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December 24, 2025 | Latest Issue
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SA seeks more open CCAOD proceedings

By Matt Lewis | February 28, 2002

The Student Assembly challenged Dean of the College James Larimore to remove the confidentiality policy binding all members of the College Committee on Alcohol and Other Drugs, passing a resolution Tuesday night creating the Student Assembly Committee on Alcohol Policy. Prior to the 30-to-1 approval of that resolution, religion Professor Susan Ackerman expounded upon the Committee on Academic Advising's report that recommends a complete overhaul of the pre-major advising program. The Assembly resolution proposed that the CCAOD and a supplementary advising committee, the Binswanger Working Group, release their minutes, preliminary reports and the final report to the public before any implementation.

News

College sets strategic plan

By Megh Duwadi | February 28, 2002

Modernization of academic facilities and increased efforts to promote diversity among the initiatives proposed by College President James Wright in a new comprehensive plan for Dartmouth's future. Wright's "Strategic Vision" -- the most in-depth evaluation published since 1990 -- outlines the future of the College's undergraduate and graduate programs and appraises its current position in the community of higher education. "The document itself reflects a lot of discussions with students and faculty and colleagues over the last two years," Wright said.

News

Deflation or inflation? FSPs mean alternative grading

By Victoria McGrane | February 27, 2002

A term spent in an exotic locale, replete with little work, plenty of travel, and learning focused on experience. Or the most vigorous 10 weeks of your Dartmouth career, with highlights including tough classes, tougher grading, and barely enough free time to notice you're not in Hanover anymore. Either one could describe the experience of the 63 percent of Dartmouth students who participate in the College's 30 off-campus programs. The College grants each department total autonomy over the design and administration of its own off-campus programs, a policy that allows individual departments to craft a system they feel best benefits their students. The flip side of this policy, however, is that all study abroad grades are not created equal. One abroad amenity offered by many departments is the opportunity to take courses at a foreign university, taught by faculty from that university, in addition to courses with the Dartmouth faculty member who leads each trip. When it comes exam time, however, these professors do not use the letter-based grading scale of the American university system.

News

Upcoming books to look at Zantop deaths

By Alison Schmauch | February 27, 2002

Last year's murders of professors Half and Susanne Zantop prompted three books recounting the shocking crime from very different perspectives. One book, by Eric Francis, is due for release on April 1, just a few weeks before the trial of suspect Robert Tulloch is slated to begin. Francis, a freelance writer for People, the Boston Globe and the New York Times, has followed the case from the beginning.

News

Unique median-grade policy does not stop inflation

By Charles Gardner | February 27, 2002

Nearly eight years after Dartmouth moved to thwart grade inflation by including median grades on student transcripts, students are receiving more A's than ever before, while some are concerned that the system unfairly penalizes students and promotes competition. Unique in higher education, the policy mandates the inclusion on transcripts of median grades and total enrollment in classes alongside student grades.

News

At Harvard, as the grades rise, so do the disagreements

By Tara Kyle | February 27, 2002

While debate over grade inflation has challenged old habits at campuses across the country, nowhere does pressure for reform loom so large as at media magnet Harvard University. The nation's oldest and most famous university also leads the Ivy League in one not entirely desirable category -- last year Harvard handed out honors degrees with nearly twice the frequency of any of its peers. Nearly half of the grades granted at Harvard last year fell into the A and A- categories -- meanwhile, grades in the C range composed only 4.9 percent of the total. These figures represent marked change over grades given in 1985, which Harvard's dean of undergraduate education Susan Pedersen released in a report on grade inflation sent to faculty late last year.

News

Department by department, grades vary significantly

By Bente Shoen | February 27, 2002

Grade inflation is an obvious trend, but some grades are more inflated than others. Though there are no official policies on grade distribution at Dartmouth, an analysis of departmental grading reveals that grade inflation has not risen all boats equally: there are significant differences between departments. The average median grade in Dartmouth's music department over the last eight terms is a 3.75, whereas that of the biology department is .52 grade points lower -- at 3.23. Make you think twice about which elective to take next term? In Dartmouth of old such inter-departmental disparities did not exist.

Opinion

Hardly Home Ice

By Joseph Vinci | February 27, 2002

For four years, I played football at this college and over those years was subjected to a lot of indecent treatment at the hands of other Ivy League fans.

News

DMS study: tanning increases cancer risk

By Fred Yarger | February 27, 2002

The use of tanning lamps significantly increases the risk of various kinds of cancers, according to a study published this month by researchers from the Dartmouth Medical School. The study has attracted the attention of local tanning bed operators, who claim that they are aware of the risks and use safe tanning methods. The study, authored by DMS epidemiologist Margaret Karagas, found that the use of tanning lamps may more than double the risk of squamous-cell skin cancer and may also increase the risk of basal cell skin cancer by 150 percent. According to Karagas, risk also increases in younger tanners, with those under 20 in the greatest danger. In spite of the study, local tanning bed operators are confident that they are doing everything possible to keep tanning safe for clients. Hanover Hot Tubs owner Eric White said he keeps records of his clients' lamp usage, monitors if they redden or burn and requires the use of goggles during tanning. "We do it our way," White said, "and it's a gradual process." When a client signs up for a tanning appointment, White consults his records or, if the client is new, asks when the tanner last tanned.

News

College once embraced grade policies, now has none

By Bente Shoen | February 27, 2002

A survey of the Special Collection's library reveals a little known feature of Dartmouth academic history: the most recent College grading policy dates to the early 1950s. "We just don't seem to have one any more," said Provost Barry Scherr, who has been at Dartmouth since the early 1970s. Now, instead of a top-down policy, grading is handled largely by individual instructors and somewhat at the departmental level. This disintegration of policy corresponds directly with grade inflation: the overall College GPA has increased by an average of .01 per year over the last 25 years, and this trend appears to have begun in the 1960s, a decade after the publication of Dartmouth's last official policy. Indeed, Dartmouth's Institutional Research Office put out a statistical report in 1971 outlining a decade of grade inflation. Not only has no centralized College policy existed for some time, but even departments shy from standardizing grades internally. History department chair Mary Kelley said her department has no written or unwritten policy and that, as far as she knows, there has been no discussion of moving in that direction.

News

Bobbitt: CIA needs to reform

By Nathaniel Ward | February 27, 2002

An attack with a weapon of mass destruction and other disasters will befall the United States in the next six years unless serious reforms are made in intelligence services, former National Security Council member Philip Chase Bobbitt said yesterday. Bobbitt discussed the ways in which the United States can avoid the disaster, and warned against certain policy options. Sounding a note of skepticism, he said the construction of what he considers an "unachievable" national missile defense system instead of the more plausible "theater defense" among individual allied nations is highly problematic. In the final Montgomery Endowment lecture, Bobbitt said the United States must work to protect international infrastructure, not just its own, and that it must establish an international search warrant to monitor suspected terror groups.

Opinion

Incompetence

By Janis Hui | February 27, 2002

Incompetence. I can't stand it. We all experience incompetence on a daily basis: cashiers who give you the wrong change, drivers who block roads by attempting to parallel park, professors who make you copy a page of a proof before realizing it doesn't work or hairdressers who hack off an inch of your bangs after you specifically tell them not to do so.

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