Week in Review

Wednesday, May 22, 1996

Housing Developments

This week Dartmouth students received housing assignments for the 1996 fall term. One hundred fifty-four students requesting housing were placed on the waiting list. Despite the autumn housing crunch, many vacancies still exist in affinity housing. The college's Academic Affinity Housing and Special Interest Program Living Units provide housing for students of particular cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Currently, forty-three vacancies exist in the fall for such housing, including 21 in the Cutter/Shabazz Hall (African-American housing).

Small Spaces at the Big Red

Students at Cornell University are up in arms about their administration's attempt to 'assimilate minorities into America's melting pot.' The University plans to 'force' all freshmen to live in dormitories. Until now, young, ethnically diverse Reds could live in special housing such as the Celtic American Living Center, Slovak Living Center, Ecology House, Ujamaa (native American), or Homosexual housing.

Low demand for the Program Housing costs the University $300,000 per year alone and leaves 200 Cornellians without housing. Ironically, Cornell's students and professors are using civil rights chants from the 1960's to defend their right of segregation.

Naughty-aughts

Competition was fierce for the 1085 spots in Dartmouth's class of 2000, with only 19% of applicants accepted. While most statistics for the '00's are up — SAT scores, numbers of valedictorians and cello players — the percentage of minority students has noticeably dropped. The class consists of:

• 4.7% Black, down from 6.4% last year

• 7.9% Asian, down from 9.9%

• 3.7% Latino, down from 5.1%

• 1.5% Native American, down from 2.0%

Pumping Adrenaline

Associate UVA Professor Susan Fraiman spoke on 'The Adrenaline Rush: Male Vulnerability and Violence in Pulp Fiction.' Her interpretation of the Cannes Best Picture award-winner was that the film is about man's reclaiming masculinity. She claims that the director, Quentin Tarantino, is allowed to get away with more because he has an 'aura of hipness and sophistication.' He is also a misogynist because he gives females small roles.

Analyzing two characters in a scene, Prof. Fraiman, 'wanted them to go to bed.' But they didn't because men love violence; in fact, 'violence in Pulp Fiction is specific to the white male psyche.' Male fantasies lead to violence in society, and 'violence disperses heterosexual closeness.' It is the 'cool/uncool binary' which dictates events in male-dominated society. She also spoke on feminism as a whole, claiming that it gets harder every year to address women's issues and feminism in academia and left-wing journals.

Dressed to Kill

Black students at Columbia Law School tried to prove that racist New York cabbies wouldn't pick them up; they wanted to videotape the cabs driving by and report this phenomenon to the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

The student who wore a Columbia sweatshirt was picked up by every cab he flagged down, and every driver agreed to take him to his desired destination. When joined by a classmate dressed in ghetto garb, 14 out of 15 taxis refused to stop.

Newt's Consumption Tax

Newt Gingrich believes that he's found an issue even more popular than the gas tax: a beer tax. He discussed the idea of repealing George Bush's 1990 tax of 16¢ on barreled beer. Democrats are angry for not having thought of it first. The cut is believed by Newt to be a sure-fire way to court American voters.

The Future of Dartmouth Education

This week the Student Assembly passed a resolution urging the administration to keep the Education Department. Over 100 years old, the department is known for its scholarlship and excellent professors. If the department were to become a program, students would be unable to gain certification here; they would be sent to Harvard to get their degree.

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