Don't Drink the Kool-Aid

By Alston Ramsay | Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Welcome to Dartmouth, or, as it's know in some circles, "PC Hell." I don't mean to paint a bleak picture right off the bat, but there are some things you need to know, and I'd rather not bore you with the usual pleasantries, which I'm sure you've heard a few hundred times since you arrived. Instead, let me offer a few words about a concept that has lately become hip at universities and colleges around the country: diversity.

For the next four years you're going to hear a lot about "appreciating diversity." So much, in fact, that a couple years ago Dartmouth changed its mission statement—established in the 1700s—to emphasize the College's newfound commitment to diversity. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: "diversity," in the Dartmouth sense of the word, is crap, and I'm tired of hearing it repeated like a Rosary. If you read between the lines, you'll quickly find that every appeal to "diversity" is nothing more than a code-word for "skin pigment" or "people who aren't straight." This school's tolerance for real academic and intellectual diversity is remarkably narrow, and it's shrinking every moment. Students who don't toe the line and recite the mantra are met with slurs like "racist," "sexist," "homophobe," and the like—even when nothing of the sort exists. Just wait and see.

The most recent term to join the litany is "whiteness," an ill-defined catch-all for anything that could possibly (or impossibly) be deemed oppressive, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, imperialist, or (insert slanderous epithet here). Of course, you won't hear any evidence for the connection, because being on the cutting edge of academia means blind adherence to the latest fad. At last year's convocation, for example, President Wright lectured the incoming class about the fact that many didn't "recognize whiteness as culturally meaningful"; thus, they didn't understand the "privilege that they enjoyed, as whites, in a racialized, hierarchical environment." A racialized environment—sort of like the one he's busy creating here. I can't wait for his speech this year.

But seriously: Just this summer, Dartmouth published a report on a conference it sponsored called "Race Matters in the University of the 21st Century." The report outlines a completely new direction for higher education, and cites as its sole evidence pieties from the burgeoning field of whiteness studies: "race, ethnicity, and cultural diversity [should] make up an important part of every undergraduate's education" so that "whiteness [is] no longer the unacknowledged criterion of the university curriculum." See, "whiteness" is bad, and the counterbalance is obviously "diversity"—of skin color, that is. How do we achieve this? According to the report, the three main steps are creating diversity plans for the entire campus, forcing students to take diversity courses , and, finally, tenure reforms to lower the academic bar for minority faculty. It makes one wonder what happened to the "education" part of "higher education."

If you don't find this promiscuous rhetoric appetizing (or believable, for that matter), you're not alone—despite what many of Dartmouth's self-proclaimed activists would have you believe. These are the avatars of diversity who will, activist badge in hand, try to convince you that outrage exists where there is none, that racism exists where there is none, that sexism exists where there is none, etc. They love policing the campus with a heavy hand, and castigating the rest of us for our "intolerance." Just pick up a copy of the Dartmouth Free Press and see for yourself.

Don't get me wrong: Dartmouth has much to offer, and can be an exhilarating learning experience—if you play your cards right. First, though, you have to learn to ignore the effusive diversity babble. Rest assured, it will be difficult.

I wish you the best of luck as you navigate the minefield of campus discourse. But if you ever need a break from it all, drop by the Review's office at 8 Webster Avenue. We're sure to offer a refreshing view on the latest moral outrage.

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid

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