Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1999/03/10/question_authority_already.php
Wednesday, March 10, 1999
'Students don't rebel against adult guidance in the way they did 30 years ago,' said Dartmouth President James Wright in March 3's New York Times.
The comment provoked the expected rumblings from the student body: 'arrogant!' 'paternalist!' 'outrageous!'—all epithets we've heard applied to Wright before (surprise, surprise: Wright is arrogant).
But you know what? He's right.
The College announced two weeks ago that it would no longer respect the choices that students have made in their private lives, that it would seek to regulate students' social lives according to its own ideological desire, that, for all intents and purposes, Dartmouth students would no longer have the right to freely associate with whomever they choose.
If a College administration had tried that in the Sixties, students would have marched on Parkhurst, occupied the President's office, and refused to leave until the College recognized their fundamental right to control their own lives. They would have demanded respect for their rights to freedom of choice and conscience. And they probably would have gotten it.
But, alas, it's 1999. How do today's students respond to administrative restrictions on their freedom? They form working groups. They discuss, and discuss, and discuss. They hold 'brainstorm' sessions and plan events that they think the administration will like in the hopes that, in the end, they'll reach an acceptable compromise (already the CFS has instituted new programming requirements for next term). Somehow, one gets the sense that students' demands won't be met in the way they were in the 1960s.
It's not that students aren't unified in their cause. Every opinion poll shows that Dartmouth students overwhelmingly oppose the administration's plan. The problem is that today's students are eminently more reasonable than the faculty and administration.
The College is able to make a series of demands. 'We're going to become a coeducational system,' says James Wright. 'This is not a referendum on those things. We are committed to doing this.'
'It will become clear to everyone that the system is changing and that what you call 'traditional rush' is no longer relevant,' insists Stephen Bosworth, Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
The faculty votes unanimously in support of the plan. They remain unequivocal in their insistence that the Greek system must be ended. No questions. No reservations. No qualifications. No two ways about it; that's the way it will be.
Meanwhile, the students are quick to acknowledge flaws in the Greek system, claim that they and the administration can reach common ground and work together on improving residential life so that both parties can be happy, and express their desire for more dialogue, with a view toward reaching a compromise.
The administration and faculty, while students try to be reasonable, march on in lockstep, unyielding opposition to student demands. Even Student Assembly President Josh Green, once a champion of student-administration cooperation, has become so frustrated in his efforts that he publicly declared, 'Students have no institutional voice at this College.' In his February 24 column in The Dartmouth, Green terms James Wright 'the Sun King' for his uncompromising arrogance and stalwart refusal to consider student opinion.
The price of freedom, we are told, is eternal vigilance. Dartmouth students haven't been particularly vigilant. The entire history of the relations between the College and the Greek system has consisted of administrative demands and student concessions.
The College demanded that Safety and Security officers and Hanover Police patrol private parties on private property, that all such parties be registered with the College, that freshmen be forbidden from joining Greek houses, that freshmen even be forbidden from entering Greek houses in their first academic term.
When students continually compromise their rights, yielding to the administration's demands, why wouldn't James Wright expect students to submit once more? Of course he believes that 'students don't rebel against adult guidance.' They don't. Even when that 'guidance' includes restrictions on their most fundamental rights.
One naturally wonders how the Berkeley Free Speech Movement ever culminated in restrictions on speech and association. Curious too is that the students of the Sixties, now leaders in the academy, have come to never trust anyone under thirty—to believe that students are incapable of governing their own lives and must instead be subject to the control of college administrators.
Yet, in contemplating such musings, a salient fact emerges: they're not the students anymore. We are. So what are we going to do about it?