The Times' Sara Rimer: Then and Now

By J. Lawrence Scholer | Sunday, June 8, 2003

The national media have found a new home in Hanover in recent months. The murders of the Half and Susanne Zantop in the winter of 2001 brought hordes of reporters and television crews to campus. News crews stopped students on the Green and begged for something quotable. When faculty and students gathered at the President's house, reporters huddled outside the gates to get a glimpse and maybe a ten second sound-bite from the other victims of the tragedy, those close to the Zantops. Eventually, everyone reached the same conclusion: the murders were brutal, senseless, and a downright mystery. That was evident from the start, but the media needed something on which to wax eloquent. The trial concluded with little fanfare because no questions had been answered. The kids were guilty, and, as for a motive, nothing ever developed.

A few months later the national media again converged on Hanover—this time for a College-sponsored tragedy of sorts. There was no real tragedy—no one was murdered—but feelings were hurt, reputations were ruined, and sexism was alive and well. The College had discovered that Zeta Psi, a mild fraternity on campus, had distributed among brothers a parody of the Daily Dartmouth, the Zetemouth. The Zetemouth described ill-thought hook-ups and embarrassing moments of the brothers, and worst of all it named names. The newsletter was innocent and done in jest; call it sophomoric. Of course, one can always say, like Bill Buckley, that the humor was sophomoric because the students in question were sophomores—some were—but the administration had delayed rush until the winter and coupled with some rising anti-Greek sentiment... Anyway, most of the Zete brothers were juniors and seniors, so sophomoric behavior was out of the question.

The media leaped upon these 'Sex Letters' and recalled the days of John Belushi and friends. Dartmouth has a history in which Greeks play prominently, so this story was perfect. The BBC even interviewed the Editor-in-Chief of the Review for radio. The New York Post was perhaps the most shameless and alliterative. ''Animal House' in Porn Shocker—Dartmouth Frat's Filth-Filled Mag Ridicules Coeds' blared the headline for the article which referred to the brothers as 'nerdy geeks.'

Well, any press is good press...but these events surely received the scorn of public relations-happy administrators, who on November 12 couldn't have been more pleased. On that date, the New York Times ran a front page story on Dartmouth's struggle to achieve diversity on campus, and, in keeping with Howell Raines's agenda, the story was more editorial than news report. The article described how the administration has worked to change the image of Dartmouth, particularly during freshman orientation: 'It used to be that freshman orientation here at Dartmouth College revolved around hiking up mountains and sleeping in huts along the Appalachian Trail. But this year one of the highlights was a talk by Karim Marshall, a senior, who told the 1,100 new students about his arrival on campus from a predominantly black high school in Washington.' (I presume this refers to the District of Columbia, not the state, although the author leaves this unclear.) Presumably, most students, regardless of whether they are inclined to the outdoors, would prefer hiking to listening to a fellow student share his touching personal story, but apparently not. Marshall's words moved students. Matthew Oppenheimer '05 told the Times, 'I couldn't imagine what it was like to come from his community to Dartmouth. I have such respect for him being so open.'

So students have fallen for the ploy. Most striking, however, is Dartmouth's efforts to promote this diversity. The Times reported that Dartmouth spends 'millions' to achieve diversity and also offers diversity training courses to students and faculty. The College even forces staff members to take the course.

The article reads like a diversity pep talk—no surprise there—but the most disturbing aspect of the article is not in the text, but in the by-line. The author of the article is Sara Rimer, no stranger to diversity or Dartmouth. Rimer has reported on Dartmouth news for a number of years, and with each report she produces a pro-diversity, pro-administration editorial in the guise of news. And Rimer is no stranger to the Review—she hates us.

On January 4, 1997, Rimer penned a gushing piece on James Freedman and creative loners. Freedman preceded James Wright as president of Dartmouth College and served a rocky term, frequently challenging the Review. Rimer's piece on Freedman, 'a shy, self-effacing scholar,' sounds eerily familiar to her latest opus: '[Freedman] has transformed Dartmouth in the past decade from a college known for its fraternities and athletes into one into one that embraces those students whom he calls creative loners.' So from creative loners, Dartmouth now turns to diversity. Moreover, Rimer describes Freedman's attacks on the Review in a very sympathetic light. 'While he defended their right to publish and to be provocative, Mr. Freedman insisted on civility,' she writes, failing to note that his definition 'civility' left the door open for repressive speech codes. And, when Rimer attacks the Review, she conveniently neglects to mention the Review by name: 'The 61-year-old Mr. Freedman, who counts among his heroes the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom he was a law clerk, has also restored tolerance and civility by standing up to a group of right-wing students—and their prominent, adult benefactors—whose harassment of blacks, homosexuals, women, and Jews had deeply wounded many on campus.' When Rimer wants to attack the Review for lack of tolerance she refers to it as 'right-wing,' but, when she wishes to praise Freedman for his false tolerance of ideas, she refers to the Review as 'neo-conservatives.'

That was not all the praise that Rimer showered upon Freedman. On June 15, 1998, Rimer wrote 'Dedicated Intellectual Ends Chapter as Dartmouth President,' which bade Freedman farewell from Hanover. According to Rimer, Freedman changed the face of Dartmouth. He had achieved parity among males and females and had changed the nature of the Dartmouth student from the rugged outdoorsman chugging kegfuls of beer to the 'self-effacing idealist.' Rimer also quoted notoriously liberal professors. Susan Ackerman, now co-chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and professor of Religion, said that Freedman had 'upped the intellectual ante.' And to appease any doubts that Ackerman exhibits a liberal bias, she recently told students and faculty regarding the recent elections, 'I'm always surprised every election, and especially this election, when things that are so obvious to me are not obvious to 55-60% of the American public.'

Rimer's distaste for the Review, by this time, had matured such that she no longer needed to justify Freedman's attacks on the Review. Now being conservative was enough justification: 'Early on, [Freedman] took a stand against The Dartmouth Review, a neo-conservative off-campus student newspaper.'

In Rimer's most recent article, the bias exhibited in her article is not striking when compared to the bias inherent in the questions she asked the students whom she interviewed. One student, John Stevenson '05, posted excerpts from his conversation with Rimer, which did not appear in the story, on a weblog, dartobserver.blogspot.com, to which he frequently contributes. Stevenson wrote to her by email, 'I do not regularly think of myself as African-American primarily. In the back of my mind, the identification is there. However, I think primarily of myself as John Stevenson....'

Rimer, however, was not pleased with Stevenson's statement, so she pressed on, searching for a statement that would fit the tone of her report. She responded to Stevenson, 'But it is important that I underscore that you are proud to be African-American and have African-American friends. So can you tell me anything along those lines—do you drop in regularly at the African-American Affinity house? Is Booker T. Washington a hero of yours, or someone else? Can you name one or two of your close African-American friends? I just don't want people to get the mistaken idea that you are putting aside your blackness....'
Rimer's leading questions expose the problems with her article and the administration's push for diversity. Rimer writes that Dartmouth and other colleges are spending millions in an attempt to get students to 'connect across racial and ethnic lines.' But, when Rimer meets a student who had crossed those lines, without the College's provocation, she urges him to cross back and seek refuge with students and scholars of his own race. Diversity is frequenting the Cutter-Shabazz Center; it is not about interacting with students of varied backgrounds. That is, unless the student is question happens to be white.

Rimer's article and reporting is beneficial since it exposes the shallowness of the College's efforts to promote diversity. The administrators no doubt felt that this article exposed all the good things it is doing to increase diversity on campus—it was a front page Times story. But, in the end, the story exposed all that is wrong with the College's efforts. Rimer was wrong in her stories about James Freedman. Do creative loners exist at Dartmouth? There are probably some (I never see them, but I guess that's the point), but they are hardly the majority. One can only hope that history repeats itself.

The Times' Sara Rimer: Then and Now

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