Letters to the Editor

Wednesday, May 28, 1997

College Bureaucracy Far Larger than Reported

Editor's Note: The following letter was sent to Quentin Kopp of San Diego California, and carbon-copied to the Review.

To the Editor:

I appreciated your article on Dartmouth's bureaucracy in the May 14 issue of The Review. However, had the editors dug just a little deeper and compared the Dean of the College flow chart, which the editors were given, with the Dartmouth College Staff Directory they would have discovered that the dean's chart has some serious discrepancies.

For example, take the Outdoors Programs Office, with which I am most familiar. I know from many years of personal contact with this department that the OPO, in addition to what the Dean's chart mentioned, also employs a full-time facilities manager, a director of horseback riding, a full time business manager, a full time receptionist, a part time computer expert, and other P/T non-student employees who run the equipment rental program, and look after the College Grant, and, at one time, looked after the Billings cabin as well. In addition to all this the ski team is represented by four coaches and a secretary.

A second example: according to the Dartmouth College Staff Directory for 1996-7 the Freshman Office has listed a total of nine people (all non-student employees), not simply four as indicated by the Dean's list.

Athletics, according to the Dean's list has twelve staff members, yet the directory lists 94 employees in all (this, of course, does not include grounds people who look after the playing fields or janitors working indoors).

Even the much abbreviated Dean's list is considered 'excessive bureaucracy' by the editors. Imagine what they would think if they had not been deceived by the Dean's Office and knew the real truth.

Sincerely Yours,

Jay Evans '49
Lyme, NH

Wesleyan Frat-Busting Echoes Pelton's Own

To the Editor:

It was interesting to see Lee Pelton's fraternity-busting agenda published in your May 7 issue; it was eerily similar to the agenda in fact employed to destroy fraternities (all the while denying such intention) by the Wesleyan University administration starting in the 1960's.

I was in the last Wesleyan class, 1965, to have freshman rush and to eat in the fraternity as a freshman in the summer and fall of 1961. Up until then the college needed the restaurant, hotel and entertainment facilities which the fraternities had supplied successfully for over a century. After that, the administration employed its power over the endowment to build facilities, to monopolize those formerly undergraduate-run businesses, and to force the fraternities out. Most of them folded over a period of 10-20 years.

Karl Furstenberg (Dean of Admissions at Dartmouth) can tell you how it was done; I think he was in the Class of 1967 at Wesleyan and also watched the beginning of the destruction.

You have to understand that fraternities are anathema to college administrations in this era. At Wesleyan, the Board of House Presidents in 1961 had a great deal more power over undergraduate life than did Wesleyan's President. This kind of student liberty and independence cannot long be tolerated by an administration bent on reforming mankind by inculcating the young in correct thinking and living.

Very Truly Yours,

Edward C. Cerny III
New York, NY

Hart Off Base

To the Editor:

Jeffrey Hart's criticism of tobacco regulation in the United States ('The Puritans are Back,' May 7, 1997) is terribly shortsighted and requires some rethinking. Mr. Hart — usually a very independent and critical thinker — unfortunately toes the party line on this issue.

Conservatives have for decades espoused a laudable laissez-faire style when it comes to regulating commerce in the United States. The results are in: we have created a veritable breeding ground for innovation, adaptability, and entrepreneurial spirit. Freedom of choice — for both businesses and consumers — is a central tenet of this system.

We must not, however, become so intoxicated with our successes that we overlook subtle problems. The use of tobacco isn't a 'lifestyle choice' for many people, as Mr. Hart suggests. On the contrary, many users are hopelessly addicted. (Just as many Americans are addicted to, say, crack rocks, heroin, and Liberal politics.) The only choices being made are at RJR Reynolds and Phillip Morris: these companies have for years surreptitiously regulated the levels of nicotine in their cigarettes — despite the sworn testimony of company executives to the contrary. That isn't freedom of choice for American consumers. Rather, it's a deceitful effort to get people hooked. It has worked wonderfully well because nicotine is such an addictive drug. Cigarettes are just the dastardly delivery mechanism.

I will readily admit that I am a biased observer; my father, Myles P. Cunningham MD, is currently the President of the American Cancer Society. He is also a surgeon who has watched forlorn addicts die for over thirty years. This debate is not, however, about sympathy; it's about science. The many nicotine addicts in this country and around the world are being chemically controlled by tobacco companies. That's not freedom of choice, it's not laissez-faire, and it's not Conservative. Let's be a little more thoughtful on this issue.

Regards,

Sean L. Cunningham '97
Hanover, NH

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