Peters: End of Term Time Management
(05/28/21 6:05am)
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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.
The Dartmouth has postponed tomorrow’s issue of Mirror to Thursday, May 27 in order to give our writers, editors and staffers time and space to attend tonight’s vigil mourning and honoring the four Dartmouth undergraduate students who have died over the past year. In particular, the tragic death of Elizabeth Reimer ’24 last week and subsequent events have taken a toll on all of campus, and the outpouring of grief and pent-up frustration cannot be ignored.
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.
This column is featured in the 2021 Spring special issue.
This column is featured in the 2021 Spring special issue.
This column is featured in the 2021 Spring special issue.
This column is featured in the 2021 Spring special issue.
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.”
“As Dartmouth approaches the end of a full academic year online, it is important that the Dartmouth community reflects on the successes and failures of the past year. While some of the changes and policies the College has implemented in response to the pandemic have been successful, others have not been. Of the numerous pandemic-related changes that Dartmouth has made this past year, are there any you found to be particularly successful or unsuccessful? Why did you perceive them this way and what changes should be implemented as Dartmouth transitions back to “normal” in the coming months?”
On May 11, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced a new bill: the Ivory Tower Tax Act. The proposed legislation would tax the endowments of some of America’s wealthiest colleges and universities — Dartmouth included — in order to subsidize workforce training programs, even going so far as to require these schools to decrease their endowments over time. The reasoning? Cotton believes that these universities are helping the wealthy become wealthier while teaching students “un-American ideas.” According to Cotton, increasing trade school programs, on the other hand, would help create more “high paying, working-class jobs.” The problem, however, is that this act seeks to counteract economic and opportunity inequality not by addressing their root causes, but by undermining the systems working to fix them.
The Geisel School of Medicine made national headlines last Sunday when the New York Times reported on the medical school’s cheating allegations against seventeen of its students. The Dartmouth has followed up with our own reporting today, shedding light on the worrying conditions at the north end of campus.
How can we start preparing now for the next COVID-19? If you ask some of science and medicine’s best thinkers, the answer lies in monitoring and sequencing viruses in animals, continuing development of new vaccines and increasing funding to the WHO, among other approaches. To be sure, these ideas have great promise — but on their own, they can never be enough. In addition to harnessing innovations in science, preparing for the next pandemic will require a multi-pronged economic plan to tackle mounting financial and social inequities that contribute to the spread of disease and inhibit any attempts to stop it.
In order to win the 2020 presidential election, President Biden made a lot of promises. Not only did he pledge to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic via more responsible management, but he also proclaimed that he would dramatically expand health care coverage, meaningfully respond to climate change, combat police brutality, shrink racial economic gaps and use government power to promote economic growth to create vast numbers of new jobs, among a whole host of other promises. While these are all very important topics worthy of addressing, the frank reality is that apart from emergency pandemic response, Biden has failed to get many meaningful initiatives passed by Congress. If this trend continues, he puts his party at risk in the 2022 midterms, which typically act as a referendum on the sitting president’s performance. To keep control of Congress, Biden must act, and he must act now.
With the United States achieving universal COVID-19 vaccine availability for adults as of April 19 and Dartmouth recently deciding to mandate the vaccine for all students on campus in the fall, a return to normalcy seems to be on the horizon. In light of the recent progress, it’s fair to say that students are looking forward to in-person classes and social activities with minimal risk of catching or spreading COVID-19.
In a May 5 campus-wide email, College President Phil Hanlon announced that due to the increasing vaccination rate and the declining COVID-19 incidence rate nationwide, the College will allow graduates to bring up to two guests to graduation. This announcement embraces suggestions made by students following the initial decision to hold Commencement for families virtually and is a promising sign of an impending return to normalcy on campus — something this Editorial Board has argued is overdue. However, while the College should be commended for revising its decision, for many low-income students and their families the eleventh-hour nature of the decision erects significant financial and logistical hurdles and comes as too little, too late.