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The Dartmouth
June 14, 2026
The Dartmouth
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News

Police charge second man with murder of '07

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Police arrested Christopher Hollis, the second man charged in the murder of Dartmouth student Meleia Willis-Starbuck '07, after a Friday night traffic stop in Fresno, Calif. According to Fresno Police reports, Hollis initially gave officers a false name when his car was pulled over under suspicion of a hit and run.


News

Comic offends some, adds fuel to debate over religion

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Debates over the place of religion in campus and community discourse continued Monday evening as the Navigators Christian Fellowship at Dartmouth discussed a recent comic strip caricature of Jesus. The caricature, which Paul Heintz '06 drew as part of his "Guy and Fellow" comic strip in The Dartmouth, portrayed Jesus as a marijuana smoker and Student Body President Noah Riner '06 as a crusading theocrat in the wake of his Convocation speech. Riner's numerous invocations of Jesus during his Convocation remarks bewildered and offended some members of the Class of 2009 and prompted the resignation of a high-ranking Student Assembly official. In a routine meeting Monday, Navigators officers responded to Heintz's comic.


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Gazzaniga to leave for UCSB

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Michael Gazzaniga, one of Dartmouth's most renowned faculty members, will leave the College at the end of Fall term for a full-time professorship at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Gazzaniga, who is widely regarded as the father of the cognitive neuroscience field, will join UCSB's psychology department in the winter and head up a new interdisciplinary center for the study of the mind, UCSB psychology department chair James Blascovich said. Currently the David T.


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Lecture series examines religion, politics

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As faith occupies an increasingly high profile part of public life, academic disciplines at the College are coming together to sponsor a new lecture series on on religion as politics as part of the Dartmouth Centers Forum. Aine Donovan, executive director of the Dartmouth Ethics Institute, one of six interdisciplinary centers involved in the forum, said the topic for this year's events came out of the last presidential campaign. "The idea of religion and politics as this year's topic was conceived during the 2004 election when Howard Dean was visiting campus as the Rockefeller Center's Class of 1930 Distinguished Fellow," Donovan said. Campus discussion surrounding the speech Student Body President Noah Riner '06 delivered at this year's Convocation exercises has made the topic even more relevant, Donovan added. "The recent Riner controversy has served as a great impetus for the whole discussion of religion's role in politics," she said.



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Disparate enrollment threatens some courses

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If just one more student drops Geography 49, "The Nation and its Others: France, the Jews and the Muslims," the class will be cancelled. While new and obscure courses already draw few students, Geography 49 has also suffered from being omitted from the College's course catalog and, until the end of the summer, from its Internet course listing.


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Former College provost advises 'scholarly temperament'

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Returning to Hanover Friday afternoon, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger addressed a crowd of 100 in Filene Auditorium on the role of academic freedom in higher education. Bollinger, this fall's Dorsett Fellow at Dartmouth's Ethics Institute, emphasized the need for constant reassessment in the world of scholarship. "What is worth knowing should constantly be under review," he said. Bollinger's career has seen its share of controversy.



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Class officers consider merger of alumni groups

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Over 300 officers, hailing from Class of 1929 through the Class of 2005, attended last weekend's Class Officers Weekend, an event aimed at educating new officers, sharing techniques and energizing the classes. The Alumni Governance Task Force also proposed changes this weekend that would make the Alumni Association more egalitarian, it said in a statement it released. "Currently there are two alumni governing bodies: the Alumni Association and the Alumni Council," Rex Morey '99, assistant director of young alumni and student programs, said.


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Garrott to head Aquinas House

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The walls at Aquinas House, the College's Catholic student organization, could soon reverberate with the music of a guitar-playing priest as Father William Garrott assumes the center's directorship. Garrott, who was ordained in 1994, received his master's degree in theology from the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome and spent time as an associate professor in Ohio. Most recently, Garrott worked as director of vocations at the Order of Preachers in Washington, D.C., where he recruited young men interested in becoming Dominican brothers and priests. At Dartmouth, Garrott's responsibilities include saying mass, meeting with students and organizing Aquinas House activities.


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Katrina devastates students' homes

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Over three weeks ago, the winds of Hurricane Katrina poked holes in the tile roof over the house where Veronica Jones '06 and her family had decided to wait out the storm. The day after the worst weather subsided, the levees that held back Lake Pontchartrain broke, sending floods nine feet high into senior Anton Hasenkampf's neighborhood.


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Fifteen finish cross-country biodiesel bus trip

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As Americans shuddered at fast rising gas prices this summer, 15 Dartmouth students traveled 10,000 miles across the nation and back promoting environmentally friendly transportation in the Big Green Bus, a 37-foot vehicle fueled almost entirely by vegetable oil. After the group completed each day's journey, they met up with Dartmouth alumni, ultimate frisbee players and family friends who hosted the group overnight. The seven members of the group who were approved to drive the bus divided the journeys to their next destinations, which ranged from two or three hour stretches to the overnight journey from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, to Seattle. The bus ran primarily on vegetable oil, the same liquid used to fry eggs at the Hopkins Center's Courtyard Cafe, but it also used diesel fuel, or the more environmentally friendly biodiesel fuel, to heat the engine.



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SA committee chair resigns after contentious speech

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One day after Student Body President Noah Riner '06 delivered a controversial Convocation speech invoking Jesus, the Student Assembly's Vice President for Student Life Kaelin Goulet '07 severed all ties with the organization. Goulet, a Riner appointee, announced her resignation Thursday to several other Assembly executives. "I consider his choice of topic for the Convocation speech reprehensible and an abuse of power," Goulet wrote in a BlitzMail message obtained by The Dartmouth, to which she attached the text of her resignation letter. "Your first opportunity to represent Student Assembly to the incoming freshmen was appalling," Goulet wrote to Riner.


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Wilson to plead not guilty in Willis-Starbuck murder

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Christopher Wilson, the 20-year-old California resident accused of murdering Meleia Willis-Starbuck '07, postponed entering a plea on the charge of homicide when he was arraigned last week in Hayward, Calif. Wilson, a friend of the slain Dartmouth junior, has been released on $326,000 bail and is due back at Alameda County Superior Court on Oct.


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Riner lays out plans for SA, defends Convocation speech

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The Student Assembly will concentrate on reducing class sizes, soliciting student concerns and assisting campus groups this year, Student Body President Noah Riner '06 said Wednesday in an interview with The Dartmouth. Riner, whose controversial address at Tuesday's Convocation exercises included repeated references to Jesus, said the speech had nothing to do with his agenda for the Student Assembly but was intended to get students thinking and talking about character. "I realize that I have a very specific perspective on the issue of character," Riner said.


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Wheelock dominates text market

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Despite the long lines that still reveal Wheelock Books' dominance over the Hanover textbook market, the new management at the Dartmouth Bookstore is trying to reestablish its reputation in the community and create a renewed competition between the two stores. According to John Cusick, who took over the role of manager when John Schiffman '62 purchased and renovated the Dartmouth Bookstore last summer, patronage to the store has increased significantly compared to last year. Cusick partially attributed the sales growth to more professors who were willing to share their book lists with the store this term. "There are still some who are not sharing their lists with us, but we're very appreciative of those who are, as are the students who now have the option of buying their books here," Cusick said.


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Police Blotter

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Aug. 22, Boathouse Road, 4:12 p.m. Dartmouth Safety and Security reported to Hanover Police that a lewd man had repeatedly feigned drowning to entice lifeguards, usually female Dartmouth students, to swim out to him and discover that he was not wearing any clothing.


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Construction across campus on track for 2006 completion

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Five major construction projects have already begun to transform the Dartmouth campus this fall. Well underway, the combined $113-million effort, which began in August 2004 and is scheduled to end in 2006, represents a major expansion of the College's educational, athletic and residential facilities. The projects include two new residential facilities, an addition to the Thayer School of Engineering, an overhaul of the Alumni Gym and a series of buildings to house a variety of departments and centers.


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Tuck takes top spot in WSJ ranking

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The Tuck School of Business reclaimed the top position in this year's Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive business school rankings, up from the number three spot last year.