Wednesday, February 3, 1999

Wright, Trustees to Close Down Greeks

A pair of related incidents at Dartmouth have put the future of the College's treasured Greek system in severe jeopardy. The Trustees of the College released a letter to the student body and President James Wright gave an interview with The Daily Dartmouth which, taken together, announce a new administrative policy.

Carnival Cancelled in Response

Reaction was swift and decisive. In a random survey taken by The Dartmouth Review on Wednesday afternoon, an overwhelming majority of students opposed the trustees' proposals. Of 373 students surveyed, 331 were against the plan, 22 supported it, and 20 were undecided.

Paternalism and Illegality

Dartmouth's paternalists are at it again. James Wright and the Dartmouth Trustees want to remake the College in their own image and, in the process, have ignored the sentiments of Dartmouth's students and alumni. Wright plans to eliminate all fraternities and sororities within the next five years.

Letters to the Editor

I am an educator. I teach law school at George Mason University. I teach my students to be independent thinkers. To think beyond mere stereotypes and to examine their views and defend their positions with reasoned analysis and arguments. An educator does not brainwash his students, but attempts to give them the confidence and tools to make up their own minds and to identify the good life.

The Deconstruction of Duke English

At Lentricchica's suggestion, Duke snatched Milton expert Stanley Fish from his perch as English Department Chair at Johns Hopkins to head its own department. Lentricchia also recommended Fredric Jameson, the Marxist critic and literary theorist, to direct the Literature Program. Jameson was hired away from UC-Santa Cruz.

Social Text: Fish's Other Flop

Another Southeasterner, Duke University post-structuralist literary scholar Stanley Fish, has provided a real life example of Wolfe's parable. In Fish's case, though, his excessive ambition was for his brand of post-structuralist, deconstructionist theory, and his Croker's Concourse was the journal to which he became closely linked, Social Text.

The Pathos, The Agons, The Fastbreak

These are my qualifications for coaching a basketball team: I've watched the movie Hoosiers repeatedly, I occasionally follow college hoops, and, most importantly, I'm used to sitting on the bench. So when the opportunity arose to coach middle schoolers for Hanover Recreation, I jumped at the chance to demonstrate my considerable knowledge and expertise.

Lookin' for Love ... All the Wrong Places

Over the course of the next five minutes, I agreed, under extreme peer pressure, to do an article on the gay bathroom scene at Dartmouth. Last year at some point, in the Week in Review there was a story on the mass quantities of gay solicitation going on in bathrooms at Dartmouth. My assignment was to go to these bathrooms and see if they were for real.

Rum, Women, and Song: Benjamin Oren Reviews 'The Rum Diary'

Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary is a great Caribbean novel. I don't know if it's THE great Caribbean novel, but it has to be one of the great ones (how many other Caribbean novels do you know?).

Podhoretz's Literary Kiss-and-Tell: Jeffrey Hart Reviews 'Ex-Friends'

It is difficult to find the terms with which to describe all the excellences of this√∑ well, what is it? It is autobiography to be sure, but also important political and cultural history, an intense account of battles about ideas, of Norman Podhoretz's arguments with himself as well as with a set of vivid figures whom he portrays with the skill that could have made him a novelist.

Love! Valour! Compassion! Catherine Muscat Reviews 'A Return to Modesty'

Before reading A Return to Modesty, I wanted to do a little investigating. Honestly, I was skeptical about the utility of a book that seemed to state the obvious about propriety in America. The title appeared to say it all: our society is crude and morality is dead. Nonetheless, I conducted an Internet search for "female modesty" to get a taste of the cultural climate.