Hanover Review Inc. P.O. Box 343 Hanover NH, 03755
Volu m e 3 6 , Is su e 11
Mond ay, Novemb er 1 4 , 2 0 1 6
Face Your Fears
Stubborn Students refuse to accept democracy.
Students Rally for Hate Devon M. Kurtz Associate Editor
After an unexpected and widespread victory Tuesday night by Donald Trump and the Republican Party, Hillary supporters and opponents of Trump found themselves in a situation they never expected to encounter. Some faced not only political defeat, but also a genuine fear for their way of life and for the wellbeing of their families. The result in many cases was an eruption of emotion—but, in Dartmouth’s case, one that occurred in a relatively respectable and dignified way. Wednesday morning, sobbing members of the Dartmouth community could be found everywhere: dorms, classrooms, the library, Foco… Students who could face deportation if President-Elect Trump decides
to repeal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), were especially upset, many of them making painful calls home to begin planning for their uncertain future. It should first be made clear: these students are neither sore losers, nor “a bunch of spoiled cry-babies”, as Rudy Giuliani called them. Their emotional responses to Donald Trump’s election are legitimate and justified, as is their First-Amendment-protected right to express these reactions. Just as many people on the right would have viewed a Hillary Clinton victory as a grave threat to their traditional beliefs, these individuals were devastated by Trump’s victory. This devastation was not unique to Dartmouth’s campus. Massive protests erupted in New York City, Philadelphia, Columbus, Portland, Washington
D.C., and across college campuses nationwide. Some of these protests became violent; in Portland, nineteen cars were vandalized, and police were forced to use pepper spray to control the crowd. At UCLA, students attempted to flip a car with someone inside of it. At American University, students burned the American flag. Many rightfully condemn the violence of these protests, but that condemnation often wrongfully extended to the larger number of peaceful protests. On social media, the protests took a different turn, as anti-Trump users antagonized and attacked friends, family, and strangers who at any time expressed support for Trump, and some Trump supporters responded with varying degrees of (dis)respect. As soon as Trump’s presidency seemed im-
minent, anti-Trump individuals filled Twitter and Facebook with messages of confusion, sadness, and anger. By Wednesday morning, Facebook timelines consisted largely of multi-paragraph posts denouncing Trump supporters, expressing fear for the future, and offering support for those who they feel will be negatively affected by Trump’s presidency. Tweets such as “Trump supporters should have been aborted. Smh this is why we need Planned Parenthood”, “If you’re white, I hope you die. You made Trump president”, “If you voted for Trump, I hope someone from the LGBTQ community or a POC comes and murders you”, and “Trump and all the white people need to be killed” were common on Twitter feeds.
> FEATURES page 6
Haidt on Diversity Sandor Farkas Jack F. Mourouzis Peter W. Schroen Editor-in-Chief Executive Editor Contributor
The Dartmouth Review sat down for a second time with renowned proponent of ideological diversity in high education Jonathan Haidt. The Dartmouth Review (TDR): Identity politics are a fact of life on the college campus today, but what role should they really play? Jonathan Haidt (JH): Identity politics makes sense in the world of politics, you can have politics based on industry, you can have it based on values, you can have it based on identity. That’s all fine in the world of politics. But in the university, I believe our “telos,” as Aristotle
Sandor Farkas
put it, should be the pursuit of truth, and the extent that anything gets in the way of that to the extent that people see battles not as over what is true, but what is helpful or harmful to a group, that is a direct violation to our “telos” as scholars. So I think that the general effect of identity politics has been to take certain fields of study away from the study of truth and to turn them into forms of activism. I believe that has no place on a college campus. TDR: What is the value of student activism, particularly in its current form? What is it really accomplishing, whether intentional or unintentional? JH: Student activism serves many functions. Young people do things to display their
> Features page 8
Look evil in the eye
Helman speaks out
A timeline of scandal
The Review challendges students to confront different opinions
The Review sits down with Chairman of Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees
The Review looks back at the past four years of scandals at the College
> EDITORIAL page 3
> features page 9
> features page 10
2 Monday – November 14, 2016
The Dartmouth Review
The Dartmouth Review
Table of Contents
FreSHmen Write
Work
For thirty-five years, The Dartmouth Review has been the College’s only independent newspaper and the only student opinion journal that matters. It is the oldest and most renowned campus commentary publication in the nation and spawned a national movement 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 brittle and orthodox thinking. We stand for free speech, student rights, and the liberating 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
Look Evil in the Eye
Sandor Farkas
executive editors Brian Chen Jack F. Mourouzis
Managing editors Joshua L. Kauderer Max J. Frankel Marcus J. Thompson Joseph r. Torsella
Associate Editors Zachary P. Port Devon Kurtz Rushil Shukla
Business staff President
Mathew R.Zubrow
“Because every student deserves a safe space”
– Inge-Lise Ameer, Vice Provost for Student Affairs
vice president RObert Y. Sayegh Samuel W. Lawhon
Meetings held Mondays at 6:30 PM at our offices at 32 S. Main Street (next to Lou’s in the lower level office space)
ADVISORY
Inside the issue Students Rally for Hate
The Dartmouth Review provides an account of student demonstrations in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president .......................................................................... PAGE 1
Haidt on Diversity
The Dartmouth Review sits down with renowned scholar Jonathan Haidt, who recently spoke at the College, and he offers some insight on the dire situation facing higher education in the modern era ......................................................................................... PAGE 1
Week in Review
The Dartmouth Review writes about current events, including new developments on the Morton fire, controversy in the Free Food GroupMe, Gender Studies presentations, and the College’s Veterans Day celebration .................................................................................... PAGE 4
SUBSCRIBE The Dartmouth Review is produced bi-weekly by Dartmouth College undergraduates. It is published by the Hanover Review, Inc., a tax-deductible, non-profit organization. Please consider helping to support Dartmouth’s only independent newspaper, and perhaps the only voice of reason left here on campus. Yearly print subscriptions start at just $40, for which we will mail each issue directly to your door. Electronic subscriptions cost $25 per year, for which you receive a PDF of The Review in your inbox at press time. Contributions above $40 are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated. Please include your mailing address and make checks payable to:
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Intellectual Diversity in Trump’s America
Reviewers offer commentary on campus and national events relating to the election and the state of the College after Trump’s election ............................................................ PAGE 7
Founders
Greg Fossedal, Gordon Haff, Benjamin Hart, Keeney Jones
Legal counsel
mean-spirited, cruel, and ugly
An Interview with Bill Helman
We sit down with current chairman of the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College and gain quite a bit of insight into the inner workings of Dartmouth’s most senior leadership ............................................................................................................................................ PAGE 9
A Timeline of Scandal
The Dartmouth Review provides a retrospective on various controversies and scandals that have plagued the College in recent years, beginning with the Andrew Lohse saga all the way up to the election of Donald J. Trump ......................................................... PAGE 10
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to takerank 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
Conservative
space
3
MASTHEAD & EDitorial
Pontificate
Safe
Monday – November 14, 2016
Board of trustees
Martin Anderson, Patrick Buchanan, Theodore Cooper-stein, Dinesh D’Souza, Michael Ellis, Robert Flanigan, John Fund, Kevin Robbins, Gordon Haff, Jeffrey Hart, Laura Ingraham, Mildred Fay Jefferson, William Lind, Steven Menashi, James Panero, Hugo Restall, Roland Reynolds, William Rusher, Weston Sager, Emily Esfahani-Smith, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Sidney Zion
Churchill reads the review. do you?
Notes Special thanks to William F. Buckley, Jr. Love Trumps Hate 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: editor@dartreview.com Or by mail at:
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Please direct all complaints to: editor@thedartmouth.com
The audience sat silently, the men’s complain that the socialist was too heads tilted against their starched col- radical, that the capitalist was immorlars, the women’s faces nestled in lux- al, and that the cleaning lady was racurious fur. A skinny man with round ist. They fear every perspective that spectacles stood before them, lectur- challenges their conception of realiing in Yiddish. He told them to leave ty, and they actively avoid things that their homes, to leave their prosper- provoke self-reflection. ous lives, and move to Eretz Israel. It is far greater challenge to divine He looked them in the eyes and told a plan of action by which Jabotinsky them, “Eliminate the Diaspora, or the could have succeeded. Can one man, Diaspora will surely eliminate you.” equipped with the truth, really infilAfter the he had concluded his speech, trate the minds of a people who are the men and women returned to their so resistant to new ideas? The answer homes. A few took his advice, but most is obvious: Jabotinsky was doomed to of those stoic faces were content to lis- failure. No matter what he said, logic, ten and to stay put. passion, and evidence were all inadeThat man was Ze’ev Jabotinsky, quate to convince those Parisian Jews and the year was 1934. The audithat their lives were in danger. ence was composed of French Only one thing could have Jews. We know these things convinced them, and that because the lecture was thing could not come from filmed as part of Jaboan external source. tinsky’s campaign to If they had possessed spread his message to the courage to leave their the assimilated Jewish synagogues, their communicommunities of Euty halls, and their schools, rope. Jabotinsky is my they would have heard the hero because he spread a truth in so blatant a fashtrue yet unpopular ion that it would have message in an attempt overwhelmed them. If Sándor Farkas to save the lives of his they had gone to Hitfellow Jews. He was a visionary and a ler’s rallies, listened to his speeches, great Jewish leader, and his theoretical and talked with his supporters, they work has helped to form modern Jew- would have realized the real danger ish thought. they were in. There is even a chance – Unfortunately, he was also a failure. albeit slight – if they had started early It is impossible to watch the short film enough, that they could have stopped of his speech without feeling horror at the nightmare before it spread over all the thought that many of the men and of Europe. women in the audience would not surHate often stems from ignorance, vive the next eleven years. I look at my from a divide between two parties grandfather’s picture on my wall; his characterized not by conflict but by an starched collar, parted hair, and glass- absence of contact. By engaging with es make him indistinguishable from those who hated them, the Jews of Euthe men in the audience. In 1934, he rope could have undermined their hawas in his twenties, and had recently tred. At the very least, they could have arrived in America. His father, an old seen it for what it was and left before it man by then, had chosen to remain in was too late. I am not lamenting conHungary with some of his siblings. Be- flict: I am lamenting its loss. Students fore the Second World War, they were who avoid engaging with Trump supall religious or socialist or both. They porters fear conflict, when they should were idealists, like me. I can picture welcome it. my great-grandfather listening to JaI came to this conclusion and wrote botinsky’s ravings. As a Jew, he liked much of this editorial before our reto expose himself to different perspec- cent Presidential election, but I feel tives. This week, it was a Zionist. Next that it is necessary to clarify how this week, a socialist. A Hasidim might be extended analogy applies to our presstretching it. That aside, he had no ent situation. Donald Trump is not reason to believe what the man said. Hitler, and Trump’s supporters are not His Hungarian neighbors still patron- the Germans who eagerly followed ized his bakery, and the Jewish school Hitler. The real “Hitler” in this analacross from his home was still open. ogy is the growing cultural division He didn’t listen. He died. in the United States, and the “eager It is easy to understand why Ja- Germans” are those partisans on both botinsky failed: all you have to do is sides who blindly call for ideological look around at the pathetic homage homogeneity. In my last editorial, I our countrymen, particularly college called for “extreme” dedication to a students, pay to ideological diversity. cause. That stands: the answer is not to They attend lectures by socialists, they abandon principle for moderation, it argue with capitalists, and they even is simply to listen to other principles. listen as their cleaning lady talks about Conflicting passions are the building why she supports Donald Trump. They blocks of a free society; the loss of pasdo all this, but at the end of the day, sion and the loss of conflict are both to they retreat to their safe spaces and be avoided at all costs.
4 Monday – November 14, 2016
The Dartmouth Review
WEEK IN REVIEW NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE morton fire New developments in the Morton Hall fire debacle have come to light this week. Sebastian Lim, speaking on behalf of himself and his partner in crime Daniel Ro claimed responsibility for the fire that clamed the dorms of over seventy East Wheelock upperclassmen causing the Morton Hall refugee crisis. The note, taking the form of a petition, confesses that the administration’s emails do not tell the whole story of the night of the Morton Fire and that as a result of their actions, they have been expelled for Dartmouth. While offering an apology and assuring that they are willing to accept the consequences of their actions, the perpetrators asked that students disprove the administration’s finding that they pose a threat to the Dartmouth Community. The petition has amassed over 1,000 its targeted 2000 signatures, of which only 513 come from the Hanover area. But while the chance of being run over by an townie is far greater than that of these two ignoramus’ burning down of another building, it is indeed challenging to discount the extraordinary damage as a mistake. At a certain point actions have consequences and some consequences are too devastating to for a community to digest. Besides, would you really want to walk among students whose families can claim to have helped built buildings around campus, when you yourself have only burned them down?
Free food but no free speech For one thousand six hundred and three members of the Dartmouth community, the FREE FOOD @ NOW GroupMe is sacred. Students from all walks of life come together to alert each other of opportunities for non-DDS sustenance around campus. The chat has only one rule: you may only post about free food. Anything else will result in a swift removal. For a few days earlier this week, the purity of the
chat was defiled. The golden rule was suspended and the chat was opened to posts about politics because of the weight of the upcoming presidential election. The fateful post, at 10:50 am on Tuesday, read: “VOTE VOTE VOTE AT HANOVER HIGH TODAY 7 AM – 7PM!!! And if you’re free in the next hour Dartmouth Dems are hosting an event that future governor Colin Van Ostern will be speaking at! [sic] It’s at 11 am (in 10 minutes) behind Collis!!!” When one devilishly handsome ’20 decided to point out that the previous post did not, in fact, concern free food, voting posts were deemed excusable because voting is “TOO IMPORTANT.” When an excited Trump supporter later posted “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!!!!!” however, he was promptly removed from the group. While it might seem like harmless group chat politics, the events of Tuesday in FREE FOOD @NOW represent a dangerous double standard. Supporting Senator Clinton was encouraged, while supporting Mr. Trump was met with swift removal from the group. This phenomenon follows a disturbing trend, both on and off Dartmouth campus, in which left-leaning political speech and views are allowed and encouraged while right-leaning political speech and views were censored and ostracized. Limiting speech because we disagree with it is dangerous. As soon as any kind of speech is limited, society approaches a slippery slope. Take the incredibly imprecise and subjective definition of hate speech, for instance. The American Bar Association defines it as “speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.” If hate speech were to be criminalized, suddenly an objective comment about someone’s height, for example, could be interpreted as offensive and lead to legal ramifications. You can’t prove that something isn’t offensive with a jury trial because interpretations are personal and completely subjective. While saying hateful things is obviously reprehensible, this type of speech is protected by the first amendment. Furthermore, any actions that limit this right are highly threatening to all, because once limits on speech are implemented, there is no way to prevent their inevitable expansion. What makes the events of Tuesday even more insidious is the fact that the speech in question wasn’t even hate speech: it was support for a different worldview. While some of what Mr. Trump has said over the years is, well, deplorable, clamping down on support for our President-Elect is problematic. As soon as we outlaw speech that supports an ideology, we outlaw the ideology itself. In George Orwell’s 1984, the dystopian government creates Newspeak, a language intended “to narrow the range of thought.” The end goal is to make “thoughtcrime [anti-government
thought] literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” While Orwell presents an extreme case-and I am by no means accusing anyone of becoming the literal thought police—his logic is nonetheless sound. Limiting speech that supports a different worldview risks eliminating that dissent entirely, which jeopardizes everybody’s freedom. On a more Dartmouth-specific level, we are here to learn. If we only surround ourselves with the people with whom we agree, creating “echo chambers” and reaffirming our own beliefs, we all lose. College is not supposed to be a safe space. It is supposed to be a place where we are respectfully challenged to build and defend our own independent world views. And I’m not going to be hypocritical—anyone who wants to challenge my views about free speech is welcome to come find me on campus and discuss them. We’ll probably both learn something. While I was personally never a Trump supporter, I took it upon myself to re-add all of the people who were kicked out of the group for pro-Trump comments. In the end, Voltaire said it best: “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.”
Sex, Gender, and Society projects take over the library After grabbing your morning coffee at KAF, check out the student project displays for Sex, Gender, and Society. The projects covered topics such as being from a low-income family at Dartmouth, the influence of capitalism on standards of beauty, and opinions on what it means to “just be attractive.” These projects do not all try to depict an image of America as a classist, racist, heteronormative, homophobic, transphobic, and sexist nightmare, but some of them do take that approach. One student’s project about low income students at Dartmouth was very interesting and is definitely worth looking over while you sip on your coffee tomorrow morning. One side of the display, filled with facts about financial aid, loans, budgeting, and stereotypes about Dartmouth’s more affluent students, likely has information that some students here have never seen before.This project will certainly serve to educate a passerby in Dolce and Gabbana wingtip oxfords and a Hugo Boss cashmere overcoat about the struggles of the other half of the students here. Unfortunately, her project also shows that there are un-
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fair and unjust assumptions and stereotypes of higher income students that should be combatted as much as the stereotypes of lower income students. On the other side of the display, there are quotations from students about their financial struggles and how that affected their social lives at Dartmouth. One quotation reads, “You’d get weeded out of friendships based on what you could afford,” and really captures the essence of this well-done project. Another student focused his project on “intersectionality,” the idea that elements of an individual’s identity intersect to create the “whole” person. Through a series of examples with dinosaurs, he tries to demonstrate how each part of the dinosaur’s identity—sex, religion, gender, age, nationality, and race—come to together to define the dinosaur. At first glance this project seems to be a cool breakdown of something we should already know—people are dynamic. But there is a hidden box, smaller than all of the others, in the center of the project that reads, “These intersections can be constructive, destructive, or both, depending on the situation. Some intersections give the individual certain privileges, some are a source of oppression, some are a mix.” There is no further explanation into what those two statements mean beyond their literal interpretation, and there is no discussion of the implications of those statements. The dinosaur examples do not include how they are oppressed or privileged through their identities, so there really is no other part of the project that touches upon these assertions. It seems like those two sentences were thrown onto the poster as a, “Professor, I pinky-promise that I hate the patriarchy so please give me a good grade,” as they did not really fit in with the rest of the otherwise creative project. There are plenty more of these projects to be viewed and discussed. Some of them will make you cringe, some will strike your fancy. Challenging yourself to seek out new perspectives, and deciding only then if you agree or disagree with them, is important to the free exchange of ideas and the growth of our intellectual community. You may be tempted to walk right by these displays because the line at KAF was so long that you are late to your class, but at least consider being just a little bit more late and reading just one or two of these projects. Nothing gets the blood flowing in the morning like identity politics.
Dartmouth celebrates veterans day The Dartmouth Community celebrated veterans throughout the weekend with a variety of events. On Friday, the Veterans’ Banquet took place at the Hanover Inn. James Geiling, a Professor at Geisel and retired United States Army Colonel, was presented with the James Wright Award for Distinguished Service. Geiling helped coordinate the first responder teams on 9/11 at the Pentagon, and is the chief of medical services at the regional VA. The banquet at the Hanover Inn included a ceremony to honor the victims of 9/11, among which were twelve people with ties to the College. Earlier in the day, there was a drill ceremony on the green conducted by Dartmouth ROTC, and a Veterans’ Day retreat. At the ceremony a cannon was fired and the bells on Baker tower played Service Hymns. Throughout the weekend various other events were held to honor veterans and their sacrifices. Veterans got free admission to Dartmouth athletic events all throughout the weekend. There was also a sled hockey game between TuckVets and IceVets in the Thompson Arena which raised money for programs that help veterans. On Sunday, the Marine Corp Birthday Ball was also held at the Hanover Inn. It is good that Dartmouth honored its commitment to veterans even if the College’s attention was distracted by the results of the electoral on Tuesday.
5
Devon Kurtz Max J. Frankel
Cartoon
“Democracy is so triggering, bro.” “How dare you assume my gender identity. That’s basically a war crime.”
Cartoon
“And when I took a day off from work because of the elction, my boss was just like, ‘You’re fired.’”
Cartoon
“...And then she just started crying! All I did was wish her a good day!”
6 Monday – November 14, 2016
The Dartmouth Review
> CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
On the other side, some particularly despicable Trump supporters posted pictures in black face, announced victory for “white nationalism”, and otherwise reciprocated the hostility and aggression of the anti-Trump tweets. This deeply disturbing exchange continued on for days, but by Saturday, November 12, most of the radical posts and tweets were becoming less public and fewer in number. Dartmouth’s own demonstrations fell into the peaceful category, and should be respectMr. Kurtz is a freshman at the College and an Associate Editor at the Dartmouth Review.
ed as such. The protests began with students camping out on the green in the early hours of Wednesday morning. By that afternoon, signs began appearing around campus, offering reassurance and support to groups who might share negative feelings toward the results of the election without antagonizing those who supported Trump. By four o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, the protest on the green grew to be quite large. The protestors then began a march, beginning at the green, walking to Baker Library, chanting through the library, and then parading back through campus towards downtown Ha-
nover. The march ended back on the green, where protestors made a circle and continued chanting. This peaceful protest remained orderly and peaceful throughout; few people were disrupted from their studying when the protestors quickly marched through Baker-Berry, and traffic remained largely uninterrupted from the march through the streets of Hanover. Even the protestors’ chants comprised of only a few negative sentiments and many more positive encouragements offering support to groups that were more likely to be upset by the election results. Despite the high levels of
A Letter to the President
7
Intellectual Diversity and Trump’s America
Election Triggers Protest, Students
Protestors embody love and tolerance.
Monday – November 14, 2016
Features
features
tension and pain, and the example of violent and demeaning protests set by cities across the nation, Dartmouth students executed their protest with the dignity, respect, and class that one should expect from a group of Ivy League students. Even those who disagree with the message behind the protest should recognize the importance of this most basic display of the First Amendment right to peacefully assemble, and they should also recognize the vast differences between Dartmouth’s protest and the protests on other campuses and in other cities. These passionate and poised protestors represented Dartmouth well in this time of pain, anger, and sadness, and should be respected and applauded. The right to peacefully protest should be celebrated and encouraged. It allows those with opposing views to express their sentiments without harming others. President-Elect Trump’s messages on social media were generally positive and dignified, a welcomed change by many who view his usual tweets as hostile and inappropriate. President-Elect Trump at first condemned the protests by tweeting “professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!” but later recognized the necessity and beauty of peaceful protest in our democracy, and tweeted “Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our
The Dartmouth Review
great country. We will all come together and be proud.” His statement about the protests indicates that he recognizes that his opposition also wants what is best for America, and while both sides are passionate, their methods simply differ. These protests are his first test in his quest to unite the country, and so far, in the face of deep, painful division, he is making progress. Even with all of the hostility between those standing with the president-elect and those standing against him, Dartmouth students are representing themselves well. Though not perfect, the composure, mutual respect, and passion that runs through the members of this College like the “hill winds in their veins” sets them apart from most other college students, and from the general population. Despite what many might say about the opposing faction, one can find in most students here—both leftists and rightists—the ability to have disagreement, conversation, debate, and argument, all the while remaining nonviolent and disciplined. As protests rage on across the country, some increasingly brutal, it is important for everyone in this community, pro-Trump and anti-Trump, Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, to appreciate the responsible and respectable manner in which Dartmouth students have handled this time in our nation’s history. Please, give credit where credit is due.
To Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon: As the leaders of Dartmouth’s conservative community, we, the undersigned, wish to express our formal disapproval of this administration’s partisan handling of the results of the recent national election. Your administration has mobilized College resources in support of partisan political dissent. This is a blatant violation of College policy and of non-profit law. Even worse than this is the failure of administrators, staff, and faculty to recognize ideological diversity and encourage civil discourse. We find these things to be unbecoming of a college that predates our electoral process and claims to support the virtue of equality. Our great republic, having held fifty-six elections for the nation’s highest office, is facing something unprecedented. Across the country, citizens have chosen to call into question the validity of our democratic process. Neither College Republicans nor The Dartmouth Review endorsed President Elect Donald J. Trump, but the American people chose him. If the American people had chosen Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton as President, we doubt that the College would have given us free food, safe spaces, and other resources. Regardless of this speculation, the fact remains that the College has deliberately supported attacks on our President Elect because of his politics. This is not only against regulations and the law, it has put conservative students in harm’s way. Over the past few days, conservative students have been heckled in public. They have been told by faculty members that those who vote for President Elect Trump are stupid. They have been the victims of bullying by their peers, some of whom were formerly close friends. Conservative students feel compelled to hide their beliefs lest students, staff, and even faculty berate them, shout at them, or attack them. We are not afraid: we welcome challenges to our beliefs. We have the courage of our convictions and the will of the American people to defend us. We condemn the blatant fear-mongering and hate of our peers and our professors. We ask only for equality and human dignity, the right to live as equal citizens deserving of the same basic respect accorded to our peers. We are, Sandor Farkas, Editor-in-Chief, The Dartmouth Review Matthew R. Zubrow, President, The Dartmouth Review & Vice President, College Republicans Michele Knesbach, President, College Republicans Brian Chen, Executive Editor, The Dartmouth Review & Vice President, College Republicans Dear Sandor, Matthew, Michele, and Brian: The Dartmouth administration is committed to providing support to any of our students who need or request it, regardless of the reason. We take your comments seriously and encourage you to please report any incidents of harassment to Safety & Security or speak with your undergraduate dean. Going forward, please do not hesitate to communicate with us as opportunities to be of support to you and to your community arise. Phil
Joseph R. Torsella Managing Editor A great many thinkpieces and “hot takes” will be written about the outcome of Tuesday’s election. What else should be expected in the aftermath of the greatest political upset in recent memory? But I think there is a lesson to be learned in Trump’s victory, and specifically in the revulsion and surprise with which it was greeted by much of our campus. The atmosphere around Dartmouth on the day following the election was tremendously sad. Asian American Students for Action sent an email saying “F--- White Supremacy, F--- Trump, F--Comey, F--- Pence.” Protestors marched down the Green, beside dorms, and into the library chanting against “white supremacy.” Indeed, they have closely mirrored the “#NotMyPresident” protests in urban areas across the country. Faculty and students joined together on Wednesday in stunned disbelief and abject horror at what was, admittedly, a devastating loss for progressivism. Surely some of this emotion is well-placed: most pollsters predicted a Clinton victory, and Donald Trump will set back causes integral to the progressive movement. But my intuition is that much of the wailing and gnashing of teeth on campus is the result of something different – of a startling and harmful lack of intellectual diversity among the faculty and students. Indeed, this phenomenon seems eerily reminiscent of the apocryphal statement of film critic Pauline Kael with regards to the landslide victory of Richard Nixon in 1972: that Nixon couldn’t have won because she didn’t know anyone who voted for him. This self-selection was woefully present in this election. Of the 700 counties that voted twice for Obama, a stunning 1/3 flipped to Trump. Progressives exist surrounded by a sea of the differently-minded. And Hanover, NH is one of these places. It is a bastion of privilege, education, and meritocracy grossly disconnected from the country around it, which voted for change. Many progressives argue that the red sea is dominated by irrationality, prejudice, and reactionary fear. Perhaps that is true. But is that an excuse for the obvious ignorance for their concerns Mr. Torsella is a sophomore at the College and a Managing Editor at The Dartmouth Review.
displayed by both parties and the beneficiaries of the meritocratic system? Our own homogeneity is our biggest danger – it isolates us, divides us, and shields us from the concerns of our fellow Americans. Perhaps this played into the shock which greeted the result on this campus. Stuck inside the “Dartmouth Bubble,” so few of us are attuned to the concerns that drove Tuesday’s realignment. And this may explain the struggle to explain, contextualize, and cope with the result on Wednesday, too. Progressives on campus are so invested in critical theory, in intersectionality, and in race and gender theory that they view every event in that context. No, this election was not about “white supremacy.” Nor was it about racism. Yes, many of the things Donald Trump said were unabashedly xenophobic. But does this explain his victory – entirely at the hands of counties and states that voted twice for our first African-American president? Clearly not. Critical theory gives us no tools to understand this election – and so there was a lack of understanding. And so we see now the importance of intellectual diversity on campus. If progressivism has failed in its understanding of this election already, in what other important places will it be a detriment? Intellectual diversity is a check on epistemic closure, a needed brake on the most worrying trends of the day. When we leave Dartmouth, we will find a world increasingly divided along pseudo-ideological lines – urban and rural, young and old, rich and poor. Our higher education is the place where we have the greatest opportunity to encounter those who do not share our views and to be challenged in uncomfortable ways. How unfortunate, then, that a recent study showed only 6% of social psychology professors being conservative, that most campus administrations have an unabashedly liberal slant, that students have taken to policing language and viewpoints themselves. The more successful the left is at making college a place of ideological exclusivity, the more students will be unable to understand and contextualize world events. Political correctness does not make the world a better place, it makes academics and students unable to understand its complexity. How much longer do we have to wait for progressive methods to be proven grossly deficient? How many more
Brexits? How many more Trumps? How many nationalists need to be elected in Europe for the left to realize that its strategy has succeeded only in creating islands of condescending liberalism and seas of dissatisfied voters? For the last century, progressivism has been successful when it advances with the people. Now, it has advanced beyond them, looked back, and called them backwards. This is no strategy for successful persuasion, and an even worse strategy for education. Tuesday proved that there is a great swath of America unrepresented here at Dartmouth. Our task now is to seek it out.
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8 Monday – November 14, 2016
The Dartmouth Review
Features
Johnathan Haidt Looks Forward
Johnathan Haidt
> CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 virtues and traits, and this is one of the reasons why people get involved in activism. There are real problems in society and on campus, and students are often motivated to fix them. But when we talk about changing complex systems, I think the history of activism reform is that interventions in complex systems almost always have unintended consequences. This I believe is the greatest conservative insight, this what I love about Edmund Burke, and conservatives have always understood that one should not intervene haphazardly or thoughtlessly. In the academy we are all in the business of praising student activism, but in fact activism that is not based on a good understanding of reality is at risk of doing more harm than good. TDR: Last winter, there was an article in the Brown student newspaper about how activism was a burden on the academic lives of student activists. It called on universities to compensate student activists with grades or actual money. Do you have any comments on that? JH: An important feature of adulthood is learning to make tradeoffs and choices. You can’t have everything you want. Since the 60s students have made choices about their priorities and the idea of not fulfilling your academic duties in order to fulfill your political duties is a perfectly reasonable choice to make, but the idea that some adult should then compensate for it or otherwise make up for it is a great example of the kind of moral dependency that victimhood fosters. TDR: What sort of a role do you think humor plays in intellectual discussion? JH: There are two aspects to humor here. I’m an intuitionist. IN my research I study the ways that intuition drives reasoning. And so persuasion and explanation and communication are not just a matter of laying out your ideas. A good presenter, a good speaker a good businessperson understands what it takes to get ideas across. Humor, warmth, self-deprecation, appreciation of the other, these are all Mr. Farkas is a senior at the College and the Editor-in-Chief of The Dartmouth Review. Mr. Mourouzis is a junior at the College and an Executive Editor at The Dartmouth Review. Mr. Schroen is a freshman at the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.
parts of communication. I don’t know if these were all included in Ancient Greece when they studied rhetoric but the ancient Greeks understood that rhetoric is a human art form that people need to learn. So humor plays important roles in communication. As for sacred values, what I see happening on campus is a moral revolution, a new morality of victimhood culture that treats victims as sacred. There’s a play by some students to make this the official morality of the university. There’s resistance by other students. Certainly conservative students are not accepting of that as the mission of the university. There is a long tradition of an individual or group that is weaker or outgunned using humor as a weapon. If you can’t be physically stronger than your opponents, you can at least make fun of them. What I know of it, the Dartmouth Review is provocative, it tries to use humor, and you’re certainly outgunned on campus. Humor is a powerful tool, but it’s tricky because you have to be careful about committing real blasphemy. You can do things that are truly offensive as opposed to simply mocking or what the English call “taking the piss out of someone.” And there’s no clear line, it’s negotiable. TDR: The Review’s historical strategy was to be incredibly provocative in order to drive the conversation, which was primarily centered far to the left, more towards the center. Some current figures, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, use similar tactics. What do you think this model effects? JH: I think we have to distinguish between the context and the institution in which this is occurring. In the university we have a shared culture around the truth. If you listen to academics talk, they generally shy away from terms like always and never. If you have a strategy of saying extreme things that are not true, I don’t see how that can help you in an academic context. It just discredits you. Milo Yiannopoulos is actually quite smart and perceptive and well read, so I think he has a lot to contribute in terms of being a critic of political correctness. But if the style of provoking by making extreme statements, if it might be effective in certain situations, I don’t think that’s the appropriate role in a university setting. TDR: Is there a connection in the philosophies between capitalism as an economic system and the free market of ideas? JH: The human mind is very good at certain things. We are very good at thinking about people being nice to each other or being mean to each other, were very good at thinking about people interacting. A lot of systems have emergent properties that are hard for us to understand. This was Adam Smith’s great insight about the economy. People that are pursuing self-interested motives can end up creating enormous social benefit. It’s not that intuitive, but it’s true. The same thing happens in intellectual life. Peo-
ple criticize cherished notions, people saying things that the majority find offensive, can force the majority to be explicit about its defenses, to think through whether it really can defend something, and sometimes to even change its mind. I think the metaphor “A Marketplace of Ideas” is a wonderful metaphor. It helps us understand how truth can emerge from individuals who are biased and flawed and often kind of stupid. I’m very fond of the metaphor of the university as a marketplace of ideas, and this is why I’m so concerned about the loss of viewpoint diversity. Up until the 1990s the university leaned left by two or three to one, and since the 1990s it’s switched to now being anywhere from five to one overall, to more like twenty or thirty to one in the humanities or social sciences. There is no marketplace of ideas in many of the humanities or social sciences, there’s a complete monopoly. One school of thought has a complete monopoly on what can be said and what cannot be said. This is a market failure. This is what we’re trying to fight at Heterodox Academy, because even many people on the left recognize that you can’t have scholarship if you don’t allow dissent. TDR: Obviously not all people share this ability to tolerate [intellectual] diversity, or have the desire to. What in your upbringing inclined you towards this love of intellectual diversity? JH: I never thought of myself as someone who loves intellectual diversity, I love arguing, discussing, learning. I think the transformative event for me was when I decided to shift my research from studying cultural differences in morality to studying political differences in morality. This was in 2004 after John Kerry lost the presidential election. I was on the left and I was so upset that the second time a candidate was smarter than George W. Bush, he lost to George W. Bush. I wanted to do research that would help the left understand the right and speak more intelligently to American values. To do that, I started watching shows on Fox News, like Glenn Beck. And I started reading the National Review. And what I discovered was that there were a whole bunch of ideas I had never encountered before. I always like new ideas. So that to me was actually really thrilling. I was, at the time, 41 years old. I had never been exposed to conservative ideas. So I think I’m someone who’s always enjoyed learning new things. At the age of 41 I discovered that there was a big repository of interesting ideas about society I had never encountered. That made me more sympathetic to conservatives. As the academy began to lean more and more to the left, and as the culture got more and more intense I began to notice some weak reasoning among social scientists. I started getting concerned that the lack of viewpoint diversity was harming our science, our research and our scholarship. I first began talking about that in 2011 and since then its gotten worse and worse and I’ve gotten more and more passionate about it. So that’s the
story about how I’ve become active in the movement for viewpoint diversity. TDR: At The Review, we like to consider ourselves one of the more diverse organizations on campus, and in many ways we are, but in many ways we aren’t. The Review is mostly male. Why do you think the push for intellectual diversity is coming from such a narrow demographic and how can we change that? JH: The left-right divide in America has become increasingly gendered. Since the 1970s the Democratic Party began to embrace gender equality as an issue. The Democratic has become more gendered – the female party. Most women are Democrats because most women are on the left. That’s part of it, and that’s just normal politics. That doesn’t mean that either side is right or wrong, it’s just the nature of political evolution in this country. There’s another factor here, which is that libertarians are overwhelmingly male. My colleagues and I have done some research showing that people high on systemizing and low on empathizing – psychologically – are more attracted to libertarian ideology… For libertarians, I think there are actually good psychological reasons that they’re mostly male. For social conservatives its not as clear that there would be a gender mix. The politics on campus tend to radiate out. Activist politics tends to come from the “studies” departments. So that would be gender studies, African American studies. Because these departments tend to be activist departments, they teach ideas about privilege and oppression. These political and academic debates tend to have a racial and gender aspect to them. Again, that’s the nature of political disagreements. There are different groups that have different interests that are exposed to different ideas. TDR: If the movement for intellectual diversity is truly a diverse movement, why do many of its advocates tend to be conservative and how can we fix that? JH: Well at Heterodox academy, our membership is roughly 28% conservative and 28% libertarian, 28% moderate and 15% progressive. So we’re not mostly conservative. There aren’t that many conservatives in the academy but there are a lot of libertarians and moderates and even they are often in the closet. So we tend to find the best pickup from libertarians and moderates who are really well placed to see the restrictions on ideas and speech. I think a key term that we need to use more and more is “illiberal.” So you can be on the left and be liberal or illiberal. Liberal means that you believe in freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, that you think, as Adam Smith said, “people should be free to live lives on their own plan.” So you can be on the left and be liberal, and you can be on the left and be illiberal. The illiberal one wants to tell others how to live their lives: what words they can use, what clothes they’re allowed to wear, what they must believe,
The Dartmouth Review
Monday – November 14, 2016
Features
William Helman Looks Back mouth community.
what they must think. We’ve had an illiberal left for a long time in the academy. But what’s really scaring me as an American is that just in the past few years is that we’ve seen a new form of illiberalism on the right, which is the alt-right, which is often overtly racist. So I think we have a national emergency in which the traditions and institutions that have made America great and have led the West to levels of prosperity and equality and openness, are threatened by an illiberalism on the left and on the right. This is happening in Europe just as much as it is happening in America. TDR: A lot of what you say reminds recalls the classic William F. Buckley preference for being governed by “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,00 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” So if we’re drifting away from that tendency in American democracy, does that mean what American democracy has stood for is threatened? JH: I think the events of the past year or two need to make us all go back and read the Federalist Papers and the reasons why the founding fathers didn’t want a democracy. They read Plato carefully. Plato believed that democracy is the second worst form of government. Tyranny is worse, but democracy inevitably descends into tyranny. So, the most important idea in politics is that people need to have veto power. People need to be able to say “the leadership is bad and we want to throw them out.” That’s essential. But, the idea that the people should make policy by popular consent opens thing up to demagoguery. There are certainly problems with democracy and the founding fathers understood that. There are also problems with elitism. The elites think they know better. The elites as a community are often biased by a particular ideology that blinds them to the truth. This is what I think we’re seeing, Europe in particular, where the people are often opposed to mass immigration but the elites are unable to criticize it and its only when immigration levels get extremely high and social problems get undeniable that the elites catch up to people. We saw this very clearly in Sweden when only last December that the elites finally what the people had been saying for a while, that they can’t take in as many immigrants. So each has their problems – the elites and the masses – both have very predictable problems that they fall into. TDR: If you were a college student again, what would you be doing to bring about these changes? JH: I have no idea because, as a college student, I was very concerned about what women would think of me and I wouldn’t want to do anything that would make me unattractive. So I didn’t have much in the way of guts when I was a college student. Now that I have tenure, I’m older and I’m happily married, I can go out on a limb much more easily.
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William Helman as chair of the Board of Trustees
Sandor Farkas Editor-in-Chief
The Review recently sat down with Bill Helman ’80, current chairman of the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College. The Dartmouth Review (TDR): You graduated from Dartmouth in 1980, the year the Dartmouth Review was founded, and John George Kemeny’s last year as president. What did you think of Kemeny as a president and any of the founders of the Review, if you knew them, especially Jeffrey Hart? Bill Helman (BH): I didn’t have a lot of exposure to the president. Until my senior year. I heard him speak about the purpose of a Dartmouth education, very insightful, very inspirational. I heard him talk about what it meant to give back, to make a contribution to our society. He talked about the responsibilities of a Dartmouth education. He was very philosophical. In particular for a mathematician, his speeches were amazing. I hung on every word, and I was very impressed. My senior year I was asked to serve on a committee where I had exposure to President Kemeny every Wednesday for ten Wednesdays in a row. I must say, once again, this was an amazing man, a man of careful thought, he was an inspiring guy, he was an aspirational guy for Dartmouth, and I found him to be a real role model. I also took math 6 from him, which was a beginning math course, and I enjoyed having him as a teacher. I started off not having any idea who the president was, just inspired by his speeches and his thinking, his dedication, and ended up being a total fan. Mr. Farkas is a senior at the College and the Editor-in-Chief of The Dartmouth Review.
TDR: Did you know Jeffrey Hart at all? What did you think of his political antics on campus? BH: I had him for class. He taught a great literature class on Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Interestingly, Kemeny and Jeffrey Hart were the two professors of the time who smoked in class. Kemeny was a cigarette holder, and Jeffrey Hart had this beautiful meerschaum pipe. I didn’t have any exposure to the Dartmouth Review, except I would read it, and I didn’t know [the students who wrote it]. They were all younger and smarter than me. I don’t recall [his political antics] as being that influential on me. I know he had some office hours where we would engage in great, far-reaching discussions, but I never remembered him as having that much influence on me politically. That could have been because I wasn’t that politically active. TDR: There’s been a lot of protest recently, from the Dimensions protest in 2013, to the Freedom Budget, the occupation of Parkhurst, and the recent Black Lives Matter protest. How has your perspective on campus activism/politics changed since you were a student? BH: I was always in favor of activism. When I was a student, there was not as much activism as today, and I’m supportive of it. Can it go too far, and should there be any limits? I think President Hanlon has it right, which is that activism, vocal speech, and protest is right, and we should support it, but we should also bear in mind the community standards, the things that we have all signed up for, where we have agreed to be part of the greater Dart-
TDR: There have been a number of different initiatives to address the issues brought up by campus activism. One of those initiatives is the Inclusive Excellence program, which says it “seeks to address faculty diversity, staff diversity… to build a more inclusive community… create transparency…” and so on. Where are these initiatives coming from? There’s been some criticism on the part of students that they’re either attempts from higher up to reduce negative press, and that they don’t actually do much to change anything, or that they’re just coming from the bloated bureaucracy of the administration that’s seeking to create more of these self-sustaining programs. BH: That’s the first I’ve heard of that, and it’s quite amusing. Most of our negative publicity is around unsafe behaviors, the social culture. President Hanlon did Moving Dartmouth Forward, which was incredibly intensely committed, and he has an outside review board. His view is that we should be transparent to the outside world in what we’re doing and we should hold ourselves accountable in making progress against those things we said we would do. Imagine someone actually saying they want to be held accountable; you don’t see that very often. That’s pretty impressive, and President Hanlon has done that time and time again. The good news is we’re making substantial progress as a community in almost any measure. We’ve made progress against the high risk behavior that President Hanlon was seeking to reduce. It’s great when the community comes together to amend the process at all. It seems to have really had impact, which is great. It’s hard for anyone to say that a reduction in high risk behavior is not a good thing. The reason for the focus on inclusion is because we don’t have an inclusive community. I know that sounds crazy, but that is the reason. If you look at almost any measure, and anecdotally, we need to do better. Inclusivity is something that is talked about often because people think you have to do it and check the box, but very rarely is real progress being made, including at Dartmouth. I give President Hanlon, Carolyn Dever, and others real credit for saying we need to make progress. That’s the driver of the initiative, not PR or trying to keep people employed. TDR: On that same note, I want to talk about intellectual diversity. First of all, by the metric of faculty contributions to political campaigns, Dartmouth has
one of the most liberal faculties in the country. Jonathan Haidt has been writing about the crisis of intellectual diversity on campuses, and how American college campuses are one-sided intellectually. I think that is starting to become true at Dartmouth that were starting to see this lack of diversity. Have you ever thought about this at Dartmouth? Are there any ways we can remedy this? BH: I absolutely support intellectual diversity. Everyone on the Board does. Of course, intellectual diversity means a lot of things. When I talk to our faculty in different domains, different disciplines, different divisions, I see lots of diversity. I see diversity in research, I see diversity in basis of thought, teaching methodology, the way people deal with their students. I’m pretty pleased with that. Are there perhaps ways we could become more diverse intellectually? I’m open minded and always listening to people who have ideas about that. TDR: President Hanlon has received a lot of criticism from different parts of the Dartmouth community, like the hard alcohol ban, which is seen as another form of ineffective prohibition. He’s received criticism for shutting down fraternities, seeking to end the Greek system, he’s received criticism from protestors for not receiving their demands, from Divest Dartmouth for accepting money for the Irving Energy Institute. What I see is a lack of institutional vision for Dartmouth. President Kemeny had a strong vision to modernize and diversify Dartmouth. BH: There’s no question that there are students who are upset about it, but the general feedback was two or three to one positive in support of the hard alcohol ban. I don’t think those things relate to vision. What you’re talking about relates to how things are implemented, how we communicate, and we can always do a better job of communicating. When you listen to President Hanlon’s speech, he has a pretty clear vision. He has a pretty clear vision of building Dartmouth academically, around its core liberal arts, undergraduate focus, around its core teacher/scholar model. He has interest in scholarship and research and beliefs that it reinforces undergraduate education. I hear him talk about vision a lot. TDR: Administrative bloat been a big concern among students, alumni, and faculty that the non-faculty staff of Dartmouth has been growing at a crazy rate. Joe Asch has
been very critical of the almost 3500 non-faculty staff of Dartmouth. Why is that happening, and how can we reverse that trend so as to keep down costs and make sure the College is doing what it is supposed to be doing, which is teaching students? BH: First of all, everyone on the board and all the administration need to be as productive and efficient as possible. We need to deliver the best education product that Dartmouth can in an efficient and cost-effective way. The cost of higher education is too high, we all agree with that. If you look at President Hanlon’s history, in terms of the rate of growth of non-faculty, I think you’ll find it’s been pretty modest. Then the question is, how did we get here historically? These are easy-to-understand concepts at the gross level, but when you get into the detail, when you say that we should be focused on the educational product, you have to look at the number of staff that support our faculty. What’s the discretionary staff? It’s not really as big a number as you think. I would argue that we should figure out a business model that allows Dartmouth to efficiently and productively deliver the best educational product possible. That may involve staff looking at staff, and other things too. Facilities, for example. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that we should be looking at, and we are. TDR: Part of the role of being a Dartmouth professor is being an excellent teacher, a role model, an intellectual mentor, and exemplifying research that challenges society and looks critically at things. These professors don’t know what the administration and the College want from them anymore. They’re being told that undergraduate education comes first, but by all metrics, they’re being pushed to put their research first and their students second. What should a Dartmouth professor be? What does the Board want from the average Dartmouth professor? BH: I already answered exactly what we’re trying to do. I’m surprised to hear that some faculty feel that way, and I hope that they will drop a note to President Hanlon and say “Let’s talk.” That’s the way to deal with that. TDR: There are allegedly people who want to rename the College into Dartmouth University, and it apparently was talked about at a recent Board meeting. Any thoughts on that? BH: It hasn’t come up. Not a focus.
10 Monday – November 14, 2016
The Dartmouth Review
Features
Executive Editor
Editor’s Note: This piece originally ran in the Finals Issue of the Fall of 2014. It has been updated with the past two years of scandals and presented here for reference in the modern Dartmouth era. 2012 January 25 – Lohse’s First Column – The now-infamous Andrew Lohse publishes his initial (and quite dubious) exposé of Dartmouth’s hazing rituals as an opinion piece in The Dartmouth. This preliminary exposure does not quite reach the degree of publicity as do his later endeavors (see March 28), but this column ultimately gets the ball rolling for the next few years of Dartmouth controversies. March 23 – Departure of President Kim – President Kim announces his departure from Dartmouth after being called on by President Obama to head the World Bank. Stating that “the prospect of leaving Dartmouth at this stage is very difficult,” Kim seems to recognize the looming distress in which the College will soon be engaged, but ultimately leaves after winning the election in April. He is replaced by Interim President Carol Folt. March 28 – “Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy” – This Rolling Stone article by Janet Reitman brings Dartmouth’s issues to the mainstream. This article explores the alleged abuses perpetrated upon Lohse and many others in the SAE fraternity (claims that will afterward be summarily refuted by a plethora of brothers). Regardless, with a total of over 20,000 shares on social media, the negative impact of this piece on public perception of Dartmouth cannot be understated. April 9 – Fallout – Dartmouth alumna from the class of 2009 Ravital Segal, a sister at Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, follows up Lohse’s claims with her own revelatory column in the Huff-
BESTSELLER Lohse’s book, which really got the ball rolling
Monday – November 14, 2016 11
Features
A Timeline of Scandal
Jack F. Mourouzis
The Dartmouth Review
Controversies at the College
ington Post. Segal details her own experience with hazing while criticizing President Kim for his “fear of reduced alumni giving and campus tension.”
war on Greek life. After unfounded (later proven so in court) allegations of hazing, Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity is handed a suspension by their national chapter and a derecognition from the College. As SAE owns the land upon which a part of the Baker-Berry Library is built, their physical plant remains in operation.
Fall of 2012 – Alpha Phi Alpha Incident – Yesuto Shaw joins the ever-growing list of whistleblowers as he brings to light incidents of hazing at Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, in which pledges were allegedly beaten. This event draws especial controversy because of the relatively light punishment dealt to the fraternity, which many attribute to racial bias. 2013 March 31 – Clery Act Investigation – A group of Dartmouth students files a complaint with the Department of Education under the 1990 Clery Act. They claim the school “violated students’ civil rights by not thoroughly investigating sexual assaults, and failed to obey the Clery Act, a federal law that mandates the accurate tracking and public disclosure of crime statistics on campus, including sex offenses.” April 19 – RealTalk / Dimensions Protests – Another group of students in the student organization RealTalk launches a protest during Dimensions, the weekend-long event centered around incoming students. The protest calls attention to “homophobia, sexual assault and racism on Dartmouth’s campus.” Ultimately, the protesters are charged with violating the College’s Code of Conduct. Classes are canceled on April 24 and replaced with opportunities for discourse on the aforementioned issues on campus. May 2 – Parker Gilbert Assault – Then-freshman student Parker Gilbert allegedly rapes another freshman student in the early morning after a night of partying. Gilbert is initially charged with four counts of aggravated felony sex assault. July 1 – Hanlon Takes Office – Current President Philip Hanlon joins Dartmouth as its eighteenth president. Hanlon is a member of the Dartmouth class of 1977 and Alpha Delta fraternity. Upon assuming office, Hanlon remarks that he is “excited to be leading Dartmouth in a period when I believe higher education is going to change in important ways.” July 26 – Bloods & Crips Party – A party organized by Greek organizations Alpha Delta and Tri-Delt is deemed racist after encouraging students to dress up as members of an infamous predominantly black Los Angeles-based street gang. The event drew signifi-
NO JUSTICE NO PEACE Students launch a protest outside of Parkhurst cant negative media attention, prompting a release from AD stating that “While there was never any ill intent in the party’s theme, the gravity of our oversight is now apparent to us.” Fall – The Beta Files – A series of private email exchanges by members of Beta Alpha Omega fraternity surface, publicized on Gawker. The emails detail hazing and pledge rituals. The fraternity is placed on probation for hazing and providing alcohol to minors, most significantly due to the providing of alcohol to an individual who allegedly perpetrated a sexual assault. 2014 January 10 – B@bB Rape Guide – A “rape guide” is anonymously posted to popular Dartmouth student message board Bored @ Baker. The post details how one should behave in order to sexually assault a specific fellow classmate, a freshman girl, on campus at the time. The author of the post is no longer a student at the College and the case is placed under review by the Committee on Standards. Backlash is primarily targeted at the website, even though it is a forum public to all Dartmouth students. February 24 – The Freedom Budget – This now-infamous collection of radical suggestions (still available online for your reading pleasure) is sent to 13 different Dartmouth administrators. Over seventy students participate in the drafting of this list, seeking to “eradicate systems of oppression [namely racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism] as they affect marginalized communities on this campus.” The College offers no immediate, detailed response. March 14 – Ultraviolet Petition – US-based fringe feminist organization Ultraviolet releases a petition with over 50,000 signatures demanding
that Dartmouth “take sexual assault seriously.” Regardless of the college’s recent million-dollar-plus initiatives aimed at risk reduction, the organization’s leadership continues the College’s “long history of students and faculty demanding better response to sexual assault.” March 27 – Parker Gilbert Acquittal – Gilbert is found not guilty and acquitted of all charges in a trial that epitomizes the ambiguity of “drunken, awkward, college sex” and nonconsensual intercourse. The decision results in public outcry amongst a plethora of organizations, including WISE, drawing skepticism with regards to Dartmouth’s recent commitment against sexual assault. April 2 – Freedom Budget Protests/Sit-In – Over seventy students affiliated with the drafting of the Freedom Budget launch a sit-in protest in President Hanlon’s office in a movement deemed “Occupy Parkhurst.” Ten students elect to stay overnight in the office, though ultimately their demands (namely, a specific response to all of the Freedom Budget’s points) are not met. President Hanlon offers a campus-wide response, stating “progress cannot be achieved through threats and demands. Disrupting the work of others is counter-productive.” April 5 – Ultraviolet Reprise – Feminist organization Ultraviolet follows up on their earlier petition by launching a series of social media advertisements that specifically target Dartmouth for the College’s alleged “rape problem.” Many students respond over social media, criticizing the aggressive nature of the advertisement campaign, which is later expanded to target many more schools. April 16 – The Steering Committee – President Hanlon launches the Steering Committee’s process of review and rec-
VERBUM ULTIMUM So much for the Dartmouth speaking for the studentry ommendation for the College. This is part of a greater campaign termed Moving Dartmouth Forward. Students, faculty, administrators, and alumni are all invited to be a part of this decision-making committee whose deliberation is still ongoing. April 25 – Phiesta – Yet another Dartmouth party, this one thrown to raise donations for cardiac assistance, is canceled due to its perceived racist and culturally-inappropriate nature. The theme of the party, organized by Greek organizations Phi Delta Alpha and Alpha Phi, is inspired by Cinco de Mayo, and accordingly inspires an offended student to announce that “it was sadly unsurprising that a culturally-themed party was seen as a casual venture for such a privileged institution.” Phi Delt (and Dartmouth Review) President Taylor Cathcart sardonically supports the cancellation, explaining, “We felt that the possibility of offending even one member of the Dartmouth community was not worth the potential benefits of having the fundraiser.” September 22 – Pledge Term “Ends” – Dartmouth’s Interfraternity Council, or IFC, decides in an unanimous vote to abolish the institution of the pledge term amongst all Greek organizations, stating in the campus-wide email that “New members will enjoy full rights and privileges of current members.” The efficacy of this ban is uncertain and controversial, with many believing that any hazing (which, with the transparency of pledge term, was formerly benign) will simply be forced underground. October 17 – The Last Word – The Dartmouth’s editorial board releases their weekly Verbum Ultimum column, plastering the front of the paper with an editorial egregiously entitled “Abolish the Greek system.” The editorial is met with wide-
spread student ire and backlash against the supposedly objective paper for producing such a heavily-biased issue. Several students quit in protest, and the paper continues to be heavily criticized for the headline. November 3 – Faculty Jump on Board – A 116-13-3 vote at a faculty meeting passes a motion expressing support for the abolition of the Greek system. The vote comes in wake of an open letter published by a group of faculty that ultimately gathered over 200 signatures. Though the motion carries no actual weight in the process to end the Greek system, the disdain shown to a crucial population of Dartmouth affiliates is a significant blow to proponents of the system. 2015 January 29 – Moving Dartmouth Forward – In an early-morning speech, President Hanlon finally unrolls his long-awaited and controversial plans for the future of the College. These plans include a residential housing system (set to begin at the beginning of the 2016 school year), an intensified campaign against sexual assault, implementation of a new Student Code of Conduct (in addition to heightened standards for student organizations), strengthened academic rigor, and, most notably, a ban on hard alcohol. Hanlon’s plans are, unsurprisingly, not particularly well received. April 20 – AD Derecognized – In the first and perhaps most devastating blow to Dartmouth’s Greek system, the administration finally brings down the hammer upon the College’s most famous fraternity, Alpha Delta. The derecognition stems from the alleged Mr. Mourouzis is a junior at the College an Executive Editor at the Dartmouth Review.
branding of pledges, in addition to a “three-year history of disciplinary violations – including hazing, serving alcohol to minors and hosting unregistered parties.” The fraternity follows up with an appeal process through Hanover’s zoning board, which was ultimately resolved the following year. AD’s physical plant now sits on East Wheelock Street with boarded up windows and doors. May 2 – Derby Protests – Following the uprisings in Baltimore, a group of Dartmouth’s left-wing students launch a Black Lives Matter protest at KDE’s annual Derby party and AXA’s Pigstick. Scandal erupts after a video emerges of Student Assembly President Frank Cunningham yelling in the face of the protesters, who had allegedly personally insulted him. Cunningham issues an apology and brushes off calls for his resignation. The controversy rears its head nearly a year later on April 6, 2016, when the party theme is changed to “Woodstock” in a near-unanimous vote by the sorority. Then-Vice President of KDE Nikol Oydanich justifies the decision with the claim that the Derby theme is “related to pre-war southern culture. Derby was a party that had the power to upset a lot of our classmates.” October 13– Columbus Day Flyers – In the early hours of Columbus Day, flyers pop up around campus advertising “Columbus Day vintage apparel” featuring the Dartmouth Indian head image. The College’s Native American community breaks out in uproar over the “racially charged, violent attack” on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The culprit behind the flyers remains unknown, though many are quick to point fingers at the Review. November 5 – Pong Table Theft – An unknown group of individuals, who are identified only as “concerned upperclasswomen,” break into Theta
Delta Chi fraternity and steal a pong table emblazoned with the Dartmouth Indian head and the words “Boom Boom Lodge.” The scandal prompts renewed campus discussion on the topic of the “dehumanizing and racist” imagery. November 11 – Black Lives Matter Protests – Over one hundred students in support of the Black Lives Matter movement charge into the Baker-Berry Library and, during finals period, engage in a loud, disturbing protest. The protesters’ actions included yelling at studying students, confronting individuals about whether or not they believe that “Black lives matter,” and chanting obscenities at white students. Reports of violent altercations have not been confirmed. The incident draws national attention and a weak (at best) condemnation by the administration. Controversy continues when Vice Provost for Student Affairs Inge-Lise Ameer is caught on tape calling the protest a “wonderful, beautiful thing” and claiming the existence of “a whole conservative world out there that’s not very nice.” November 15 - Snow Justice Snow Peace - An email from various left-leaning student organizations calls for the changing of the “Seuss on the Loose” Winter Carnival theme to “Snow Justice, Snow Peace,” which would center around social justice and even feature a visit from radical political theorist Cornel West. The proposed change is met with stark backlash from the general student body, and while additional social justice-themed events are held during Winter Carnival, the petition to change the theme falls flat.
Week of May 9 – #Fight4FacultyofColor – Controversy comes to a head regarding the denial of tenure to Assistant Professor Aimee Bahng, a professor in the English department. Students cite structural racism and their own personal relationships with Dr. Bahng while asserting that she deserves tenure. A public demonstration follows on May 27. The situation prompts widespread student discussion regarding such issues on campus, including a faculty petition and new committees from the administration. May 12 – Blue Lives Matter – Dartmouth’s College Republicans put up a board in Collis in honor of National Police Week, including the phrase “Blue Lives Matter” as part of the display. Within hours, the board is ripped down by other students and replaced by black flyers that read “You cannot co-opt the movement against state violence to memorialize its perpetrators. #blacklivesmatter.” Additional flyers are posted around featuring a picture of the College Republicans posing with Donald Trump emblazoned with aggressive statements. The College responds by affirming the Republicans’ right to post on the board. Hanlon
enters the fray with a campus email regarding the importance of freedom of expression and open discourse. The events draw national media attention. May 17 – Class Petition – Class of 2016 President Danny Reitsch, with the support of other student leaders, launches a petition to the administration and Board of Trustees humbly requesting that the College’s leadership “depart from the realm of student life and instead expend every possible effort to eliminate unnecessary costs so that the school can refocus on the elements that once made Dartmouth a truly unique College.” The petition is generally well-received and gathers nearly 2000 signatures. In addition, the 2016 Class Gift rate drops to just 30%, by far the lowest participation rate in years. Fall 2016 and the Future – Uncertainty – The future of political tensions at the College is uncertain. A visit by controversial conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos on November 1 passes without incident. The surprising election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States strikes the liberal population with a heavy blow. Countless tears are shed, and a public “Walk of Solidarity” occurs the day following the election – naturally, effecting zero change, but again, passing without incident. However, the black cloud of the past several years still hangs heavily overhead. It is difficult to say what the future may hold, but at the very least, the state of affairs at the College on the Hill can certainly be described as grim.
SNOW JUSTICE SNOW PEACE We really dodged a bullet with this one
2016 February 4 – SAE Derecognized – The administration takes down its second fraternity in recent memory in their
BLACK LIVES MATTER The infamous library protest
12 Monday – November 14, 2016
The Dartmouth Review
The Last word Gordon Haff’s
Compiled By the dartmouth review staff
“Most people: ‘If you voted for Trump we’re not friends.’ Me: Nah we’re past that. If you voted for Trump we are enemies. I wish you nothing but the worst in life and a long ride to the depths of Hell.” –Dartmouth ’17 “F*CK WHITE SUPREMACY F*CK TRUMP F*CK COMEY F*CK PENCE need a place to vent?” -Asian-American Students for Action (campus email)
“If you voted for Donald Trump, I cannot count you as a friend. I have no respect for him in office because he has no respect for my existence, and even I have so much privilege writing this status as a white straight woman at Dartmouth.” -Dartmouth ’18 “Feeling upset about the election? Do you need support?” -East Wheelock House Community email
“Everyone who voted for Trump is ignorant, uneducated, plain old stupid and privileged.” -Class of ’16 Alumnus “We must not turn our back on America, even if we feel it has turned its back on us.” -Dartmouth ’19 “congrats to the everyone who has a passport/the physical and economic means to leave the country. f--kers.” -Dartmouth ’18
“I thought you’d have half the brain to withdraw support for someone who literally embodies the satanic vitriol that goes against our Christian faith.” –Dartmouth ’18
“Meet in the center of the Green at 4 for a peaceful walk for love, unity, and community in the far of hatred and division. Bring signs.” -Dartmouth ’17
“The Tabard will be open tonight for those in need of a safe space. We welcome those affected by this tragedy… Our doors will be open for anyone looking for a safe space, a hug, a conversation, or to play with some dogs.” -The Tabard (campus email)
“Do you know what it is that scared you into doing this? It is progress. It is the relentless arc of the universe, bending towards justice. So we are not going to stop. We are not going to leave and we are not going to sit down.” -Class of ’14 Alumnus
“Donald Trump is not going to be president of the United States.” -Nancy P. Pelosi
“My bio prof led us in a good group cry.” -Dartmouth ’17
“For anyone who needs a quiet, safe space to spend a few minutes or a few hours, have a cup of tea, share their experience, or even take a nap, I am opening our home this morning at 10:30 am for you and your friends. We’ll have beverages, snacks, and plenty of Kleenex, as well as music, art supplies, and support.” -South House Community Email
“Donald Trump is not going to become president of the United States.” -“Crazy” Bernie Sanders
“America, I hope you suffer as a result of this choice. You deserve nothing more.” -Dartmouth ’18 “Now is when, more than ever, we must come together and support our brilliant, resilient queer people of color communities… We will survive this if we support those most disenfranchised in this impending reign of terror.” -Dartmouth ’17
“Got called childish today for saying ‘unfriend me if you voted for Trump’ to someone, so I wanted to extend the invitation to all of you.” -Class of ’16 Alumnus
BArrett’s mixology
MAGA! Ingredients
• 1 part Limiting Access to Abortion • 2 parts Dirt-covered Hands of the Working Man • 1 part “Marriage is between a man and a woman” • Garnished with the Second Amendment • Served in sippy cups to all the infantile liberals
This is it. This is the end of the Republican Party. There will never be another Republican president. Every state is turning blue. The red light at the end of the tunnel is fading. He is our last hope. We can’t lose. She is the most qualified person to every run for the office of president. She is not the lesser of two evils, she is the best candidate you could ask for. Traditional values, fiscal conservativism, unapologetic foreign policy... all gone. The future of America is female. Where are you, God? Shatter the glass ceiling! What’s happening to my way of life? Wait. Oh my God. She lost? We won? But... how? We won! *Sobbing and rocking back and forth* I can’t even right now. *Crying of joy* Make American Great Again!
— Conrad Kissinger
“No.”
-Poster on the Green
“He will never be president of the United States.” -Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren
“Mr. Trump will not be president.”
-Barack H. Obama
“Donald Trump is going to be our president.” –“Crooked” Hillary R. Clinton “Sorry to keep you waiting. Complicated business.” -Donald J. Trump
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