The Dartmouth 04/23/2021

VOL. CLXXVIII NO. 1

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2021

Qian, Johnston elected Student Assembly president, vice president

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Off-campus students granted access to campus facilities

This article was originally published on April 19, 2021.

Since April 9, roughly 400 offcampus students enrolled in classes have been accepted through a waitlist process offered by the College for oncampus access to facilities including Baker-Berry Library, the Hopkins Center for the Arts, the Collis Center and Alumni Gym, according to College Health Service director Mark Reed.

College spokesperson Diana Lawrence wrote in an email statement that all eligible students who completed the one-time waitlist application by April 7 were approved for on-campus access to select facilities.

While access to some facilities will be expanded, Lawrence wrote that the “public health conditions” did not allow for increased occupancy in the residence halls or dining facilities this spring.

According to Reed, the College decided to grant access to facilities that generally require appointments and can be easily monitored for density, factors that do not apply to residence and dining halls. Reed specifically noted that the Class of 1953 Commons is already at capacity as seating arrangements were designed to accommodate the limited number of students living on campus.

Low COVID-19 case counts —with the exception of the winter outbreak — drove the College’s decision to ease restrictions on certain facilities, Reed said. Even with the influx of students approved off the waitlist, Reed noted that the College has maintained the same capacity limits for these spaces.

Although these facilities are still not operating at maximum capacity, their increased use by approved off-campus students may inconvenience those who are living on campus, Reed said.

“Whatever you do, some people will be happy, and some people will be unhappy,” Reed said. “It is possible that there will be an on-campus student who wants to work out on a bike at a certain hour and it will be taken [by an off-campus student]. That would be an inconvenience. If it becomes really overwhelming, then we may need to adjust.”

But Reed said he hopes that both on-campus and off-campus students appreciate Dartmouth’s decision and will use it as an opportunity to work and socialize together in approved spaces.

Emily McConnell ’22, who was accepted off the College’s waitlist, said she is looking forward to attending rehearsals on campus with her dance group, Fusion Dance Ensemble.

“I’m really excited because now that I have access, I’ll be able to go to in-person dance rehearsals, which is huge because there’s not really a room in the place where I’m living to dance,” McConnell said.

According to Blake Danziger ’22, the ability to leave his off-campus house and work in Dartmouth’s libraries will provide a much-needed “change of scenery” from his current work environment, which he said can be “distracting” at times.

Sonia Eckstein ’23 noted that gaining access to workspaces on campus, such as libraries and study rooms, has had a positive impact on her productivity.

“We’ve all gotten used to working basically in the same room that we sleep,” Eckstein said. “It definitely makes a difference to leave the house and have a quiet place where you know you won’t be disturbed.”

Eckstein added that she is glad to have access to a gym on campus that is “safe and following all of the [COVID-19] protocols,” as opposed to certain gyms in the Upper Valley that operate under a less stringent set of guidelines.

In a recent email to students eligible for on-campus approval, Dean of the College Kathryn Lively outlined a series of protective measures, including those already established for students living on campus.

“You must comply with all testing, physical distancing, face covering, facilities use and other College health and behavioral guidelines,” Lively wrote. “Failure to do so will lead to immediate revocation of any waitlist access privileges for the remainder of spring term, and revocation of approval for summer for those of you who may have that in place.”

Lively also wrote that students must reside at the New Hampshire or Vermont address they provided for the remainder of the spring term.

Should a student’s address change, they are expected to notify the College, which will then revoke “waitlist access approval,” Lively added.

Danziger said that the College’s physical distancing and frequent testing policies make him “generally feel safe” using campus facilities.

Despite existing safety measures, Reed noted the possibility of another outbreak, in which case the College “would have to take whatever steps [it] thinks are necessary to protect the community.”

Those steps may entail revocation of on-campus facilities access for enrolled off-campus students, Lively wrote, adding that students “will be expected to comply” in the event of renewed restrictions.

While H.B. 307 and H.B. 2 are the only bills flagged by the NHMA that have passed the House, several other controversial bills remain under consideration. One of the most notable is H.B. 266, which would require local governments to comply with federal immigration requests and would prohibit local governments from adopting “sanctuary city” ordinances.

Lebanon mayor Tim McNamara said that H.B. 266 could nullify part of the “Welcoming Lebanon” ordinance, which prevents local law enforcement from assisting the federal government in immigration investigations. He added that the point of the ordinance was to create a “welcoming environment” for all town residents regardless of citizenship status.

Griffin said that while she thinks H.B. 266 is “unconstitutional,” it would not have a “significant” impact on the town’s “Welcoming Hanover” ordinance that passed last year. She explained that because Hanover does not hold jailed individuals, and most immigration detainment requests are sent to county jails, the town would not likely be asked to comply with immigration requests.

A number of other bills that could affect local governance have been tabled by the House, meaning that they can be modified and voted on again — likely after significant changes. These include H.B. 439, which would limit the powers of city

councils, as well as H.B. 111, which would repeal qualified immunity, the legal principle that protects city employees from legal liability for actions undertaken in good faith.

McNamara said that H.B. 439 would “greatly restrict” city councils from being able to pass discretionary ordinances, and that a city council would need to go to the state legislature to ask for approval for ordinances like zoning changes, regulation of dogs and mask wearing.

“This bill would have hamstrung our ability to act expeditiously on issues that are important to our city,” McNamara said.

With regard to H.B. 111, Johnston said that the bill could have made cities and towns financially liable for the behavior of their employees, and that municipal employees could be fired even if they had a “reasonable” belief that their actions at the time were lawful. He added that this might mean that towns may have more trouble with hiring employees.

Berch, who was one of the sponsors for H.B. 111, said that the bill supports the rights of “victims” who may have been wronged by the government. He added that he was inspired to draft the bill due to recent controversies over qualified immunity for law enforcement officers.

“We have a constitutional principle that all citizens [have] the right to a redress of harms,” Berch said.

“There should be no exception for government officials.”

BY Ben Fagell

The Dartmouth Staff

COURTESY OF JENNIFER QIAN & MAGGIE JOHNSTON

BY THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF This article was originally published on April 20, 2021.

Students have elected Jennifer Qian ’22 and Maggie Johnston ’22 as Student Assembly president and vice president, respectively.

The Qian-Johnston campaign ran on a platform of elevating student voices, increasing access to academic, financial and emotional resources; fostering an inclusive campus culture and bringing together the Dartmouth community.

The pair will succeed current SA president Cait McGovern ’21 and current SA vice president Jonathan Briffault ’21. Johnston wrote in an emailed statement that the newly elected pair’s tenure will begin upon McGovern and Briffault’s graduation in June.

A total of 1,531 ballots were cast in the election. Of the votes cast for SA president, Qian received 937

PARTLY CLOUDY HIGH 56 LOW 38

while her opponent, Attiya Khan ’22, received 569. SA vice presidential candidates Johnston and Sebastian Muñoz-McDonald ’23 received 927 and 581 votes, respectively. Any undergraduate student was eligible to vote in the election, according to Election Planning and Advisory Committee chair Zipporah Abraham Paiss ’23.

Turnout fell more than 20% from last year’s election, which saw 1,918 ballots cast, 387 more than this year.

Spring enrollment figures are not yet available, but according to the Office of Institutional Research, 4,640 undergraduate students were enrolled in the winter and 4,725 in the fall.

“We’re really, really invested in our platform and just so proud that the student body entrusted us with the privilege of leading Student Assembly,” Qian said.

Johnston said she is looking forward to institutionalizing projects SA has been working on, such as

The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on April 20, 2021.

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SEE SA PAGE 2

Upper Valley officials oppose state bills limiting local governments By andrew sasser

OPINION

the Dartmouth Coach voucher program and menstrual product access program. Qian added that she is excited for the SA committee on mental health to launch a pilot program with the Calm meditation app. The two have already reached out to various clubs and organizations, including the Sustainability Office and Student Accessibility Services Office, and plan to collaborate with others moving forward.

“We’re in a really rare time with the [COVID-19] vaccine and with everything that’s happened this year,” Johnston said. “I think we’re just really excited to start advocating for students and to push for as normal a Dartmouth experience as possible going forward.”

In an email statement, Attiya Khan ‘22 congratulated Qian and Johnston on their win.

“I’m incredibly proud students came forward to make their voices

Twenty of the bills proposed during the current New Hampshire legislative session have been flagged as potentially threatening to the autonomy of local governments by the New Hampshire Municipal Association, a group that advocates for the interests of towns and localities at the state capitol. Many of the bills would result in the state exerting more control over local affairs in policy areas ranging from gun control to immigration enforcement.

Two of the most controversial bills — H.B. 307 and H.B. 2 — have passed the Republican-controlled state House during the 2021 legislative session. H.B. 307 would prohibit municipalities from regulating the use and possession of firearms on public property. An amendment in H.B. 2 — the state budget bill — would forbid local governments and any contractors they hire from teaching their employees about “divisive concepts” like “race and sex scapegoating.” The bill’s critics say it would impede instruction on systemic racism, sexism and implicit bias. Both bills are currently under consideration by the state Senate, which is also controlled by Republicans.

“This is the most toxic legislative session I’ve seen in 31 years with how the House is treating local gover nments,” Hanover town manager Julia Griffin said. “It seems that multiple committees have gone rogue, recommending bills that could harm local governments.”

NHMA government affairs counsel Cordell Johnston said that there has been a growing anti-local government sentiment in the New Hampshire legislature in recent years, particularly in the House. He added that while the lobbying group has had “decent

success” in influencing votes against the 20 bills, the group will continue to lobby the Senate to reject H.B. 307 and H.B. 2.

Griffin said that if signed into law, H.B. 307 would prevent Hanover from restricting activities like gun sales at the Community Center or firing a gun in a public park or cemetery. Similarly, Johnston said that the “nonsensical” divisive concepts amendment in H.B. 2, while unlikely to be included in the final budget bill due to opposition from industry groups and Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, has upset many businesses.

“Both of these bills represent steps towards state control of local affairs,” Griffin said. “The ‘little government values’ the legislature promotes are really just big government in sheep’s clothing.”

New Hampshire state representative Sharon Nordgren, D-Hanover, said that Republican representatives, who won control of both chambers of the state legislature in the 2020 elections, refused to pass a budget bill unless items like the “divisive concepts” amendment were included in the bill.

All but two House Democrats voted against the bill, a level of opposition Nordgren attributed to the inclusion of other “controversial” amendments including cuts to the rooms and meals tax and restrictions on emergency powers.

State representative Paul Berch (D-Westmoreland) said that he opposed the “divisive concepts” amendment in H.B. 2, arguing that the measure would prevent school systems and companies from being able to “accurately” teach the history of the United States and New Hampshire.

He added that he was “surprised” that Republicans would pass a bill limiting employee training that private contractors could implement.

Republican representative Beth Folsom (R-Wentworth), who voted for both bills, did not respond to requests for comment.

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

PAGE 2

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2021

Biden infrastructure plan may include funding for Upper Valley

BY Soleil Gaylord The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on April 19, 2021.

On March 31, President Joe Biden unveiled the American Jobs Plan, a landmark legislative proposal that would allocate $2.3 trillion toward infrastructure projects over the next eight years. If the proposal is ultimately passed by Congress in some form, local New Hampshire town leaders in the Upper Valley said that they will seek to use the funding to support local infrastructure improvements for transportation, bridges, broadband access and energy systems.

The plan, which is funded by restructuring the corporate tax code and raising corporate tax rates, aims to modernize bridges, roads, highways and water pipes; update public transit; invest in “resilient” and “energyefficient” infrastructure; and expand broadband access. Provisions within Biden’s plan also target multiple forms of transportation updates, including expanding Amtrak service in the northeast corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., converting the United States Postal Service vehicle fleet to all electric vehicles and upgrading airports and waterways.

Along with national sites, the proposal also has the potential to fund infrastructure improvements in the Upper Valley. According to Hanover public works director Peter Kulbacki, the town’s most pressing infrastructure issue is its water system, which he said is over 70 years old.

Ku l b a c k i s a i d m a ny N e w Hampshire regional wastewater treatment and water distribution systems were constructed before the 1900s, during the Great Depression, or right after World War II, and were

often built with lead fittings.

“They’re pretty old pipes, and there hasn’t been a lot of infrastructure investment in those for years,” Kulbacki said.

Kulbacki said bridges and broadband access are also major infrastructure priorities for Hanover.

He noted the lack of internet access in some areas of the Upper Valley; many rural areas, he said, do not have broadband access.

Kulbacki also said that Hanover is working to create more sustainable and resilient energy grid systems by transitioning to more renewable energy sources.

“We are working on how we can make our grid more resilient, but also provide local power,” Kulbacki said.

“The College is doing that right now — they’ve got a bunch of buildings with rooftop solar.”

Kulbacki added that Hanover plans to build one more solar array this spring, and that once it does the town will have about 90 percent of its power generated on “home facilities and lands.”

According to Lebanon city manager Shaun Mulholland, Advanced Transit, which provides free shuttle buses in the Upper Valley, has a plan to transition to electric buses, a plan that would be “accelerated” by funding through the American Jobs Plan. He added that one of the energy-related projects that his office submitted to Rep. Ann Kuster, D-N.H., to be potentially included in the American Jobs Plan includes transitioning the town’s fleet vehicles from being combustion enginepowered to an all-electric fleet.

Mulholland also said that the Lebanon Municipal Airport is looking into the prospect of electric aircraft from a Vermont company called Beta Technologies, a project he said he plans to apply for funding from

NAINA BHALLA/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

The American Jobs Plan aims to modernize roads and highways, among investing in other infrastructure projects.

the American Jobs Plan if the bill is passed.

“For smaller airports, this could be a game-changer in terms of our public transportation,” Mulholland said.

According to Mulholland, Lebanon has a “significant amount” of roads and bridges that need to be repaired.

He added that red-listed bridges — projects designated by the state of New Hampshire as structurally deficient and in need of repair — include Trues Brook bridge, the Route 12A Main Street bridge and the Route 120 Hanover Street bridge.

“The state provides very little

money — it’s at the bottom of the list in terms of providing money to municipalities for bridge work,” he said.

Hartford, Vermont public works director Hannah Tyler said that Ver mont’s biggest challenge in improving its infrastructure has been finding applicable funding sources without relying completely on taxpayer dollars.

“One of the problems with infrastructure around the nation is there were big investments in the late 1940s through the 70s, and then we forgot to continue to make good, healthy investments,” Tyler said.

“Everything’s now 50 to 70 years old, and it’s significantly deteriorated.”

Tyler added that Vermont has had steady funding streams for drinking, waste and stormwater infrastructure due to the state’s commitment to keeping pollutants out of Lake Champlain and the Long Island Sound. However, according to Tyler, the state has historically lacked funding for deteriorated bridges.

“The state of Vermont has some grant programs that are available for bridges — they tend to be relatively small, where the max is $75,000 for replacing a $6 million bridge,” Tyler said.

Dartmouth Design Collective hosts second annual Designathon

BY Sydney Wuu

The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on April 19, 2021.

Twenty-three participants across six teams participated in Dartmouth Design Collective’s second annual Designathon from April 9 to April 15. Although last year’s Designathon took place over a weekend, this year’s challenge lasted one week and focused on the theme of educational equity.

The Designathon awarded prizes to the top three teams; CampUS took first, Pathways second and Symbio third. The four members of the first place team were Abigail Johnson ’23, Ardelle Ning ’22, Feray Ok ’23 and Katie Shi ’21.

Johnson said the CampUS prototype is designed to provide customized support to international students coming to college, focusing on social and academic situations like making friends or navigating a foreign grading system.

On the CampUS platform, users can create personalized profiles with information such as school, class, area of study, race, gender and income level to browse posts created by similar users.

Johnson added that the application includes a messaging feature that allows international students to build a sense of community and mentorship.

Johnson and her three teammates received a $1,500 stipend from the Thayer School of Engineering to further develop the project, an Apple Home Pod Mini for each group member and a group consultation with The Literacy Lab recruitment associate Alexis Underwood, who was one of the judges at the Designathon. The Literacy Lab is a nonprofit organization that provides children in preschool through third grade with evidence-based literacy intervention, and was one of the sponsors for the event.

Pathways aimed to empower community college students to transfer

to four-year universities, while Symbio focused on the facilitation of mutual aid for low-income students in the Dartmouth community.

Dartmouth Design Collective president Cindy Yuan ’22 listed three main goals of the Designathon: to give students the opportunity to think critically about a social issue from a design lens, to bring the design community together on campus and to provide a productive learning experience for friendly and fun competition amongst students.

Yuan said the officers opted for a weeklong format to reduce Zoom fatigue and to allow students the opportunity to generate more thorough work, adding that the biggest challenge caused by the virtual format was navigating different time zones and getting participants on the same page without a physical base.

“The event went pretty well, although the virtual weeklong format was definitely very experimental and something we don’t see ourselves going back to post-pandemic,” Yuan said.

Alex Wells ’22, a member of the Dartmouth Design Collective executive board, said the Zoom format made it difficult to sustain the “high energy” of designing in person.

“People had a little bit more trouble staying fully invested,” Wells said. “I think, by and large, that is the nature of most remote work that we’ve been doing this year, but it was a little bit harder to keep energy and motivation high for some of the teams.”

Yuan said that she was “very impressed” by the overall quality and variety of work generated by the six teams.

“We saw a lot of different types of solutions [to educational equity problems] ranging from tackling accessibility issues, designing for international students, focusing on mutual aid and taking a look at the community college transfer process,” Yuan said. “Really, really interesting

SOPHIE BAILEY/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

solutions across the board.”

Johnson said she had a “really positive experience” as team members “leveraged different strengths” to create their winning solution, despite all working from different time zones.

After conducting user research interviews and identifying themes like culture shock, Johnson said the team decided to focus its project on international students attending college in the U.S. Although they did not code the actual app, the team went through all the steps of the design process and used Figma, a prototyping platform, to create a visual mock-up of how the app would look on a smartphone.

Johnson said that her experiences in ENGS 12, “Design Thinking” helped her realize the importance of trusting the design process.

“Going through and really doing

some deep user research, brainstorming, testing and refining of your different ideas will end up generating a much better product than if you feel frustrated and immediately jump to a solution,” Johnson said.

Johnson said she “really enjoyed” listening to the other participants’ presentations and watching her peers get excited about using design to create social impact change in their communities.

“All of the projects were incredible,” Johnson said. “Everyone had chosen a different user group and taken a really unique spin on this broad question.”

Wells said that he hopes the Designathon will be a gateway for many participants to become more involved with the College’s design community.

“The amount of work we asked these folks to do was equivalent to a class project,” Wells said. “They went above and beyond that, and hopefully made

some friends along the way.”

Participant Judy Guo ’24 discovered the Designathon through the Dartmouth Design Collective’s weekly newsletters.

After taking a Digital Applied Learning and Innovation Lab design mini-course last fall, Guo said she thought it would be fun to apply what she learned, compete for prizes and participate in the workshops.

Guo and teammates created Dscribe, a computer-based note-taking platform that aims to “flatten” the inequities faced by students with attention disorders and learning disabilities.

“Ultimately, I think the Designathon was a really great experience getting to apply design skills that we learned and accumulated,” Guo said. “I’m really proud of what we were able to accomplish because even though we didn’t necessarily win first, second or third, we had a lot of fun.”

Election winners campaigned on experience, actionable plans FROM SA PAGE 1

heard via this election,” Khan wrote.

“I hope that our ideas and voices will continue to be utilized, and students from outside of Student Assembly will feel empowered to run again in the future. It was an honor to participate, and an honor to share our hopes for a better Dartmouth.”

Muñoz-McDonald expressed optimism for students taking agency in creating change within the student body and said that he and Khan hope to work with Qian and Johnston, as they have many “joint ideas.”

“I think we definitely both speak

to different communities on campus,” Muñoz-McDonald said. “I think me and Attiya are both invested in change and I think Maggie and Jennifer are still invested in making a difference too.”

Muñoz-McDonald said the KhanMuñoz campaign was a “message that the bare minimum is not acceptable” and raised awareness for the “desperate need for transparency” in student government.

Alexander Klein ’22 and Ramy Hanna ’22 were elected for senior class president and vice president, receiving 440 and 445 votes, respectively.

The Class Council executives for the Class of 2023 are Mubbie Idoko ’23, Salvatore Lupo ’23 and a tobe-determined write-in candidate.

The Class of 2024 Class Council executives will be Alyssa LeBarron ’24, Emma Johnson ’24 and Karim Khalil ’24.

The Committee on Standards and Organizational Adjudication Committee elected Alexander Klein ’22, Molly McQuoid ’23, Sheen Kim ’23, Ophelia Woodland ’23, Molly Rudman ’23 and Claire Macedonia ’24. Because members are allowed to serve on the COS and hold a representative student body position,

Klein will serve both as the Class of 2022 President and on the COS, according to Abraham Paiss.

Additionally, Chase AlvaradoAnderson ’23 and Kami Arabian ’24 will be serving as senators for Allen House, and Elliott Montroll ’23 and Jessica Chiriboga ’24 for North Park House. For South House, David Millman ’23 and Anthony Fosu ’24 will be senators. The East Wheelock House senators will be Gerol Fang ’23 and Jason Acosta Espinosa ’24.

Sylvie Lamontagne ’24 will be the School House senator, and for West House, Finn Hulse ’23 and Kiara Ortiz ’24.

Seven members of the Senate will be write-in candidates: all six senators from the Class of 2022 and School House’s senator from the Class of 2023. Write-in results will be available in the “upcoming week,” Abraham Paiss wrote in an emailed statement.

Correction appended (April 20, 2021): A previous version of this article stated that Qian and Johnston were initiating the pilot program with the Calm meditation app. The article has been updated to reflect that the SA committee on mental health is running the program.

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2021

PAGE 3

STAFF COLUMNIST MAX TESZLER ‘23

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST KAMI ARABIAN ’24

Departing the Graveyard of Empires In Afghanistan, reconstruction can only begin with the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops — but that’s just the first step.

This column was originally published on April 22, 2021.

On April 14, President Joe Biden announced an unprecedented change in American foreign policy toward Afghanistan: instead of a conditional withdrawal of troops, the United States will commit to a concrete timeline for bringing its forces home. While prior administrations have stipulated that the United States would need to ensure the long-term stability of the Kabul government before withdrawing troops, the last two decades have proven that there can be no such military solution in Afghanistan. With a timetable in place for when the U.S. will withdraw its troops, the Biden administration can finally build a sustainable peace without the need for intervention or its more sinister counterpart, occupation. The United States should supplement this decision with a renewed commitment to diplomacy and support the Afghan people in their nation-building efforts without direct military intervention.

In 2001, the United States and its partners publicly announced their limited purpose for launching an invasion of Afghanistan: to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for orchestrating the September 11 attack. However, after the removal of the Taliban and the establishment of a new government in Kabul, then-President George W. Bush redefined the preconditions for withdrawal, broadening the enterprise to a long-term military occupation defined by ill-advised nation-building programs.

History has proven again and again that Afghanistan is a difficult land to occupy indefinitely.

Since the 19th century, many an empire has tried and failed to conquer Afghanistan, earning the country areputation as the “Graveyard of Empires.” With the shift to a defined timeline for withdrawal, it seems even the United States has finally learned this lesson.

Before committing to a new strategy, the Biden administration should pause and reflect on the enormous costs of interventionism and adopt a better way of promoting Afghan and American prosperity.

The administration must further acknowledge that the United States cannot simply carpet bomb peace and stability into the Middle East at large, and continuing to try would be a tremendous disservice to the citizens of Afghanistan and the United States.

Intervention has already cost the lives of more than 2,300 U.S. soldiers and an estimated 43,000 Afghan civilians. In addition to the loss of life, the war in Afghanistan, it is estimated, cost over two trillion dollars. In the war’s aftermath, reconstruction efforts alone cost over 130 billion dollars, which — adjusted for inflation — is more than the United States spent

in Western Europe after World War II. Unlike the Marshall Plan, reconstruction spending in Afghanistan has not brought peace and stability to the region. Instead, it has bolstered a dysfunctional Kabul government that is bound to remain dependent on foreign support for years to come. Unfortunately, billions of taxpayer dollars have been leached by corrupt Afghan officials and expensive contractors. The rest was spent in all the wrong places — on American solutions, rather than Afghan solutions. American policymakers, for example, insisted that aid be spent on education, despite the fact that Afghanistan does not have the economy to support its graduates. As one military officer put it, “We were building schools next to empty schools, and it just didn’t make sense.” Such inflexible programs have been ineffective at — and, all too often, counterproductive to — rebuilding Afghanistan.

Nation-building efforts must be directed by the people of Afghanistan rather than foreign interests; the Afghans are sophisticated people who will never accept al-Qaeda or Taliban rule and who understand how to build their own society. Once U.S. and NATO forces have been pulled from Afghanistan, the United States must recommit itself to diplomacy in place of military force as its primary means of conducting foreign policy. However, accomplishing peace in the country will also require an increase in intra-Afghan dialogue — between the recognized Afghan government and the Taliban forces that remain in control of large swathes of the country — without American meddling with the internal affairs of the nation.

In response to Biden’s decision, congress Republicans — such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — have argued that the withdrawal of troops may enable future aggression by the Taliban. However, despite twenty years of war, the Taliban continues to retain control over a significant portion of the country and shows no sign of declining any time in the foreseeable future.

Two decades of military intervention have simply not worked, so it is time to try something new. With negotiations continuing between Kabul and the Taliban, this is the perfect opportunity to devise a new strategy for the establishment of peace.

As globally-conscious students, we must all be opposed to an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban.

We must also be opposed, however, to the military operations that have killed thousands of civilians and plunged Afghanistan into a devastating war.

By withdrawing troops, the United States can finally allow the people of Afghanistan to rebuild their nation while still providing non-interventionist foreign support.

Houses Divided Cannot Stand Electing SA senators by house is arbitrary and unfair.

This column was originally published on April 20, 2021.

Out of the 18 Student Assembly positions up for election this year, only two are actively contested — and both of these are in East Wheelock House. For the other 16 positions, there’s either one candidate running or none, leaving voters with a write-in as their only option. As I’ve written previously, the near-total dearth of electoral competition is a serious threat to the legitimacy of SA. It’s clear that electing senators by house is a key part of this problem. The concept of running elections by house is arbitrary and results in a nonsensical electoral process, with only a handful of contested races and others lacking even a single candidate. Then there is the question of fairness: while houses are randomly sorted and have no unique interests, their differing sizes mean that the principle of “one person, one vote” is blatantly ignored.

It’s time for the election of senators by house to end — a practice which, by the way, only began in 2016, following the advent of the house system.

Based on the Student Assembly’s website, what came before seems far worse, with the assembly varying in size and power at the whims of the SA President. To its credit, our current election system is organized and easy-to-understand — there are four representatives from each house, one for each class year. Students have a single representative to reach out to with concerns. But despite its merits, this reform has clearly failed to deliver fair and competitive elections.

The 2021 election cycle is not an outlier — SA elections regularly run into the same problems, with candidates concentrated in a few house’s spots and other house elections remaining totally uncompetitive. Last year, there were only three contested Senate elections. In 2019, just one seat was contested, meaning students in other houses and classes were out of luck in getting a real choice. Yes, we have write-ins, but they aren’t a good solution — by the nature of a write-in election, it’s harder to know who candidates are and to evaluate them before voting. And of course, write-ins can also be someone totally random, written in by a few friends.

Having real options isn’t just nice; it’s the cornerstone of a real democracy. Without competition, we can’t be sure we’re getting the best candidates — and in the case where nobody runs and someone wins as a write-in, voters are left completely in the dark.

Even if the races were more contested, though, running elections by house would still be unjust.

The six houses have dramatically different sizes owing to the arbitrary metric of how many students the house dorms can accommodate; there are 137

upperclassmen beds in North Park compared to 389 in West House. The closest analogue may be the U.S. Senate, in which two senators from each state are elected regardless of their state’s population. But this comparison fails to provide a compelling argument for house-based elections. Unlike states, houses don’t tend to have distinct identities or political interests.

We’re all just randomly sorted upon arrival into groups that represent nothing more than the location of your dorm for the next four years. Arguably, the only real difference in the houses are their sizes and locations — which again, are based on whatever organizational decisions the College made when it implemented the house plan in 2016.

“One person, one vote” is essential to our modern conception of democracy — for every legislature in the United States other than the Senate, the Constitution requires equal-population districts, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed.

Obviously, as a private body and not a government entity, SA is entitled to do what it sees fit with its elections. But for a group purportedly meant to represent the “voice of students,” it’s a disgrace that some of our votes should count far more than others in electing student representatives.

All of this is not to say that we should personally blame SA for this unfairness — they adopted this new system to align with the College-imposed house plan.

Instead, let’s focus on ending the haphazard process of electing students by house. There are many other approaches SA could take in setting up a new election process: For instance, we could elect representatives by class year, and have a few additional spots elected by the whole school, like our elections for SA president and vice president. Other innovations, like ranked choice voting, could also help increase competition and choice. Whatever its final shape, a new electoral system should allow open debate from students across campus — instead of randomly boxing important discourse into whatever house happens to have the greatest number of interested candidates.

By itself, an electoral system change wouldn’t totally solve the lack of competition in our elections.

We still need more students to run and open up debate on key College issues — as many are currently reluctant to do, perhaps held back by widespread perceptions of SA’s ineffectiveness. SA would also need to publicize a clear explanation of whatever system it ultimately adopted; complicated election procedures may only discourage participation.

Nonetheless, a new electoral system would be the perfect chance to push for new candidates and increase outreach for a more diverse set of options.

We all want real debate and real choice — but that just won’t be possible as long as we continue to arbitrarily elect students by their houses.

THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD

Verbum Ultimum: Free and Fair?

EPAC’S election code is unnecesarily restrictive and suffers from a lack of transparency.

Each year, at the outset of Dartmouth’s candidates. These policies, in addition to Student Assembly election period, the infringing on the autonomy that campaigns Elections Planning and Advisory Committee should have in making their case for their publishes its annual election code. In recent candidacy to the student body, create elections, this rulebook — which outlines the unnecessary hurdles for both campaigns and regulations by which candidates’ campaigns their supporters. and their supporters must abide — has A d d i t i o n a l l y, E PAC s u bve r t s t h e grown increasingly complex and draconian, democratic process by attempting to insert expanding into spheres of students’ social lives itself as a gatekeeper of candidate speech. For that a student-run committee should have no example, the committee requires campaigns business occupying. This year and last, in to receive approval before posting videos or the name of “ensur[ing] equality, equity, even Snapchat filters online, in addition to fairness between all candidates” after the compelling candidates — under threat of pandemic forced campaign activities online, disqualification — to ask EPAC’s permission EPAC has only tightened its before campaigning on “any already stringent rules. Many “At its core, EPAC medium of advertising” not of these more recently imposed covered in the committee’s regulations — as well as many in its current form election code. of those already in place — suffers from a If this wild overreach into are decidedly undemocratic glaring lack of candidates’ ability to campaign and stand in direct conflict freely wasn’t already enough, with the committee’s mission transparency.”

EPAC seems to be under the statement that EPAC exists impression that its jurisdiction to facilitate “open and fair” extends to governing how student elections. organizations and individuals campus-wide While some of the committee’s policies are choose to participate in the electoral process. reasonable and actively contribute to EPAC’s These restrictions EPAC attempts to foist on stated mission of ensuring legitimacy and students include arbitrary and overreaching fairness in student elections, many others limits on endorsements. For instance, the do not. To give just a few examples of the committee’s election code stipulates that shortcomings in EPAC’s election code, under organizations may send only a single email the committee’s current rules candidates are in support of a candidate to their member barred from sending out more than three lists. Supporters, meanwhile, are limited to campaign-related posts on their personal a maximum of three posts on social media social media accounts over the entire duration — though it’s unclear how EPAC could ever of the election period, posting messages hope to monitor and enforce compliance by in group chats of over 100 members and the College’s more than 4,000 students. publishing written endorsements of other At its core, EPAC in its current form

suffers from a glaring lack of transparency.

Perhaps one of the most bewildering of EPAC’s powers is the committee’s ability to suspend campaigns with little to no warning and virtually no appeals process.

During this year’s campaign period, after EPAC decided to temporarily suspend the campaign of Attiya Khan ’22 and Sebastian Muñoz-McDonald ’23, the ticket described not being informed of the charges it faced prior to an EPAC disciplinary hearing and said it was permitted to mount a defense during the hearing. In addition to leaving the Khan-Muñoz campaign in the dark, EPAC declined to comment on their suspension in The Dartmouth, informing a reporter that the committee “does not discuss sanctions publicly.” For a committee that touts transparency as one of its guiding philosophies, these guidelines create an unnecessarily opaque process.

While some students might fear that without such stringent regulations, elections could become a popularity contest, it remains unclear how these rules actually work towards addressing this concern. Regardless, it’s evident that EPAC’s convoluted elections code is doing much more harm than good by making elections unnecessarily complicated and bureaucratic. Significantly rolling back these regulations would make elections more fair and straightforward, and would prevent too much power from being concentrated in the hands of a few students. In amending its code, rather than creating disdain for the electoral process, EPAC could encourage student participation in Student Assembly elections by reducing the numerous barriers

KYLE MULLINS, Editor-in-Chief REILLY OLINGER, News Executive Editor COALTER PALMER, Production Executive Editor

that unnecessarily complicate the election process.

While student elections might be easy to dismiss as inconsequential compared to higher-stakes national elections, say, it’s important to remember that many Dartmouth students go on to become influential leaders in government, academia and the private sector, in some cases stepping into leadership roles at the very organizations in which we entrust our federal democratic processes.

These alumni include the first-ever chairman of the Federal Election Commission, an ’84, who recently served as chief of staff of the DNC, and an ’89 who currently sits in the role of RNC National Committeewoman for California. In a community brimming with future leaders, we’re all better off if anti-democratic ideas, like those enshrined in EPAC’s election code, are snuffed out sooner rather than later.

In a preamble to the committee’s election code document, EPAC’s chair quotes the American poet Maya Angelou as saying “if you don’t like something, change it.”

The Dartmouth’s Editorial Board urges Dartmouth students — many of whom are undoubtedly frustrated by the committee’s attempts to exert influence on their personal and social lives — to follow this same advice by pushing EPAC to overhaul its undemocratic and needlessly restrictive election code.

The editorial board consists of opinion staff columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-in-chief. Editor-in-chief Kyle Mullins was not involved in the writing or editing of this editorial due to a conflict of interest.

OLIVIA GOMEZ, Publisher

ARIELLE BEAK, HANNAH JINKS & LORRAINE LIU Managing Editors

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THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

PAGE 4

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2021

Q&A: English professor Joshua Bennett on Whiting Award

BY SABRINA EAGER The Dartmouth Staff

This story was originally published on April 22, 2021.

Every year, ten of the most promising voices in literature receive the Whiting Award, a prize that Vanity Fair has dubbed the “crystal ball of the literature world” for its tendency to go to up-andcoming writers early in their careers. Past winners have gone on to receive other prestigious awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. On April 14, English and creative writing professor Joshua Bennett won the award for his work in both poetry and nonfiction.

Bennett is the Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing.

He studied Africana Studies and English as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania and received an M.A. in theater and performance studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. He has performed his spoken word poetry nationwide and has authored three books: “Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man,” “Owed” and “The Sobbing School.” Bennett is also a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In an interview with The Dartmouth, Bennett shared his experiences as both a writer and scholar and discussed what winning this award means to him.

How do you feel that your scholarship and teaching informs your writing, and in turn, how does your writing inform your scholarship and teaching?

JB: For me, the poetry, the literary criticism and the teaching are inextricable.

As a spoken word artist, as someone who is very committed to the dance of language on paper and as someone who writes critical theory, I’m always bringing the classroom into the writing. I taught young incarcerated people and students in middle school summer programs.

I was always trying to think about the relationship between education and human freedom that comes from an aesthetic and expressive tradition. I was raised in a house where the idea was that you study books not just to expand your mind, but because the larger social order couldn’t take anything that you had in your imagination away from you.

The brilliant insights of my students have been one of the great gems of being at Dartmouth. I’m always learning more about texts that I have studied for years by teaching them on campus.

How does your life, in terms of your family and your experiences, inspire your work?

JB: A lot of my work is about kinship, especially how people from historically marginalized communities have theorized about what survival means, what it costs and what it means to raise children in a world that despises them where you know you can’t tell them that.

They need an affirmative life vision, and I had that. My parents helped give me that, my big sister helped give me that. I went to The Modern School, a predominantly Black preschool in Harlem. There, we sang the Black national anthem every day. I didn’t even know what “The Star Spangled Banner” was until my family moved out of the city to Yonkers. To me, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was the national anthem. That was the context in which I emerged, in which Blackness was beautiful and multivalent and appeared

in a bunch of different languages and skin tones.

I lived in a neighborhood that represented a quite robust vision of the African diaspora, with my friends from families from all across the world.

I understood myself as being in close proximity to people that represented so much of life on Earth. Eventually, I got a scholarship to go to a private school when I was 14, and that was the first time I had even encountered this idea that I wasn’t supposed to like my neighborhood very much, that I had been rescued by my formal education. I didn’t quite see it that way. I was thankful for books and for teachers that loved me, but I didn’t have to go to an elite private school to find that. I’ve had educators my entire life that really stood by me and told me I was smart and invested in me. All of that appears in my work: the cloud of witnesses that helped make my life possible and that helped protect me on the way here.

How do you decide whether to tell a story through poetry or through a more critical nonfiction lens?

JB: I don’t know if it’s me. There are moments when the work comes through you. Sometimes it’s an image in my head, sometimes it’s a sound, and when I sit down to write, that’s when I figure out what form it’s going to take or what genre category it’s going to inhabit. Often, when it’s in my mind, it’s just music. I’m thankful that I haven’t lost that yet. That’s been my practice for a long time, for decades now. The more I gather instruments, the more I gather tools from reading other writers, or listening to new musicians, or encountering a piece of visual art or film that astonishes me, that adds other layers to it. When I sit down, I imagine that what I’m producing is in no small

part those influences flowing through me.

What do you hope that readers take away from your work?

JB: Encouragement. That’s what I turn to language for. Part of why I’ve always loved reading is that it’s a reminder that you’re not alone. There’s this other constellation of voices out there, and they’re speaking back to you through the text, through the record, from the shadows and from beyond to let you know that it’s going to be alright. Even if it’s not, there’s no reason for you to worry about that right now. Today has its own trouble.

Right now, there’s this James Baldwin passage just above my head that’s been on my mind. He wrote, “If you are burdened, the joy of your brother lightens your burden, if you are crawling on your belly, his joy brings you to your feet.

It’s true: my soul is a witness [...] The happiness of someone you love proves that life is possible.” That’s part of what I want people to take away from the work: that life is possible, and that kinship and various forms of community and collectivity and solidarity are possible. I think we live in a historical moment where that can be quite difficult to believe, but I plan to remain a believer.

What was the virtual Whiting Award ceremony like?

JB: It was surreal. I was with my wife, Pam, and we were in the kitchen super dressed up. We still got to rock out with the outfits. So much was still a surprise.

I had no idea what the judges were going to say about my work. It was just so deeply moving, I felt so incredibly seen in a unique way. In the digital age, you’re just throwing stuff up against the wall, you have no sense of what sticks.

It’s heartening, deeply moving and encouraging to see the work celebrated and to be in conversation with so many other writers that I admire and respect.

We were on Zoom together, all watching the ceremony live. It was quite beautiful that even from a great distance, in different states across the country, we were able to share that moment with one another, in lieu of being able to be at the ceremony together as a cohort.

What does the award mean for you as a writer and for your career moving forward?

JB: I’m immensely thankful for the larger community of writers it puts me in conversation with: people whose work I’ve read for years and people whose work is newer to me. To see myself now on this list, in this database with all of these incredible writers I studied forever — people like [Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry] Tracy K. Smith, and [National Book Award winner for fiction] Denis Johnson, and [National Book Award winner for poetry] Nathanial Mackey — that’s incredible.

Hopefully, what it means for me as a writer going forward is that I can help create new windows and new opportunities for younger writers. I want to help create spaces and share knowledge. The Whiting Foundation has a bunch of other programs that you can apply for, like the magazine awards. Knowing that those places exist, that’s knowledge I want to share with younger writers and communities that are historically underrepresented in American poetry. So that, hopefully, is the next step.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Review: Netflix’s ‘The Serpent’ muddles a gripping story

BY SHERA BHALA

The Dartmouth Senior Staff

This story was originally published on April 19, 2021.

Over the past few years, Netflix has capitalized on people’s fascination with the macabre. From the 2015 hit “Making a Murderer” to “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,” “The Ripper” and then this year’s “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,” recent Netflix originals have focused on a darker side of human nature. On April 2, this trend continued with “The Serpent.”

However, the limited series of eight episodes is not Netflix’s true-crime pièce de résistance. The crime itself — or, in this case, a series of crimes — is enthralling.

But the achronological representation of the crime is disorienting, the show’s concluding episodes appear lazily constructed and the series was lackluster overall.

The eponymous criminal of the series is Charles Sobhraj — nicknamed “the Serpent” — as well as “the Bikini Killer,” played by Tahar Rahim. Currently rotting away with a life sentence in a Nepalese prison, Sobhraj is a sociopathic serial killer who committed heinous crimes in the 1970s. He began with petty theft, but his crimes eventually escalated to robbing tourists, jewel heists and, most notably, drugging and murdering Western travelers roaming the Hippie Trail of South Asia. An underreported and absurd story, set in such an interesting time and place, yields high expectations for its cinematographic retelling.

“The Serpent” does not grace its audience with a detailed and organized understanding of Sobhraj and his motivations. Viewers only learn about his background from tiny breadcrumbs scattered through a few episodes and an introduction to his mother in the sixth episode. Instead of elucidating his “mutt” background and “stateless” origins — Sobhraj was born in 1944 to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father in Japanese-occupied Saigon, French Indochina and only gained French citizenship when adopted by his stepfather, an Army lieutenant stationed in the French colonies — the show leaves most details murky to curious viewers who must then satisfy their crime-junkie inclinations via a rabbit hole of internet sources.

For most of the episodes, all that viewers know about Sobhraj is that he is a sociopathic murderer, has a vendetta against hippies for some reason

that is never properly explained and manipulates his two sidekicks — his lover, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, and his errand boy, Ajay Chowdhury.

Further obscuring the details of this murderous threesome’s actions, the chronology of the show is presented as a messy collage of timelines. The show skips time periods every few minutes, moving between different weeks, months and years in the blink of an eye. “The Serpent” is at a loss when it comes to narrative coherence. While the modern filmmaking trend of playing with timelines can be done well, it is overdone here. As I sat watching, I hoped for a reprieve from time-jumps of “one year ago” to “seven years later” to “three months earlier.”

The sloppy timelines are forgivable early on in the show. The crimes are so unbelievably evil, the perpetrator so horrifically larger than life, that the structural flaws are overshadowed at the start. Sobhraj’s egomania is perfectly encapsulated in a confrontation with his mother: Sobhraj’s mother sharply admonishes, “You ought to be careful, Charles. You’re almost 33 now. Jesus Christ died when he was 33.” Sobhraj responds “I’m smarter than Christ.”

The original shininess of Sobhraj’s criminal operations in Bangkok wore off after the first four episodes. In the following four, the plot dragged, if not limped, along. Boredom kicked in at the halfway point. Viewers mostly follow Herman Knippenberg — the Dutch diplomat, played by Billy Howle, behind the investigation — as he painstakingly tries to piece together a case after the Dutch ambassador, the Thai police and most other legal authorities refuse to help him.

The final episode brought a bit of intrigue back, but also constituted a rapid dump of information that was clearly hastily thrown together by the producers. All at once, we learn that Sobhraj and Leclerc have fled to Delhi to steal from and murder more tourists to support their lifestyle and Sobhraj’s gambling habits, Interpol now cares about finding Sobhraj and Knippenberg is spiraling due to his obsession with the case. In the end, predictably, cockiness is Sobhraj’s Achilles’ heel. He attempts to poison more than 20 members of a tour group at once and is arrested by Indian authorities.

The details throughout the show, particularly the last episode, are exaggerated. In each episode, an animated serpent slithers over a sepia-toned map of South Asia. The concluding updates on what happened to

LILA HOVEY/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

each character in reality are helpful, but also are superimposed on the same map.

Tying it all together is the soundtrack that is a bit too on the nose; the early 1970s hippie music comes across as cheesy at best.

There are a few redeeming qualities in the production, namely that the first couple episodes are attention-grabbing and therefore effective in introducing the characters and their crimes. Additionally, the styling is outstanding; all the 1970s-era outfits, particularly Sobhraj’s flare jeans and Aviator sunglasses and Leclerc’s halter tops, were on point. The settings are also stunning. Most of the show was filmed in Bangkok, and the backgrounds are lush and inviting. Knippenberg and his then-wife Angela Kane’s home is also beautiful, situated next to a pond of water lilies. Finally, Rahim’s acting throughout was captivating and convincing.

The producers must also be commended for their commitment to historical accuracy. The limited series is based on interview tapes from Sobhraj’s time in prison, but given that Sobhraj is a sociopath and pathological liar, there is reason to be skeptical of his narrative.

At one point, Sobhraj even sold a French producer the rights to a biopic for $15 million, demonstrating his narcissistic obsession over legacy. As they never spoke to Sobhraj directly, the producers were tasked with balancing Sobhraj’s egotistical, and potentially skewed, account of the crimes with accurate information.

Originally, Knippenberg was the character I liked most because of his deep conviction for justice. Yet, even his character devolves as he develops tunnel vision for the case, though, and his wife leaves him in the end — although this may be a reflection of what happened in real life. Additionally, I longed for character development for Leclerc. She has great tragic potential — both a victim and an accomplice to a man she loves.

And, of course, the central story missing

from the series is the origin of Sobhraj’s deep resentment of hippies.

At least this story, which went relatively unpublicized for so long, has finally entered mainstream media. At the end of the series, the victims are honored, which does bring some sense of justice to the case. All in all, “The Serpent” falls short of being a successful true crime series.

Rating: 

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THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2021

PAGE 5

SPORTS

From the Bleachers: Looking Ahead to the NFL Draft BY baily deeter

The Dartmouth Staff

Since my last column, not much has changed outside of a couple of injuries in the NBA and Hideki Matsuyama’s triumph in the 2021 Masters. But we’ll get to the NBA much more in the next few weeks, and I don’t feel like talking about golf until I can consistently hit my driver more than 100 yards; maybe in a few years I’ll write about the PGA Tour.

For now, I’d like to focus on the upcoming NFL Draft, set to take place in nine days. Recently, I’ve been confident in Gonzaga winning the national championship and Jordan Spieth winning the Masters, both of which didn’t happen. However, I can say with complete faith that the Jacksonville Jaguars will take Trevor Lawrence with the first overall pick.

You heard it here first.

Lawrence is arguably the best quarterback prospect since Andrew Luck in 2012, if not the best since Peyton Manning in 1998. The Clemson standout is a once-in-a-generation talent, and he will take the reins for a team that was on the cusp of making the Super Bowl just three years ago.

The sky’s the limit.

After that, though, the rest of the draft is up in the air. The New York Jets, at 0-13, were primed to land Lawrence.

Yet they couldn’t even manage to tank properly, upsetting the Los Angeles Rams and the Cleveland Browns (both playoff teams) in back-to-back games to earn the second overall pick.

Nonetheless, Gang Green has a few enticing options at the quarterback

position. The likely pick is BYU’s Zach Wilson, who exploded onto the scene in 2020 with 33 touchdown passes and only three interceptions. Transitioning from Provo, Utah to the Big Apple could be a culture shock for the 21-year-old gunslinger, but Wilson appears to be up for the challenge.

Perhaps the biggest turning point of the draft will come next with the San Francisco 49ers, who shook up the entire event by trading up from the No. 12 pick. The Miami Dolphins, who previously held the third pick, were certainly not going to select a quarterback after taking Tua Tagovailoa fifth overall last year. However, Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers seemingly have their sights set on a signal-caller to replace Jimmy Garoppolo after a subpar 2020 campaign.

Justin Fields may appear to be a wise choice. Fields and Lawrence have been the stars of this quarterback class ever since high school, when they competed against each other in the Elite 11 passing competitions. More recently, Fields led his Ohio State Buckeyes to the national championship by throwing six touchdowns against Lawrence’s Tigers. But instead, it may be the quarterback that beat Fields in the national championship who finds himself in the Bay Area.

Mac Jones’ name has been consistently linked to the 49ers, seemingly the most likely bet for the 2019 NFC Champions. Jones threw 41 touchdowns and just four interceptions in 2020, and played a near-perfect game in Alabama’s 52-24 rout over Ohio State in the national championship. It

didn’t hurt that he had a phenomenal offensive line, a Heisman trophy winner at wide receiver and multiple soonto-be first-round picks on his team.

Regardless, Jones had a tremendous season and proved himself worthy of a high draft choice.

Let’s say the 49ers choose Jones, allowing Fields to avoid California’s high income taxes. The Atlanta Falcons have the fourth pick, and they have a former league MVP at quarterback in Matt Ryan. But after a 4-12 season and with the 28-3 Super Bowl jokes not showing any signs of slowing down, it might be time for a rebuild.

It’s unclear what Atlanta would do at this point, but Fields or North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance would certainly be tempting. If not, the Falcons could look for a passcatcher like tight end Kyle Pitts or wide receiver JaMarr Chase to supplement Ryan’s offense. They could also trade down with a quarterback-needy team like Denver or Detroit, potentially leading to the first four picks all being quarterbacks.

If the Falcons choose Pitts, this would leave the Bengals and Dolphins, picking fifth and sixth respectively, with multiple options at wide receiver.

The Bengals drafted Joe Burrow first overall last year, and he had a solid start to his rookie year, though it was unfortunately cut short due to a torn ACL. Cincinnati can ensure that they bounce back effectively by drafting Chase, a future superstar who could find himself filling A.J. Green’s shoes as the next great Bengal wideout.

Miami would have its pick of

SOPHIE BAILEY/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

available talent at No. 6, much of it coming from Tuscaloosa. Alabama receivers Devonta Smith, the 2020 Heisman winner, and Jaylen Waddle will both be high first-round picks. The Dolphins could reunite Tagovailoa with one of his former college teammates in hopes of rekindling the offensive fireworks that characterized the Dan Marino era in the 1980s and 1990s.

If Fields is still on the board at No. 7, it would be tough to imagine the Detroit Lions passing on him. The Lions traded Matthew Stafford to the Rams this offseason after 12 faithful seasons with the franchise, and they received Jared Goff in return. Goff did appear in a Super Bowl just two years ago, but he has also been mediocre throughout his career. He doesn’t have the upside like Fields, who would represent an exciting addition for a team that has never made a Super Bowl and hasn’t won a playoff game since 1991.

But let’s not forget about Lance, whose strong arm and great mobility

make him an intriguing prospect.

Carson Wentz made a great name for North Dakota State when he dominated the 2017 regular season, but after a messy divorce from the Philadelphia Eagles this past offseason, it’s less clear whether the school produces top-tier NFL quarterbacks. Still, Lance is a promising prospect who could go anywhere from No. 3 to the mid-to-late first round.

Ultimately, if you’re going to watch one NFL draft in the next 10 years, make it this one. With five top-tier quarterbacks poised to go in the top half of the first round, this may be the best quarterback class since Ben Roethlisburger, Eli Manning and Philip Rivers all were selected in 2004, if not the best quarterback class ever. The league will change on a dime next Thursday night, and it may show that parity truly works in the NFL. Who knows — maybe we’ll be watching a Jacksonville-Detroit Super Bowl sooner rather than later.

Former Dartmouth athletes play as graduate transfers

BY ANDREW DOERR, WILL ENNIS & JASON NORRIS The Dartmouth Staff

Some of Dartmouth’s most accomplished athletes decided to transfer in the past year due to canceled seasons and the Ivy League’s policy against graduate athletic participation. Although the Ivy League Council of Presidents voted in February to allow current seniors admitted into graduate programs at their schools to compete as fifth-year players, it was too late for a number of Big Green athletes. Men’s basketball player Chris Knight ’21, who will play at Loyola University Chicago next year, criticized the timing of the Ivy League’s decision, noting that he and his teammates did not believe they had enough time to apply to Dartmouth graduate programs.

Two Ivy League Players of the Year and a number of team most valuable players and record holders are among the athletes who have left Dartmouth and are now competing for Division I schools across the country. Brendan Barry ’20 played for Temple University during this past men’s basketball season, Katie Bourque ’20 is currently recovering from a torn ACL in time to compete for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the NCAA women’s lacrosse tournament, Drew Estrada ’20 is preparing to play for Baylor University’s football team next fall and Micah Schroder ’20 is in the middle of softball season at Indiana University.

Brendan Barry ’20, Men’s Basketball at Temple University Brendan Barry ’20 had a decorated career at Dartmouth, playing three full seasons and winning the A.D. “Dolly” Stark Award for the team’s most valuable player during the 2018-19 season. After surgery on both hips effectively ended his senior season at Dartmouth, Barry transferred to Temple University to play a fifth season as a graduate transfer student.

Barry’s decision to transfer was very sudden. After being awarded a fifth year at Dartmouth due to his medical hardship, the Ivy League canceled the 2020-21 season due to the pandemic. With that news, Barry shifted his attention towards finding a new school to play his final season with.

“Our first game was December 19,” Barry said. “And I graduated from Dartmouth in the first week of December, so I got there for practice for two days and then was thrown

into the fire when I played in that first game. It was really interesting.

I’m just thankful that I had that opportunity to put it all together.”

This past season, Barry averaged 6.9 points per game while shooting 43.6% from the field and 45.3% from three-point range for Temple. The Owls finished 5-11 on the season and lost in the first round of the American Athletic Conference tournament.

Barry said that the playing style and level of competition at Temple were notably different from his experience at Dartmouth, calling the Ivy League and AAC “polar opposites in terms of style of play.”

“It’s just a lot more up-tempo in the [AAC] and not as much based on half-court sets,” Barry said. “Also, there’s more one-on-one play with less ball movement. It definitely was an adjustment to switch to that type of style of play.”

Despite the adjustments, Barry was pleased with his decision to transfer. Being able to play his final season was an experience that he enjoyed even with all of the challenges along the way.

“Obviously, it was just a weird situation for everyone involved,” Barry said. “At the end of the day, I knew I had to transfer and I was just thankful that I got to play this year.”

Katie Bourque ’20, Women’s Lacrosse at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill After captaining Dartmouth’s women’s lacrosse in 2020, a season which was ultimately cut short due to the pandemic, Bourque enrolled as a fifth-year graduate student at UNC. In her final season at Dartmouth Bourque earned two Ivy League Player of the Week awards and a U.S. lacrosse Player of the Week award while also leading the Big Green with 21 goals. After the cancellation of her season, Bourque was forced to find a new school to play for.

“When our season got canceled, I was super upset as we were doing really well,” Bourque said. “I love Dartmouth and my dad played lacrosse at Dartmouth, so I always wanted to play here… knowing that I couldn’t go back to Dartmouth made me sad, as I would have loved to play again.”

At UNC, Bourque enrolled in the masters in educational innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship program. She now plays midfield for the Tar Heels, the 2013 and 2016 NCAA Division I champions.

Despite stepping onto the UNC campus for the first time this past fall, Bourque was able to make her

transition relatively smoothly — but still misses Dartmouth.

“The biggest thing I miss is my teammates and coaches because the people are really what makes the place special,” Bourque said. “So much that goes into lacrosse is the chemistry on the field that also has to be formed off the field, so the biggest transition was just meeting so many new people and adjusting to being in a new place. I miss the woods, but it’s definitely nice to be warm holding my stick in April, since it gets to be 75 [degrees] and sunny most days.”

Shortly after arriving at UNC, Bourque suffered a torn ACL and has been unable to compete as she goes through rehab. Bourque plans to be back on the field just in time for the NCAA tournament next month.

Drew Estrada ’20, Football at Baylor University

At Dartmouth, Drew Estrada was a force in the Ivy League. He scored eight receiving touchdowns during his senior year — second-most on the team — while also working his way into the Dartmouth record books, recording 2,392 all-purpose yards in his career to rank 14th all-time in Dartmouth history. With an extra year of eligibility after red-shirting during his freshman year due to an injury, Estrada looked to continue his football career closer to his hometown of Argyle, Texas.

Estrada made the move to Baylor, an hour and a half from Argyle, in January after graduating from Dartmouth in December. At Baylor, he is working toward his Master of Business Administration. After the Ivy League canceled the 2020

football season and it seemed as though senior athletes would not be able to return for a fifth year, Estrada entered the transfer portal seeking a football program similar to Dartmouth.

“Playing in the Big 12 on a bigger stage was always something that I wanted to do out of high school… that was a dream of mine,” Estrada said. “The coaches and the program itself reminded me a lot of Dartmouth because it is a very family-type atmosphere and they put a high importance on character and personal development over the player.”

As Estrada gears up for the 2021 season, he hopes to make an impact on a bigger stage. Moving out of the Ivy League and into the Big 12, he noted that although there are more resources to support athletes, there are also a lot more athletes competing for starting roles and more big-name recruits.

“At the end of the day, it’s x’s and o’s,” Estrada said. “You focus on the fundamentals and don’t let things get too big for yourself.”

Micah Schroder ’20, Softball at Indiana University

Following a junior season that ranked among the all-time greatest individual year in Big Green softball history, Micah Schroder’s senior season was cut short after just 10 games. A few months later, she committed to Indiana as a graduate transfer student.

In Schroder’s final full season playing for Dartmouth, she recorded a .473 batting average and 40 RBIs, both single-season school records.

In Ivy League conference play, Schroder batted .586 with a 1.041 slugging percentage and .638 on-base percentage, amassing 41 hits and 33 RBIs. Each of those five numbers led the conference.

She took home a number of awards during the 2019 season, earning a selection to the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Division I All-Region First Team, a unanimous First-Team All-Ivy selection and Ivy League Player of the Year honors.

Schroder g raduated from Dartmouth before heading to Indiana, where she said she had always intended to go to earn her MBA after graduation. She said that the competition is stiffer in the Big Ten than in the Ivy League. Indiana faces some of the most high-powered squads regularly in conference competition, whereas the Big Green would only play those teams in its preseason schedule.

Schroder has seen limited playing time for the Hoosiers this season, in part due to an ankle injury, appearing in just three games. The team is 14-14 with less than a month remaining in the regular season.

Schroder did say that she wished that Dartmouth and the Ivy League had offered the opportunity to play to graduate students before she had made her decision to transfer. She added, however, that she does not regret her move to Indiana.

“Transferring in general, and then specifically to Indiana, has just been a huge highlight in my life and one of the bright things to come out of the pandemic for me,” Schroder said.

“So I do not regret it at all. I would do it a thousand times over.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF MICAH SCHRODER

Micah Schroder ‘20, the 2019 Ivy League Player of the Year, transferred to Indiana University last June as a graduate transfer student.

PAGE 6

MIRROR THE DARTMOUTH MIRROR

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2021

A Moment to Grieve (What I Wish the Emails Would Say)

BY CARIS WHITE

The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on April 14, 2021.

It feels like we’re not at the age where we should be losing peers this often. Within the past six months, three Dartmouth students have died. None of them had even celebrated their 21st birthday.

Three people sounds like a small number in the face of the staggering amount of death this year. Millions of people have died from COVID-19, and I realize that for many at Dartmouth, our three peers are not the only people they have lost recently. However, with the unexpected deaths of Beau, Connor and Lamees fresh in my mind, I wanted to take a moment to engage with the grief of these tragedies.

I was thirteen the first time one of my friends died. I still remember the feeling of blank shock when I realized that my childhood friend had stopped existing on a random Tuesday afternoon. I also remember feeling a strange, toxic mix of grief, confusion and guilt wash over me in the weeks and months after his suicide. He was my friend, yes, but I hadn’t talked to him regularly since he switched schools. I knew his mom and had done class projects at his house, but who was I to be devastated? We hadn’t been close in years. Then, an equally concerning thought would creep in, that maybe I wasn’t devastated enough.

Who gets to grieve, and how much?

At thirteen, I was kept up at night by

these questions, and although I wish they weren’t, I know they’ve been on my mind again — and maybe on some of yours — over the last six months.

Sometimes, after a catastrophically sad moment, it can be helpful to remind ourselves that the world keeps turning, and that this too shall pass. However, I think that Dartmouth has leaned too far into this approach. The blame sits partially on our ten-week terms, which has an unrelenting pace that forces students to keep up or fail out –– after all, there is no time to process grief if you have a midterm in two days.

However, we can’t and shouldn’t blame everything on the academic calendar.

To the Dartmouth administration: listserv emails aren’t good enough. It is not enough to write a few hundred words, click send and expect students to just work it out. We deserve better.

Grieving takes time, and that feels like the one thing Dartmouth is unwilling to give us — it’s also the thing I’ve personally found it hardest to give myself.

Instead of moving forward, I want to take a moment to grieve. I know that what I write will be imperfect, but I hope that putting my thoughts into words will help document the significance of these tragedies, even if it’s only in part.

So, this is what I wish the emails would say: Dear students, We are so very sorry that the world you live in is grim, and we apologize for the ways our own lack of transparency

ANNIE QIU/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

has exacerbated it. We acknowledge that life is not normal, that nothing about this situation is normal, and we refuse to act like it is.

Three of your classmates have died, three promising young lives were prematurely extinguished, and the show cannot possibly go on uninterrupted.

Dartmouth has long prided itself on being a tight-knit community, and in many ways, that closeness has been a promise unfulfilled this year. For that failure, we are deeply sorry, and we are committed to doing better despite the challenges of pandemic life. We acknowledge that the shockwaves of

these tragedies will not dissipate quickly, and we are going to change our plans accordingly. As an institution, our judgement is not infallible, and the past year has made that abundantly clear.

As students, you deserve respect, compassion and honesty. We want you all to know that we stand with you –– not against you –– in this situation where it seems like everything has gone wrong, and we are committed to creating time and space for your grief.

Sincerely, Dartmouth

Dartmouth’s commitment to students’ well-being is as important as its commitment to students’ successes, and I think we could all benefit from clarifying that those two words are not necessarily synonymous. Most of all, I wish that Dartmouth would choose to stop and process –– even just for a moment –– instead of continuing its unrelenting march forwards.

I hope that what I’ve written isn’t just a read-through email, and that it might inspire a period of reflection.

I’ve needed to take a moment to grieve for a while now, and I think, maybe, the rest of us needed that too.

Muslim Students Recount Challenges During Ramadan

BY Street Roberts The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on April 21, 2021.

On Monday, April 12, Muslim students and faculty in the Upper Valley awoke and enjoyed suhoor — a traditional meal eaten early in the morning before starting a day of fasting. Then they headed off to practice, logged onto their Zoom class or began the mountain of work that was due the next day — such is the Dartmouth experience. Yet, unlike the large majority of our community, they were fasting — refraining from eating, drinking and engaging in habits such as smoking, engaging in sexual activity and drinking alcohol — until the sun fell back behind the mountains. At that point, they broke their fast with the iftar, another ritualistic, spiritual meal. For all Muslims observing the holy month of Ramadan, this is their routine for the next 30 days.

Ramadan — the ninth month of the Muslim calendar — marks a period of deep introspection and reconnection with God for all members of the Islamic faith, with an emphasis on prayer and the study of the Qur’an.

Tucker Center Muslim advisor

Khalil Abdullah said that Ramadan involves a heightened mental awareness.

“There tends to be a sharpened focus on improving character, growing in social consciousness, considering those who are less fortunate — the poor, the hungry — and cultivating in our community a deeper sense of spirituality,” Abdullah said.

In Muslim-majority countries, work hours are often adjusted to accommodate the strenuous nature of fasting, but here at Dartmouth, Muslim students and faculty must add fasting and prayer to their already arduous schedules. It’s a staggering, supremely admirable task — and certainly not an easy one.

According to Al-Nur Muslim Student Association vice president Ameena Razzaque ’21, balancing being a student with observing Ramadan can be “rocky.”

“Being at Dartmouth, it’s always a little bit of a rocky transition, wondering how I will balance my work, wondering what kind of food I will eat.

And for me, the biggest thing is the caffeine withdrawals,” Razzaque said.

“Especially this year, staying energized and trying to maintain focus on a Zoom class, where I’d usually be snacking on the side or drinking my coffee and instead my mind is drifting off, it makes

work a lot harder.”

For Muslim athletes who are on campus this term at Dartmouth, there is another layer of difficulty, as students have to negotiate fasting with the physical rigor that comes with being a Division I athlete.

For women’s rugby player Aleemah Williams ’24, adjusting to the nutritional changes during the month of fasting has proven challenging.

“It’s very, very stressful. Overall, rugby is very demanding, and I want to continue to do this the next three years, but I also have to understand that my commitment to God comes first,” Williams said. “So I needed to find a way to balance everything.”

Fortunately, before Ramadan began, Williams was able to work with her coaches and a sports nutritionist to create what she called a “game plan” for the month, which involved moving some practices around to allow for more recuperation and following a strict, sustainable diet — which included a protein shake, hearty breakfast, vitamin supplements, sizable dinner and plenty of water — with the help of Dartmouth Dining Services.

“What I really appreciate about my team is [that] I told them I would be observing Ramadan, and our coaches really tried hard to accommodate me

and included other individuals, like the nutritionist, to help optimize my performance and take care of my body,” Williams said.

Given the importance of food during the month of Ramadan, DDS plays a crucial role in helping Muslim members of the community during this holy month. With the help of the Halal Task Force, created by Al-Nur to advocate for students’ dietary needs, DDS has been able to improve accommodations, according to Razzaque. Both Razzaque and Williams have appreciated the implementation of a DDS policy that will cover anything students get using their late-night swipe regardless of whether it exceeds the limit of five dollars, which helps when trying to catch up on calories. DDS also provides pre-packaged halal meals, such as protein shakes, dates and hard-boiled eggs, which come in handy when students are rushing to break their fast.

While DDS has certainly helped accommodate the needs of students observing Ramadan, Razzaque noted that there can be more done to help Muslim students feel supported among the challenges with fasting. Razzaque, who is also a member of the Halal Task Force, said that having an option for delivery and selling pre-packaged halal meals at locations other than Foco

MIA NELSON/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

would assist students when observing Ramadan.

“Sometimes it’s hard for students to come to Foco every night — sometimes they may be sick or something — so a delivery option would be really cool to have,” Razzaque said. “We have also been having conversations about having pre-packaged food at a location other than Foco, where students can just stop by and not have to use a meal swipe. But hopefully that’ll be a task for future generations.”

Abdullah also commented on the demands that DDS has to face during a pandemic, adding that food presents the “biggest challenge” during Ramadan.

“Having to meet dietary needs — not just halal but also kosher and others — in quarantine, in a pandemic … it’s a challenge having to meet those needs,” Abdullah said. “I think DDS has been responsive, but there [are] always opportunities to improve the quality, not necessarily the quantity, of offerings.”

Above all else, Muslim students just want to be supported, heard and acknowledged by their peers. With such a small community — Razzaque said there are less than thirty students, both graduate and undergraduate, observing Ramadan on campus this term — it can feel isolating at times, according to both Razzaque and Williams. And while most students and professors are understanding and supportive, it can be taxing to deal with students who lack awareness.

“When we’re fasting for fifteen hours, we don’t really want to hear people say offhand comments like, ‘Oh, you should just train yourself to eat later,’” Razzaque said. “So just having understanding and flexibility and basic respect is really important to us during this time.”

Ultimately, as Abdullah noted, the responsibility of awareness and understanding falls on the entire D a r t m o u t h c o m mu n i t y, a n d it is cultivated through personal relationships.

“Increasing awareness starts with our centers, our departments, our administration acknowledging this holiday — that’s part of the diversity and inclusion responsibility,” Abdullah said. “But awareness grows because of personal relationships among students.

If it’s a personal invite, or a personal conversation, or a personal ‘Would you like to break fast with me?’ that’s really how more people become educated.”

So, if you see or hear of someone observing Ramadan, maybe ask them if they would like to break fast with you, or perhaps simply wish them “Ramadan mubarak” — “Blessed Ramadan.”

You just might be making someone feel more at home.