The Week in Review

Monday, January 15, 2001

Working for the Man

On January 4th, the U.S. Department of Defense announced the award of $4.5 million for the academic study of Internet security. Among the grantees are Dartmouth's own George Cybenko and Susan McGrath, professors of Engineering at the Thayer School, both of whom are active in Dartmouth's Institute for Security Technology Studies. The Institute was itself founded only last year by a $10 million appropriation from Congress and is 'a principal national center for counter-terrorism technology research,' according to its own press releases.

The new grant will fund the ArtComm Project, which has the goal of developing 'technologies that will maximize the usability of complex, global computer and communications networks,' and D'Agents, Dartmouth's long-standing incarnation of mobile electronic agents. Both projects appear to need funds desperately, their websites both having been last updated in November of 1999.

The grant will support the hire of postdoctoral and faculty scientists 'conducting high quality research.' Contrary to rumors, this newfound hawk-like focus on quality does not necessitate the firing of the entire Computer Science department.

Wah-Hoo-Wah

According to a Dartmouth College press release, Ebony magazine has named a Dartmouth graduate, Paul Allen '98, as one of its '30 Leaders of the Future' in its January issue. The magazine recognizes Mr. Allen for his 'motivational speeches to elementary and junior high school students.' Bravo.

Mmmm... Eye of Newt

On November 3rd, the Women's Resource Center sponsored a brown-bag lunch featuring Jessica Stickney and Frank Williams, both self-identified witches. The two discussed broomsticks (wooden ones trump those of metal and plastic in high winds, though splinters can be a serious problem) and recounted the long and involved history of their magical 'religion,' Wicca.

'Long and involved,' that is, only if one hundred years is considered a great length of time. Attendees agreed that the witches lent much-needed credibility to the often-absurd WRC.

The Big Deal at Brown

According to a New York Times article, 'Brown U. Breaks Ground in Picking Black as Chief,' the Providence, Rhode Island, University's selection of Dr. Ruth Simmons as its president is a great leap forward for blacks in academe.

Said a sophomore political science major, 'Brown was liberal enough that it was willing to take a look at her.' A Brown junior concurred: 'Someone will step up and notice a black woman as the president of an Ivy League university.'

Blacks, of course, enjoy full civil rights and have served, often admirably, in the upper echelons of our military, government, and largest businesses. While The New York Times insists on going agog over Dr. Simmons' appointment—as if she triumphed over those bastions of racism, the Ivy League college administrations—in terms of the great march toward equal rights the Brown post seems a bit anticlimactic; treating it like some arduous achievement is both parochial and backwards. Maybe Simmons was simply qualified for the position.

A Dartmouth Rhodes

Courtney Voelker, a second-year student at the Dartmouth Medical School, has been named a Rhodes Scholar. Only 32 American students are annually awarded the honor, generally considered the most prestigious academic scholarship. Ms. Voelker will pursue a doctoral degree in physiological sciences.

The Rhodes Scholarship has traditionally eluded even the most promising Dartmouth students, making the congratulations due Ms. Voelker that much greater.

Westside's West Bank

Dartmouth College has announced that the Westside dining hall, former trough for carb-hungry athletes and weight-impaired students, will soon be converted into a kosher and halal eatery, in order to meet the dietary needs of Jewish and Muslim students on campus.

The conversion, however, will not be easy. A committee of students and faculty planning the new facility found that, currently, there exists 'no facility in the world that certifies meat items as fulfilling kosher and halal norms.'

The significance of Dartmouth's new dining facility should thus be noted: the College's press releases indicate that it will be the first in the world to adhere to both kosher and halal requirements, through a policy of 'greater stringency' where the two customs clash.

Either that, or the College is planning a facility in kosher and halal 'style,' which will be neither kosher nor halal, and accommodate no one who takes these religious requirements seriously. (Of course, Dartmouth only rarely sacrifices substance for image when placating campus minorities.)

A communiqué from committee leaders Yousef Haque '02 and Jason Spitalnick '02 expressed their hope that the new facility will 'provide a model for institutions of higher learning...[with] student groups of disparate backgrounds, even those with a history of conflict, as to what may be accomplished when working together for the betterment of one another.' The conflict to which they refer is the well-publicized 1996 bombing of the Roth Center for Jewish Life for which the military wing of Al-Nur claimed responsibility. Tensions between the two groups have since run high.

Time: Dartmouth is Driving Students Insane

Psychiatric illness at Dartmouth has increased tenfold over the past three years, according to a Time magazine article on mental illness among college students.

As always, the College has one specific concern in the matter: liability.

Susan Klein sued Brown University in 1993 after her son, Daniel Shuster, shot himself in his campus apartment. Shuster had been erroneously referred two years earlier to a psychologist specializing in eating disorders by a Brown therapist for the treatment of depression.

Though Brown has won so far in court, the case is still under appeal.

Similarly, Anita Rutman attempted to jump to her death days after a Syracuse University counselor recommended that she be hospitalized for her suicidal tendencies. Rutman survived and is now suing the University for not preventing her unsuccessful and crippling attempt.

The issue on which liability hinges is, ironically, a college's acting in loco parentis. Currently, according to malpractice lawyer Jerry Meek, 'there is no special relationship between university officials and a student that imposes duty [to protect students].'

Parents like Klein, however, disagree, believing that colleges bear the same responsibility for their students as parents for their children—that inaction can be tantamount to abuse. 'When a student cries out, there should be a set of mechanisms whereby the right people learn about it,' she told Time.

Also disagreeing with Meek, in nearly every other context, are college officials, who are increasingly concerning themselves with 'campus life' and, in general, students' activities outside of the classroom—for several decades solely the concern of the students themselves

For example, the announced 'de-emphasis' of Dartmouth's Greek system, for many of its members the only anchor within the turbulence of Dartmouth life, correlates eerily with the meteoric rise in the incidence of illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia.

Accordingly, the College's usurping more and more the role of guardian puts it at a greater liability if, in medical parlance, 'unfavorable outcomes' occur.

So far, however, the College's response has been muted: a poorly-publicized symposium on psychiatric health. Meanwhile, appointments with the department of counseling and human development are harder than ever to come by, with some students waiting nearly a month for preliminary evaluations, and weeks after that for actual treatment to begin. Worse, psychiatric appointments, when they are available, are often scheduled for as little as fifteen minutes, of questionable benefit to patient or doctor.

It is currently unknown whether the rigors of providing coverage will necessitate that college administrators involve themselves more or less in campus affairs. Cases like Klein's and Rutman's, if won by their plaintiffs, will force administrators to swallow a hands-off approach for the sake of avoiding potentially endowment-breaking claims. After recent events, however, that a kick in the College's pants by State Farm could actually aid student freedom strikes many as unlikely.

Get Your Juices Movin'

Over one hundred students flooded the new Filene Auditorium in Moore Hall for the Women's Resource Center's inaugural lecture in its 'Let's Talk About Sex' series.

The topic, 'The Mechanics of Pleasure,' was promoted as a great opportunity for students to 'listen, learn, and 'play.'' Further, the program was promised to include ''interactive' segments to get you and your juices movin [sic].'

Suspicions that the event may have been misadvertised arose early on, when the two guest lecturers were introduced by a woman of incredible girth, apparently wearing a tent, who spoke—blessedly—briefly before wedging herself into a seat.

The first and most-vocal of the speakers squealed like a chipmunk as she described, in surprisingly little detail, the female anatomy, preferring, to facts, the pseudo-anthropological psycho-babble of new age mysticism and self-help books (Sex for One and, did we copy this down right?, Masturbation for Morons).

Her cohort—wearing bright purple and apparently heavily sedated—cooed breathily, her eyelids fluttering as if in a dream, that 'some people are stimulated by their feet.'

Answering questions in front of a giant overhead-projected vagina, the two explained that men are completely ancillary to a woman's sexual experience as women are aroused instead by 'trust' and, also, electrodes.

In exception, however, are little girls, who are universally 'randy.' With knowing approval and a sly smile, the chipmunk confided that 'They'll touch their father's penis.'

She then told, sketchily, the story of a six-year-old who regularly shaves her pubic hair with her 'partner.'

Later, the sedated woman observed, 'Your body has only so many orifices, and there are only so many things you can put into them.' How very true.

Penfield Jackass

'I think he [Bill Gates] has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses.'

The words of former Department of Justice antitrust prosecutor Joe Klein? Apple CEO Steve Jobs? Former Netscape wunderkind Marc Andreesen?

Actually, the above was spoken in an interview with the New Yorker by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson '58, who last year ordered Microsoft's breakup.

On William Neukom '64, Microsoft's lead attorney: 'not very smart.'

But what about David Boies, the government's chief litigator? According to Jackson, Boies was the best lawyer to ever appear in his courtroom. And that includes the former lawyer behind the bench.

Can justice be blind when it harbors personal animosities towards the accused? Apparently not.

Government Cigarettes

Dr. David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, proposes in his new book that cigarettes should be available only to those already addicted and that the tobacco industry should be stripped of its profits.

Says Kessler, 'Although nicotine and cigarettes have to remain available, you cannot ethically and morally allow companies to make a profit.' Under his plan, the tobacco companies would be dismantled and then reassembled as a heavily regulated para-statal utility.

Next up on the chopping block for conversion to 'public utilities' are the immoral manufacturers of such deadly products as automobiles, antifreeze, and Twinkies.

Come to think of it, isn't this the sort of thing we made the East Germans and the Russians unravel over the past decade?

The Week in Review

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