Monday, January 24, 2000

The Systematic Division of Dartmouth

Students who have been encouraged by the system to interact with only one set of people in every aspect of their lives, save their classes and extra-curricular activities, will rarely venture out of this ready-made comfort zone for the nebulous purpose of creating a "Dartmouth Community."

James Wright is Watching You

The new in loco parentis powers of universities, critics argue, are in the hands of political partisans who employ them to transform students according to their own ideological desire, with disastrous consequences for freedom of conscience and independent thought. According to recent polls, most students agree.

Dartmouth's Leviathan

The report also contains plenty of the pretentious rhetoric and gaudy platitudes of which Dartmouth administrators are so fond—all with the trifling aim of displacing fraternities from students' social lives. The report of the Committee on the Student Life Initiative is a document worthy of today's academy: overblown, ideologically-driven, and utterly obsessed with trivial nonsense.

The College's Bankrupt Policy

The most dangerous proposals, though, are the ones that ensure that it will be economically unviable for Greek houses to continue operation. Greek organizations obtain the majority of their funding through rent. This is where the houses are most vulnerable, given the extent to which the College regulates living arrangements.

Letters from Alumni

Alumni on the Student Life Initiative: "Beneath the veil, this proposal is a blow against freedom: more of the same 'we know better than you do how you should live' elitism that plagues American society, best demonstrated at American educational institutions."