A New Beginning (4.10.2019)

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A New Beginning

New Hampshire (White Mountain Landscape) Regis Francois Gignoux, Oil on Canvas, 1864.

Courtesy of the Hood Museum

The Tragedy Of The Misconduct Machine: Admissions in 2019 Policy Revised Thomas A. Knight

Associate Editor In an action that harnessed the dual fury of anti-elite conservatives and egalitarian, rich-bashing liberals, the Justice Department announced last month the indictment of a man named Rick Singer and almost fifty others for effectively gaming the college admissions system, using fraud and bribery to falsify credentials and facilitate the admittance of unqualified students into some of America’s most prestigious colleges. The transcripts read like Bernie Sanders’ night-terrors, with some of the country’s richest and most connected families taped gleefully laughing about the felo-

nies that they were about to commit. It was a crime that emphasized the easiest stereotypes imaginable: the glitzy actress with a daughter who was, d escribed charitably, dull, a major partner at an international law firm cheerfully breaking racketeering laws, and of course, the corrupt crew team. This racket, with its high-profile indictments, lurid details, and broad moral implications is the case that has launched a thousand op-eds.

So how do we remedy a problem that seems, well, institutional?

Part of fixing this problem lies in the fact that some aspects don’t necessarily need to be fixed, at least with the entrenched models of ed-

ucation and philanthropy currently in place. Institutional giving, although a well-worn comedic device, is a practice that is a necessary evil. Although this back-door is complex and not exactly optimal, it pivots on the hypothetical amputation of the toe to save the leg. The impact that a handful of institutional donors can make on an institution goes beyond the much-joked-about donated library, and largely outweighs the minor hit to a class’ academic profile.

Program-creation, scholarship funding and limiting tuition hikes, or a moral victory? Colleges and universities must weigh these options and ultimately decide their priorities. Equal-

ity across the board, or limited inequity that ultimately fosters more equity?

But this cultural event reveals a problem that is ultimately more ingrained than even those who considered themselves in-theknow ever realized. Dartmouth was seemingly not prey to this specific nefariousness, but it might as well have been. Dartmouth owns the dubious honor of having more students from the top 1% of household incomes than the bottom 60%. Elite education has been tailor-made for the rich for centuries, harkening back to the very beginnings of pedagogy in the United States.

> FEATURES page 6

Rachel T. Gambee

Executive Editor On March 29th, the Campus Climate and Culture Initiative (C3I) released a draft of their proposed United Sexual Misconduct Policy and Procedures. This document was released for general review by all members of the Dartmouth community—students, faculty, staff, and alumni. In a letter accompanying the release, President Hanlon asked that the Dartmouth community not only review the policy, but also offer candid feedback for consideration by the administration prior to the policy’s implementation. This feedback can be given anonymously through a portal located on C3I’s website. All feedback

is welcome. However, only feedback submitted before April 9th will be considered in amendments to the policy for the coming academic year—all later comments will be reviewed by the College for future policy updates.

Releasing the United Sexual Misconduct Policy and Procedures is the most substantive action taken thus far by the C3I, which was announced by President Hanlon’s office in January of this year. C3I is intended to work in consort with the two prior campus initiatives launched by President Hanlon’s administration— Moving Dartmouth Forward in 2015

> Features page 7

Reflecting on Past Ideas

MIndhood: An Update

The College Raises Tuition

Editor-in-Chief Devon M. Kurtz reflects on one of his previously published editorials.

The Review’s gives an update on the most recent developments of Mindhood at Dartmouth.

Dartmouth College has raised tuition for undergraduate students once again.

> EDITORIAL page 3

> features page 10

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The Dartmouth Review

The Dartmouth Review

Table of Contents

students

Write Debate Pontificate For thirty-eight years, The Dartmouth Review has been the College’s preeminent independent newspaper and the only student opinion journal that can speak the truth.

It is the oldest and most renowned campus commentary publication in the nation, inpsiring national movements at the likes of Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and countless others. Our staff members and alumni have won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and have been published in the Boston Globe, New York Times, National Review, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard, Village Voice, New Criterion, and many others.

The Review aims to provide a voice for any student who enjoys challenging or questioning campus academic hegemony. We stand for free speech, student rights, and the liberal arts. Whatever your political leanings, we invite you to come steep yourself in campus culture and politics, Dartmouth lore, keen witticisms, and the fun that comes with writing for an audience of thousands. We’re looking for writers, photographers, cartoonists, aspiring business managers, graphic designers, web maestros, and anyone else who wants to learn from Dartmouth’s unofficial school of journalism.

EST. 1980

EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief

Rethinking Past Ideas

Devon M. Kurtz

Executive Editors Rachel T. Gambee William G. Jelsma Zachary Z. Wang

Senior Editors W. K. James

Thomas Knight

“The original un-PC college newspaper... The flagship of American conservative campus publications.”

—The Wall Street Journal

Senior Correspondents Ishaan J. Jajodia Joseph R. Torsella

Business staff President

Jason B. Ceto

Meetings held Mondays at 6:30 PM at our offices at 32 S. Main Street

Vice Presidents Jake G. Philhower Peter P. Scalise IV

(next to Lou’s in the lower level office space)

Inside the issue

ADVISORY

The Tragedy of the Machine: Admissions in 2019.............................................................................................................................Page 1

Founders

C3I Revises Sexual Misconduct Policy.................................................................................................................................................Page 1

Greg Fossedal, Gordon Haff, Benjamin Hart, Keeney Jones

Editorial: Rethinking Past Ideas...........................................................................................................................................................Page 3

Legal Counsel

Improving the Dartmouth Range.......................................................................................................................................................Page 10 Mindhood: An Update..........................................................................................................................................................................Page 10

Mean, Nasty, and Cruel-Spirited

Board of Trustees

Emily Esfahani-Smith, Charles Dameron, Nicholas Desatnick, Gordon Haff, Benjamin Riley, Kevin Robbins, Adam Schwarzman, Alexis Vagianos

Dartmouth Raises Tuition....................................................................................................................................................................Page 11

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“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

Editorial BOARD

Associate Editors

An Interview with Owen Benjamin......................................................................................................................................................Page 8

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MASTHEAD & EDitorial

“The Review is a vibrant, joyful, provocative challenge to the regnant but brittle liberalism for which American colleges are renowned.”

—William F. Buckley Jr.

“I must say, it’s an impressive paper.”

—Ronald Reagan

Wednesday – April 10, 2019

the review Continues to Mourn Hart

Notes Special thanks to William F. Buckley, Jr. “I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered” The Editors of The Dartmouth Review welcome correspondence from readers concerning any subject, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material published previously in The Review. We reserve the right to edit all letters for clarity and length. Please submit letters to the editor by mail or email: dartmouthrevieweditor@gmail.com Or by mail at:

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Please direct all complaints to: editor@thedartmouth.com

In a piece for The Dartmouth Re- COS is neither some bureaucratic kanview published on May 31, 2017, I garoo court, nor is it a committee of wrote in favor of the College estab- unknowledgeable rabble. The organilishing mandatory minimum punish- zation is, like a jury, made of commuments for students found responsible nity members who care about upholdfor non-penetrative sexual miscon- ing the values and rules of conduct duct. My argument was based, in part, that govern our college. Unlike a noraround the College’s stern approach mal jury pool, the committee members to other misconduct, such as alco- receive rigorous training on bias, adhol and academic violations: “When ministrative procedure, and the conpaired with the clear expectations of text of sanctioning. Additionally, and suspension as a minimum punishment most relevantly to my previous article for other offenses such as cheating on sexual misconduct sanctioning, the committee gets specialized training on an exam or giving someone a from attorneys on how to apglass of whiskey, Dartmouth proach sexual misconduct College’s prioritization of sanctioning hearings. preventing and handling While the training might sexual violence is called not be as extensive as the into question.” But, what thirty hours required for I was missing in that artiSexual Assault Peer Adcle was knowledge about visors, it is sufficient for the process through preparing the committee which these sanctions members for the unique are decided by the Comchallenges of sexual mismittee on Standards. conduct sanctioning.

While Judicial Affairs As Executive Editor provides some inforDevon M. Kurtz Rachel Gambee dismation about the Committee on Standards (COS) and its cusses elsewhere in this issue, there responsibilities, COS is a largely unfa- will be many changes to Dartmouth’s miliar organization to campus, despite sexual misconduct policies, including being made up mostly by students periods in which community members and faculty. COS consists of a pool of can offer comments on desired changstudents, faculty, and administrators es. While two years ago I would have from which a panel is drawn to serve advocated vociferously for minimum matters involving registrarial appeals, penalties as a change to the policy, but non-sexual misconduct adjudication, I no longer would support that. I have or sexual misconduct sanctioning— utmost confidence in COS to arrive at sexual misconduct is adjudicated by a fair and just decision on these matan independent investigator who de- ters—a minimum penalty would contermines responsibility, and COS’s re- stitute unnecessarily cumbersome reg sponsibility is limited to sanctioning. ulation.

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WEEK IN REVIEW Acceptance Rate Lowest in College History The Dartmouth class of 2023 is the most selective in its history, with only 7.9 percent of applicants admitted to the College on the Hill, a decrease of 0.8 percent from the class of 2022. Of the 1,876 students admitted to Dartmouth, a record 16 percent are first-generation, while 51 percent identify as people of color, and ninety-two applicants were accepted to Dartmouth through QuestBridge, a program for low-income students which “matches” students with institutions of higher education based on academic performance and interests. The average scholarship received by admitted students is fifty-three thousand dollars, also a record for Dartmouth, and 17 percent of students are eligible for federal Pell Grants. Nine percent of admitted students are legacies, the lowest of any Ivy. In purely academic terms, admits for the class of 2023 had a mean SAT score of 1501 out of 1600, also the highest in Dartmouth’s History.

On April 4th, the College also announced plans to alter its admissions practices for student-athlete applicants in response to “Operation Varsity Blues,” a federal investigation which revealed widespread admissions fraud in which wealthy parents conspired with former college counselor Mark Riddell to boost their children’s test scores and fraudulently claimed their children were involved in sports which they did not play. Fifty people, including actresses Lori Loughlin (“Full House”) and Felicity Huffman (“Desperate Housewives”), were arrested in connection with the scheme and many of the schools allegedly targeted as part of Riddell’s operation, including Yale and the University of Southern California, announced reviews of their admissions process in response to the scandal. While Dartmouth was not mentioned in the federal indictment of Riddell and his co-conspirators and has denied any involvement in the scandal, the College still announced plans to ensure that all student-athletes applying to Dartmouth were legitimate athletic recruits capable of playing an NCAA Division I sport. Starting with the class of 2024, candidates for admission will have their athletic credentials reviewed by a College administrator in order to ensure that coaches had not recommended an unqualified candidate. Diana Lawrence, a spokeswoman for Dartmouth, insisted that such measures were cautionary and that within the last three years for which data was available no Dartmouth coach had been found to have recommended an inapt student-athlete for admission.

Hendricks signs largest pro sports contract for an Ivy League Alum The 2019 MLB offseason was a time of exorbitant spending for a number of the league’s top teams. Most

notably, two generational players—Mike Trout and Bryce Harper—signed record breaking deals with the Angels and Phillies, respectively. However, names that are well on their way to Cooperstown were of course not the only ones who signed record breaking deals. Kyle Hendricks ’12, a veteran pitcher and World Series champion with the Chicago Cubs, just recently signed the largest professional sports contract an Ivy League Alum has ever signed. Totaling at about $63 million prior to bonuses, Hendricks finds himself in a unique position this spring.

Hendricks, for the early parts of his career, was often overlooked as he was under-scouted and certainly under-hyped. Now, with the money to back his past work, Hendricks will be asked to be an anchor in the Cubs starting rotation. As in any professional sport, with great compensation comes great expectations.

Hendricks is certainly not amongst the Steven Strasbergs of his generation, who often burst onto the scene throwing 103 miles an hour for 7 innings until Tommy John surgery is absolutely necessary. Instead, Hendricks has brought a certain finesse, intellect, and pinpoint accuracy to the mound that can at times render him one of the best pitchers in baseball. Hendricks relies most heavily on his sinker and changeup—pitches that average around 87 and 78 mph, respectively. His precision is absolutely integral to his game and provides a sense of maturity and longevity that is rare amongst pitchers who can dominate for 7 innings a game. Hendricks occasionally still sneaks in the standard four-seam fastball, but with a pitch speed topping out at around 90 mph, is forced to rely far less heavily on the ability to blow by all-star batters. Many Cy Young award winners, most notably pitchers like CC Sabathia, have a tendency to lose power throughout their career whilst fighting father time. As a result, pitchers must readjust their pitching style to compensate for eroding power if they wish to survive beyond the first couple of years. Hendricks is unique in that he is an off-speed starting pitcher, something that has proven to be far more sustainable regarding long term contracts. By relying upon a keen ability to pitch precisely rather than with overpowering velocity, Hendricks positions himself to have a clear path to a far more sustainable career. The Cubs have put faith in Hendricks and have even included a team option for a 5th year on the contract, not because he is the best pitcher to ever work through their farm system, but because he has the tools to become an anchor in their rotation for years to come. Though Hendricks has struggled a bit in the past few seasons, accumulating only 21 wins over 57 starts, this contract is an investment in future potential rather than past achievements.

Senate introduces veteran mental health bill in honor of John Hannon ‘08 On March 13, Senators Jon Testor and Jerry Moran introduced the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act. The bill aims to bolster VA mental health care while also providing veterans with additional alternative treatment options. The

bill aims to increase the VA’s mental health workforce, increase the number of VA or alternative organizations available to veterans in rural areas, and give every servicemember a full year of VA healthcare for free upon leaving the military. In addition, the new legislation hopes to increase availability of and investment in alternative treatment options, such as animal and outdoor therapy, yoga, and meditation. Finally, the VA’s current suicide prevention resources will be examined and improved.

The bill’s namesake, Commander John Scott Hannon (1971-2018), was a Tuck ’08 graduate who represented the finest that Dartmouth and this country have to offer.

Commander Hannon enlisted in the Navy in 1989. He graduated BUD/S Class 173, completed SEAL Qualification Training, and joined SEAL Team Two in 1991. This was the beginning of his 21-year career in the SEALs. In 1995, he completed Navy ROTC by graduating from the University of Colorado and became an officer in the SEALs. Commander Hannon put his life on the line on combat deployments for many years. He deployed to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the late 1990s and early 200s. While serving with SEAL Team 3, he was named the top SEAL Platoon Commander, an extremely difficult achievement when in such a rarefied group. Finally, he joined SEAL Team Six, where he was responsible for all aspects of the advanced training curriculum of other elite SEALs. Hannon received a scholarship to attend the Tuck School of Business from 2006 to 2008. After graduating, he worked at U.S. Special Operations Command, where he helped to plan numerous operations. He retired from the military in 2012 as a highly decorated officer, with his numerous awards including two Bronze Stars for Valor.

However, Commander Hannon’s service to others did not stop after he left the military. While struggling with bipolar disorder, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and severe depression, he still found the time and energy to work on improving veterans’ access to mental health care. He was a strong proponent of alternative treatment methods such as animal and outdoor therapy. His life was tragically lost to suicide on February 25, 2018.

This country owes Commander Hannon a tremendous personal debt that it can never repay. However, the bill in his name may go a short way toward continuing his life’s work. Kim Parrot, his sister, stated, “John Scott spent his final years advocating for easier access and a broader approach to mental health care. This bill is in complete alignment with his beliefs and efforts.” Hopefully, the bill will pass and help veterans on a larger scale in the same way that Commander Hannon attempted to help veterans around him.

Thayer School Appoints new dean Dartmouth has announced that Alexis Abramson will be dean of Thayer School of Engineering, starting on June 17. She is coming to Dartmouth from Case West-

The Dartmouth Review

Wednesday – April 10, 2019

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W. K. James William G. Jelsma peter p. scalise

Philip R. Swanson Christopher D. Wright ern Reserve University, where she is currently the Milton and Tamar Maltz Professor of Energy Innovation and co-director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute, which works to drive innovation in energy sustainability. She will take over from Laura Ray, a professor of Engineering who has been interim dean of Thayer since former dean Joseph Helble’s appointment to Provost in the fall.

Abramson will be leading Thayer as the school undergoes major expansion. Construction began on a new $200 million building shared by Thayer, the Department of Computer Science, and The Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship in December, and plans are in place to build for the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society. The expansion will allow Thayer to double the size of its faculty.

From 2011-13, Abramson worked in the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office as Chief Scientist and Manager of the Emerging Technologies Team, where she oversaw research, development, and commercialization of energy-efficient and cost-effective building technologies.

Abramson received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Tufts University and completed her PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

A twelve-person search committee chaired by Eris Fossum, the John H. Krehbiel Sr. Professor for Emerging Technologies, selected Abramson. In addition to Fossum, the committee was comprised of other Dartmouth professors, administrators, and alumni. The search firm Isaacson Miller also aided the committee in their search.

Cartoon

“Wait... so we can’t pay to get our grandkids into college?”

Cartoon

Dartmouth Professor Named Templeton Prize laureate Marcelo Gleiser, professor of physics and astronomy at the College, was announced as the 2019 Templeton Prize Laureate for his exceptional contributions the study of spiritualty on March 19th of this year. The Templeton Prize, established in 1972 by Sir John Templeton out of a belief that the Nobel Prizes and other prizes had neglected the fields of religion and spirituality, has been awarded to a distinguished number of past recipients including Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, and Desmond Tutu. The prize celebrates “humanity’s efforts to comprehend the many and diverse manifestations of the Divine” and distinguishes individuals who have expanded humanity’s purpose and ultimate reality and includes prize money of around $1.5 million per recipient.

Professor Gleiser is a prominent voice among scientists interested in spirituality as being complementary to science, emphatic in his belief that “science, philosophy, and spirituality are complementary expressions of humanity’s need to embrace mystery and the unknown.”

Gleiser’s work points to the deep interconnectedness of science and the humanities, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between science and the sui generis uniqueness of human existence.

On his win, Professor Gleiser remarked “I am deeply honored and humbled to be this year’s recipient of the Templeton prize. The path to scientific understanding and scientific exploration is not just about the material part of the world. My mission is to bring back to science and to the people that are interested in science this attachment to the mysterious and to make people understand that science is just one way for us to engage with the mystery of who we are.”

A self-proclaimed agonistic, Professor Gleiser speaks to science’s role in engaging with some of mankind’s deepest existential questions. Gleiser points to the profound mystery of the cosmos, life, and the incredible development of the human mind as methods for science’s engagement with the spiritual quest for meaning.

Gleiser recognizes that science can take humanity only so far, for there exists a tantalizing possibility that humanity is forever bounded in divine mystery and that the essence of our reality is ultimately unknowable.

“Spring term: playing tennis while it hails.”

Cartoon

“Is that the devil’s lettuce? What happened to cigars!”

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The Dartmouth Review

Mr. Knight is a freshman at the College and associate editor at The Dartmouth Review.

Ivy League degree and a Spanish teacher. I have lived my whole life without economic worry. I recognize my privilege for the purpose of highlighting the lack of it that surrounded me. I grew up in a little contradiction of a town, one of the few surviving islands of what was once an archipelago of prosperity that stretched across Upstate New York. Most of those islands have been swallowed up, and the water levels are rising. Within 10 minutes of historic stone mansions, a craft distillery, and shiny Audis, there are 4 separate trailer parks. It is not an uncommon sight on the backroads to see a wellmanicured country house, and only a few doors down, a mobile home starting to rot from the foundation, often accompanied with a Confederate flag or a Trump/Pence sign. I paint this picture not to add to the ever-expanding pile of Trump apologetics that populated highbrow magazines and bookstores following the election of 2016 (and achieved varying levels of success). (The sad irony of the popularity of Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance, perhaps the prototype of the kind, was that the plight of the impoverished Appalachians was only validated by the educated American public when it was told by Vance, himself a Yale graduate.) I simply want to explain why this issue matters so much to me. I won’t attempt to hint at some mortal flaw that is draining America’s hinterlands.

But because my convictions

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McNutt The College has consistently ranked among the worst schools for economic diversity.

Waterville, or Ilion. They don’t have the privilege of schoolshopping in Madison County.

Where my mom teaches in Edmeston, elite education is a pipe dream. After helping one of her best and most promising students through the testing and application process (school counseling in rural, impoverished schools is laughable), she was crushed when she found that the low-income valedictorian with good SATs was rejected from every selective private school that he applied to. Even her alma mater, Connecticut College,

For every student helped by Rick Singer, there are 10 students shepherded by well-meaning parents into the legal equivalent, the juggernaut of private education, enrichment, and college counseling that begins in some American households before preschool.

The resulting product is marketable, intelligent, hard-working, eminently qualified, and generally bereft of any unique life perspectives. are shaped by the choice that my parents made, it is worth explaining why they made that choice.

Burned out by endless oncall shifts and Boston commutes, and unnerved by the prospect of living in a Boston suburb where summer vacation meant intensive math camp and not pick-up wiffle ball, my parents chose Cooperstown, NY, a historic village with a well-reputed hospital. They chose a school system that ranked among the best north of Westchester County.

They chose Cooperstown. But nobody chooses Schenevus,

to which she had written an impassioned letter, responded with a flat denial. Any Dartmouth student remembers how hard they worked to cultivate all the right extracurriculars, fine-tune their essays, and ensure that they were the candidate that Lee Coffin could never reject. Imagine doing this without a competent college counselor, a parent who went through the same process, or even a quiz team/debate team/ model U.N./school newspaper.

Good outcomes are rare, and that is the result of blatant negligence that the institutions that explicitly and implicitly shape the fabric

of our country have shown to underserved, rural populations decimated by post-NAFTA, postbig agriculture blight. In fact, negligence might be the wrong word. I’m not sure that Ivy League admissions offices even realize that these people exist.

Colleges preach the importance of diversity, and studies back up the learning benefits of a multicultural campus population.

Dartmouth has worked especially hard to incorporate more and more racial perspectives, an effort that should be applauded and encouraged, especially for the college known as the whitest in a league of overwhelmingly homogenous schools.

But more important for a school that is becoming increasingly culturally varied is diversity in socioeconomic perspectives. I tell the stories of people I know in conversation and in the classroom because they are not on the campus to tell them. Although that may sound like hokey Loraxspeech, it is functionally true.

And as aware as I might be, I can only relay the experience of growing up on a family dairy farm pressured by the increasing scale of corporate agriculture, or losing your job at the Remington plant that had stood for almost 150 years. I simply don’t know how it feels. But at a school where we learn the complex interplay between economics, history, and government policy that creates the cultures we grow up in, I have to explain one that’s not necessarily mine, because If I don’t, nobody will.

A system that replaced racial preference with admissions considerations for lowincome students would have consequences. Had one of those

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C3I Revises Sexual Misconduct Policy

The Tragedy Of The Machine Even if Dartmouth was never implicated in this particular scandal, its existence is proof of a similar culture that sustains Dartmouth itself. Dartmouth the institution, as we know it, simply cannot exist without it. For every student helped by Rick Singer, there are 10 students shepherded by well-meaning parents into the legal equivalent, the juggernaut of private education, enrichment, and college counseling that begins in some American households before preschool. The resulting product is marketable, intelligent, hard-working, eminently qualified, and generally bereft of any unique life perspectives.

We cannot fault parents for wanting their children to have the best, nor can we fault the children who will be the beneficiaries. The sad reality of the situation is that the benefits of elite education, as supported by academic studies, are largely squandered on children who come from affluent, connected, and welleducated communities. Studies have shown that children who are set up to succeed will do so regardless of whether they attend SUNY Binghamton or Columbia, Princeton or Rutgers. The infinite promise of the Ivy League and its sibling institutions does exist.

These schools truly promote mobility, but the comprehensive, transformational effects promised on the admissions brochure and emphasized by the national sentiment is really only for those on the lower rungs of the ladder, to which the educational enrichment and network creation unique to elite schools may truly change their lives.

Equality of opportunity is the American gospel, and the esteemed Ivy League is the shining symbol of the supposed fulfilment of that principle. If Americans are truly tired of systems that explicitly benefit the wealthy and well-connected, we must adjust the machinery that creates those outcomes.

Colleges like Dartmouth have provided wonderful resources to help students pay for school, but not to get into them. What egalitarian-minded Americans need to support is an affirmative action system that compensates along economic lines, rather than strict racial ones.

This is an issue that motivates me and fills me with some sort of ferocious populist drive, admittedly from a place of noblesse oblige. I belong to the top decile, and was born to educated parents, a doctor with an

Wednesday – April 10, 2019

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features

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The Dartmouth Review

systems been in place when I applied for college, I may have had to go to a slightly inferior state school instead of earning a spot at Dartmouth. But with the level of parental and economic support, I’m not entirely sure I would find any difference.

Moving forward, that exact situation could impact my kids.

As long as my children got a good education and was academically challenged, I would cheer the new system, despite my wishes to see them clad in Dartmouth green.

Another legitimate concern with my proposed system would be a possible decrease in diversity apparent at the college. Hypothetically, ridding admissions of traditional affirmative action could create a vacuum of racial diversity, as has happened in the University of California system. However, this claim remains unfounded. Longterm studies done at universities who have experimented with economic-derived admissions preferences found no significant reductions in racial diversity. But what they found was that their process had favored a new group of impoverished students of all backgrounds, who having gained acceptance to a quality university, were well on their way up the meritocratic ladder to economic security and favorable future prospects.

Elite institutions in the United States risk becoming their own worst enemies, transforming themselves into the out-oftouch caricatures peddled as ammunition in the culture wars.

But there is a way out, and that is by providing promising young students, irrespective of their cultural background, a way out and a way up.

and Inclusive Excellence in 2016. According to its mission statement, C3I aims “to create a learning environment free from sexual misconduct and abuse of power.” To that end, C3I plans to adapt and expand the recommendations for institutions of higher education set out by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.” This report, released by NASEM in June of 2018, was written with express focus on female students and professionals working in the sciences, medicine, and engineering. This report discovered “that progress in closing the gender gap in science, engineering, and medicine is jeopardized by the persistence of sexual harassment and its adverse impact on women’s careers in our nation’s colleges and universities.” Following the report, NASEM offered fifteen recommendations for colleges and universities to help combat the adverse effects that sexual misconduct of this nature has on female students and on the institutions themselves.

Broadly, these recommendations condemn universities who pay lip-service to federal laws requiring them to address sexual misconduct without making sincere efforts to change the climate and culture of their institutions. Specifically, NASEM’s encourages universities to promote diversity, particularly among leadership, as well as recommending transparent and equitable sexual misconduct policies that do not differentiate between students and faculty members when addressing instances of sexual misconduct. Through C3I, Dartmouth not only plans to adopt these guidelines, but also to expand upon them— namely, to apply them to the entire Dartmouth community and not just students and faculty in STEM. The draft of the new United Sexual Misconduct Policy and Procedures is a substantial stop towards that goal. When adopted, these procedures will supersede all previous Dartmouth procedures regarding sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual misconduct, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking.

This policy will also apply broadly to all members of the Dartmouth community, including all undergraduates, graduate students, and any faculty or staff member at any Dartmouth facility. Through this unification and the statement of non-discrimination at the beginning of Ms. Gambee is a sophomore at the College and an Executive Editor at The Dartmouth Review.

the policy, this document will replace the ten previous policies and procedures regarding sexual assault. These older policies offered separate guidelines for various different kinds of misconduct as well as separate policies for students and faculty at each of Dartmouth’s graduate schools. By comparison, this new policy is concise and certainly complies with the (NASEM) recommendation for transparency and equability by presenting the Dartmouth community with a policy that is not overly cumbersome and applies to all community members. Furthermore, President Hanlon’s request for community feedback on the policy is another attempt to establish transparency between the administrators and the Dartmouth community. Other administrators, primarily Theodosia Cook, the new director of C3I, have also been in communication with students and faculty over the campus emailing system encouraging them to offer feedback on the policies before the April 9th deadline so that their feedback may be considered during the review of this policy for the upcoming academic year. In terms of the actual procedural elements of this policy, they do not diverge substantially from the policies currently in effect. Technical definitions for the various kinds of misconduct in this procedure remain largely the same, as do the procedures for resolving reports made against students, faculty, and staff.

Though the College is eager to display its compliance with the NASEM recommendations—both in this policy and in their presentation of it—recommendations by another notable organization seem to have been largely skirted by the College.

In November of 2018, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released her own set of recommendations for American colleges and universities when handling incidents of sexual misconduct. These new federal guidelines came after Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed the Obama era Dear Colleague guidelines. DeVos’s new guidelines aim to provide “clarity for schools, support for survivors, and due process rights for all.”

They appear to be a response to burgeoning national sentiment that universities prioritize the rights of the accuser over the rights of the accused in their internal sexual misconduct proceedings. In the guideline DeVos emphasizes the critical point that all accused individuals, known as “respondent parties” in Dartmouth’s new proceedings, be treated with the presumption of innocence that would be afforded to them in a formal court of law. This

Secretary of Eduication Besty DeVos was only one of a handful of “preponderance” standard or directives meant to restore and the “clear and convincing” stanpreserve eroded rights of the dard. At present, it would be accused in these proceedings. possible for a college to use the Others included the option for “clear and convincing” standard universities to move from the for all non-sexual cases and the “preponderance” standard of ev- “preponderance” standard for idence which had been mandat- all sexual cases while still being ed by the Obama-era guidelines, in full compliance with federal to the higher “clear-and-con- guidelines. vincing” standard of evidence.

Additionally Gersen praised DeVos also encouraged the in- DeVos’s requirement for a live clusion of a cross-examination hearing during the misconduct and live hearing within the mis- proceeding, pointing out that conduct proceeding as opposed many colleges now choose to to the investigator-only model forgo such a hearing. Gersen currently used in order to guard stated that without a live hearagainst abuse by a biased investi- ing, colleges run the serious risk gator. Finally DeVos also altered of a single biased investigator the definition of official sexual tainting the outcome of a the enharassment from the previous tire proceeding. definition—harassment that is Gersen also addressed De“severe or pervasive” to a degree Vos’s recommendation for a that it denies someone access to cross-examination within the an educational program or ac- proceeding. She argued that tivity—to a definition of harass- while this has been the most ment as rhetoric that is “severe, controversial point in DeVos’s pervasive, and objectively offen- guidelines, with many progressive” to a degree that it denies a sives arguing that it opens the person such access. avenue for needless extra trauma Perhaps the best critical re- to be inflicted on a potential vicview of this policy was given by tim of sexual misconduct to a viHarvard Law professor Jeannie cious cross examination, ProfesSuk Gersen in an op-ed pub- sor Gersen highlighted DeVos’s lished The New Yorker in early attempt to guard against such a February. In her article, Profes- scenario. The new federal guidesor Gersen commended certain lines suggest that this cross exaspects of DeVos’s policy, stat- amination be conducted by the ing that they will make “schools’ parties’ advisors, i.e. attorneys, processes for handling sexual to avoid heated exchanges bemisconduct fairer to all parties.” tween students. They also allow Gersen pointed out that it was for video conferencing should wise of DeVos to offer the op- the involved parties choose to tion for a university to use the avoid a face-to-face interaction “clear and convincing” standard altogether. of evidence—a standard generThe only part of the new regally used for all non-sexual dis- ulations that received substanciplinary procedures—thus giv- tial criticism from Gersen was ing colleges at least the option to DeVos’s decision to alter the ofbe equitable in their disciplinary ficial definition of sexual harasspolicy. However, she criticized ment. Gersen believes that this that DeVos did not insist that new, more stringent, definition colleges use the same standard will functionally prevent colfor all proceedings, sexual and leges from addressing the manon-sexual, whether that be the jority of sexual harassment that

Courtesy of The New Yorker takes place in their institutions.

Encumbering the College’s ability to address this harassment could undermine the protection advancement of female students and faculty that these policies state as their goal.

Finally, the point of Gersen’s critique that is most relevant to Dartmouth policies is her acknowledgement of the national response to DeVos’s new guidelines. The Obama-era Dear Colleague guidelines were never formally codified into law, nevertheless colleges and universities jumped to comply with them. Despite not being law, we followed them as if they carried the weight of capital punishment. It was at Dartmouth that then Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon, said of Dear Colleague, “do not think it’s an empty threat.” The DeVos guidelines have not been met with the same reception.

That is evident in the draft of United Sexual Misconduct Policy and Procedures. In this draft, the College asserts its intention to retain the “preponderance” standard of evidence in all sexual misconduct proceedings as well as to exclude cross-examinations in their disciplinary proceedings.

Given that DeVos’s guidelines are suggestions and not codified law, these decisions do not mean that the College is breaking any federal law with their proposed policy. However, it is apparent that the recommendations of the federal government are not considered with the same weight that the recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine were considered. Should members of the Dartmouth community wish to change that fact, they can avail themselves of the feedback portal on the C3I website—hopefully someone reads it.

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Wednesday – May 1, 2019

The Dartmouth Review

Features

Elizabeth Warren and Racial Politics

Elizabeth Warren ruminating on her own racial identity

W.K. James

Senior Editor Elizabeth Warren, 2020 Presidential Candidate, Massachusetts Senator and progressive firebrand du jour, entered a packed conference room at the Hanover Inn about an hour late. In her absence, a group of fresh-faced volunteers distributed campaign signs and other paraphernalia while inoffensive vintage pop music played on the speakers, barely audible over the sound of conversation. Warren took the stage and launched into her usual stump speech which, as a native of Massachusetts, I have grown quite familiar with. For her part, Warren is an energetic and passionate speaker, with

was the “best person to talk about race.” Given Warren’s record on race, which one could describe as questionable at best, such an assertion is patently ridiculous. The fact that no one else in the crowd of several hundred seemed to take issue with this deluded claim is troubling, particularly given the Democrats’ professed position as the more racially clued-in of our two major parties.

Senator Warren’s claim to Native American ancestry has been proven extremely tenuous at best, but I will not question that, at a certain point in her life, she may have genuinely believed herself to genuinely be of Native American descent.

Oklahoma, where she was born

Senator Warren’s claim to Native American ancestry has been proven extremely tenuous at best, but I will not question that, at a certain point in her life, she may have genuinely believed herself to genuinely be of Native American descent. a set of well-worn talking points guaranteed to elicit an enthusiastic response. While I admired her enthusiasm and her ability to captivate her audience, I found her views so disagreeable that I was unable to have nearly as good of a time as her supporters were.

A sentiment expressed by a member of the audience near the end of the event perhaps captured my dislike of Warren on both a personal and political level. A woman in her late sixties, who is frequently involved in the Black Lives Matter protests which occasionally happen on the green according to one rally attendee, asked a question about racial issues. As a means of prefacing her question, the woman said that Warren

Mr. James is a sophomore at the College and a senior editor at The Dartmouth Review.

and raised, is full of people who claim negligible Indian ancestry, in addition to those who belong to the State’s several federally recognized tribal nations and can actually prove their heritage beyond family legend. Her claim that she always believed she was Native because her family had “high cheekbones,” while reductive and witless, is not by any means outlandishly offensive, and is in fact an inverse of sorts to President Trump’s claim that the Mashantucket Pequot, whose Foxwoods casino threatened his Atlantic City gaming empire, “don’t look like Indians to me.” For the record, the Mashantucket oversee one of the largest tribal corporations in the eastern United States and are, in fact, Indian. Even the first documented instances of Warren claiming Native heritage, when she applied to the Texas bar and when she claimed to be Indian in a survey of

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Harvard Law School faculty, are not automatically disqualifying in her pursuit of higher office, even if in hindsight they qualify as tremendously stupid.

However, Warren decided to accentuate her past missteps by publicizing her DNA test, which stated that she had a Native American ancestor anywhere from six to ten generations ago. A generation is around thirty years; Warren’s claim is the equivalent of a modern-day American claiming to be British by tracing their ancestry back to the Revolutionary War. Rather than apologizing for her past actions and seeking to launch her campaign by focusing on issues like income inequality that she is most passionate about, she chose to publicize her own failings. And unlike the President’s “Pocahontas” jibe, which has been undeniably effective at riling up public vitriol against her, Warren’s own attempt at “owning” the opposition has backfired spectacularly.

Warren’s decision to release the results of her DNA test to prove that she was of partial Indian descent is one of the least well-thought-out ways of launching a presidential campaign in the history of

same quarter. Of course, the Democratic donor base has likely not stopped supporting Warren because of her senselessness; they have simply moved on to newer, younger candidates capable of checking more demographic boxes (Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, among others) and familiar faces with demonstrative appeal in Trump country (Biden and Bernie). But, more than being an ill-conceived attempt at getting back at a President who, while mercurial and only semi-competent in most other regards, is undeniably effective at playing the role of attack dog, Warren’s DNA test fiasco demonstrates a carelessness and naiveté unbecoming of a public figure approaching her seventieth birthday. For starters, Warren has never sought to advocate for Native people at any stage of her life, save for a recent attempt to make

More than being an ill-conceived attempt at getting back at a President who, while mercurial and only semicompetent in most other regards, is undeniably effective at playing the role of attack dog, Warren’s DNA test fiasco demonstrates a carelessness and naiveté unbecoming of a public figure approaching her seventieth birthday. up for her past indifference towards issues affecting tribal communities by sponsoring legislation overturning a court decision declaring the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe ineligible to take land into trust. While this seeming disinterest regarding tribal issues could be due to an ideological dislike of identitybased political and student groups( let’s not forget she was a relatively conservative Republican until the late ‘90s), it seems more likely that she claimed Indian heritage out of a desire to stand out among the Harvard Law faculty. For the record, I’m not totally ruling out the possibility that Harvard pressured her to claim Indian

In a speech to the National Congress of American Indians...said all the right things in order to appeal to the Native vote.

American politics. The awful rollout of her campaign has apparently made many Democratic donors wary, given that she has raised a mere $6 million in the first quarter of 2019, three times less than Bernie Sanders’s haul, and around $1 million less than rising star Pete Buttigieg, who didn’t even formally launch his campaign until earlier this month. Even failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who launched his campaign months after Warren did, raised $9.4 million in the

things in order to appeal to the Native vote. She promised to address health-care disparities in Indian communities, the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and improve tribal economies.

Warren’s rhetoric, along with the overtures made by many Democrats towards Native Americans in recent years, smacks of the same sorts of promises made by the Party in their pursuit of maintaining a tight grip over the African American and Latino vote.

Like clockwork, the Democrats emerge from their coastal and suburban communities every election season and try to appeal to Black, Hispanic, and now Native communities, stocking their campaign platforms with empty promises to minority communities. Then, once the dust has settled and the votes have been counted, nothing changes. Since the

ancestry in order to boost the statistical “diversity” of its faculty, something which was coming into fashion during the birth of the bleeding-heart era.

Warren’s latter-day overtures to Native peoples smack of tokenism and desperation, rather than genuine atonement.

In a speech to the National Congress of American Indians, the largest tribal lobbying group in the United States, Warren addressed her past claims of Indian heritage directly, and said all the right

Nixon administration, still the best presidential administration in history as far as Indian policy is concerned, Native people have been largely ignored by each subsequent administration, save for the occasional photo-op or smallpotatoes initiatives that do little to address the infrastructural and economic issues which relegate Indian tribes, like many rural communities, to extreme poverty. Although most Democratic politicians can’t claim much success in terms of actually helping to improve the lives of people of color, Warren’s seeming attempt to paint herself as a standardbearer for racial progress is particularly laughable given her own racial stupidity in the past. Based on the Black Lives Matter woman’s question, such an attempt seems to be working, at least in the minds of the most susceptible members of our Upper Valley community.

Warren will likely not win the Democratic nomination in such a competitive field, but the fact that she is running and is seen as an authority on anything to do with race or racial issues is laughable. Warren’s perceived position as an expert on race, despite her poor track record on the subject, shows that she has been able to win an audience on an emotional level regardless of what the facts actually are.

The Dartmouth Review

Features

Owen Benjamin Continued .

Mr. Morris is a freshman at the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.

Owen Benjamin Continued .

Mr. Morris is a freshman at the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.

Wednesday – May 1, 2019

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10 Wednesday – April 10, 2019

The Dartmouth Review

Features

The Dartmouth Review

Wednesday – April 10, 2019 11

Features

Improving the Dartmouth Range

The College Raises Tuition... Again

William G. Jelsma Thomas Knight

Zachary Z. Wang

Executive Editor Associate Editor

Dartmouth has long been the most rustic member of the Ivy League. While many of the Ancient Eight conjure up images of reading Milton in musty libraries, the northernmost Ivy has always been a place where students take their Hemingway with hiking, and their Chinese with canoeing. It is in that spirit that Dartmouth offers a set of unique resources among private colleges—a shooting range and an on-campus firearm storage facility.

As gun ownership has become less and less popular, especially among the younger generations, the College’s facilitation of responsible sportsmen and shooting enthusiasts has become a much-appreciated and little-known secret on campus. But for the benefit of the greater community of shotgunners and riflemen, gradual improvements to the range and the firearms storage-system would be much appreciated. Most directly, this would mean an increase in the accessibility of the College’s resources, which would lead to greater interest in Mr. Jelsma and Mr. Knight are students at the College and editors at The Dartmouth Review.

safe, responsible shooting. While those of us who use the range and the storage enjoy a system functional for the small number of students who know about it, we are committed to seeing a system at Dartmouth that would allow the sport shooting community to grow for years to come.

Reserving the range is a process which needs a fair amount of streamlining. In order to get a time to shoot, you have to appear in person at the Safety and Security headquarters, located on the far side of Campus near Occom Pond and McLaughlin. After declaring your intentions to the officers stationed at the desk (who tend to be quite friendly and accommodating), they will announce whether the range is occupied, or if you can proceed. This system creates a multitude of headaches, as your chances of reserving the range are entirely left to chance. If you show up right after another group has gone out, it may take more than two hours, ruining plans you may have made for another part of the day. On busy shooting days, the uncertainty of availability can be a serious headache. This is a system that clearly needs a fix, and luckily there is one, although it comes with a catch. Leaders of Bait and Bullet, the Dartmouth club which introduces students to the lifelong pursuits of hunting and sport shooting, may call ahead and reserve the range

through the telephone. This merits of this system over the other are clear. However, it remains unclear why this privilege is not extended to other students. Dartmouth students who have firearms stored with the college must be certified in firearms safety, usually through the completion of a hunter safety course.

Although Bait and Bullet leaders undergo DOC training and leadership courses, they have no additional gun safety training than any other person qualified to reserve the range. Allowing all students to call and arrange range times would make for greater efficiency and accessibility, while retaining high standards for safety. Another possible solution would be a reservation system modeled on the one used to reserve Baker-Berry study rooms, allowing certified shooters to reserve their times electronically.

In addition to the difficulty most students face to reserve the range, the range itself has some major deficiencies. Many of these are related to its topography—the range is a small field surrounded on all sides by steep hills. All nearby water flows down into this field, turning it into a swamp during most parts of the year. The area around the shooting bench and clay throwers is covered in gravel, protecting sportsmen from the worst of the mud.

The swampy field is a major problem for rifle shooting. The range has no permanent targets or

Mindhood: An Update W. K. James

Senior Editor Mindhood, the grassroots digital wellness initiative founded

by Dartmouth alumna Susan Reynolds ’85, has announced that it will be incubated in the College’s Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship and will continue to expand to other colleges and universities across the United States and worldwide.

The initiative, established with the intention of countering the effects of digital dependence on young people, has already expanded to six universities besides Dartmouth, including Trinity College in Dublin and the University of Oxford, as well as Columbia University and Amherst College.

On March 29th, Ms. Reynolds and Natalie Mendolia ’19 represented Mindhood at the Magnuson Center’s “From Digital Addiction to Digital Wellness: A Dartmouth Start Up Opportunity” forum, which also featured Professor Bill Hudenko, Chief Science Officer of suicide-prevention startup Voi, and Rich Levitan ’86, President of payroll direct deposit company NPS Rent Assurance. As part of the Magnuson Center, Mindhood Mr. James is a sophomore at the College and senior editor at The Dartmouth Review.

will be able to increase its presence at Dartmouth through student leadership: Ms. Reynolds announced, “Natalie Mendolia will be taking over as the point person, and I will step back to an advisor role.” This exciting, student-centered development will offer student internship opportunities, the training of Mindhood ambassadors from student organizations across campus, and the creation of complimentary technology for the program.

Mindhood will also send representatives to three major international technology conferences over the course of the Spring and Summer: the Next Web conference in Amsterdam, the Digital Wellness Festival in London, and the Mindful Society’s annual meeting in Toronto.

All three conferences share Mindhood’s goal of reducing the effects of technology and social media overuse, which include depression, anxiety, and sleep interruption. Reynolds founded Mindhood in 2017 after spending a decade as Director of Academic Technology at the Fenn School in Concord, Massachusetts. In the Summer of 2018, Reynolds worked with students from a number of Greek organizations at Dartmouth, including Sigma Delt, Phi Delt, SAE, KDE, Bones

Gate, Beta, Chi Gam among others, in order to implement Mindhood principles within the Dartmouth community through some of its most important social organizations. In addition to the general benefits provided by the Mindhood program, in the context of Greek life on campus, Reynolds believes that an emphasis on faceto-face communication can help prevent sexual assault and address high rates of depression, feelings of isolation and other mental health issues on campus. In addition to Mindhood workshops, TDX hosted a Mindhood-themed Tails event in which brothers and their guests were encouraged to turn their phones off and engage in direct conversation instead. TDX has taken even more iniative, as it is also the first Greek organization to Dartmouth to appoint a permanent mindfulness chair to its executive council.

Mindhood has also made an impact beyond Webster Ave, working with other student groups on campus in order to encourage a healthier relationship between students and technology.

Although Reynolds initially struggled to engage female students due to the less formalized alumni structure of sororities and other female-only groups on campus, she was able to establish a correspondence with Sigma

target stands, so its users must go out into the mud and standing water to place their targets, to check if they are shooting well or if their rifle is zeroed properly, and to replace their old target with a new one. For those unfamiliar with shooting, paper targets need to be replaced fairly often to still offer a sportsman useful information about his rifle’s or his own performance. All of this adds up to a large amount of time spent slogging through deep mud and trying to step around frequent pools of standing water. Unfortunately, a major side effect of how wet the Dartmouth range is that it is a major breeding ground for ticks; during tick season, almost every person who visits the range will find a tick on them afterwards.

There is a simple solution to this problem—steel targets. Steel targets can be left outside for a long time, and make a ringing noise when hit.

This means that riflemen and women no longer need to place or retrieve targets, since steel targets can be left in position for long periods of time. And, rather than having to walk up to their paper target to see where the holes are, steel offers an auditory cue to tell if a target has been hit or not. Bait and Bullet is currently considering purchasing and setting up steel targets at the range, which should eliminate some of the problems present with paper targets.

Another issue with the range is

its lack of distance markings. Rifles typically need to be zeroed a specific distance to achieve the good firstshot accuracy needed for hunting.

Since there are no known distances marked at the range, a rifle’s zero can only be as good as its user’s ability to guess an unknown distance. Additionally, having known distances marked on the range can help new shooters judge their progress in improving their accuracy at a specific distance. One possible solution to this issue is to measure out ten, twenty-five, and fifty yards and place a post with a sign for that distance at each spot.

Dartmouth’s range provides its students with a unique opportunity to get involved or continue their involvement in the sport shooting.

Dartmouth is to be lauded for simply having a range, but the range definitely has problems: a time-consuming reservation system, swampy topography, and no way to know the distance to a target. Bait and Bullet has recognized some of these issues, and is in the process of attempting to improve the range with steel targets. In addition, Bait and Bullet is trying to reach an agreement with a local range in Lebanon to allow Dartmouth students to purchase a membership. This attempt may or may not be successful, but it could provide an alternative to the Dartmouth range that, while less conveniently located, has better facilities.

Delta’s wellness chairs and spoke to the entire sisterhood, her first major interaction in this capacity with the feminine side of Greek life at Dartmouth. Although other sororities have not officially held Mindhood workshops, many sisters in other houses have engaged with the program through other means, with many reporting beneficial results.

“An overbooked, ever stressed student myself, I found Susan’s insights refreshing, especially as she recalled the difficulties of her own Dartmouth experience in order to better understand our community’s overall state of health,” a sister at KDE told the Reviewin 2018.

According to surveys of Mindhood participants conducted at the end of the Summer of 2018, students reported being 78% happier than they were before undergoing mindfulness training.

For participants to describe such a sharp increase in their happiness before and after participating in Mindhood programs is arguably a testament to both the successfulness of Mindhood as well as the plethora of negative consequences experienced by students as a result of the overuse of technology. Although the program’s close ties to Greek life have been controversial in some circles, its success in reaching

to other groups and its overall effectiveness have done much to quiet this criticism, although the most entrenched of fraternity prohibitionists will likely persist in their wariness towards Mindhood.

Throughout its history, Mindhood’s success has been rooted in its autonomy from College administrators, most of whom seemingly jump at any opportunity to undermine Greek life on campus at every turn. Rather than maintaining separation from Greek life and student life in general, Mindhood has engaged with Greek life instead, something which many of the College’s own wellness initiatives have failed to do on as large a scale. Now that it has been absorbed into Magnuson, it would seem to be in Mindhood’s best interests to maintain a degree of sovereignty from the often unwieldy and ineffective College administration which has damned many positive campus initiatives. Mindhood’s focus on student leadership, however, should maintain the strength of the movement.

Although its incorporation into the Magnuson Center will certainly give it greater funding and publicity, autonomy is central to Mindhood’s continued success in getting students to reconsider how they use technology on an everyday basis.

Executive Editor

On March 4th, the Office of Communications announced new policies determined during the Board of Trustees’ spring meeting. These new policies focused on four points: (1) a focus on diversity, inclusivity, and accountability; (2) a record amount of financial aid allotted and a “new tuition” increasing the already sky-high cost of attending Dartmouth to a jaw-dropping $73,578; (3) approval of operating and capital budgets and endowment distribution; and (4) Dartmouth’s research model. I am certainly not in a place to discuss specifics and make any policy recommendations.

Here I merely seek to provide my thoughts on the message from the Office of Communications as well as summarize its contents.

I’d like to start, somewhat unusually from the last point.

The Office of Communications, in what it called “A Dartmouth Model for Research,” summarized a panel discussion, moderated by Provost Joseph Helbe, of undergraduate and graduate research. F. Jon Kull, dean of the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, noted Dartmouth’s return to R1 status in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, signaling “very high research activity.” This definition applies to institutions that awarded at least 20 research doctoral degrees and had at least $5 million in total research expenditures. Margaret Funnell, director of UGAR (undergraduate advising and research), noted that 60% of graduating seniors participated in faculty-mentored research and that UGAR dispenses more than $1 million annually in grants for undergraduates to perform research. This is perhaps the most positive aspect of the announcement. Dartmouth’s potential as a research institution is one of its greatest assets, even as a liberal arts institution. Dartmouth provides many opportunities for students to get paid for their research efforts through Presidential Scholarships, Junior and Sophomore Research Scholarships, and other various fellowships—all of which are relatively easy to obtain for qualified applicants. Though the research stipends are not especially generous (usually around $1000 per term), this amount of money can allow lower-income students to participate in research rather than working student jobs in lieu of research. Dartmouth’s low student-faculty ratio and close community bonds allow a unique opportunity to do advanced research with high-profile profesMr. Wang is a junior at the College and Executive Editor of The Dartmouth Review.

sors in a welcoming environment.

My issue with this part of the announcement is that it lacks substance. All other three points address specific policy and financial items and changes whereas this last section just serves to vacuously inflate Dartmouth’s self-image, and just seems unnecessary to include in this announcement.

Now to get to the meatier parts of the piece. The first point declares that “a focus on diversity, inclusivity, and accountability” will become central to College proceedings from now on. President Hanlon proclaimed that “it is essential that Dartmouth continue to strengthen all the ways in which we foster and integrate diversity and inclusivity into the fabric of the institution and create new ways, as well,” in response to an announcement that the percentage of faculty and staff from underrepresented backgrounds is below the national average. One could also choose to prioritize ability and achievement rather than disproportionately rewarding people based on their race, but to each their own. I’d personally prefer to leave the racial profiling in the very capable hands of Harvard.

Regardless, that’s a topic for an-

impact of the Alcohol Management Policy (AMP), which “emphasizes the health and safety of students at events is served.”

The third section of the announcement focused on “operating and capital budgets, endowment distribution approved.” The trustees approved Dartmouth’s 2020 fiscal year budgeted expenses of $1.083 billion. The board also approved a budget of $78.3 million to upgrade campus infrastructure. The bulk of the money went towards upgrading the campus computer network, advancing the second phase of construction to extend north campus utilities, and renovations to Kellogg Auditorium at Geisel.

Now to the fun part, (2) a “record $111.3 million in financial aid” with a new tuition set.

The College budgeted a record amount of money in financial aid, a 5.1% increase from last year. The trustees simultaneously approved a 3.9% increase in undergraduate tuition. The College noted that the expansion of financial aid exceeded the growth of tuition for the third consecutive year. Board Chair Laurel Richie ’81, said that “attracting the very best talent—whether it’s students, faculty, or staff—is our top priority and the key to en-

The middle-class gets crushed in the current system by being too wealthy to receive sufficient need-based aid and too poor to pay for oppressively high tuition rates without massive lifestyle changes. other day and another article.

This section of the message also provided a progress report on initiatives that are part of the Moving Dartmouth Forward plan. Elizabeth Agosto noted that 2,700 students participated in the Dartmouth Bystander Initiative in fall and winter term, focusing on leadership and bystander intervention to “mobilize the community to prevent stalking, harassment, dating and domestic violence.” What wasn’t mentioned in the article was that

during excellence.” The College provides free tuition for students with a total family income of less than $100,000. I’m all for doing everything possible to open admission to qualified students regardless of socioeconomic background. Dartmouth, and other top educational institutions, ought to act like meritocracies (not to say that this system is ideal, but it would be naïve not to acknowledge that top universities are signals for talent to the world). People should be select-

ed States is not like that (at least not yet) and has a sizeable middle-class. The middle-class gets crushed in the current system by being too wealthy to receive sufficient need-based aid and too poor to pay for oppressively high tuition rates without massive lifestyle changes. The current system, as it is, is immensely unfair.

By increasing tuition in addition to financial aid, the College is de facto suggesting that poorer students have more of a right to attend than middle-class students, as they can get in for free while other people have to pay. There are many families that face immeasurable burdens that prevent them from being able to afford an expensive degree, which I fully admit. However, these families should not be prioritized over middle-class families who also have financial struggles, if not just as many. While it may sound idealistic to suggest that everyone pay the same amount of money for the same service, the current college attitude towards tuition and financial aid has blatantly disregarded the plight of middle-class families, the majority of the American populace. Families should not be punished for having savings and making more money than the average American. My family is not poor, by most standards.

However, paying tuition for my brother and I has forced them to make nearly unimaginable sacrifices long-term (such as housing and transportation changes) and in the day-to-day aspects of their lives (even having to change their diets). Dartmouth should seek to open educational opportunities to everyone without punishing certain demographics. In reference to a past tuition increase, an alumnus wrote that “Dartmouth is a great college, but tuition close to $71,000 per year? Being from an upper-middle class family, I did not receive any financial aid, and frankly, my parents were highly reluctant to send me to Dartmouth because of the high cost of tuition at the

The College budgeted a record amount of money in financial aid, a 5.1% increase from last year. The trustees simultaneously approved a 3.9% increase in undergraduate tuition.pay for oppressively high tuition rates without massive lifestyle changes. the program was mandatory for anyone seeking to rush a Greek house and that it consisted of one 2-hour information session that included asinine lectures teaching a bunch of ineffectual methods to stop sexual assault (highlights include “the smooth stop” which included spilling a drink on someone and the “direct stop” which would likely lead to its user getting punched in the face or otherwise physically accosted). The report also claimed an approximately 50% drop in student hard alcohol consumption and noted the purported

ed for their talent and ability to overcome obstacles, not solely their ability to afford college.

Dartmouth has increased its tuition to allow more students from lower-income backgrounds to afford a world-class education that they would not be able to afford themselves. While that is certainly superficially laudable, the initiative ignores the plight of the middle-class. Dartmouth’s current financial aid system would seem to see the world as some feudal holdover of an immensely wealthy upper class and the poor masses. However, the Unit-

time. I also felt bad about having my family spend this much on my education, when I could have gone to many nearly-asgood colleges for a fraction of the price. If I were admitted today…

I probably would just take the full ride that I go from a middle-tier liberal arts college in my own state. Four times $71,000 is $284,000… that truly reaches a point where attending Dartmouth would probably not have been worth it to me considering my family’s own finances, I am sorry to say.” If Dartmouth wants to truly attract top talent,

it must be a viable option for people across the socioeconomic spectrum, not just parts of it.

No student should feel guilty for gaining admittance to a top-tier college. I have seen, with my own eyes, top applicants who would have loved to go to Dartmouth or other top-tier ivy league schools, but ultimately (and painfully) decide to take scholarship money at lower-tiered schools. Dartmouth should make its education more affordable, period. Not more affordable to certain demographics, but more affordable for everyone.

Additionally, many Dartmouth students want to make the world a better place, whether working on ground-breaking research, for non-profit organizations, or in education, but simply just can’t afford themselves that opportunity when faced with lucrative finance offers and crippling student debt. What’s the point of having so much talent in one spot if it’s not allowed to make a difference in the world, even though it so desperately wants to.

This isn’t a question of who should get in and who shouldn’t.

Even accounting for the $111.3 million set aside for financial aid, Dartmouth’s endowment is $5.5 billion. I’m certain that Dartmouth can cut expenses in many, many other areas before rejecting students who can’t afford it. In competing for these top applicants, Dartmouth and other top-tier schools have invested irresponsible amounts of money to appeal to more applicants to get that fleeting US News Ranking. Dartmouth’s costly residential-house system is almost as expensive as it is unpopular. All it did was split up Dartmouth’s community and restrict who you could live with.

These residential communities have massive budgets, and put on many events in expensive venues, often with open bars (for the undergraduates?) and catered meals. The last event like this I went to was a “winter formal” where I saw a total attendance of perhaps 9 students.

I also imagine we can get rid of just a few administrative assistants whose ranks just seem to multiply while we lose beloved and talented professors.

Dartmouth needs to get its priorities in order, especially when it comes to affordability. Everyone should be able to afford a Dartmouth education, not just select socioeconomic groups. No student should toil throu gh years of laborious studies only to go to a lower-ranked school because they received a scholarship.

Nobody should have to feel guilty about attending a highly selective institution. I hope that, next spring meeting, the Trustees have some sympathy for middle-class Americans and ends this toxic practice.

12 Wednesday – April 10, 2019

The Dartmouth Review

The Last word Gordon Haff’s

Compiled by WilLiam G. Jelsma

“It’s morning again in America.”

– Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan “Trust, but verify.”

– Ronald Reagan “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

– Ronald Reagan, after being shot “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

– Ronald Reagan “We are forever indebted to those who have given their lives that we might be free.”

– Ronald Reagan “Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.”

– Ronald Reagan “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

– Ronald Reagan “I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.”

“I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.”

– Ronald Reagan “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his action.”

– Ronald Reagan “I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don’t know why he chose to write it, but I’m glad he did.

He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can’t become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.”

– Ronald Reagan “We must never remain silent in the face of bigotry. We must condemn those who seek to divide us. In all quarters and at all times, we must teach tolerance and denounce racism, anti-Semitism and all ethnic or religious bigotry wherever they exist as unacceptable evils. We have no place for haters in America -- none, whatsoever.”

– Ronald Reagan

– Ronald Reagan

BArrett’s mixology

Top 10 List of Secrets More Secret than Secret Societies

Ingredients • • •

Cupcake brand Prosecco—it’s just nice enough for people to know you ain’t fancy Cocaine if you’re in the cocaine secret society, chocolate milk if you’re not A sense of superiority that can only come from excluding people who don’t even know you’re part of a group

1. African Drumming is a layup.

2. The free food table is actually run by a magical leprechaun that grants you leftover Ramunto’s to those who need it most.

3. The “tapping” that happens is literally just a single tap on your left elbow. It happens only at GDX dance parties at 1:27am. There’s NO possible way that you’ll miss being tapped. Secret societies cry when you don’t show up.

4. EBA’s is operating out of Sphinx and the fountain in Sphinx is purely for chicken sandwiches. Or, let’s be real, whatever the actual purpose of Sphinx is.

5. That everyone’s grandma will call Dirt Cowboy a name like “Dirty Cowgirl” and you can’t bare to ask her to reverse it.

6. ’23s will be the *gasp* worst class ever. One of them will get offended. All the fun is now done.

7. Nobody rages anymore.

8. The Chi Gam hot tub is exactly 12% urine and all of that urine comes from disgruntled parking lot people.

9. The location of The Dartmouth Review office.

10. Jesse McCartney is coming for Green Key. No. Seriously.

— Scotch Cara

“You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans. ” – Ronald Reagan “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not to run their lives.”

– Ronald Reagan “I won a nickname, ‘The Great Communicator.’ But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference. It was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation — from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries.”

– Ronald Reagan “The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that the government spends too much.”

– Ronald Reagan “I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.”

– Ronald Reagan “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

– Ronald Reagan “Many students belonging to the Dartmouth left ... are writers for and editors of the ostensibly conservative publication The Dartmouth Review.”

– Eashwar Sivarajan ‘21

Julian Lennon Reads the Review