The Dartmouth Winter Carnival Special Issue 2021

ANNIE QIU/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021

Table of Contents

EDITORS’ NOTE

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have been forced into home offices and dorm rooms, left to reflect on the past and think about the future. But, though we may be separated, members of the Dartmouth community continue to grow, learn and connect digitally behind closed doors.

In this year’s Winter Carnival special issue, we explore the theme of “Behind Closed Doors” from multiple angles. In addition to examining how several Dartmouth student and administrative organizations have adapted to the pandemic, we seek to shed light on issues and processes that typically evade the public eye. In examining College history, Greek life, accommodations and other aspects of campus, our writers have researched and recorded new student narratives worthy of sharing.

We hope that this issue affords our readers the opportunity to look behind the scenes at Dartmouth — from a safe distance, of course.

Sincerely, Jacob and Natalie

College grapples with Native representations in art

2

Demystifying Alpha Delta, the original ‘Animal House’

3

Pandemic prompts College to reexamine accessibility

4

Revisiting the illicit recording of a 1984 GSA meeting

4

Exploring the maze: Administrative power at Dartmouth

5

Tobacco ban sparks College-wide debate on substance use

5

Verbum Ultimum: Oh, The Places You Won’t Go

6

Teszler: Nalgene in the Streets, Tons of Trash Per Week

6

Arrington: Reopening the Dartmouth Experience

6

The spaces between: Stepping away from Greek life at Dartmouth

7

Back in action: A look at Dartmouth EMS’s pandemic operations

7

Alumni relations shifts focus to online programming

8

Sloan: Level Up

8

To put away or on display? Native representations in College art

By Kristin Chapman The Dartmouth

In the wake of a year marked by protests against racial injustice and police brutality, conversations have reemerged about what to do with controversial works of art — and more broadly, how institutions should confront their racist pasts.

Public monuments have played a central role in this latest wave of protests. For example, Black Lives Matter protesters tore down and painted over Confederate statues, and Indigenous activists have toppled monuments that they claim celebrate the extermination of Native Americans.

Dartmouth is no stranger to controversy surrounding art. Over the years, students criticized the Hovey Murals — a series of paintings depicting a myth of the College’s origin story featuring half-nude Native women and inebriated Native men — for representing Native Americans in a dehumanizing way.

The murals, which were painted by Walter Beach Humphrey, Class of 1914, in 1938 and 1939, were moved from a closed room in the basement of the Class of 1953 Commons to an off-campus location in 2018.

Last summer, after calls from students, alumni and community members to remove the weather vane on top of Baker-Berry Library, College President Phil Hanlon stated that the vane contained an offensive image of a Native American and did “not reflect Dartmouth’s values.”

The weather vane, which depicted a Native American smoking a pipe and wearing feathers while sitting on the ground in front of Dartmouth’s founder, Eleazar Wheelock, and what appears to be a barrel of rum, has since been removed.

A petition to take down the weather vane, which garnered over 800 signatures, stated that it was symbolic of “the degradation and annihilation of Native Americans by white colonists” and “the plight alcoholism and drug addiction played in the stealing of Native lands to found Dartmouth College.”

However, some have argued that the weather vane’s removal was not necessarily warranted.

“I wish that there had been some discussion about the weather vane,” said art history professor Steven Kangas, who questioned whether enough research was done on the historical context of the weather vane’s imagery before its displacement. Kangas said he believes that the artist’s decision to portray Wheelock sitting above the Native American was meant to establish a “hierarchy” in the same sense as “authority in the classroom,” rather

than ancestry or race, and the artist used the barrel and pipe to symbolize the time period of the piece.

“Of course, to argue this would probably place you in a category that is considered not progressive enough,” Kangas said.

The library and the Hood Museum of Art have also decided to remove an edition of the sculpture “Appeal to the Great Spirit,” that currently sits in the center of the Tower Room in Baker-Berry Library. The original sculpture sits in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Created by Cyrus Edwin Dallin, a white sculptor, “Appeal” shows a Native American riding on a horse with his arms outstretched and looking up towards the sky.

Taylor Rose Payer ’15, Hood Museum cultural heritage and Indigenous knowledges fellow and member of the Chippewa Tribe, said that she thinks the sculpture “just looks like the most tragic Native thing ever.”

Payer said that works by non- Construction workers removed the weather vane atop Baker Tower last summer.

Native artists, such as “Appeal,” project harmful messages about “It’s not fundamentally a committee the administration,” which will then Native people because they imply that about removal,” Coffey said. “That decide whether or not to act on them.

“Natives are vanishing, or they’re not is, the core question at the heart of Payer argued that while some going to survive, so we have to take what we’re trying to do is not, ‘Let’s Native American art created or their photographs or make art about go around and take things down.’ The collected by non-Native people them or take art, in a lot of cases, in idea here is to actually articulate and can be “educational,” it is always order to study them.” concretize our values, priorities and wrong for artists to represent Native In the future, the Hood Museum aspirations, so that when we’re faced American stories in racist, inaccurate intends to replace “Appeal” with with a decision about getting a new or obsolete ways. She cited ethnologist a piece work of art, Edward Curtis’s famous photographs made by a or naming of Native Americans from the early Native artist, “If it comes to some sort a building 20th century as “responsible for a according to of problematic thing that or designing lot of the stereotypes we have about Payer. an interior, Native people.” Curtis often staged is impacting Native people, B ro a d e r w e h a v e photographs and used props to make discussions then Native people need s o m e t h i n g it seem like they were “more ancient or about art and to be able to decide what to look at more backwards” than they actually artifacts at to h e l p were. the College happens with it to some guide that Currently, the Hood Museum a r e a l s o extent. You can’t make process.” has an exhibition that was created u n d e r w a y. response to Curtis’s photographs. that decision for the Native s a i dP atyhea rt in A working Photographers Will Wilson, of g r o u p people.” d e c i s i o n s the Diné, or Navajo Nation, and consisting on how to Kali Spitzer of the Kaska Dena of students, handle racist took tintype images of Dartmouth alumni and -TAYLOR ROSE PAYER ’15, HOOD art “should community members and put them faculty is in its MUSEUM CULTURAL HERITAGE be up to the on display as an example of Native preliminary people reclaiming their narratives.

AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES communities stages and that [the art] Hood Museum director John h a s m e t FELLOW most directly Stomberg confirmed that the museum twice so far impacts.” is considering how to deal with issues to start a

“ I f i t of race and representation in art. dialogue about the art around comes to some sort of problematic “Who gets to be heard? That’s the campus, according to art history thing that is impacting Native people, question we ask ourselves all the time, professor and working group co-chair then Native people need to be able to and we are working to make sure a Mary Coffey. decide what happens with it to some real, true diversity of voices are heard Coffey explained that the group has extent,” Payer said. “You can’t make through the artworks that we show at discussed two of its aims thus far, one that decision for the Native people.” the Hood,” Stomberg said. of which is a “historical accountability Coffey affirmed that the decisions Although the Hood Museum is project” examining “how the College of the working group will involve currently closed to visitors due to represents its own history,” and “reaching out and dialoguing COVID-19, it is offering virtual another is the evaluation of whether with all kinds of constituencies.” online programming that allows or not these representations reflect the Further more, they will write students to experience its exhibitions College’s aspirations for “inclusion “recommendations and guidelines remotely. and diversity” going forward. that will be made public and given to “My goal, frankly, is that every

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student at Dartmouth finds themselves or their heritage reflected at the Hood,” Stomberg added. If you’re a first-generation student from Argentina, there should be something at the Hood that speaks of home to you –– if not every day, at least some days.”

For Native Americans and other minority groups, the road to change has been long –– not only nationwide, but also at the College. Native American students and others protested Dartmouth’s “Indian” mascot until the College abandoned it in 1974. Students have also confronted anti-Black racism in the past, and activism around racial justice continues on campus today.

According to Payer, one solution may be redefining the ways we teach and learn about art.

“Maybe show [the artifact] and say, ‘This is the history of racist attitudes at this time,’” Payer said. “And in that story, you can then tell that Native activists, Native students, Native community members asked for it to be removed, and let that be part of the education of the piece.”

Stomberg added that keeping these objects in museum collections or libraries with the intent to learn from them can be “just the right thing to do.”

“Every institution in this country that has been around as long as Dartmouth has objectionable material, has objectionable stories in their past, and it’s all in how we deal with it,” he said. “Do we try to sweep it under the rug and deny it, or do we face it? And in facing it, change the future. So, that’s what I hope we are doing.”

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

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Demystifying Alpha Delta, the original ‘Animal House’ B y Caitlin McCarthy The Dartmouth Staff

Derecognition and a hit movie have given Alpha Delta fraternity at Dartmouth a mythic reputation.

The house still stands on campus, where it currently serves as office space. But what was it really like to be a part of the brotherhood?

According to some of its alumni, it wasn’t exactly like “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” but the film got at least one part spoton: the music.

Otis Day and the Knights, the fictional-turned-real soul band, said for mer AD brother and alumni advisor John Engelman ’68, was “the kind of band we would have at AD.” “Our music was rhythm and blues, Motown, soul music,” Engelman said, as opposed to the “British Invasion” music trend of the late 1960s.

However, the days of parties and musical guests gracing the halls of AD have since passed.

With the house derecognized and shuttered in 2015, alumni have been left to reflect on AD’s legacy amid continued campaigns for reinstatement.

House life and history Dartmouth officially recognized its chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi SOURCE: DARTMOUTH DIGITAL LIBRARY COLLECTIONS fraternity in 1846. The chapter was Students gather outside of Alpha Delta fraternity in the late 1980s to listen to live music and socialize. a part of the national fraternity E n g e l m a n s a i d t h a t t h e Carnival parties, complete with party, were “pretty close” to his derecognized AD in April 2015 until 1969, when it separated over the issue of expensive dues Sunday afternoon party would live disco bands. For Green Key experiences in AD. He added that after news broke the previous fall and became the local fraternity be the “largest-attended party on weekend, AD would host a band the house spent most of its social about members being branded Alpha Delta, complete with a campus,” since fewer houses would on its porch and students would dues on bringing bands to parties. with a hot iron, a practice that the gather in the yard, he said.

Alcohol would “materialize, but College had been investigating. new constitution detailing how throw parties at that time.

In general, Engelman said, Kapadia also described the if we didn’t have the music, then By the time it was derecognized, the frater nity would run. An archived “Visitors Register” for there “wasn’t as much going on diverse social makeup of the it wouldn’t necessarily be a party the fraternity had already been suspended since September 2014 the fraternity reads across the front in those days, because there were house’s members, including “Alter worth attending,” he said.

Delta” — students interested in Kapadia also noted that Animal after failing to check identification “Dartmouth Chapter, Alpha Delta no women on campus.”

“There weren’t a lot of loud, “the alternate lifestyle … the guys House was based on an earlier time before serving alcohol and not Phi,” with “Phi” crossed out by a huge parties,” he said. “It was not who are musicians and playing period than when he was a member, reporting a large event to the single line.

Engelman described the 1960s unusual of an evening for a bunch hacky sack, and hanging out and and that the “Delta House” from College. The College cited a frater nity landscape as being of people to be sitting around reading poetry,” “Aggro Delta” the film was based on a number three-year history of disciplinary somewhat different from what playing bridge and drinking beer — students who were on sports of different fraternity houses. He v i o l at i o n s, i n c l u d i n g h a z i n g, teams and “Aca Delta” — students remembered one person telling serving alcohol to minors and it is today, approximating that and having a nice time.” about 40% to 45% of students Kapadia, a member of the including Kapadia and other pre- him that a mermaid statue with hosting unregistered parties, as two fish bowls on her chest featured factors in its decision. participated in Greek life. As of house in the early 2000s, said that meds in the fraternity.

According to Engelman, town the 2019-2020 academic year, 63% he “wasn’t super excited about the “Any one of these g roups, in the movie was actually a fixture Greek system” you wouldn’t necessarily, in high in Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity, ordinances mandate that nobody of Dartmouth when he came school, imagine them all at the not AD. can live in the AD house, which is students are part to Dartmouth. same table,” Kapadia said. “But at “The movie gained immense on land still owned by the alumni, o f t h e G re e k “‘Animal House’ is He did not rush AD, we were all part of this really p o p u l a r i t y, ” E n g e l m a n s a i d . but there are office spaces available s y s t e m . H e fiction. [But there during his first vibrant and diverse mixture.” “… No one for rent. T he cited a cap on eligible fall, expected it to “We don’t want to alumni also rent fraternity size as were] two or three citing financial The “Animal House” be the hit that out social spaces a factor behind brothers of AD whose necessarily just come concerns and AD has gained notoriety as the it was, but after in the house lower affiliation personality and whose lack of interest. “Animal House” fraternity — a it finished its back as a regular old to fraternity numbers and However, after reputation it earned given that one run through the fraternity, just like all alumni for g u e s s e d t h a t actions informed the observing that of the three screenwriters, Chris movie theaters, events, and the fraternity’s character of Bluto many students Miller ’63, was a member of AD i t w a s t h e the other fraternities. a l u m n i practice of a t t h e t i m e when he was on campus. highest grossing It should be, I think, receptions q u e s t i o n i n g Blutarsky.” participated in Miller began writing for the movie comedy a re a l s o h e l d authority and something a little bit Greek life or a National Lampoon magazine, in history up to i n t h e h o u s e, tradition may - JOHN ENGELMAN ’68 senior society, Engelman said, publishing stories that time. And more forward-looking, Engelman said. have driven Kapadia said he such as “Tales of the Adelphian [ M i l l e r ] w a s however that turns Pepper, some people “realized how Lodge: The Night of the Seven famous.” the president away from lonely it can be Fires” about his “Hell Night,” or Part of the out to be.” of AD’s alumni Greek life. corporation, Parties at the time included on campus if you decide not to initiation experience and “More p o p u l a r i t y , Tales of the Adelphian Lodge: Engelman said, added that there “a whole lot of hard liquor,” join a house.”

-NIRAV KAPADIA ’03 h ave re c e n t l y Engelman said — but not too Kapadia noted that through Pinto’s Fir st Lay” about his w a s t h a t s o been Alcoholics many women. Dartmouth would AD, he “met a lot of people with experience losing his virginity. many fraternity Anonymous not become fully coeducational whom [he] had absolutely nothing These stories then went on to m e m b e r s a n d until 1972, and the few women in common, in a good way.” He help inspire the 1978 film “Animal a l u m n i a ro u n d t h e c o u n t r y meetings in the space. “claimed ownership of Animal There are plans among AD who frequented parties consisted also noticed that many of his rugby House.” “‘Animal House’ is fiction,” House.” alumni to find some way to revive of “a few dates and girlfriends” teammates had joined the house E n g e l m a n e x p l a i n e d t h a t the house. It is not unheard o r a g ro u p o f wo m e n f ro m and noted that there were many Engelman said, but he explained Colby College, whom Engelman pre-med students in the house as that the film’s characters were at looking at the house as an alumni o f f o r f r a t e r n i t y h o u s e s o n well, which “sealed the deal,” as least influenced by real members advisor, he could see that “it was Dartmouth’s campus to return described as “just friends.” of the house. Bluto Blutarsky, exactly what a fraternity should be: after derecognition. Phi Delta Engelman said that Dartmouth’s he was pre-med himself. “big weekends” drew in the largest Kapadia described the house as played by John Belushi in the a brotherhood that supported each Alpha fraternity, Beta Theta Pi being “a nice place to come home film, was not a real person, but other. They also like to party a lot, fraternity — which returned to crowds. “ Yo u r t y p i c a l w e e k e n d — to” when he lived there, beginning Engelman noted that he had met which was part of their downfall. Dartmouth’s campus as the local “two or three brothers of AD But they also did good things.”

Beta Alpha Omega fraternity — Homecoming, Winter Carnival, his sophomore summer.

Green Key — would find a band “There was always something whose personality and whose He referenced events that the and Zeta Psi fraternity were all Friday night, a band Saturday night going on, like, if they weren’t actions informed the character of fraternity would hold, such as a reinstated after being derecognized and a band Sunday afternoon,” he playing beer pong in the basement, Bluto Blutarsky.” The fraternity campus-wide literary contest in by the College. they were shooting pool upstairs. president in the movie, Robert the 2000s that honored Alpha Pepper explained that AD plans said.

Both Engelman and Nirav If they weren’t shooting pool Hoover, was similarly based on Delta Phi alumnus and English within the year to be “officially Kapadia ’03 spoke about AD’s upstairs, they were watching a “aspects of the character of two p ro f e s s o r R i ch a rd E b e r h a r t , connected back with Dartmouth preference for bands from other movie or playing video games,” or three of the guys who have Class of 1926, and a campus students, with recognition or been president of the fraternity,” discussion in 2000 that examined without,” floating the idea that cities — Engelman cited places like Kapadia said. homophobia on campus. This it “might be co-ed.” He added New York, Boston, Washington, He remembered that the house Engelman said.

D.C. and Chicago — over campus was fairly open to campus, drawing Kapadia said that the film’s event, organized in the wake of that the pandemic “has sort lots of students to its Winter party scenes, such as the toga then-“ex-g ay activist” Yvette of slowed down the plans” of bands.

Schneider’s controversial speech inviting students to be a part of detailing her “transition from the organization. homosexuality to Christianity,” Kapadia, who is also on the included a student panel and AD board, echoed the focus on opened up discussions around the fraternity’s future. “heterosexism and the integration “We don’t want to necessarily of alternative sexuality into the just come back as a regular old Greek system,” as reported by The fraternity, just like all the other Dartmouth at the time. fraternities. It should be, I think, John Pepper ’91 Tu ’97 recalled s o m e t h i n g a l i t t l e b i t m o r e a similar experience in the house. forward-looking, however that Business foundations and “There was probably too much turns out to be,” Kapadia said. career preparation for Liberal Arts drinking and too much distraction T h o u g h t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p and STEM students from the from why we came to Dartmouth, between the College and AD has Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and there were some consequences been fraught with controversies, to that that weren’t good,” he said. Pepper said that “the [AD] alumni Summer Bridge “And at the same time, there were group as a whole are incredibly a lot of really deep friendships that s u p p o r t i v e o f D a r t m o u t h , ” Session 1: June 13–July 2, 2021 were formed.” and many past member s are Session 2: July 11–30, 2021 Stressing the strength of these on the Board of Trustees or VIRTUAL 2021 bonds, Pepper noted that recently, the Alumni Council. Notably, Summer S a group of AD alumni flew to College President Phil Hanlon PROGRAM visit a fellow alumnus who was ’77 himself is an alumnus of the hospitalized with brain cancer, house. while around 20 other alumni “There are things about [AD]’s called in to support him over Zoom. past that don’t make people bridge.tuck.dartmouth.edu proud, but the reality is we all Derecognition and beyond have to look forward. So that’s T h e C o l l e g e o f f i c i a l l y what we’re doing,” Pepper said.

BRIDGE Their Future

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021

Pandemic prompts College to reexamine accessibility

By KYLE MULLINS

The Dartmouth Staff

In order to have most lectures recorded, students used to need to secure accommodations from the College for a documented disability.

Then COVID-19 hit — now, in the age of Zoom classes and asynchronous learning, recorded lectures are relatively routine.

For students with accommodations and the administrators who work with them, the pandemic has underscored the effectiveness of some accommodations — such as increased flexibility with assignment deadlines, extra time on exams and recorded lectures — and the potential for a more accommodating class environment in the future.

“It was this huge, you know, foot in the back that pushed us into this new mindset of how do we teach and learn, how do we do work?” said institutional compliance officer for the Americans with Disabilities Act Cathleen Trueba.

“And I’m pretty optimistic that we’ll find some things that we used to think we needed to do for this little group of people. Now it’s like, actually, a lot of people could benefit from that.”

Academic accommodations are organized largely through the Student Accessibility Services office, though changes to housing and dining are usually handled separately, assistant dean and director of SAS Alison May noted. Broadly speaking, she said they are “adjustments” intended to “level the playing field” — to ensure equal access to education for students with disabilities of some kind.

“The idea is that there is some barrier to access being presented by the assignment or the curriculum itself, and our role is to reduce or remove that barrier,” May said.

Under the ADA and its predecessor, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Dartmouth is required to “make its programs and services accessible via reasonable accommodation to anybody that’s otherwise qualified,” according to Trueba. Each student is entitled to a lack of discrimination based on disability status and to a determination process for what “reasonable accommodation” looks like for them, she added.

At Dartmouth, that “interactive process” is individualized, May said.

Students meet with SAS, discuss their needs, provide documentation of their disabilities and create a plan with the SAS officer for accommodations that can then be sent to professors. “[They] really work with you to get you everything that you need,” Anthe Roberts ’22, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as well as mild cerebral palsy, said. “ ... I’d never thought about recording lectures, and then I realized

that I needed it, and it was so helpful, but it’s something that I never would have thought to ask for,” Roberts added.

Such accommodations are only available for students with proper documentation — multiple students with accommodations noted that without it, the process can be difficult.

Alessa Lewis ’22 said that her accommodations were “predicated” on her ability to provide up-to-date documentation of ADD and slow processing. Roberts also felt fortunate to have a “paper trail” dating back to an ADHD diagnosis at age nine.

May clarified that documentation is sometimes not needed, especially when a condition is “readily apparent,” but that usually, some form of verification is required to assess the “level of functional impact” for the student.

May said that the office requires documentation to demonstrate that accommodations are not “unfair advantages,” but are actually mechanisms to equalize the learning environment. In the case of dyslexia, for example, documentation showing a student’s reading skills are well below average “means that extra time might be something appropriate for that student, to be able to have the same or equal access as a student without a disability.”

All in all, about 450 students — roughly 10% of undergraduates — are registered with SAS, according to May. The registration process can take as little as a week to complete with the proper documents, and has not changed substantially since the beginning of the pandemic. What has changed is the general campus outlook on

accommodations like class recording, according to May and Trueba.

“A lot of professors are now recording their lectures — which is awesome, and is something that I think all professors should do, all the time, because there’s no reason not to,” Roberts said.

May said that the remote format of classes has allowed students with disabilities who never completed their degrees to return to Dartmouth to do so, noting that she knew of a ’12 and a ’17 in that situation. More broadly, the shift has made classes more accessible for some current students.

For example, May said that winter poses difficult conditions for students with mobility impairments. The switch to remote classes, she said, would allow such students to avoid unnecessary winter off terms.

Dartmouth has also gained access to a beta version of an artificial intelligencebased live closed captioning system for Zoom, May and Trueba said. The tool, which can be enabled by the host of a Zoom call, automatically generates fairly accurate closed captions for the call, making them more accessible for anyone with hearing loss or attention deficit disorders — as well as students for whom English is a second language, or who need to step away from the screen for a moment, Trueba added.

May said that she believes the pandemic has actually led to fewer students requesting accommodations, because many common accommodations are already built into the structure of the remote classes — an aspect of online learning that May said she hopes will continue after

COVID-19 recedes.

Bill Cheng ’22, co-president of Access Dartmouth, a club that advocates for students with disabilities, said that the group’s current focus is consulting with academic departments on accessibility issues and preparing a handbook for new students concerned about accessibility, as well as providing a social space for students to share “access challenges.”

Last summer, the group achieved a victory — SAS began allowing students to automatically send accommodation letters via email to professors rather than meet directly with them to arrange accommodations for a class. May said several panels that the club held highlighted the stress that the in-person delivery often put on students helped to spur the change, and Cheng said that “the dynamic has changed a little bit” between students and professors thanks to the switch.

Roughly 700 accommodation emails were sent through the SAS online portal this term, May said. Students generally take two to three classes, but not all of the approximately 450 registered students are taking classes this term, and not all send emails to every professor, she clarified.

Challenges remain, however, as the College begins looking toward a broader return to campus. Cheng pointed out that many buildings, like Dartmouth Hall (which is undergoing renovations), remain inaccessible to students with physical disabilities.

Cheng suggested that increased faculty training could help College educators be “more understanding” of students with disabilities. While Cheng

has a disability — cerebral palsy — that is more “visible,” he noted that for students with less outwardly apparent disabilities, “it becomes more difficult for them to advertise that, and also for professors to perceive a need for those accommodations.”

Roberts said that while some professors are enthusiastic about working to provide accommodations, others “will treat it like a chore that they have to give you the accommodations that you legally have the right to.”

According to Roberts, one professor had objected to rescheduling a time-and-a half exam after an emergency room visit, citing the specific inconvenience of moving around the larger block of time.

Lewis said that she experiences less of a general stigma around accommodations in college than she did in high school.

“I think in college, it’s like everyone has their own situation,” Lewis said.

“And this is what needs to happen for them to be on an equal playing field.”

Cheng noted that students “don’t have to have a disability to have challenges” and encouraged anyone who may have circumstances that leave them struggling to reach out to SAS or their dean. The goal of Access Dartmouth, he said, is “universal design” — a setup where accommodations are not necessary because barriers to access have been lowered for everyone.

“It would be a very good thing,” Cheng said, “if everyone’s needs could be met, so that no one would have to feel that they weren’t able to function at their maximum potential.”

NAINA BHALLA/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

The Student Accessibility Services offices are located in Baker-Berry Library.

Revisiting the illicit recording of a 1984 GSA meeting

By Griselda Chavez The Dartmouth Staff

On April 29, 1984, The Dartmouth Review secretly recorded and published details of a Gay Student Association meeting on campus. In the fallout of the event, campus-wide conversations arose on privacy and how to support LGBTQ+ students.

Decades later, the legacy of the incident persists, raising questions about queer spaces on campus.

Under the physical restrictions of the pandemic, LGBTQ+ students have turned toward digital forms of communication to connect, leading to new questions of online privacy.

A secret recording Jay Berkow ’85, GSA president at the time of the recorded meeting, noted that roughly two-thirds of the organization’s membership were “in the closet.” The GSA’s meetings, according to Berkow, sought to create a forum for these students who had not yet come out or were dealing with other issues surrounding their identity, particularly in the absence of queer spaces on campus. “[The College] was at its best, hands-off, and at its worst, kind of supporting and encouraging anti-gay sentiment on campus,” Berkow said.

The first of the GSA’s meetings open to the wider Dartmouth student body, which was publicized via ads in The Dartmouth and flyers around campus, was slated for April 29, 1984.

At the start of the meeting, Berkow said everyone was made to sign a paper stating that “nothing that gets said in this meeting ever gets repeated outside of this meeting, and it is all in private.”

Unbeknownst to Berkow, Teresa Polenz ’87, one of the students in attendance, had been sent by then-Review editor-in-chief Laura Ingraham ’85 to allegedly investigate how the GSA was spending its funds.

According to Berkow and Stephen Carter ’86, another student who attended the meeting, Polenz had entered explaining that she wanted

to attend because she was questioning her sexuality.

Carter described Polenz as being “too forceful” with her questions and said her visit “didn’t seem right” because people “usually didn’t come in as a curious person.” However, he noted, the members “had a philosophy that anyone could join.”

Throughout the meeting, Polenz would get up and excuse herself to walk outside to flip her tape, according to Berkow and Carter. At the end of the meeting when a group of members, including Berkow, confronted her at her dorm, she confessed to being a reporter for The Review.

Berkow noted that students at the meeting had “revealed a lot of their own personal lives,” leaving them in a “vulnerable” position. According to Berkow, one of the students in attendance was someone on an ROTC scholarship, who, if outed by The Dartmouth Review, would lose their college scholarship.

Despite confronting Polenz, Berkow mentioned that she refused to give up the tapes, and a transcript of the meeting was eventually published

by The Dartmouth Review. The transcript did not include names except for two club officers, one of them being Berkow. However, Berkow mentioned that “the entire transcript was published in the paper, so even if [a] name wasn’t mentioned, it was pretty easy to identify people.”

The aftermath According to Berkow, the incident changed his life “enormously.” As The Review became embroiled in a legal battle due to the recording, he recalled news reporters “constantly” pulling him out of class to speak with him.

At the same time, he noted that he was “luckily” living off campus, away from the “bullying and aggression towards the gay community,” and his reputation allowed him to escape much of the harassment as well.

“I was such an outspoken, strong, angry man at the time that I think people were afraid of me because I

wasn’t afraid of them,” Berkow said.

Ultimately, according to an October 1984 New York Times report, the New Hampshire state attorney general opted not to prosecute Polenz, who was under investigation for potentially violating felony wiretapping and misdemeanor privacy laws.

Ingraham claimed that since the GSA had “advertised” the meeting, participants had given up confidentiality and that it was a “freedom of the press issue,” according to an Associated Press report from July 1984.

“Part of what we did was journalistically justifiable: The group received college funding but, unlike every other student group receiving a college grant, refused to make public its membership or budget,” Ingraham wrote in a Washington Post column over a decade after the incident. “We wanted to find out how student funds were being spent and to demonstrate the double standard Dartmouth had created by funding the group. But in doing so, we adopted a purposefully outrageous tone — occasionally using, for example, the word ‘sodomites’ to describe campus gays.”

B erk ow ch ar a c ter ized th e community’s reaction in the aftermath of the events as “polarized.” Similarly, Carter noted that here was “outrage from the more progressive groups,” but The Review also “validated the people who were homophobic.”

Moreover, Carter mentioned the LGBTQ+ presence on campus “wasn’t as tight of a community” itself at the time due to privacy concerns, given the large share of closeted members. The tape recordings made ties among the community “more tenuous,” he said, and he believes that people were even more unwilling to come to subsequent meetings because they were “on edge.”

Ultimately, though, Carter believes The Dartmouth Review’s article “backfired” because it “solidified” the need for greater support for the LGBTQ+ community at Dartmouth, especially after the “horrible” treatment he said queer students

regularly endured came to light.

According to Carter, the GSA continued “business as usual” in the aftermath of the recording because they recognized “the worst [had] been done,” and they did not expect another similar incident to occur. Meetings and social gatherings continued, and he noted that support from the student body throughout the ’80s and ’90s began to grow at a “very, very slow” rate.

Meanwhile, Berkow said that students who were “outed were made to feel like Dartmouth was not a place to go to school, so they left and went to other schools.” While the College did not support The Dartmouth Review, Berkow noted, they “certainly didn’t come out against them either.”

Although he waited until his graduation, Berkow “ran out” of Dartmouth and said he did not intend to return.

Queer life on campus, four decades later Throughout the years, Dartmouth’s LGBTQ+ community has expanded, and resources like the Office of Pluralism and Leadership have provided spaces for queer students.

However, concerns about privacy and security remain.

Within, a group founded last winter, is currently the only studentled organization focused on providing a space for the LGBTQ+ community on campus. Val Werner ’20, Within’s president, described the organization as a social and advocacy group.

A main concern for Within amid the pandemic has been managing the security of meetings, especially given the prevalence of “Zoombombings,” or unwanted and disruptive guests on Zoom calls. As a way to regulate who entered the meetings, Werner explained that the organization would not send out the link to meetings through the “Campus Events” listserv.

So far, the organization has avoided falling prey to any breaches in security, Warner said.

Nicolas Macri ’24 said that with

the relatively new environment of virtual spaces, communication and interaction in the LGBTQ+ community have persevered through the pandemic. Macri attributed it to the initiative of fellow members within the community, who created virtual spaces like group chats and Zoom meetings.

Macri said that within the queer community, there is a struggle to navigate between protecting people’s privacy and not hiding the “existence of LGBTQ+ people.”

For conversations via group chats, who is admitted and who is not may be a particularly complicated question.

“The thing about being LGBTQ+ is there’s no real way to know — there’s no proof,” Macri said.

Students have to rely on each other and trust that they will not leak any private information that is mentioned in these spaces, Macri noted.

Although it is not explicitly an LGBTQ+ organization, the Amarna undergraduate society, according to its president, Nathaniel Stornelli ’21, has become a “space that is very queer by nature.” Stornelli emphasized that members of Amarna are expected to respect each other’s boundaries and privacy, but there can always be more done to ensure everyone feels secure in their space.

“I guess part of it is having that philosophy that we are a safe space, so the people who come [to Amarna] will want to respect that — and that’s well and good — but we should be doing more to make sure that happens,” Stornelli said. They added that under their presidency, if a breach of trust were to occur, they would call a disciplinary hearing “so fast.”

Reflecting on the 1984 GSA incident, Stornelli noted that such events can and should inform presentday discussions on privacy within Dartmouth’s queer community.

“I think we need to have these conversations and remember some of Dartmouth’s uglier history and use that to move into a better place,” they said.

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Exploring the maze: Administrative power at Dartmouth B y Lorraine Liu

The Dartmouth Senior Staff

Since its founding, Dartmouth’s administration has evolved from just a few roles into a sizable bureaucratic web. As Dartmouth grew both in size and in operational complexity, the College added a slew of new positions, and responsibilities — especially of the president and provost — have shifted. However, all senior administrators still work under the overall direction of the Board of Trustees.

History and evolution of the College administration When Eleazar Wheelock first established the College in 1769, the president, a librarian and a treasurer for med Dartmouth’s administration, according to College archivist and records manager Peter Carini. Carini said the administrative structure did not change substantially until College President William Tucker arrived at Dartmouth in 1893, when he first installed a dean of the College, before a secretary of the president in 1901 and various other positions.

Today, the number of administrators greatly outnumbers these original few.

“Tucker realized that as president, he could move the College in new directions,” Carini said.

Tucker’s administration created the secretary of the College in 1905 to serve as secretary of the Board of Trustees, and a dean of faculty of arts and sciences was added in 1933 as a liaison between faculty and the administration. More administrative positions came into place when John Sloan Dickey became president in 1945, and the position of the provost was created between the end of Dickey’s administration and the early days of College President John Kemeny’s tenure.

As of 2019, the latest report available, Dartmouth has 24 “chief institutional officers” that work in departments ranging from undergraduate admissions to public relations. In 2018, 943 faculty members and 2,938 full-time and 328 part-time staff members worked for the College.

W h i l e W h e e l o c k , Tu c k e r, Hopkins, Dickey, Kemeny and even current College President Phil Hanlon have added different roles to their cabinets, one common theme that ties their governance together is their influence over the administrative structure, according to Carini.

“Each president comes in and not only appoints the people they want within those positions — usually within a year or two there’ll be a shake up — but the president also can reshape the structure of the administration by adding or elevating different positions,” he said.

For example, the College — under Hanlon’s direction — appointed Shontay Delalue on Feb. 4 as the College’s senior vice president and senior diversity officer to oversee equity and inclusion. Delalue, in the newly elevated position, will join the College’s senior leadership

group and meet with the president weekly.

Meanwhile, the position of the provost has not always been as heavily involved in operating the College as it is today. According to Carini, the president took on most of the College’s operational tasks up until the end of Dickey’s administration.

“The provost is a position that has really shifted a lot,” he said.

“The president has kept apprised of the details he needs to know, but I don’t think that the president runs the institution in the way that they did 30 or 40 years ago, and a lot of that has transferred to either the chief financial officer or the provost and some other deans.”

Role of the president Different departments, staff and faculty members come together to operate the College, with the president in charge of fundraising, the executive vice president overseeing campus facilities, the provost planning the budgets and academics and the Board of Trustees approving the College’s overall key initiatives. Administrators collaborate closely with each other and with the Board, but Board members ultimately have the final say in approving measures.

Carini described academic institutions as “one of the most autocratic governing structures in the world, if not the most autocratic other than a political dictatorship.”

He said that the faculty have some governance say in the College, but it has decreased over the years, noting that the College president’s main goal is to “keep [the Board of Trustees] happy.”

Carini noted that between Kemeny’s and Hanlon’s administration, the president took on more fundraising responsibilities, while operational duties were gradually delegated to the provost.

From Carini’s perspective, the more recent presidents are the College’s “direction setters at a high level” and “chief fundraising officers” who represent the College to the public.

Carnini also observed that as increasing fundraising became a more integral part of the College over the past century, the size of the administration has also “exploded.”

When Hanlon took on his presidency, he appointed Robert Lasher as the College’s senior vice president for advancement. He also launched the $3 billion “Call to Lead” campaign in 2018, which has reached 91% of its goal.

While over time many of the president’s tasks have been delegated to the provost, the president’s direct connection with the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences has remained mostly unchanged.

Provost Joseph Helble said that this unique relationship persists in large part because the faculty of arts and sciences is “the focus of the undergraduate institution” and the College’s largest faculty excluding the clinical faculty at the Geisel School of Medicine.

Additionally, the president is usually a part of the College’s faculty, rendering communication

with the dean of the faculty especially important. For example, Hanlon was a math professor at the University of Michigan prior to becoming president, and he has continued to teach during his presidency. For example, last fall he co-taught Math 108, “Topics in Combinatorics” alongside graduate student Benjamin Adenbaum.

“The president has always been a member of the faculty. … They are sort of like the highest ranking faculty member in a weird way,” Carini explained.

The provost: managing the College’s budget and academic operations The provost, created more recently in the College’s history, is currently among the highest positions in the senior administration, reporting directly to the president as the chief academic and budget officer at Dartmouth. All of the College’s academic deans — except for the dean of faculty — report directly to the provost’s office.

Helble said that prior to the pandemic, his main responsibility as the College’s chief budget officer had been to plan Dartmouth’s annual operating budgets to ensure that the operating costs were not growing faster than the revenues. While his role did not change when the pandemic hit, Helble said the tasks of making budgetary adjustments and planning the College’s operations have become much more timeconsuming as a result of COVID-19.

During the pandemic, important decisions related to the College’s operations, such as the number of students allowed on campus each term, have come from the provost’s office with recommendations from the COVID-19 task force and in consultation with Hanlon and the Board of Trustees, according to Helble. He added that he consults with Hanlon on most of his decisions, even if his office is ultimately in charge of finalizing them.

Helble compared his role to being the chief operating officer of a large organization, while Hanlon is regarded as the chief executive officer.

“A good way to think about it is that the responsibility of the president is to set the vision and direction of the college or university,” he said. “And the provost is charged with implementing that vision.”

Dean of the College Kathryn Lively reports directly to the provost and oversees student affairs, campus health and the house community system.

Executive vice president: operating campus services and facilities Two of Hanlon’s key appointments include naming Richard Mills as the executive vice president and Michael Wagner as the College’s chief financial officer, marking the separation of the College’s finances from the EVP’s tasks. Meanwhile, the EVP focuses more on the College’s strategic initiatives.

As EVP, Mills reports directly

to Hanlon and oversees seven administrative roles, including chief financial officer and the director of Safety and Security.

He said one important part of his job is having oversight over central campus services and facilities, such as the custodial crew and dining operations.

“I’m essentially the administrative counterpart to the provost, who reports to the president,” Mills said.

Mills’s responsibilities have fluctuated since he started working at the College. In 2015, Mills oversaw the College’s residential operations, dining services and the Skiway among other departments that previously operated under the provost’s office. During this time, Safety and Security — which used to report to the dean of the College — was also placed under Mills’ management.

Mills said changes in the reporting relationships of different administrative departments reflect the College’s evolution, such as the change in oversight for Safety and Security. As Dartmouth’s graduate schools expand, campus safety is no longer limited to protecting undergraduate students, which explains why Safety and Security stopped reporting to the dean of the College — a position mainly overseeing undergraduate students’ affairs, according to Mills.

Another important responsibility that senior administrators like Mills have is the reshaping and hiring of key positions within the departments they oversee. For example, after previous vice president of campus services, Steven Moore, left the College in 2019, his role became combined with that of the vice president for institutional projects.

Josh Keniston then took over the new position — vice president of campus services — in April 2019.

In this role, Keniston said he focuses on College initiatives like the Dartmouth Green Energy Project and the graduate student housing project. Due to the “cross-cutting nature” of the projects under his direction, which exceed the scope of traditional campus services, Keniston draws on academic, financial and legal inputs.

Keniston noted that some of the institutional projects have slowed down as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that as the cochair of the College’s COVID-19 task force, he now dedicates a significant amount of time to operationalizing public health measures in campus facilities, such as reorganizing the setup of dining halls.

Helble described the general policy-making process within the senior administration as a “partnership and collaboration.”

When issues arise, a working group composed of staff, faculty members or students are appointed to look into them and provide recommendations.

The findings will be presented to either the EVP or to the provost when the issue has an academic component, and a group of about 14 senior leaders who report directly to Hanlon will collectively discuss the policy recommendation. The

senior administration does not have a formal voting procedure like the Board of Trustees does, but Helble said he sometimes asks for a “raw poll” to gauge responses from other senior leaders.

The Board of Trustees While the College’s administrators are tasked with carrying out the president’s vision, they ultimately need permission from the Board for strategic initiatives to move forward.

The Board, which includes the governor of New Hampshire and 24 other members, takes on a fiduciary responsibility for the institution. It is responsible for overseeing the work of the senior leaders while focusing on the long-term strategy and overall institutional health, Board of Trustees chair Laurel Richie ’81 wrote in an email statement.

Within the Board of Trustees, member s are assigned to 10 committees that advise the work of different senior administrative leaders. For example, while Helble acts as the primary Dartmouth representative on the academic excellence committee, Mills and Keniston work closely with the campus planning and facilities committee. Senior leaders would at t e n d t h e B o a rd ’s a n d t h e committees’ meetings to present their recommendations and hear Board members’ perspectives.

While some operational decisions are made without the Board’s review or approval, issues like the initiation of construction projects and the selection of the College president require their support.

One mechanism that pushes the agenda of the Board and the senior administration forward is voting.

According to Helble, the president and the chair of the Board make “a judgment call” to decide whether issues should be presented to the entire Board.

Keniston said that while working on the Center for Engineering and Computer Science, he had many discussions with the campus planning and facilities committee to ensure that his plans aligned with the parameters that the Board has set.

He added that at the end of certain design phases, the committee would weigh in and hold a vote before the vote went to the full Board.

Most votes are passed by a simple majority, except for “a very few specific instances” where a higher standard is required by College bylaws, according to Richie.

The myriad ways in which College administrators work with each other can be “messy,” Mills noted, but he added that the policymaking process that allows different voices to be heard ultimately makes the College operate as smoothly as possible.

“Whether you’re a faculty member or a staff member, people come to work in higher education or a nonprofit because they actually believe in the mission,” he said. “And part of what I think makes it work is the workforce. Whether academic or administrative, people are here because they want to be here, and they believe in what the place is doing.”

Tobacco ban sparks College-wide debate on substance use

By Arielle Feuerstein The Dartmouth Staff

Dartmouth has a reputation for its rampant alcohol consumption and partying; after all, the College’s unofficial mascot is a sentient beer keg. For decades now, Dartmouth has attempted to shed this reputation and curb the prevalence of alcohol and drugs on campus.

The College’s most recent effort to do so — a soon-to-be-implemented campus-wide tobacco ban — has sparked discussions about substance use on campus and the policies used to prevent it. While some consider prohibitive policies a step in the right direction, others believe such rules fail to confront a culture that has perpetuated substance abuse on campus.

According to Executive Vice President Richard Mills, he and College President Phil Hanlon had always intended to implement changes to the College’s tobacco use policies. Mills cited health benefits as the primary motivator for the ban, adding that he hoped it would protect non-smokers from exposure to secondhand smoke. The COVID-19 pandemic was one factor that prompted the administration to finally take action, Mills noted.

“As COVID came into focus and the lung and pulmonary aspects of the virus became clear, it felt more urgent to take action,” he said.

Over the decades, the College has

instituted various alcohol education programs and prohibited smoking inside campus buildings, among other initiatives to restrict substance use.

In 2014, Hanlon issued a “Call to Action” that expressed the College’s interest in minimizing high-risk drinking among other prevalent campus issues, like sexual assault and lack of inclusivity. Hanlon announced the Moving Dartmouth Forward Plan in 2015, which banned the consumption of hard alcohol on campus and instituted a tiered system of bartending and security guidelines depending on the size of gatherings.

The policy also strengthened the punishments for students found with hard alcohol.

Not every student believes that policies that outright prohibit the use of a substance, like the tobacco ban and hard alcohol ban, are in the best interests of the student body.

Daniel Bring ’21, a former smoker, described the ban as a “useless policy that hurts the people it’s trying to help,” explaining that it “just imposes this prohibition without providing meaningful resources to help students quit.”

Bring said he believes there are certain factors in Dartmouth’s environment that encourage a culture of substance use, such as peer pressure common in Greek spaces.

“I know people in fraternities who are required to smoke or to use some form of tobacco, like chewing tobacco, as part of their pledging

activities,” Bring said.

However, Bring does not feel that Greek life is the sole driver of substance use on campus.

“Dartmouth students are under an enormous degree of stress and have this isolated experience of living in the far north without a lot of interaction with outsiders or a broader culture,” Bring said. “So I think that can be sort of isolating and leads to a lot of these communities that form around this bad behavior.”

Mills used to work at Harvard Medical School, where a similar tobacco restriction was implemented.

He notes that the ban “created a sort of culture change” at Harvard, and in the early stages of the ban, students seemed to take advantage of the resources and support offered to help students quit smoking.

Mills also commented that smoking is a “social moment for people who would take a cigarette break,” and the aim of the tobacco ban was not necessarily to cause this “culture shift,” either at Harvard or Dartmouth.

“It wasn’t as though, either at Harvard or Dartmouth, we thought the culture was bad.” Mills said.

“What we wanted was to get away from the bad health effects and the unintended consequences or ancillary consequences of this cultural phenomenon.”

One notable critic particularly of Dartmouth’s alcohol-driven culture has been Andrew Lohse ’12. An alumnus of Sigma Alpha

Epsilon fraternity, he chronicled his experiences with Dartmouth’s drinking culture in a 2012 Rolling Stone article, “Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses.” Lohse said he felt that the student culture at Dartmouth was unique compared to other Ivy League schools like Harvard University or Princeton University because the social hierarchy was based more on its drinking culture than on family ties and connections.

“In order to be moving among the social groups to meet people, to meet girls, get tapped for a secret society, all these social goals that people had in mind, they all kind of happen through drinking culture,” Lohse said. “I feel like there was a positive aspect … to the insane drinking culture in the sense that it was democratizing. If you could drink a lot and you were fun to hang out with, that was an avenue to attain social capital.”

Lohse matriculated in 2008, and then took time off during his junior year following an incident in which he drunkenly threw a chair at a security guard and was arrested for disorderly conduct. In the wake of the incident, Lohse would go on to divulge details of his time at Dartmouth in a tell-all Rolling Stone piece. When he returned to campus in 2015, he noticed that changes had already begun to take shape under Moving Dartmouth Forward.

“You would have all kinds of monitors at parties and in the

basement that would be exerting a level of authority on what people were doing,” Lohse said. “And then some fraternities were permanently banned, and SAE became whatever it is now.”

According to the College’s most recent evaluation of Moving Dartmouth Forward, alcohol-related incidents involving Safety and Security or the Office of Residential Life, as well as medical encounters with Health Services or Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for intoxication, did not immediately decrease after the initiative’s implementation, though there was later a steep decline in both between the 2018-2019 school year and the previous year. Meanwhile, Good Samaritan calls have increased slightly and medical encounters involving blood alcohol levels above 0.25 have remained steady since the program’s launch.

For a long time, Lohse believed the College needed to abolish Greek life in order to address the campus’ alcohol and drug culture. However, in light of more recent attempts by Dartmouth to establish alternate communities, like the house community system, Lohse believes the solution is more nuanced.

Because the house communities are involuntary, he does not think there is any meaning in belonging to that group identity.

“There should be a middle ground between this and [allowing Greek organizations to] outright abuse people,” Lohse said.

THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD

STAFF COLUMNIST MAX TESZLER ’23

Oh, The Places You Won’t Go

Tons of Trash per Week

After cutting several study abroad programs, the College should revamp its remaining offerings.

On Feb. 4, Dartmouth announced that it Many of Dartmouth’s study abroad programs had slashed funding for off-campus programs by follow a similar model: a major-specific, pre28% for the next fiscal year. This decision will selected slate of courses, taught largely by reduce the number of study abroad programs Dartmouth professors to a group of Dartmouth that the College offers next year from about 40 students. While this model has value in many programs to just 25, with language programs fields, for others, it can be limiting. Cultural bearing the brunt of the impact. The current engagement can be hard when ensconced in plan is for the College to gradually increase a Dartmouth bubble, and with most programs offerings again over the next few years. tied to majors, students have little flexibility to Although this decision choose where in the world has faced significant “Dartmouth’s isolated to study abroad. backlash from students, One solution to the issues faculty and alumni, the cited location makes it too with Dartmouth’s current rationale for the cuts — easy not to engage model is to nor malize which includes the Guarini transfer terms. A transfer Institute for International beyond the Hanover term means actually living Understanding’s ever- bubble. The College and studying with students growing deficit, a declining another country — and s h o u l d e n c o u ra g e from interest in study abroad significantly more flexibility programs and a shift in students to study abroad choosing courses. While interest away from the — and that means some transfer programs humanities in favor of are currently available, STEM and social sciences offering programs that the selection is limited.

— is not unreasonable. students find valuable.” Organizing an independent It is clear that these cuts transfer term is currently were more than an attempt arduous and requires a to quickly address a budget issue. Rather, $2,200 “application fee” payable to Dartmouth. the decision appears to stem from a number Streamlining the process of adding a transfer of demand-related factors, with the deficit term would make study abroad far more merely being the final nail in the coffin. And accessible and appealing to students, while the decision, though unpopular, may prove to saving the College money by reducing the have silver linings. In the wake of the cuts, the burden on Dartmouth-run study abroad College has a chance to redesign and revamp programs. its study abroad programs.

Other students simply do not have time Currently, many of the College’s study abroad in their D-Plan to study abroad. One way programs misalign with students’ academic of addressing this concern is to create more interests. This discrepancy is perhaps best programs that run for a shorter period of time, represented by the fact that although 75% of such as the three-week long Vietnam study off-campus programs are in the arts, humanities abroad program being piloted through the Asian and languages, most students at Dartmouth Societies, Cultures and Languages Department pursue STEM or social science majors. Between this coming fall. foreign study programs, language study abroad Additionally, the College should offer more and language study abroad plus programs, 23 interdisciplinary programs, like the Irving of 47 study abroad programs are specifically Institute for Energy and Society and government through language departments. department’s new FSP to Russia. Presently, The fact that nearly half of all study abroad many language study abroad programs restrict programs are from language departments, even students to taking only language courses, and a though less than 3% of last year’s graduating broader selection of courses would likely create class majored in a language, demonstrates a more demand. clear misalignment between student interests Dartmouth believes in making its students and the programs offered. While language global citizens who have first-hand experience majors clearly lend themselves to studying with the world beyond its campus. We hope abroad, such a significant disparity explains that the recent cuts are part of a move to why many students are simply not interested better realize that goal, not simply a cost-saving in the programs the College is offering. measure at the expense of global engagement.

This is a problem. Global engagement Students at Dartmouth must engage with the is critical to a liberal arts education, and wider world — and the College should give Dartmouth’s isolated location makes it too easy them that opportunity. not to engage beyond the Hanover bubble. The College should encourage students to study The editorial board consists of opinion staff abroad — and that means offering programs columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and that students find valuable. the editor-in-chief.

The Dartmouth community’s wasteful habits do not match student values of sustainability.

In my first week back on campus, I watched with helpless despair as the disposable food containers piled up in my trashcan. Plastic water bottles, wrappers and yogurt containers — all adding to an ever-growing pile of waste. With recycling suspended at the College, I knew all of it would head straight for the landfill. Yes, the pandemic has created extreme circumstances — but even in normal times, we’re not as sustainable as we could be. In spite of the average Dartmouth student’s environmentally conscious image, behind closed doors, we’re not making responsible decisions for the Earth — and some key policy steps by the College could go a long way in disposing of bad habits.

Many students here exhibit the hallmarks of a “crunchy,” “susty” environmentalist: carrying around a Nalgene, wearing 100% recycledpolyester fleece and trying their best to compost and recycle. Yet statistics show that Dartmouth simply isn’t doing well as a whole. Even before the pandemic, we underperformed our own targets for waste diversion from landfills and performed only slightly better than the national average. High levels of food contamination prevent optimum levels of recycling and were what prompted the shutdown this fall. The sheer amount of our waste is galling — we generated nearly 800,000 pounds of food waste in 2019, a number which has been increasing. In total, we generate around seven million pounds of trash per year, and our per-capita waste generation is likely to worsen in this pandemic.

A number of groups deserve commendation for their work in trying to push the College in the right direction, including the Sustainability Office and its student interns. In the 2018-2019 school year, the Sustainability Office first-year eco-representatives organized a demonstration of just how much food was left uneaten, dumping food into a bucket rather than letting the DDS cleaning system handle it.

Despite efforts like this, food waste continues to rise. A variety of other clubs and organizations offer grants for sustainability projects and related environmental advocacy — but the College lags behind in its waste diversion agenda. There are students ready and willing to lead us in the right direction, yet as a whole, we’re not doing as much as we can.

This problem represents a fundamental failure to align values with action, to conform habits to our higher ideals — one which I’m admittedly no less guilty of than the average student. It can be so easy to make the wrong decision, with little actions accumulating into a demonstrably large impact.

I throw partially rinsed yogurt containers in the recycling, leading to food contamination, telling myself it’s “good enough.” When I have a piece of waste that I don’t know is recyclable, I usually just chuck it in the trash as the inconsistent signage on our waste bins does little to inform me where that waste belongs. Despite the fact recycling could cut carbon emissions by up to 25%, I still sometimes

struggle to connect the line between my action’s real impact. I’m not alone in this — studies reveal that a lack of knowledge, and a belief that recycling can’t really have a large impact, often prevent people from disposing of their waste properly. These are solvable problems.

When it comes to changing habits, a few key policy “nudges” can make all the difference. As others have pointed out, increasing education and signage about recycling could make a difference.

Consistent and direct communication from toplevel administration about waste reduction could allow the student body to see the collective impact of what they’re doing. Colleges also tend to generate the most waste at the end of term — and there are already measures in place, such as the Sustainability Yard sale, to reuse what gets left behind. But many items aren’t eligible, such as partially-used bottles of shampoo or shaving cream, which often get thrown away before air travel. Creating a system to recycle soaps and other products (a service already widely used in hotels), is a great place to start. By no means is this list exhaustive or perfect — there’s plenty of other strong ideas out there on how to change personal sustainability habits. They just need the will and support of the College.

Let me be clear — changes in individual behavior, although important, cannot and will not solve the climate crisis and environmental degradation; broad, structural changes are needed, no matter how much we recycle or turn off our lights.

But, as environmentalists have pointed out, the need for collective action is not a free pass to live without a look at your own personal impact. Behavioral changes are essential to reduce emissions, and any broad climate policy should incentivize changes in day-to-day-life. So, while we wait for the College to enact policy changes, what steps can you do as a student? One way is to catalog the amount of food waste you produce in a week: Create an album in your phone with pictures of the scraps of food you throw away, and by the end of the week, you’ll have a compelling visual of the problem. Similarly, you can journal the amount of plastic waste you throw away. Recognize the bad habits for what they are — habits that can be broken.

I know where I can start — cleaning out those yogurt containers completely. Every time I take the extra three seconds to clean it out, I’ll remind myself I’m contributing to the success of recycling at Dartmouth (at least, when it finally resumes).

And an honest acknowledgement of what I’m accomplishing should be included. No, my small action won’t come close to what we need. Rather, the small acts of individual sustainability can be a daily environmental vigil of sorts — a moment to focus on and recognize the impact we have on the planet, while acknowledging the pressing need for more change. So yes, you should keep carrying around your Nalgene adorned with “Keep Tahoe Blue” stickers. But also, we must continue to make sustainable decisions, even when nobody’s watching.

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST KATHERINE ARRINGTON ’24

Reopening the Dartmouth Experience Dartmouth should bring back the college experience as soon as the public health situation permits.

In some ways, Dartmouth has adapted miraculously well to the pandemic. Classes and clubs have switched to Zoom, half the student body has been brought back to campus (albeit under strict guidelines) and faculty mostly work from home. But unlike most of the Dartmouth community, ’24s have not seen these measures as alterations to the typical Dartmouth experience. It is the only Dartmouth we have ever known. The College must confront this challenge and make elements of the traditional Dartmouth experience accessible to ’24s as soon as it is safe to do so.

Dreaming of college as a kid, I always imagined walking across campus to classes held in beautiful brick buildings, studying in some nook of the library on a Tuesday night, coffee in hand, and having long philosophical discussions at night with friends over Catan and peppermint tea. I pictured late nights and early mornings, rushing to class and grabbing quick meals from the dining hall, waving at familiar faces as I went about my day, maybe participating in a few traditions or even starting my own. It was supposed to be the epitome of freedom, growth and learning.

Instead, I came to campus for the first time only days before the first day of class.

I took my COVID-19 test, heaved my luggage up four flights of stairs by myself and quarantined in my room for two weeks, alone. Dimensions and First-Year Trips were canceled and orientation was virtual. I could not even see another person without two masks and six feet of distance between us.

I spent the majority of my day in front of a computer screen, in meetings for classes or clubs, trapped within the 98 square feet of

my dorm room. When I ate, most of the time it was in my room out of a plastic Green2Go box. When I left my room, it was only for brief walks to get food or sunshine before I went back to my cube. In fact, I can count on two hands the number of buildings I entered during fall term. I did not know where the Collis Center was until week four of fall term, and even now, halfway through my first year at Dartmouth, I hear of places like the greenhouse and the stacks and the Lodge, and I still have no idea where they are. All of these doors, both of the traditional college experience and the Dartmouth-specific ones have been closed to me and my class.

Of course, I knew all of this when I signed up to be on campus. I guess I just didn’t expect it to be such an isolating experience. One of my favorite aspects of Dartmouth, and what ultimately pushed me over the edge to attend, was the community. But where I expected to be surrounded by people from all over the world, enveloped in a group of passionate and like-minded individuals, I instead found something I had not anticipated: loneliness.

The first few weeks of the term I spent mostly holed up in my dorm, trying to keep up with my course load and get involved in extracurriculars. I wanted to meet people, but the group setting of Zoom made it hard to make individual connections. There were no one-on-ones or before class conversations like there would have been in a normal classroom. Even though I was on campus, meeting people in person was hard. The constant threat of Safety and Security loomed over me and my classmates, forcing us to choose between flouting the rules to alleviate our loneliness and perhaps form a few real relationships, or obeying the guidelines at the

cost of remaining alone in our rooms just as we were all day for classes.

I did eventually manage to make some close friends, not from classes or clubs, but from GroupMe, a platform I never thought would yield real connections. However, those relationships were clouded by the rigid social distancing guidelines that made even existing friendships difficult to deepen.

Classes themselves have been challenging during a pandemic. I was always used to having clear and defined spaces for work and relaxation. But when everything happens from the same desk, chair and computer screen, it is hard to stay focused and present.

The many Zooms scheduled in my day begin to blend together, culminating in the infamous “Zoom fatigue,” making me want to do anything but continue to sit in front of my computer to do even more schoolwork.

Although my college experience so far has been colored by the lens of what could have and should have been, not all doors have been closed. I learned theories of international relations, read and reacted to Toni Morrison and discovered an interest in sociology. I realized that I have a passion for writing, and I discovered that the conversations that come out of walking in Pine Park can be phenomenal. I also found a group of very dear friends who continue to encourage and support me.

But even still, I have to wonder if my college experience is truly a Dartmouth experience.

This school has given me a lot of joy, but at the same time, half of me feels as though I do not truly know Dartmouth, as if I am an impostor who has a student ID and a green sweatshirt but does know anything about the culture and community of the school.

My college experience has been defined by surgical masks, nasal swabs, quarantines and Zoom calls. I have not participated in any Dartmouth traditions. I barely know how to get around campus. I hear about 10As and New Hampshire winters and football games and Homecoming bonfires and snowball fights, and I have no frame of reference.

Don’t get me wrong, I would trade my Dartmouth experience for the health and safety of my peers and professors a million times over. After all, social distancing is a relatively small cost to pay to save lives. But there is another cost to the pandemic, and I suppose that is my Dartmouth experience.

The pandemic has, both literally and figuratively, closed many of the doors that are hallmarks of the Dartmouth experience.

While I am not advocating for Dartmouth to set aside concerns for health and safety, I hope that as the situation permits, the administration can look for ways to open the doors closed by the current public health crisis, the doors of tradition and community that make Dartmouth the school it is. I want to experience Trips, the bonfire and the snowball fight. I want our class to walk across campus in the snow and enter all of the buildings. I want Blobby, Robo and Bema to conjure up familiar imagery rather than blank stares of confusion.

Most of all, I want us ’24s to feel as though we are living a Dartmouth experience, not some poorly-made copy. I do not think that this ideal has to conflict with the dictates of a pandemic. I hope the college administration will consider — in addition to health and safety — opening doors to Dartmouth traditions and experiences, and reaching a better compromise than the one we have now.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

PAGE 7

The spaces between: Stepping away from Dartmouth Greek life

By Emma ginsberg The Dartmouth Staff

For some Dartmouth students, Greek life is as quintessential to campus culture as freezing New Hampshire winters and rigorous academics.

Greek life maintains a towering presence in Dartmouth’s social scene. Some students, like Olivia Gresham ’22 and Gus Guszkowski ’22, report feeling as if Greek life is Dartmouth’s social scene.

With over 60% of eligible students affiliated, there is an unspoken expectation that most students will eventually become a member of a fraternity, sorority or gender-inclusive Greek house.

Though rush is voluntary and there are non-Greek social spaces on campus, students expressed that joining a Greek house can feel like a requirement for “fitting in” at Dartmouth.

“I think people come to Dartmouth and are scared that the only way to have a community is to join a Greek house,” said Guszkowski, who rushed and depledged from the gender-inclusive Greek house Alpha Theta.

Though Greek life offers positive connections and genuine support networks for some, for others, a house is not always a home.

Whether feeling alienated by social expectations like Gresham and Kaj Johnson ’22, or simply unable to take on the time commitment like Guszkowski, some students decide to become inactive or officially “depledge” from the Greek houses they rush.

For Gresham, depledging from Alpha Xi Delta sorority was driven by the realization that joining a house was not a prerequisite for the deep connections many students hope to make in college.

“I rushed because it was a big part of Dartmouth’s culture,” Gresham said, adding that she was relatively ambivalent about Greek life until she joined AXiD her sophomore fall.

“I didn’t anticipate it being my thing, but I thought I’d rather give it a shot and see if I liked it than have this lingering thought in the back of my head like, ‘You’re missing out, and all of your friends are doing this fun thing!’”

Gresham said that after spending freshman year settling into college life, sophomore year rush can shake up the rhythm of familiar relationships. As friend groups split into different affiliations, she said the fear of social isolation naturally finds its way into the back of sophomores’ minds. Gresham said she thought

that Greek life would provide security and a social circle to fall back on as her freshman friendships grew and changed.

“I was a relatively active member in the fall,” Gresham said of her time in the sorority. “A lot of my friends had become affiliated at the same time, so they were off doing things with their houses and spending less time together. I thought I had to commit to something else just in case.”

The winter after she joined, a tough academic term prevented Gresham from fully engaging with the house. The remote spring term, which scattered students across the globe, put even more distance between Gresham and her sorority. By that point, however, Gresham said she had realized that her fear of growing isolated from freshman friends was unfounded; she remained close with her friends from other houses and felt at home among fellow staff at the Jack-OLantern.

With a strong social network already there to support her, the membership fees for a Greek house did not seem worth it, and she officially depledged last fall.

For Gresham, the opportunity to make deep connections in Greek life was partially undermined by the social expectations of affiliation and the “superficiality” of how different houses are judged and personified.

“I think a lot of the time sororities are painted as really empowering, female-oriented social spaces … but it didn’t feel empowering to me,” Gresham said. “There are big swaths of people on campus who really subscribe to the idea that some houses are the ‘cool houses’ and some are ‘mid-tier.’ That’s not a labeling system that I think is productive or important. I’d rather not have that judgment attached to me.”

The standards that Gresham encountered in the Greek system, where she said members are expected to behave according to notions of how people affiliated with a given house “should” behave, color the experiences of other students who depledge or drop rush.

Johnson, who began the fraternity rush process his sophomore year and dropped before bid night, recalled feeling alienated by the “locker room talk” tone of conversation that frequently appeared at pre-rush events.

“Even if you’re not talking about ‘getting with girls’ or trying to do something rambunctious, it manifests in the tone of voice and the vocabulary,” Johnson said. “It

Some students choose to depledge their Greek houses after joining.

goes beyond stereotypes of just talking about football or whatever.

They were talking about a lot of things, but I felt like I couldn’t truly be myself because it would just be taken as ‘he’s weird’ or ‘he’s gay.’”

Johnson described feeling the pressure that masculine behavioral expectations can put on expressions of queerness within the Greek system. Johnson said there were many points in the rush process when he felt torn between the desire to be part of a strong Greek community and the desire to be fully authentic.

“It felt like I was assimilating into a culture dominated by rush and hazing events that are gendered and to some degree sexualized,” he said.

After dropping rush, Johnson found a community in Panarchy, a gender-inclusive undergraduate society. Panarchy, once known as Phi Sigma Psi fraternity, became Dartmouth’s first coed Greek organization in 1972 and officially broke from the Greek system to become an undergraduate society in the early 1990s. According to Panarchy’s website, Phi Psi’s severance from the Greek system was precipitated by years of the house being “othered” for its status as a dry house and a hub for queer Dartmouth students.

Though Guszkowski still has a place in their heart for Alpha Theta, they depledged in hopes that being unaffiliated would lend them the time they needed to foster connections with both their former housemates and unaffiliated friends.

“When I initially dreamed of rushing my house, it was with a few of my closest friends because that was our go-to basement freshman year,” Guszkowski said. We all got along with people in the house, and the vibe was really cool and supportive. I loved it. When I officially joined the house though, I realized that only one other person I was friends with had rushed in that cycle.”

After their first house meeting, Guszkowski realized that they had underestimated the time commitment and responsibilities associated with being part of a Greek house. Between house maintenance, intense classes and taking on the demanding role of Romeo in the Dartmouth Rude Mechanicals’ production of “Romeo and Juliet” that ter m, Guszkowski found little time to make the deep social connections they craved, both at the house and outside of it.

“I started feeling isolated from my closest friends and wondered if I really wanted to be part of the house, or if I had just liked the parties and the people,” Guszkowski said.

Guszkowski officially depledged in order to personalize their social experience, making time for both their unaffiliated friends and for the house events they still enjoyed attending.

“Every step of the [depledging] process, everybody in the house was so kind and understanding.”

Guszkowski said. “I did go to a couple more parties at the house after I depledged, and nobody there was weird about it.”

NAINA BHALLA/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

For Gresham, belonging is a feeling more personal and more complex than simply being “in” or “out.” Some of Gresham’s most fulfilling relationships were formed in club meetings, and she said she thinks making more physical space for students to bond over common interests and activities might strengthen feelings of security in non-Greek social circles.

“I think it would be cool if clubs had houses or spaces where people could live together and deepen the communities they’ve already formed,” Gresham said. She cited the Dartmouth Outing Club as an example of one such community, where students interested in nature have opportunities to get to know each other by attending feeds, hanging out in Robinson Hall and living together in off-campus spaces such as The Rock.

Gresham, Guszkowski and Johnson all expressed the hope that in the future, Dartmouth’s social scene will reflect more variety than a simple Greek/non-Greek dichotomy. Johnson said that though students may feel pressured to rush for fear of social isolation, communities across all corners of campus, unaffiliated and affiliated alike, deserve to be seen as legitimate social outlets.

“All of the good things about Dartmouth aren’t gate-kept by the Greek community,” Johnson said.

“Performing groups, sports teams, clubs and undergraduate societies can be very tight-knit. You just have to get inventive and keep an open mind.”

Back in action:A look at Dartmouth EMS’s pandemic operations

By DANIEL MODESTO The Dartmouth Staff

When Ryan McCann ’22 took the first EMS shift of fall term last September, it had been six months since Dartmouth EMS last ran a shift on campus. McCann remembered feeling apprehensive, particularly because it was the first weekend after quarantine ended for students on campus.

After a fairly smooth night, however, McCann quickly got “into the swing of things” as the term progressed.

In the six months during which Dartmouth EMS temporarily ceased operations, a team worked behind the scenes to plan how to reopen safely.

In the meantime, some members scattered off campus also found ways to help their local communities.

During a normal term, Dartmouth EMS — a student-run organization licensed by the state of New Hampshire — provides services including emergency response and first aid training to the Dartmouth and Upper Valley community.

According to director of operations Ted Northup ’21, the organization relies on three ranks of care providers: tertiaries, secondaries and primaries.

Tertiaries — who don’t need an EMT license — are responsible for talking to bystanders and collecting and recording information about the scene. Secondaries are responsible for taking vitals, and primaries lead the call and talk to patients. Northup added that the home base for Dartmouth EMS is in the basement of Dick’s House, with several rooms available for those on shift to sleep between calls.

Although the organization attracts many pre-med students, Northup, who studies engineering, said that it also draws in those who “want to be able to provide a contribution to the community.”

“It’s really a great way for people who want some exposure to medicine, but not the full medical doctor experience,” Northup said.

Dartmouth EMS member Sarah Jennewein ’21 said she joined as a sophomore because she had taken an emergency medicine class to be a lead climber with the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club.

After realizing the importance of “having the knowledge to save people in the outdoors,” she became interested in emergency medicine and took on shifts as a member of Dartmouth EMS. Before the pandemic, Jennewein said that her week consisted of training on Tuesday nights, where Dartmouth EMS members would review training slides and gather to run through practice calls, followed by weekend shifts.

“I’m really grateful for the community I found there,” Jennewein said. “I feel like there [are] a lot of people that have a really similar interest in giving their time to helping others, and I think that that’s a really amazing group of people to be around.”

When Dartmouth transitioned to online classes last spring, Dartmouth EMS temporarily ceased operations. Northup said that Dartmouth’s decision to go remote “hit [Dartmouth EMS] by surprise,” because it canceled all their shifts and the ability to “do something that [they] love.”

After the announcement, Northup said the team took a couple of weeks to decide how Dartmouth EMS was going to move forward in the spring. Due to paused operations, Dartmouth EMS donated their personal protective gear to Safety and Security. While conversations continued into the summer, McCann, who serves as the operations officer, took it upon himself to create COVID-19 safety protocols for the team.

“Watching all the frontline workers [made me realize] that this was not the time to deprive the Dartmouth community of one more emergency response organization,” McCann said.

In early July, McCann started

to compile a list of COVID-19 Norwich, Connecticut during her safety protocols to implement for summer and fall off terms, over which Dartmouth EMS. He said he looked she responded to more than 200 calls. to the guidelines followed by the state “I gained a lot of confidence in of New Hampshire and those issued my clinical skills and my interaction by the Centers for Disease Control with patients,” Warzecha said. “I had and Prevention, National Institutes to learn a lot of flexibility on the job of Health and the World Health and being able to think on the spot, Organization. In particular, McCann and also of being able to develop a considered the guidance provided in relationship with patients.” emails that Dartmouth EMS received As the fall term approached, from the state of McCann and the New Hampshire team prepared a b o u t s t e p s “ Watc h i n g a l l t h e t o resume t o p r o t e c t frontline workers [made o p e r a t i o n s themselves as me realize] that this o n c a m p u s , care providers, with altered s u c h a s t h e was not the time to procedures due proper PPE to deprive the Dartmouth to COVID-19. use.

Members still Ann Bracken, community of one more followed campus College Health emergency response guidelines, such Service director as completing organization” of clinical the daily Collegemedical services, m a n d a t e d has worked with -RYAN MCCANN ’22, DARTMOUTH temperature selfDartmouth assessment, but EMS for many EMS OPERATIONS OFFICER also had to abide years, and was by strict PPE also part of the and disinfectant conversations regarding COVID-19 protocols inside their Dick’s House safety protocols that took place in the office, according to McCann. summer.

Jennewein added that N95 face One important part of the new masks, face shields and medical protocols included how Dartmouth gowns are now the norm on every EMS would be able to use and occupy Dartmouth EMS shift. their space in Dick’s House, especially During the fall, in addition to new since Dick’s House no longer allows procedures, shifts consisted of two patients to stay overnight. Bracken people, a primary and a secondary, said that she, alongside director as opposed to the previous standard of nursing Lauri Gallimore, gave of three people to a shift. Their Dartmouth EMS advice on how to office, located in the basement of “keep themselves safe [during shifts] Dick’s House, accommodated only and keep patients safe.” one person — as opposed to three McCann said that the month of before COVID-19 — so the other August was spent working with Safety person on shift worked shifts from and Security and the College to try their dorm. There were only two to get approval, which they received shifts per week, Friday and Saturday by the end of the month. nights, but still operating normally While the team developed from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m.

COVID-19 safety protocols for The new COVID-19 safety resuming operations, many students procedures also impacted CPR and decided to work on ambulances EMT training. Director of training during their summer term. Haley Mikayla Hubner ’21 said that CPR Warzecha ’22, for example, worked training in the fall was conducted in in ambulances in her hometown of tents outside, socially distanced and

organized to “limit social contact.”

Dartmouth EMS established a hybrid model, where lectures were conducted ahead of time, and the hands-on CPR component was conducted in the tents. Now, the winter course is following a hybrid model involving Zoom lectures and in-person training in Steele Hall.

Northup said his hope for the spring is a gradual return to three shifts per week —Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights — as opposed to only weekends. Starting this term, shifts will now include tertiaries, allowing Dartmouth EMS members to work shifts that they were unable to in the fall, when only two responders were allowed on each call due to limited office space.

Joseph Bravo ’24 is a tertiary who was not able to take shifts in the fall.

He said that although he would have liked the opportunity to run shifts in the fall, he is currently taking EMT classes through a private company so that when he returns to campus from his off term come spring, he can work shifts.

“I’m definitely excited for shifts,” Bravo said. “I’m glad I’m getting my license before spring, [so I’ll be] able to [take] shifts and hang out in the [Dartmouth EMS] bunker underneath Dick’s House.”

Looking back at Dartmouth EMS’s trajectory this past year, campus emergency manager Tom Schutzius praised the team for being “a great group of students” who “show a lot of initiative,” while Bracken noted that she has been “so impressed by their commitment and their abilities.”

Northup agreed, highlighting the role several members, including Warzecha, played at home during the pandemic.

“Even when we were shut down, and we couldn’t do a lot, a number of members looked for local EMS ambulances to work on. They went out of their way to get licensed in their state and keep practicing medicine,” Northup said. “I think that was pretty incredible.”

THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL ISSUE

PAGE 8

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021

Alumni relations focuses on online programming B y Anaïs Zhang The Dartmouth

The advancement division at Dartmouth, which includes the alumni relations and development offices, has developed a host of new methods, including webinars, podcasts and livestreams to boost alumni engagement across digital platforms. Alumni-run organizations have also continued to host programming through Zoom to connect with fellow graduates, all while navigating the emerging challenge of “Zoom fatigue.”

After the pre-recorded Homecoming celebrations this past fall, content director for advancement marketing and engagement Jon Hussey said Dartmouth will likely “never go back to a fully in-person event schedule” for future Homecomings, opting instead to adopt a hybrid of in-person and online events.

Hussey said that engagement numbers on the alumni relations website and the Call to Lead campaign website are up after shifting to video content and live programming. One of the digital celebrations attracted over 500 live viewers and 1,200 views immediately thereafter. Alumni are also expressing a preference for programs — such as video content — that they can consume on their own time, he noted.

Cheryl Bascomb, vice president of alumnirelations,addedthatadvancement has utilized online live streams to connect to audiences that might not have been willing to attend a scheduled Zoom. In June, advancement premiered a cooking segment titled “Pre-Union: Cooking with Priya Krishna ’13,” which Hussey said was “very popular as a live session.” She noted that those who could not make the event could watch the video on their own time; the video has garnered some 5,000 views on Facebook.

However, Bascomb says that the office encountered several challenges in its transition to online programming.

To begin with, Bascomb noted a “significant decline” between the registration and the attendance for Zoom events. She added that participants are also prone to experiencing Zoom fatigue at the end of the day and may be unwilling to participate in another virtual meeting.

According to Bascomb and Hussey, alumni relations also initially lacked the technical skills and the equipment to mount a rigorous virtual campaign.

However, as the pandemic progressed, the office has developed several different types of virtual initiatives, including a series of webinars based on specific

industries like health care and sports, podcasts covering the election and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and social media hashtags. On Instagram, advancement has recently promoted the hashtag #GiveARouse in tandem with the “clapping hands” emoji to congratulate students and alumni on their achievements.

Bascomb and Hussey said alumni relations has also recently unveiled a new program called Dartmouth Next, geared toward online programming.

One notable component of Dartmouth Next is a series called “Great Issues, New Perspectives,” which they said brings together an alumni expert with a faculty member to explore a particular issue in greater depth. Afterwards, students will have the opportunity to ask questions directly to the alumni speaker. There will be two such events hosted during winter term, and additional events during spring term.

Amanda Fritz ’16, a member of Women of Dartmouth Boston, said she has been actively involved as a young alumna, returning to campus for Homecoming festivities in 2017 and attending other events since her graduation. Since alumni are currently unable to gather in person as a result of the pandemic, she said the Women of Dartmouth Boston alumni organization has shifted to virtual programming such as yoga and flower arranging classes.

Though Fritz said she would prefer inperson events, since virtual events struggle to reproduce the level of engagement at in-person events, she acknowledged that everyone is “doing their best” to make use of the resources available.

Still, despite efforts to adapt content for a broader audience on a virtual platform, some alumni have scaled back engagement with the College, such as with the Dartmouth Alumni Admissions Ambassador program.

One alumna, Emily Castle ’17, served as an interviewer for prospective students and began interviewing Dartmouth applicants over Skype when she was still a senior at the College. She conducted several interviews with international students or students that lived in rural areas, both of which made in-person interviews difficult.

This year however, Castle has decreased her involvement with the program, due in part to “Zoom fatigue” since much of her work is conducted online. However, she plans on taking up a more active role again next year. She said that for many of the Dartmouth friends that she still keeps in touch with, alumni interviewing makes up the majority of their engagement with the College.

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