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'What are you so afraid of?'

Monday, October 2, 2000

Editor's Note: When Dartmouth graduate Tom Harrison replied to the College's e-mail regarding the April statement from the Board of Trustees, the following exchange ensued.

Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 04:22 PM EDT
To: Tom Harrison '74
From: Stanley.A.Colla.Jr@Dartmouth.EDU
Subject: Trustee Statement Response

Dear Mr. Harrison,

If you are the individual who wrote to the College via the Web in regard to the Trustee Statement on the SLI, I wanted you to know that I have read your response.

It sounds as if you are intending to sever all ties with your alma mater. While I do not encourage this, particularly because I believe you have misread the intentions of the SLI, I do want to check to see if you are asking the College to remove your name from its mailing lists?

Stanley Colla
Vice President
Development & Alumni Relations


Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 6:59 PM EDT
To: Stanley.A.Colla.Jr@Dartmouth.EDU
From: Tom Harrison '74
Subject: Re: Trustee Statement Response

No, thank you. I did not intend to be removed from the mailing list. I am always happy to hear of repentance, and await it eagerly. As to the intentions of the SLI, I thought they were quite clear: 'encourage' conformance to the Trustees' vision for Dartmouth students, those reluctant puppets, by making it difficult, if not impossible, for counter-vision organizations to share in campus life on an equal footing with more 'acceptable' groups, like DaGLO.

I do not find that forward-looking, but rather fascist, and not useful in preparing students to operate in a diverse world, where it is not possible to enforce a common vision for life. Better to teach rednecks, hippies, communists, liberals, conservatives, naked mud-wrestlers, missionaries, etc., to be able to work in the same world and co-exist without killing each other, than to try to force those with habits, desires, and visions the Trustees do not approve of to simply change, or disappear.

What's next, making those who choose to associate with the few Greek houses that are left wear little Greek letters on their collars so the politically-correct people will know who to jeer at on the streets of Hanover? I am not pleased at the direction the College is going! ...if you hadn't already picked up on that point.

By the way, I was not a 'Greek' at Dartmouth, or anywhere else, for that matter; I lived in the basement of Kiewit. I just find the tendency of liberal academia to try to stifle all that is considered 'incorrect' just a bit Orwellian. Liberal radicals in the 60's fought to be heard, now those same characters fight to keep that same freedom from those who disagree with their vision.

As I said, a pity. That always means a war, of sorts, and repudiation of the hypocrisy. Then we all have to start over again, having learned little. ...

Dartmouth College has power over its students. By stifling the life of those who disagree with your lifestyle and cultural agenda, you are showing that you can only succeed by force, and that your ideas can only prosper by power. Nothing is learned. ...

If your views were right, the fraternities, with all their peculiar rituals and habits, would have already died out. What are you so afraid of? Is free association that scary a thought? Is the persuasion of the classroom, of example, of alternate cultural opportunities not enough to sway students? If not, are you so sure you should now use the power, ultimately, of expulsion to cause the puppets to dance to the right tune?

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