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The Dartmouth
December 11, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth
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Profs: Long road ahead for democracy in Iraq

By Colin Barry | April 3, 2003

Although the fighting in Iraq may soon be over, the battle for Iraq's future is just beginning, seven professors said at a Middle East forum panel yesterday. The panel -- made up of members of the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program -- discussed the challenges America will face in the coming years as it attempts to foster both democracy in Iraq and stability in the larger world. The panel universally agreed that fomenting democratic government in Iraq will be very difficult after hostilities end. "I'm not optimistic about the development of democracy in Iraq," history professor Gene Garthwaite said. Speakers further dismissed comparisons between Iraq and post-war Germany or Japan. "If you think imposed democratization is a possibility for Iraq and you think Germany is a precedent, you're living in a fantasy land," government professor Anne Sa'adah said. On a larger scale, event participants focused mainly on what they saw as the lack of global support for current American action.

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Network upgrade in final stages

By Nathaniel Ward | April 3, 2003

High-tech phones and streaming videos to student desktops may soon become reality as Dartmouth finishes the final stage of a multi-year update to its aging computer network. The College is on the verge of completing a process that started eight years ago to upgrade its technology infrastructure in order to include some of the fastest available network connections. Attempting the most seamless changeover possible to the new system, a team from Computer Services replaced much of the network hardware over spring break when students were not on campus. With the upgrades, students using newer network cards -- like those included in recent Macintosh computers -- will be able to connect to the network at a speed of one gigabyte per second. One gigabyte, equal to 1,000 megabytes, is about the size of 1,500 two-page Word documents or 350 MP3 song files. Before the changes, students could download files at a theoretical maximum of 100 megabytes per second, though slower transfers were more common. "You'd be really lucky if you ever got the advertised speed," said Bill Brawley, director of user communications at Computing Services. Connections to the outside Internet sites will not necessarily be faster, Brawley warned, since other factors such as Internet congestion could limit the speed. A network of single-mode fiber-optic cable, the same sort of cord that carries the nation's telephone traffic, serves as the basis for the new high-speed connections. Laid originally in 1995 while other wiring work was underway, the College did not activate the high-speed cable until recently because Computer Services lacked the hardware to use it effectively. "At the time, the electronics that would be cost-effective and mature enough to work on our network weren't ready," Brawley said. The very first Dartmouth network was small, but in 1984 the College was one of the first universities to expand its Apple LocalTalk network to every dormitory and office on campus.

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College prepares as SARS spreads

By Zachary Goldstein | April 3, 2003

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that has been responsible for the illness of over 2,200 people worldwide and nearly 80 deaths has arrived in North America. The virus, characterized by pneumonia-like symptoms including high fever and respiratory symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, and difficulty breathing, was first diagnosed in Vietnam and rapidly spread to other southeast Asian countries. "There are more than 50 cases currently being investigated in the United States and Canada in individuals who have recently traveled to these regions," said Dr. John Turco, Director of Dartmouth College Health Services, in a campus-wide announcement. Kathryn Kirkland, epidemiologist at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and a specialist in infectious diseases, said that while SARS has not yet reached the Dartmouth campus, it is conceivable that it could.

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Opening Doors

By Skip Sturman | April 2, 2003

Hey Jed, It's hard to believe that your graduation is just around the corner. Seems like yesterday when your mother and I dropped you off for freshman year at Bucknell in the midst of a raging rainstorm.

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SA seeks to ease stress of split reading period

By Jessica Spradling | April 2, 2003

Creating a less stressful reading period for students this term is officially on the Student Assembly agenda, as a reading period reform proposal passed unanimously at a brief Assembly meeting last night. Student Body President Janos Marton '04, Vice President for Academic Affairs Jonathan Lazarow '05 and the Academic Affairs Committee co-sponsored the proposal, which calls on the Assembly to lobby the faculty to give no tests after May 20 and make final papers due before the days between reading period, unless that paper is the final grade in a given class. The reading period reform is in response to the "split reading period" that has become the normal conclusion to academic classes in the Spring term.

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Wheelock expands, absorbs new demand

By Thomas Sexton | April 2, 2003

Dartmouth students no longer have a choice when shopping for textbooks in Hanover. With the Dartmouth Bookstore forced to discontinue textbook sales to undergraduates, Wheelock Books has been expanding its staff to accommodate the resulting increase in business. Although many have expressed concern about the lack of shopping options, students have generally found Wheelock's accommodations to be adequate in handling the start-of-term textbook rush. The Dartmouth Bookstore had been considering scaling back its textbook department since last summer.

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Carapico details life in Yemen

By Elise Dunphe | April 1, 2003

"Yemen is one of the most outspoken of the Arab countries," Sheila Carapico, a professor at the University of Richmond, said, explaining that Yemeni citizens enjoy relative freedom of speech and of the press. Carapico, who has lived in Yemen for the purposes of study, argued that important strides have been made in the modernization of the country and in the civil liberties granted to the citizens, but that Yemen remains a nation not quite democratized. Because Yemen has not yet fully achieved democracy, she said, the government is vulnerable to moving further away from pluralism in the new age of heightened national security measures.

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Press sounds off on urban warfare

By Max Brooks | April 1, 2003

Dartmouth government professor and urban warfare expert Daryl Press joined such national luminaries as Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman on the March 26 editorial page of The New York Times to analyze the course a battle for Baghdad might take. "The basic argument is a good news/bad news story," Press explained to The Dartmouth.

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Hart reflects on past leaders, academia

By Elise Dunphe | March 31, 2003

Former Senator Gary Hart slowly walked across the Green, wearing a tie with bald eagles clutching the Declaration of Independence in their talons, and spoke of his admiration for Thomas Jefferson. He did not say whether or not he would be running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004.

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