Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/11/12/letters_to_the_editor.php
Monday, November 12, 2001
Correction
Sirs,
In the spring, in making a contribution to the Review, I scribbled a few lines to explain both the infrequency of my contributions and my reason(s) for making one at this time.
A portion of this note was featured in The Last Word section of the commencement issue of the Review, which was fully in evidence the following day for the beginning of my 45th Reunion and proved embarrassing not so much to me as to a few of my close friends. I have said what I was quoted as having said on more then one occasion and do not disavow it. What I object to is being quoted without my permission and to the unpropitious timing.
Sincerely,
Doug Keare '56
The editor responds: The Dartmouth Review regrets having printed Mr. Keare's words without permission, the result of a mixup in our own correspondance handling. We regret any inconvenience or embarrassment the publication may have caused him.
God Hath Spoken
Sirs,
Ten Commandments for the Dartmouth Family
1.The official college name shall be Dartmouth College. Thou shall not rename Dartmouth College.
2.Thou shall restore the majestic Indian as the symbol of Dartmouth College.
3.As its primary goal and mission, Dartmouth College shall not rank the goals, needs, desires, financial security, and perks of the administration and the faculty over and above the education and teaching of the students.
4.As its primary goal and mission, Dartmouth College shall not be converted to a research university, as Dartmouth's trustees, administration and faculty fervently hope and plan for. Dartmouth College must prevent a structure in which non-teaching faculty and staff can hide in compartmentalized cubbyholes, unreachable by individual students, and one in which the student body will be treated as a mere appendage. In short: No teach-no pay.
5.The primary goal and mission of Dartmouth College shall be to provide the best education, teaching, and scholarship resources for its undergraduate students.
6.Dartmouth College shall emphasize cultural and intellectual diversity more forcefully than diversity of race, creed and color.
7.Dartmouth College shall not deny the right of assembly to social associations
and clubs, even fraternities, because the trustees, administration, and faculty, believe they are politically incorrect. Such denial is unconstitutional.
8.Dartmouth College shall not accept funding of any kind for any purpose from the federal government without fulfilling its obligation to our country accepting ROTC programs on campus in return.
9.Dartmouth College shall not award any new honorary degrees in return for two nights in the Lincoln Room of the White House — nor because the trustees, administration and faculty admire and sponsor the political views of any government officer or employee.
10.Dartmouth College Shall abolish all rules which permit the Board of Trustees to be self-perpetuating, and modify those rules so that the ultimate selection of trustees resides in the Dartmouth Alumni.
Fred Fuld, Jr. '40
Dentzer's Orwellian Vision
Sirs,
The Student Life Initiative, a brainchild of the College's administration which appears to have been adopted by the Board of Trustees, is one of the social engineering concepts so popular among today's educators, and so blessedly absent from the Dartmouth of my time (1947-51).
I am dismayed that Susan Dentzer '77, newly elected Chair of the Trustees, is so much in accord with SLI policies as she seems to be from the following statement attributed to her by The Dartmouth Review : 'We believe strongly in choices, but we want those to be very structured kinds of choices.'
Is that not the hypocritical double-speak made obvious in Orwell's 1984? And further, does it not smack of grade-school policies which attempt to remove every bad consequence from children's lives, thus often retarding normal learning processes?
Such policies are bad enough at the lower levels of education, but to continue them at college would seem to perpetuate into adulthood many childish illusions about life. Surely, through its laws and customs society sufficiently limits our conduct, especially, one would think, on the campus of an elite college.
By way of contrast to the Dentzer vision of higher education, let me offer this statement from my Editor's Foreword in our recent 50-Year Book:
'Our college administrators took a laissez-faire approach to our social conduct, in effect conceding it to be a mere by-product of our classes, our dorm or fraternity life, our extra-curricular activities, our eating arrangements, our Dartmouth traditions. We were given plenty of freedom to make fools of ourselves as a prelude to becoming responsible adults; and upon reflection, the process seems to have worked well enough for most of us—or if it did not, we have only ourselves to blame.'
Let me also add this from Dartmouth's President John S. Dickey, a statement he put emphatically at the end of each fall Convocation address to students:
'As members of the College, you have three different but closely intertwined roles to play: First, you are citizens of a community and are expected to act as such. Second, you are the stuff of an institution, and what you are, it will be. Third, your business here is learning, and that is up to you.'
Can anyone not see the emphasis here on personal responsibility, so different from Dentzer's 'very structured kinds of choices'? Do Dartmouth students really need a fail-safe environment?
Wilson C. Boynton '51