Blowing the Whistle

Today, Business Insider's sad junior writer covering the Dartmouth beat stumbled across another gem:

In short, a group of disgruntled Dartmouth College employees are "blowing the whistle" on what they allege to be a compromised College Endowment investment process. In particular, they released an open letter to the New Hampshire Attorney General detailing their accusations—conflicts of interest arising from the presence of a number of asset managers on the Board of Trustees, and a disproportionate allocation of endowment money to their funds. The implication  that board members are funneling assets into their stewardship - is by no means trivial.

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Irony and Agriculture

I hope he packed his SNAP Card.

To the interminable list of things that government does not do well, we can now safely add another item: irony.

Writing in Friday’s issue of The New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd revealed some interesting statistics about the nature of New York State’s food stamp program. While criticizing Governor Andrew Cuomo for his support of regulations that require recipients of New York State food stamps to submit fingerprints as part of a reformed application process, Ms. Dowd lamented that such an onerous requirement inhibits American families from “getting the help they truly need.” Citing the Governor’s own report, she noted that more than 1.4 million or 30 percent of families in the state fail to receive the benefits for which they are eligible. Rather than explaining how the fingerprinting policy was responsible the lack of participation, however, Ms. Dowd became far too preoccupied with pedantic bouts of asinine moralizing to make the connection apparent. Nonetheless, an implicit association emerged: by making the application more-fraud resistant, Cuomo and his allies in the Statehouse are working ceaselessly to withhold food subsidies from their constituents. 

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Trusting Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

In other news, Dartmouth researchers have discovered that in fact, people are far sillier with their money than was previously thought. Or at least, in deciding who to give their money to. Researchers from the College as well as University College London and Warwick Business School conducted a study to determine how human beings decided who to trust and who not to trust.

With one hand, the scientists used a computer program to create 20 faces of potential investment managers which were then shown to the participants in the study. Some were designed to seem more trustworthy than others, according to past research of human instinctual responses to the shapes and features of faces. With the other, the researchers provided information about the reputations of each of the possible investment managers. Some were given good reputations, others bad.

 But he seemed like such a nice guy...

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R.I.P. Jim Dupuis

The Dartmouth Review is sad to report the death of Jim Dupuis, commonly known around campus as "Jim Gusanoz," a nickname he gained from the restaurant he famously delivered for (prior to that, he'd delivered food for EBA's and, most recently, Ramunto's). Many students have marked his passing by posting rememberances on his Facebook wall. Many of our staffers knew Jim and considered him a friend. His passing in Montreal comes as a blow to all who knew him.

--Sterling C. Beard