VOL. CLXXVIII NO. 14
FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2021
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Northern Arizona University dean Kotz announces of students Scott Brown appointed loosened mask mandate interim Dean of the College B y THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
This article was originally published on August 18, 2021.
OLIVER DE JONGHE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Brown will serve a two-year term in the interim position.
B y THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF This article was originally published on August 18, 2021. Northern Arizona University dean of students Scott Brown has been appointed as interim Dean of the College, Dartmouth announced today. His appointment, effective immediately, comes following sociology professor Kathryn Lively’s sudden resignation as Dean of the College earlier this summer, effective June 30 but announced July 19. Brown will work closely with Syracuse University dean of students Marianne Huger Thomson, who has been named interim associate dean of student affairs and will begin her role on Aug. 23. Both Brown
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and Thomson will work in their respective interim positions for two years. Brown said in an interview with The Dartmouth that he understands the difficulties students have faced over the past year. “We’re in this historical moment where people are not getting exactly the spirit, the experience that they maybe hope for,” he said, adding that he aims to “understand the ... deep amount of trauma and difficulty and disappointment and frustration.” According to the announcement, Brown and Thomson will help to support the launch of an undergraduate parents and families liaison team focused on communicating with families about College policies and initiatives. Brown will also be hosting open
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Students frustrated by climbing gym closure seek alternative locations The Dartmouth Staff
NEWS
office hours and start meeting with student organizations before the beginning of fall term. “It’s up to me to really get to know students, understand the student experience, and [find] ways to sort of work with students, and the rest of my staff, to, again, give the best Dartmouth experience we possibly can,” he said. “Part of that is … making sure that I’ve got student input hardwired into as many places as possible.” When asked about Dartmouth’s mental health infrastructure, which faces inadequacies detailed by an investigation by The Dartmouth earlier this summer, Brown said that his approach will focus on both identifying and helping students
First shuttered at the onset of the pandemic, the Dartmouth Climbing Gym remained closed this summer after an internal review uncovered poor ventilation in the space. This closure is set to extend throughout the fall, as renovations have yet to commence. According to Outdoor Programs Office director Coz Teplitz, he and his colleagues must finalize the pricing and timing of the gym’s renovation before the project can begin. “As we explored reopening the climbing gym, a thorough review of the space was conducted,” Teplitz wrote in an emailed statement. “That review revealed concerns that need to be addressed before the facility can be safely reopened, including some issues independent of COVID. We are still actively working to determine if any access to the facility might be able to be provided in the short term.” Dartmouth Climbing Team cocaptain Shaalin Sehra ’23 attributed the delayed renovations — which she said will cost $20,000 — to a “holdup with funding,” noting her frustration at the unclear timeline and the College’s lack of urgency. “It’s frustrating that [the gym] just needs to be renovated and it isn’t,” Sehra said. “…it seems like we can’t really do anything about it and don’t really have all the information — and that it is a fixable problem. It’s just not being fixed.” DCT co-captain Connor Bragg ’22 noted the importance of the gym, saying its unanticipated continued closure this summer fundamentally altered the team’s normal operations. “Not having this space so close to campus definitely was a surprise, because it meant we were going to
have to radically change the way we operate socially [and] logistically [and adjust] our expectations for the summer,” Bragg said. According to Bragg, the team first identified the positive aspects of the climbing gym that they thought had contributed to the team’s strong culture and then considered how best to replicate those elements elsewhere. Bragg highlighted their agreed-upon need for a “shared space,” which he said the team found at an off-campus climbing gym: NH Climbing & Fitness in Concord, New Hampshire. Unlike the gym on campus, which only offers one type of climbing — bouldering, or climbing without ropes — NH Climbing & Fitness has rope climbing, allowing the team to experiment with different disciplines, Bragg said. “We were able to turn the advent of a new gym, a new location, into an opportunity to really figure out what direction we want the team to go in in the future,” Bragg said. However, Sehra noted the challenges associated with driving to a gym located nearly an hour away, compared to the five or ten minutes it normally takes the team to walk to the gym on campus. Although the team hosts five practices a week when Dartmouth’s climbing gym is functional, Sehra said that the team has only been making trips to NH Climbing & Fitness two or three times a week. Chloe Fugle ’23, a frequent user of Dartmouth’s climbing gym before the pandemic, noted the additional effort it takes to drive off-campus to climb, saying she has only been twice this term. In the past, Fugle said she went to the gym an average of ten times a term, and sometimes as many as three times a week. “You have to prioritize it, because it is a huge chunk of time,” Fugle said. “I’ve only gone twice this
Dartmouth will loosen its indoor mask mandate somewhat for individuals fully vaccinated against COVID-19, interim Provost David Kotz announced in a “Community Conversations” livestream today. Fully vaccinated residents of oncampus housing with no symptoms can remove their masks anywhere in their residences, Kotz said. Additionally, two fully vaccinated people meeting one-on-one indoors may remove their masks as well. Kotz said that the College has received feedback from community members both for and against the reinstated indoor mask mandate, which was put back into place on Aug. 5 a day after Hanover renewed its own mandate. He emphasized his view that the rules are “inconvenient” and “a step backward” in the return to normalcy, but are also “the best and most effective way” to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The school has detected 21 positive cases between Aug. 1 and Aug. 17, 10 among faculty and staff and 11 among students. Of the individuals who tested positive, at least 19 were fully vaccinated, Kotz said, and all of them are “recovering well” and either experienced no or mild symptoms. The reinstated indoor mask mandate is “not intended as the
first step down a path toward other, more restrictive measures like social distancing, smaller event sizes or remote learning,” Kotz said. Rather, by masking, the community can prevent a return to further restrictions, he added. The mandate will be lifted when it is safe to do so, he said, potentially earlier than the end of September. “Our plans for the fall remain effectively the same,” Kotz said, meaning that all classes will be in person and gathering restrictions are not planned. However, later in the livestream, executive vice president Rick Mills previewed an announcement next week that may delay the full return of Dartmouth staff to campus, noting that it is still under “active discussion.” “We have seen other employers, national employers, make the decision to push back the return to campus, return to office, and it’s certainly, I think, something that’s likely to be coming for us,” Mills said. As of Aug. 18, the COVID-19 Dashboard showed 12 active cases among students and three among faculty and staff. Additionally, two unrelated “clusters” of cases among students were identified on Aug. 17 and Aug. 18, respectively; Kotz said in the livestream that one of the clusters was among off-campus students. The on-campus vaccination rate is 94%, and the vaccination rate among the entire Dartmouth community is 85%.
Tuck moves orientation online following case spike, may move classes Due to the identification of eight COVID-19 cases among Tuck School of Business students since Aug. 9, the remaining two days of the Tuck Launch orientation for first-year students will be virtual starting today, according to an email sent to Tuck students by the Tuck Deans’ Office on Wednesday. The message also said that the “Tuck ’Tails” event scheduled for Thursday will be postponed and that Tuck is “closely monitoring” the case count to make a decision on the format of the first week of classes. Executive director of marketing and communications at Tuck Lindsey Walter confirmed in an emailed statement that as of Thursday evening, “no decision has been made yet” about the format of Tuck classes, which begin next week. A s o f T h u r s d ay eve n i n g, Dartmouth’s COVID-19 Dashboard showed 17 active cases among students and 3 among faculty and staff. Vice president for communications Justin Anderson confirmed in an emailed statement that the “cluster of at least
10 individuals” indicated on the dashboard is the Tuck outbreak. According to the message, the cases are “occurring despite vaccination,” and masking continues to be required in all indoor Tuck spaces. Tuck study groups are still permitted to gather in their assigned study rooms for the CEO Challenge — a 24-hour business case analysis — and a lunch scheduled for Friday will instead be offered in a “grab and go” format. The message also encouraged students to take advantage of outdoor spaces to socialize. While fully vaccinated Dartmouth students are required to get tested for COVID-19 once every 30 days, the announcement said Tuck anticipates asking students to test more frequently in the near term, regardless of vaccination status, and said that more details about increased testing frequency would be available “in the coming days.” Anderson wrote that testing hours will be extended Friday and Saturday “to accommodate an expected increase in demand.” He also wrote that despite the news and the reinstatement of the indoor mask mandate, the College “[expects] and [is] planning for all undergraduate instruction this fall to take place in person.”
term, because I need an evening where I have enough time.” The team also had to request significantly more money from the DOC than in past terms, Sehra said, noting that she “wouldn’t be surprised if [the amount] was more than double” the team’s normal budget. The cost of gas for vehicles and the termly $600 team membership to the off-campus gym are responsible for the increase in expenses, Sehra added. According to Bragg, the climbing team is “one of the lowestsubsidized clubs of the DOC” despite having some of the highest costs. He noted that for the team to remain operational while the Dartmouth gym is closed, they will need to begin requesting more money from the DOC. Although the DOC will likely continue to fund the membership to NH Climbing & Fitness this fall, Sehra said, the team is also exploring
the possibility of building its own climbing wall. The DOC and the OPO vetoed the construction on campus due to space constraints, but Sehra said an off-campus house may be a potential location for the wall. Going forward, Bragg said he aims to incorporate more students from the Classes of 2024 and 2025 into the team as it gears up for what he hopes to be a reopening of Dartmouth’s gym in the winter. “Our goals are kind of really defined ways to expand on our successes this summer of getting people to be able to successfully return to climbing,” Bragg said. “We’re looking to really integrate the newcomers, whether they be new to climbing or just simply new to the team, into our operations, and then also properly set up for competition season and hopefully [excel at] the high level that we normally perform at.”
B y THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
This article was originally published on August 19, 2021.
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2021
Parents, administrators ‘very optimistic’ about SAU 70 school district’s fall return to classes B y Kyle Mullins
The Dartmouth Senior Staff
As school reopening debates blaze across the country, Hanover and Norwich seem to have quietly dodged major battles. Similar to their operations in the 2020-2021 school year, the School Administrative District 70, which includes four public schools on both sides of the Connecticut River, will return this year to fully in-person learning and will require mask wearing for at least the first two weeks of the fall. Unlike last year, the district will not offer a remote option. And unlike at Dartmouth, where the reinstatement of the indoor mask mandate sparked frustration among students, these decisions are not particularly controversial, according to both parents and school district administrators. “We’ve had a very supportive community on all sides, with faculty and staff and parents,” assistant superintendent and pandemic response committee chair Robin Steiner said. “People have generally overall been very supportive of the steps that we’ve taken.” Local parent Stephanie Tomlin, who until recently directed the Dartmouth Atlas Project — which maps nationwide health data — at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, concurred. As an administrator for the “SAU 70 Parents, Guardians & Supporters” Facebook group, she has witnessed and waded into countless conversations between community members over the course of the pandemic. “Moving into this school year, I think the vast majority of parents — although I’m sure there are some that don’t agree with this — I think the vast majority are excited to have our kids back in school,” Tomlin said. “We reflect on what I perceive … as what went really well in the last school year.” The amicable consensus in SAU 70 stands in contrast to much of the rest of the country. Just 53% of the 100 largest school districts in the country will require masks this fall, despite Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance recommending universal masking in K-12 schools. In Texas and Florida, Republican governors have
barred schools from implementing mask mandates, leading some rebellious schools to accept funding cuts or make masks part of the dress code. And in some districts, the spread of the Delta variant has led schools to offer virtualonly options for students again. For SAU 70 administrators, their planning for the upcoming year was made easier by what they see as a successful school year last year. Out of 1,700 students, the district reported just around 10 cases of COVID-19 all year and zero cases of in-school transmission, Steiner said. Less than 10 staff tested positive all year as well, Steiner said, all from “outside contacts.” In comparison, 370 Dartmouth students and 78 faculty and staff have tested positive since July 1, 2020, according to the College’s COVID-19 dashboard. Approximately 200 in-person students were quarantined at some point in the year due to potential exposure, but none ever tested positive, Steiner added. Only around 100 students chose to be fully remote all year, making the lack of cases that much more notable. “We were so fortunate,” she said. “... I think we were really cognizant of maintaining the health of students within the school, and then with maskwearing, social distancing, cleaning protocols and ventilation systems, all of that really worked to mitigate — preventing COVID from being in the schools.” Widespread vaccinations have further bolstered district officials’ confidence. Steiner said that the vaccination rate among teachers and staff is “close to or over 90%.” Student rates are more difficult to nail down. Hanover High School is still working on collecting data for freshmen and sophomores, as well as following up with students who received one shot in the spring to ensure they got their second, but Steiner predicted that the data will eventually show that around 90% of high schoolers are fully vaccinated. As of Tuesday, the school’s official — but incomplete, she stressed — figure is that 63% of students have already confirmed their full vaccination status. The Frances C. Richmond Middle School in Hanover is split between students under 12 — ineligible for vaccination — and those 12 and over
LORRAINE LIU/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Hanover High School sports a high vaccination rate, according to district officials.
who are eligible, and Steiner said that vaccination data was not available for the school. However, she noted that “high numbers” of students were dismissed from school in the spring to get vaccinated when the PfizerBioNTech vaccine was approved for ages 12-15, indicating substantial uptake. “We’re very optimistic that as long as everyone does their part like they did last year, and is making sure that they’re not going to school sick and that they’re wearing masks and getting vaccinated, we’re confident that we’re going to have another great school year,” Hanover school board chair Rick Johnson said. A vaccine mandate for staff and students is under consideration, both Steiner and Johnson said, but the district has not decided one way or the other, Steiner added. Both said there is concern about the legality of a mandate and that it will likely be a topic of discussion in upcoming negotiations with the local teacher’s union. The New Hampshire chapter of the National Educational Association, a teacher’s union, backed vaccine mandates for teachers on Aug. 13. In addition to unequivocal support for mask mandates, local parents
— including Tomlin, French and Italian professor Lucas Hollister and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center emergency medicine doctor Alison Kapadia — also voiced support for a vaccination mandate. They and their children are fully vaccinated or will be when eligible, they all said — so why not their teachers? “I think that vaccine mandates are an obvious step,” Hollister said. “As a parent, we’re constantly having to keep our children’s vaccinations current for all sorts of things, to send them to camp, to send them to school. There are already vaccine mandates [for other diseases]. So I know that it’s become politicized, but I don’t see why.” All three also expressed excitement for the upcoming in-person school year, given the success of the previous year. Kapadia said that her child, an eightyear-old going into third grade at the Bernice A. Ray Elementary School in Hanover, only spent one day at home last year — the day after many teachers got their second dose of the vaccine and called out sick due to side effects. That, she said, was “amazing,” given the pandemic. “The Ray School and SAU 70 just really did a phenomenal job handling
COVID,” she said. “I know there were some classrooms that had to go remote for a week or two if there was a positive case, but that was really uncommon and that was part of managing this pandemic so well.” Hollister said that online activities provided by his six-year-old daughter’s day care at the start of the pandemic “didn’t take at all” for her; she had “no interest,” he recalled. When she entered Marion Cross Elementary School in Norwich last fall, the opportunity she had for in-person kindergarten all year was an “amazing gift.” “It made a huge difference in our lives,” Hollister said. “Both my wife and I work full time, so having our daughter in school was a big deal.” Tomlin emphasized the benefits she believes fully in-person education brings for her kids. Despite the spread of the Delta variant, she said the district is making the right call in bringing everyone back. “I feel like we spend so much time on our screens that these kids in particular really need human interaction, and so they lost a lot of that during [the pandemic],” Tomlin said. “I’m very supportive of them being in school and having that.”
Pickup orders routinely stolen from Tuk Tuk Thai Cuisine B y Emily lu
The Dartmouth Staff
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tuk Tuk Thai Cuisine has experienced a slew of stolen pickup orders, according to management. These orders are left out on a counter near the entryway of the restaurant to allow for contactless pickup. Carryout orders are stolen two to three times each week, according to Ken Pace, husband of Tuk Tuk owner Pannipa Pace. He said that customers are “very irate” about the situation, which he understands: When orders are stolen, the restaurant must redo the process of preparing the order. “It’s very unfortunate,” Pace said. “... There’s not really much we can do about it because we have to leave [the food] out there, because it makes it convenient for everybody.” Pace added that the restaurant has cameras installed by the entryway where orders are placed and has footage of people stealing meals. However, he said he does not want to single out students or other members of the community. Hanover Police lieutenant Mike Schibuola said that he is not aware of any recent issues with stolen food orders and that the department has not received any reports of theft from Tuk Tuk. Pace said that generally, individuals who steal will order a meal or two, but when they go to pick up their order, they leave with more than just their dishes — snatching much larger $100-or-more orders from the counter. “It’s one thing if someone’s hungry — I’m more than happy to feed them,” Pace said. “I’d truly be happy to give people food if they needed it.”
ALLISON ZENG/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Other restaurants in town reported few issues with carryout theft.
Given the convenience of contactless pickup, Pace said he anticipates that the system will continue after the pandemic despite the thefts. Other than Pace, owners of local restaurants and businesses said they have not experienced food theft problems.
Owner and CEO of Lou’s Restaurant Jarett Berke Tu’17 wrote in an emailed statement that when carryout orders are missing, it is because of “a simple error” on the customer’s part or because the person who put the food out mistakenly separated parts of an order. Lou’s utilizes
a system of contactless pickup similar to that of TukTuk’s near the doorway of the restaurant. Jewel of India owner Surjit Kaur wrote that Jewel has not experienced stolen carryout orders. Still North Books and Bar, which offers contactless pickup
for books and other orders, has also not had any issues, according to owner Allie Levy ’11. Snackpass, the online food ordering platform used by many Dartmouth students, did not reply to a request for comment.
Brown to fill vacancy left by Kathryn Lively’s June resignation FROM DEAN PAGE 1
in distress as well as building an “community of care that will … hopefully be able to, you know, be a net that that encircles all students.” “How are we helping find the best path to care for [a] particular area?” he asked rhetorically. “And I think the real big one too is just sort of, you know, what are we doing to increase resilience and wellness through the
relationships on campus, what are the kinds of upstream things that are important?” Brown comes to Dartmouth following a stint as the interim vice president and dean of the students at NAU. There, he led the division of student engagement and inclusive excellence as well as the student behavioral intervention and threat assessment teams. Prior to his tenure at NAU, he worked in
college administration at the College of Wooster from 2016 to 2020 and Colgate University for eight years before that. Between earning his master’s in higher education and student affairs from Indiana University Bloomington in 1992 and beginning his PhD in college student personnel administration at the University of Maryland in 1995, Brown served as an area director for Dartmouth’s
Office of Residential Life. He met his wife, a Norwich native who attended Hanover High School, on a blind date at Dirt Cowboy Cafe, he said. “Dartmouth could have been situated anywhere [and] I’d be excited to be here, but it’s … a special place, and it’s a special place for my family,” Brown said. Brown will be the seventh person to serve as interim Dean of the
College or Dean of the College in a decade. Thomson worked as associate vice president for student experience and as dean of students for three years at Syracuse. She also worked in student services at American University and Georgetown University prior to Syracuse. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Georgetown and her master’s degree and PhD at George Washington University.
THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2021
PAGE 3
STAFF COLUMNIST CHELSEA MOORE ’22
GUEST COLUMNIST GRACE SCHWAB ’24
An Inconvenient Truth
Instead of focusing on gaps in the evidence for climate change, we must focus our attention on combating natural disasters.
The steady rise in global temperatures significantly impacts the number, frequency and duration of natural disasters. In Haiti, the official death toll has risen to over 2,000 after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the western part of the island last week, with rescue efforts stalled by a tropical storm that lashed the fragile island just days later. Although the evidence supporting the association of natural disasters with climate change has only increased in recent years, some still argue that the data doesn’t reflect the whole story. In a Wall Street Journal article from August 5, prominent climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg takes issue with how policymakers base climate policy on sensationalized accounts of natural disasters. Lomborg posits that the significance of natural disaster s is only based on what is scientifically known, and that more ‘scare stories’ don’t necessarily mean more global warming. But does it matter how many scare stories result from global warming when a single natural disaster has such immense consequences? Are over 2,000 deaths and 12,000 injuries, as in the case of Haiti, such an inconsequential amount that we shouldn’t take any action to prevent further destruction and loss? Why are we focusing on the chance that Haiti’s earthquake and storm were not connected to climate change-induced temperature increases when, regardless of its relationship to natural disasters, climate change is unequivocally and irrevocably destroying the planet we call home? Lomborg’s criticism is reflective of a remarkable skepticism surrounding the relationship between the increasing severity of natural disasters and rising global temperatures. This increasing skepticism has called into question whether radical environmental policies are an appropriate response to these natural disasters. However, after seeing the destruction in Haiti and around the world, it seems absurd to require there to be a perfect correlation between natural disasters and climate change for us to implement legislation against climate change. Even if there’s a small chance that the two are related, the U.S. should nonetheless implement legislation to combat climate change because of the immense loss of life and suffering brought
about by life-threatening catastrophes. Yes, it is undoubtedly difficult to disentangle the effects of global warming from natural weather variation. Though meteorologists and climate scientists have fully concluded that prolonged periods of heat or cold are attributable to global war ming, weather systems present a complicated, multi-faceted modeling challenge for scientists. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, new climate model simulations and methods combining multiple lines of evidence have led to an improved understanding of human influence on weather and disasters. The 2021 IPCC report states that under higher greenhouse gas emissions, which humans have unequivocally produced, storms will intensify, monsoon precipitation will increase and the earth’s general water cycle will become more extreme and unpredictable. In the past 30 years, climate disasters have tripled in number, and more than 20 million people are being forced from their homes by climate change each year, the Oxfam charity estimates. Rising land surface temperatures have a proven connection to both the severity and likelihood of droughts and wildfires. Rising temperatures and warmer seas lead to more humid skies and thus more intense storms and hurricanes. Moreover, as was demonstrated in Haiti, as global warming increases the violence of storms and hot air pressure, there may even be more intense seismic activity — leading to more frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. This data should be enough for everyone, not just left-wingers, to spring into action. Human influence has warmed the climate at an unprecedented rate over the last 2000 years. Even if we keep our promises made in the Paris Agreement, the global temperature is projected to rise by as much as 3 degrees Celsius, making natural disasters much more prevalent and putting the lives of billions in danger. When it’s a matter of many lives lost, as seen in Haiti, we don’t have time to ponder the precise relationship of climate change to natural disasters. For climate change disbelievers, life-threatening natural disasters should be, at minimum, a wake-up call.
Pay Now or Pay Later
The U.S. should establish a carbon import fee to protect domestic jobs and reduce the impacts of climate change. A recently released report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a loud, clear and harrowing message: Humans are “irrevocably” to blame for the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing rising seas, raging forest fires, devastating droughts, melting ice caps and intense heat waves worldwide. In addition, the report warns that greenhouse gases have become so pervasive that global temperatures will increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next two decades. An increase of up to and over the 2 degrees Celsius mark is likely unless the United States and our global partners act fast to enact bold climate change prevention initiatives. It is therefore more important than ever for the U.S. to institute binding climate regulations — particularly in our international trade model, which is an often overlooked yet significant contributor to climate change. As it stands today, the U.S. lacks a formal clean energy standard for imports. This means that U.S. corporations often choose to produce products that are especially environmentally deleterious in countries that have weaker environmental regulations before shipping these products back to the U.S. for consumption. The damage of this outsourcing, called “carbon dumping,” is two-pronged: It takes jobs away from U.S. workers and undermines our climate goals by permitting polluting practices outside U.S. jurisdiction. For example, if a company were to manufacture a ton of steel in China, the process would cause more than twice as much climate pollution as it would if it were manufactured in the U.S. To consider the implication of this statistic on a larger scale, our pro-polluter trade model has made it so that the goods we import emit as much greenhouse gas as all U.S. domestic factories combined. Creating some form of carbon import tax is an intriguing solution to the issue of regulating the environmental impact of imports. The basic premise of a carbon tax is that any imported good that causes significant climate pollution would have an additional fee placed on top of its original price. Goods such as cement, aluminum, iron, steel, pulp, paper and chemicals account for the majority of global carbon emissions, so they would likely be the focus of the tax. Some opponents of a carbon import fee have argued that it would magnify inequality. Many developing countries do not have the resources or capital to address climate change, so requiring that the world’s least developed countries meet the carbon emissions standards of the most developed countries would be economically crippling. These concerns are valid — carbon import fees challenge several nondiscrimination rules within the World Trade Organization, including Article II of the
WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade laws. Still, there must be incentives put in place so that even less developed countries are held accountable for environmentally damaging practices. The data from the IPCC report indicates that climate change is too time-sensitive an issue to exempt these countries from environmental regulation. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, and Rep. Peters, a Democrat from California, recently proposed a carbon dumping fee called the border carbon adjustment in their FAIR Transition and Competition Act. The BCA seeks to reconcile global equity with climate change action. Specifically, the bill suggests a multi-year phasing system that slowly ramps up the intensity of the carbon fee so as not to jar countries’ economies too severely. The FAIR Transition and Competition Act recognizes that U.S. companies that choose to produce cleaner products incur greater costs, so the BCA would levy a fee on imports for goods that are more carbon-intensive. In this way, the BCA would disincentivize companies from carbon dumping and instead motivate them to meet robust domestic emissions standards so that they can enjoy duty-free global trade. A policy like the BCA would expose corporations for the significant role they play in climate change and ensure that they are held accountable. According to the 2017 Carbon Majors Report by CDP Driving Sustainable Economies, a mere 100 private companies and state-owned enterprises are responsible for over 70%of global carbon emissions produced since 1988. Clear climate standards are a powerful step towards holding these industry giants accountable. As the IPCC report warned, global catastrophe is imminent unless we act now. Part of the solution must include stopping corporations from shopping around their pollution and holding them accountable for the damage they have done to our climate; a carbon import fee is a reasonable way to do just that. It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of such a looming threat of disaster, but there is still hope to save our climate and ourselves if individual citizens, local communities, elected officials, governments and world leaders band together to create lasting, meaningful policy solutions. We must speak out and hold corporations accountable for their role in the climate crisis before it is too late. Grace Schwab is a former intern at the League of Conservation Voters and a member of the Class of 2024. The Dartmouth welcomes guest columns. We request that guest columns be the original work of the submitter. Submissions and questions may be sent to both opinion@thedartmouth. com and editor@thedartmouth.com. Submissions will receive a response within three business days.
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST HANNAH DUNLEAVY ’24
Their Mess, Their Responsibility Military sites must be subject to their state’s environmental regulations.
As national and local concerns mount over contamination from perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — a class of over 4,700 synthetic chemicals that are resistant to environmental degradation and are commonly referred to as PFAS, or “forever chemicals” — states are working to address the PFAS contamination found in soil, water, air, wildlife and humans with more comprehensive regulations and regard for environmental and human health. Indeed, in the absence of federal regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress regarding PFAS, states are taking the lead in addressing PFAS issues. However, the U.S. military — one of the largest PFAS polluters — is not beholden to state standards and can escape responsibility for their role due to lackluster federal standards. To hold the military responsible for its actions that damage both the environment and human health, states must subject the military to their respective PFAS regulations. PFAS pollutants build up in soil, wildlife, water and our bodies, causing damage to our immune system, reproductive organs and endocrine system and increasing the risk of cancer, asthma and thyroid disease. PFAS contamination is widespread: The majority of Americans have perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, PFOS, two common and dangerous PFAS, present in their tap water, and a 2015 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found PFAS in 97% of Americans’ blood. In Hanover, three groundwater samples surrounding our beloved Co-op food store have total PFAS contamination levels of 223.10 ppt, 139.20 ppt, and 55.88 ppt. Two Hanover wastewater treatment facilities on the Connecticut River have PFAS contamination levels of 42.60 ppt and 80.27 ppt. The majority of these samples have contamination levels above the EPA’s health advisory level of 70 ppt, and all of these samples have contamination levels well over New Hampshire’s maximum contaminant levels. The EPA’s efforts have mostly focused on conducting research and issuing an unenforceable drinking water health advisory at 70 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS. Health advisories are non-enforceable and non-regulatory, serving mostly to provide information to state agencies and other public health groups. Meanwhile, some states are conducting thorough PFAS testing, mapping PFAS contamination, passing legislation that reduces the use of PFOS-containing products, suing polluting PFAS manufacturers, funding PFAS cleanup, establishing consumer notices, requiring PFAS testing and creating
drinking water contamination limits. In New Hampshire, the state government set maximum contaminant levels for four PFAS compounds (including PFOA at 12 ppt and PFOS at 15 ppt), gave officials two years to implement changes to ensure PFAS contamination levels are below those maximum contaminant levels, created a $50 million fund in low-interest loans for PFOScleanup and required insurance companies to cover blood tests for PFAS. States’ ability to address PFAS contamination, however, is limited by states being unable to regulate military sites despite them producing some of the highest levels of PFAS in the country. Sovereign immunity — which protects the federal government from lawsuits with a few exceptions — prevents military sites from being sued for not following state environmental regulations. In 2020, the Department of Defense found 600 military sites with PFAS contamination, on top of some states finding thousands of PFAS-contaminated sites on and near military sites. The most significant source of military PFAS contamination is the firefighting foam, an aqueous film-forming foam, used on high heat fuel fires during emergencies and training exercises. Once used, military employees sometimes hosed the spent PFOS-containing AFFF into the soil or dumped it into the sewage system. When states have asked the military to take responsibility and contribute to cleanup efforts, the military has, time and time again, refused. In 2017, the EPA found 96,900 ppt of PFAS contamination in the drinking water on the Pease Air National Guard Base right here in New Hampshire. When New Hampshire officials asked the Air Force to pay for clean drinking water for those affected by Pease’s PFAS contamination offbase, the Air Force refused, and New Hampshire was forced to provide the drinking water assistance instead. In 2019, DOD officials testified before Congress that regardless of total PFAS levels, if combined PFOA and PFOS levels are below 70 ppt, the military would not follow state regulations. Historically, the DOD has opposed environmental regulations, claiming that such regulations interfered with military readiness, hindered the military’s ability to train and were economic burdens. In the case of PFAS, the DOD taking responsibility for their contamination would not compromise national security, as most PFAS contamination is legacy pollution — pollution that remains in the environment after the pollutant is no longer emitting from the original source of the pollution. Additionally, working to clean up PFAS pollution caused by past actions would not interfere with current
or future training methods, as there are now PFAS-free alternatives that can fit the role that PFAS-containing products once had. There are over 100 firefighting foams without PFAS that meet international aviation standards available for military use. Although PFAS-free firefighting foam is more expensive than AFFF, using PFAS-free firefighting foam decreases cleanup and disposal costs. Thus, despite the military’s resistance to making this transition, state demands for AFFF to be replaced with PFAS-free alternatives will not interfere with firefighting training. And finally, the DOD estimates that it would need $2.1 billion for PFAS cleanup and investigation. With a budget of $703.7 billion in fiscal year 2021 and states already conducting thorough investigations, the economic burden of PFAS cleanup should not be a barrier to the military taking responsibility. The Project On Government Oversight found in 2019 that the DOD budget could be cut by $199 billion without undermining national security, and implementing Defense Department Inspector General recommendations based on investigations into waste, fraud, and financial abuse in the military could save $2.3 billion. By refusing to spend 0.298% of its budget on PFAS cleanup, the military is saying “Americans’ health is less important than even the amount of money we could save by decreasing corruption and inefficiency,” a clear misalignment of priorities. The DOD was created to protect Americans’s safety – so why does the DOD avoid acknowledging the harm they do to their own citizens? The military following state regulations is thus necessary for service members’ and citizens’ health. People living near military sites have
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significantly higher blood PFAS levels compared to the national average. Additionally, the DOD has known of PFAS’s toxicity since the 1970s and, in 2001, described PFAS as “persistent, bioaccumulating and toxic.” Yet, remarkably, the DOD did not alert service members to the dangers of PFAS until 2011. Knowingly allowing service members and their families to be exposed to significant amounts of PFAS disrespects service members’ sacrifices for their country. The DOD must take responsibility for their role in contaminating drinking water, which means that PFAS cleanup cannot be left to military jurisdiction alone. As long as states are unable to enforce their PFAS regulations, the military will continue to be negligent in its obligation to care for the health of service members and dodge responsibility for harming Americans. To allow for states to regulate the military, one of two actions can and must happen. One, the president can issue an executive order that commands the DOD to heed state regulations. Two, states can utilize the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, a federal statute that waives sovereign immunity in cases of government officials committing civil wrongs against citizens. States may argue that the environmental harm done by military officials is a tort, giving states the ability to sue the military for its role in PFAS contamination. If these lawsuits are successful, the military will be incentivized to get its act together — and state environmental departments can use the awarded compensation to pay for PFAS cleanup and provide clean water for Americans everywhere. Dunleavy is an intern at the Maryland Department of Environment, where she has worked on PFAS projects in the drinking water program.
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THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
PAGE 4
FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2021
‘HSMTMTS’ Season 2 Lacks Charm of First Season BY PIERCE WILSON The Dartmouth Staff
The second season of the Disney+ backstage musical and mockumentary “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” ended a few weeks ago. This season saw the show depart from its title, as the students in the drama club of East High are no longer working on a production of “High School Musical: The Musical,” but rather of Alan Menken’s “Beauty and The Beast.” Though this season dives deeper into the different characters’ development, it lacks the charm of the first season overall. First, the elephant in the room: while I usually try not to think about actors’ personal lives when consuming media, I found it at times difficult to ignore the looming drama between Olivia Rodrigo and her co-star and on-screen love interest Joshua Bassett. Rodrigo has enjoyed newfound critical acclaim this year following her song “Driver’s License” about her fallout with Bassett, and that fame has eclipsed that of “HSMTMTS.” Thus, it’s easy to see how it can interfere with the viewing experience of this show. Not only was it surreal to watch Bassett and Rodrigo play a couple after their extremely public breakup, but it was also less engaging since their chemistry was weaker. The finale of season one featured their performance of the duet “Just For A Moment” that filled the audience with awe. Their onscreen chemistry was electric; I truly felt like I was watching two people fall for one another, and I cannot commend them enough for that performance. This season though, the chemistry just wasn’t there. I was almost relieved when their characters, Nini and Ricky, began to go through a rough patch and eventually break up — because at least that was believable. Bassett’s performance, in particular, was lacking this season, especially when he and Rodrigo had to act like a couple. It isn’t deadly, but is noticeable enough to be distracting. About halfway through the season, when Nini and Ricky break up, we have a chance to see how each of them deals with the fallout and watch them grow as individuals. Nini explores her songwriting talents and her dreams for the future, while Ricky finally gets
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to contemplate what musical theater means to him outside of his relationship with Nini. This shift in focus was quite refreshing, as I think I would have quickly grown bored if I had to sit through another ten episodes of “will they, won’t they.” Likewise, where last season’s romantic focus was on the aforementioned love triangle turned quadrangle of Nini, Ricky, E.J and Gina, in this season we got to see complexity and depth from all of the other characters. Despite the ensemble cast, much of season one focused on Nini, Ricky, E.J and Gina, making the other characters feel quite one-note, but this season definitely improved upon that. More depth was brought to fan-favorite characters like Courtney, Ashlyn and Big Red, thereby giving a more realistic picture of the trials, tribulations, misunderstandings and tough decisions that high schoolers must contend with every day.
I especially liked how each of the couples in the show had their own issues to work through. In season one, it felt like Nini, Ricky, E.J and Gina were the only characters that had romantic problems. But this season, Big Red worked through his feelings of inadequacy around dating Ashlyn; Sebastian reckoned with the socioeconomic differences between his family and Carlos’s; and Howie and Courtney dealt with issues of honesty and vulnerability. The fact that none of these relationships were perfect and all had complex issues made the show so much more realistic and immersive. Although “HSMTMTS” features compelling characters, the entire High School Musical franchise has always shone in terms of music, and “HSMTMTS” is no different. After all, hearing Rodrigo’s “I Think I Kinda You Know” on Instagram is what compelled me to begin watching the show in the first place. This season’s soundtrack switched
it up and gave us more original songs than before. Although it did not feature any breakout songs à la Rodrigo’s “All I Want” from season one, it featured a much more diverse range of songs that showcased unique vocal performances from cast members who did not feature as prominently on last season’s soundtrack, like Dara Renee and Larry Saperstein. Last season’s soundtrack almost felt like a demo record for Rodrigo, so it was refreshing to listen to songs by her peers. This season’s soundtrack also included a much wider array of genres. I was quite surprised to hear tango, folk and jazz sounds in the show, but they meshed well into the world. I think the most heartwarming performance was the cover of “You Are the Music in Me” by the whole cast in the finale. It reminded me of the magic of the original “High School Musical” movies and of the first season. The first season’s soundtrack was
something I listened to all the time, and it stood on its own as an album. However, this season’s soundtrack is a less cohesive project, and it features fewer songs that I could see myself revisiting. This album also has a much less compelling emotional narrative, and I think some of that is due to the fact that this season did focus on so many more characters. Overall, “HSMTMTS” still feels as though it’s struggling to find its identity at times. Although the show began as a mockumentary, the confessional format was all but ditched this season. As a result, it felt awkward when the show would randomly feature a confessional or break the fourth wall in an episode, because most of the show feels more like a regular Disney production. If “HSMTMTS” is renewed for a third season, I hope it continues to focus on the depth of its characters and refine its sonic identity. Rating: