go wrong for nearly everyone, especially when tragedy strikes on campus. Many would expect the College to be sympathetic to students in such situations, but too often, it is not. At best, Dartmouth ignores students’ cries for help; at worst, the College exacerbates their problems. When the situation calls for it — when events make it impossible for academics to be a student’s top priority — the College must recognize reality and give students a break from classes.
The Suns are in the Finals. Phoenix is a finalist. The Phoenix Suns have advanced to the final round of the 2021 NBA playoffs. No matter how you say it, the Suns’ success this season almost doesn’t sound real.
As the world reacted to the unknown and unpredictable nature of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, Dartmouth adopted a set of policies, excerpts and descriptions of which were sent to us by several anonymous professors. These policies, designed to continue through summer 2021, were intended to offer stability and enable students and professors to plan for the coming terms, despite the daunting uncertainty ahead. To their credit, Dartmouth turned on a dime and steadied the ship.
It is no secret that the College is facing a housing crisis: “As expected, demand has exceeded our capacity,” a recent email from associate dean of residential life Michael Wooten stated bluntly. Far from attempting to permanently resolve the problem presented by the lack of student housing, the administration instead sought to find short-term solutions — such as the “one-time lottery incentive” — for the long-term issue. This situation is only exacerbating Dartmouth’s poor performance in creating a socioeconomically diverse student body. In order to create a truly diverse and equitable student body, as it claims to value, the College must begin by solving the housing problem.
This is the first edition of Midsummer Musings, a summer term column on the latest happenings in the world of sports.
In 2013, shortly before the last conflict between Israel and Gaza, the population of Israel’s West Bank settlements stood at just under 325,000 people. Eight years later, by the start of the most recent conflict — an 11-day war that claimed the lives of more than 200 — the population has surged to 475,000, and in the process, thousands of Palestinians have been displaced and seen their homes destroyed. Though last month’s conflict was centered in Gaza, where Israel has no outposts, the violence was precipitated by Israeli police raids and crackdowns on Palestinian protests — including protests against planned evictions of Palestinian residents from their homes in East Jerusalem — as well as violence from a far-right Israeli settlement organization, Lehava. Illegal Israeli settlements are the main problem, and the U.S., through the billions in foreign aid it offers to Israel each year, has unique leverage to stop them. Israel's continuing encroachment on the West Bank leads to violence and directly infringes on Palestinian human rights and sovereignty. The U.S. should halt foreign aid to Israel until it commits to ending settlement of the area.
The Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health has sparked controversy on both sides of the political aisle. The central issue of this case is whether the state of Mississippi can outlaw abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy, which is before a fetus is viable to live outside of the womb. For thirty years, the Supreme Court has never upheld a “pre-viability” ban of this kind. If the Court were to uphold this Mississippi statute, it would mark a distinctive shift in its attitude toward abortion. Yet, regardless of the Court’s decision, the extent to which the Court’s ruling will impact access to abortion — both in Mississippi as well as the United States as a whole — remains unclear.
Ever since Dartmouth decided to become a coeducational institution in 1972, providing on-campus housing options to all students enrolled in classes has proved challenging, if not impossible. While the College’s adoption of an academic calendar divided into quarters was supposed to ameliorate the housing “crunch” caused by admitting female students, it has been clear for years now that the D-Plan has not been a viable solution to the problem. Even in normal years, the College simply cannot accommodate every student’s desire to live on campus.
Last summer, former PhD student Maha Hasan Alshawi gathered student and community support when her allegations of sexual harassment from computer science professor Alberto Quattrini Li were not sufficiently addressed. During this time, we, as members of the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault, took part in various conversations with administrators, hosted round tables and collaborated with Alshawi, as well as the advocacy group Justice4Maha, in response to the allegations and the lack of response by the College. We stand by our decision to have done so and will continue supporting and advocating for survivors on campus without hesitation. A formal investigation process began only after Alshawi risked her life in order to increase the visibility of the harm she experienced on campus.
Over the past few months, many students have felt disconnected from the Dartmouth administration. Many of us believe that, despite their sincerest intentions, the administration cannot possibly understand how profoundly the COVID-19 pandemic has affected its students. While, of course, the administration has been forced to make difficult decisions as a result of the pandemic, student perspectives have been largely absent during these decision-making processes.
In a shock to absolutely no one, Dartmouth’s scandals are back in the national news.
When I was a freshman in 2018, I found myself tangled within the complicated web of Dartmouth’s mental health policies. At every possible turn, I was treated as a nuisance, a legal liability the College could not risk being accountable for. To stay on campus, I traded my medical freedom, waiving my right to confidentiality so that the College could be sure I was pursuing counseling services I could not afford. More than two years on, it is evident that Dartmouth’s policy of cruelty and punitive action has not changed; in fact, the College’s lack of mercy has worsened in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, when more students than ever are in need of mental health care and support.
We are a group of alumni-affiliated group leaders, many with a decade of experience leading diverse alumni communities including the Dartmouth Asian Pacific American Alumni Association, Dartmouth’s LGBTQIA+ Alumni Association and Women of Dartmouth. But our Dartmouth education did not leave us prepared to address what we’ve seen in the last two months alone: the mass murder of eight people at a FedEx facility, four of them Sikh; the killings of eight in Atlanta, six of them Asian women; the police shootings of Mah’Khia Bryant, Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo; voter suppression and anti-transgender youth bills; and the murders of trans women of color. The problems we as a society face are interconnected, inseparable and built into the foundations of this country. Yet, Dartmouth treats anti-racist, decolonial teaching and queer studies as siloed and optional fields of study, allowing students to graduate without ever having exposure to these essential educational tenets.
Two weeks ago, Dartmouth celebrated Student Employee Appreciation Week. As a token of the College’s “appreciation,” every day from May 10th to the 14th, the bells of Baker Tower played a different song, ranging from the Alma Mater to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”