'Harry Potter' hits Hanover stores
While most Dartmouth students may spend this Friday evening like any other, a group of 100 enthusiasts will pull an all-nighter at the Top of the Hop in anticipation of the release of J.K.
While most Dartmouth students may spend this Friday evening like any other, a group of 100 enthusiasts will pull an all-nighter at the Top of the Hop in anticipation of the release of J.K.
At the Elizabeth Mine in Stafford, Vt., Ed Hathaway and his team of EPA-sponsored specialists have been seeing signs of college activities, lingering beer cans and lost sandals for quite some time. In June 2001, "the copper mines," as Dartmouth students refer to the area, were designated an EPA Superfund site, approximately forty years after Vermont recognized the site as a water pollutant. The EPA's Superfund program was established in 1980 to locate, investigate and clean up hazardous waste sites throughout the United States. Ed Hathaway is an EPA project manager for 11 sites in the Vermont and Connecticut Superfund section, which includes Elizabeth Mine. While the site exhibits alarming and hazardous chemical levels, the area that concerns most students -- where the bedrock cut meets the turquoise water -- "is one of the lower contaminated areas," Hathaway said. "That water will not hurt them; concentrations are high enough to affect fish and other aquatic organisms, but not humans," he added. While Hathaway does not advocate activity on the Superfund site, he said it does not appear to be a chemical hazard.
Somewhere in between the madness of graduation, alumni reunions and the start of sophomore summer, a number of large and mysterious packages found their way into the basement of Robinson Hall.
Hoping to stay one step ahead of hackers and other threats to its computer network, the College's Computing Services department is investing millions of dollars in new security mechanisms to combat increased vulnerability. Over the course of the next 12 months, Peter Kiewit Computing Services will phase in new security procedures requiring students to use a physical USB device, together with new security software, in order to access information on the Dartmouth intranet including student grades, administrative files and personal data. Members of the Class of 2008 began using an Aladdin eToken upon issuance of their computer hardware last fall.
For the past seven years, the Dartmouth Outing Club's sophomore trips have been an integral part of the sophomore summer experience, giving students the chance to wander the outdoors and relive freshman year DOC trips.
Even as the death toll from last Thursday's bombings in London continues to rise, Dartmouth officials are breathing a sigh of relief. Scrambling to identify Dartmouth students abroad in London since early Thursday morning, the Office of Integrated Risk Management and Insurance has been in touch with departments throughout the College to determine the safety of members of the Dartmouth community. According to Chris Boroski, associate director of the Office of Integrated Risk Management and Insurance, all students and faculty conducting Dartmouth-affiliated internships or research in London have reported back, unscathed. Boroski cautions, however, that there may be some students abroad in London involved in activities of which Dartmouth is not aware, and there is no way of knowing of their well-being. The new International SOS program available to Dartmouth students was instituted for just such emergencies, Boroski said. International SOS is an overseas program that provides medical and security assistance to students abroad in the event of emergencies. "There is a travel locator part of the program, where students can fill out a travel record of where they're going to be on certain dates, as well as contact information," Boroski said, "but this situation has shown that it's not a very well-used function." At the same time, the International Office has been attempting to contact and keep citizens of the United Kingdom informed. Providing a list of helpful websites and phone numbers, the International Office encouraged students to contact Dartmouth if they had any need of assistance, Director Stephen Silver said. Kenan Yount '06, currently taking classes at the London School of Economics, estimates that he was only about a hundred yards from the explosion of the double-decker bus. "I was on my way back to the school after taking a morning walk when we heard this terrible explosion and then felt a kind of sonic boom associated with the blast," Yount said.
Anthropology professor Hoyt Alverson is challenging the notion of a "drinking culture" at the College with his research. According to Alverson, solving the perceived campus drinking problem would require a complete reform of student culture, necessitating extreme measures that would redefine the Dartmouth experience. The study is the culmination of three years of research on social life at the College and was conducted by Alverson's anthropology students. Drawing from this research, Alverson came to the unorthodox conclusion that binge drinking is not a "problem behavior" that can be isolated from the rest of social interaction, but is instead inextricably tied to culture itself. The study suggests that changing students' drinking behavior is to change culture, a finding that stands apart from most research on the subject. "One cannot pull such an arbitrarily defined bit of behavior from a complex field of activity and seek to change that behavior alone," Alverson writes. Alverson added that if the College succeeded in curbing underage alcohol use and alcohol abuse entirely, it would require "overwhelming force" that would change the characteristic of the College and its students. Alverson said he is unconcerned that such an outcome would be realized, because alcohol is intertwined with social interaction in American universities. The research project took shape shortly after the inception of the Student Life Initiative in 1999.
This past Saturday, some 2,000 bike riders and walkers, alongside 220 volunteers, braved the rain and raised over $700,000 for cancer research at the 24th annual Prouty Fitness Bike Ride and Fitness Walk. "The Prouty" is the signature fund-raising event of the Friends of Norris Cotton Cancer Center, a philanthropic group that raises money, sponsors community events and provides patient services in an effort to find a cure for cancer. The walk is dedicated in honor of Audrey Prouty, a former patient who died from cancer over two decades ago. "Her nurses admired her courage and the way she approached the disease," Michelle Manning, program coordinator for the Friends said in an interview with The Dartmouth. The benefit dates back to 1981, when four nurses biked 100 miles and raised $4,000 for cancer research. "The event has grown quite a bit since then," Manning said. While the majority of participants hail from New Hampshire and Vermont, some groups came to the event from as far as New York City and Chicago.
Judge Michael Wolff '67 became chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court last Friday, succeeding Ronnie White, Missouri's first black chief justice. The Missouri Supreme Court rotates chief justices every two years based on seniority. "It's quite an honor," Wolff said in reference to his new position.
This summer, Dartmouth's SEAD program is launching its fifth successful year in matching up high school students with college mentors -- and providing those students with a support system for the future. The annual Summer Enrichment At Dartmouth program offers a unique experience for underprivileged high school students to spend three weeks on campus and forge both social ties and academic skills. "What we are doing is giving them some more tools," Tucker Foundation Dean Stuart Lord said in 2001, SEAD's inaugural year. This year, 25 high school students are in attendance from July 2 to 23.
The Dartmouth athletic department announced Friday that Sam Hopkins, a member of the athletic marketing office at Brown University, will be joining Dartmouth as assistant director of athletics for marketing and promotions.
Starting this fall, Dartmouth will join each of its Ivy League peers in charging undergraduates over $40,000 in tuition, room, board and mandatory fees for the 2005-2006 academic year.
Many sophomores edged closer to lucrative Wall Street jobs Monday night when the deadline for on-campus recruiting applications expired. For most firms, students had until July 5 to apply for interviews, allowing applicants to learn by July 12 if they will be continuing in the recruiting process.
For many sophomores, Summer term is largely focused on their respective Greek houses as both a living and social space.
Sophomores who may have expected the campus to feel less crowded during the Summer term are often surprised by long lines at the dining halls and crowds in the library.
The Class of 2009 has some extra star power thanks to an incoming freshman who secured a role on a new ABC reality television show.
While most professors were spending the first week of May in their classrooms, government professor John Carey embarked on a different kind of teaching mission, instructing members of the recently victorious Sudan People's Liberation Movement how to establish an autonomous democratic legislature. After 20 years of fighting, the Sudanese government has ceded roughly one-third of Africa's largest country to the SPLM, leaving the guerilla army with the arduous task of converting its leadership council into the viable regional government stipulated under the peace agreement. Carey joined two other political scientists, one from South Africa and another from Nigeria, to put on the five-day workshop organized by the International Republican Institute, a group dedicated to "advancing democracy, freedom, self-government and the rule of law worldwide." According to Carey, the workshop had the same tenor as a Dartmouth classroom. "It was kind of like a classroom except these guys were even more attentive than Dartmouth students because they have a lot more at stake," Carey said. While Carey said he believes that the members of the SPLM are committed to developing some form of representative government, he is not overly optimistic about their chances of doing so in the near term. "The challenges that these guys face are so overwhelming," Carey said.
Harvard University appointed Ryan Travia, coordinator for alcohol and other drug education programs at Dartmouth, as its director of alcohol and substance abuse services late last month.
While most Dartmouth students disagree with the United States Army's "don't ask don't tell" policy, they still overwhelmingly support the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Dartmouth, according to a recently published Student Assembly poll.
Prospective students considering Dartmouth have one more rating upon which to base their decisions.