Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/06/12/a_quartercentury_of_tdr.php
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Twenty-five years ago this week, a small group of disaffected Daily Dartmouth staffers led by Greg Fossdeal '81 and Gordon Haff Th'81 founded a new paper at the College. It was an exciting time to be at Dartmouth: as you can read on page six in the interview reprinted from the Review's first issue, John Steel had successfully been nominated by petition and defeated the official Alumni Council nominees. Simultaneously, the Trustees were in the midst of selecting the College's next president, and Ronald Reagan was sweeping his way towards a landslide victory over a moribund President Carter. While they were not the first group of college students to found a "conservative" newspaper, they were perhaps the most talented: inspired by the venerable Prof. Jeffrey Hart, Dinesh D'Souza '83 and Laura Ingraham '85 would go on to later fame in the Reagan administration and as conservative pundits; Peter Robinson '79, who contributed articles while pursuing his graduate degree at Oxford, recently became one of the College's newest Trustees.
This issue marks the first in the Review's twenty-fifth anniversary series. Over the next year, we will reprint classic articles from our archives, paired with new perspectives from the original writers. In this issue, we feature the original cover from Volume One, Issue One of the Review, drawn by Steven Kelley '81 (later a nationally-syndicated editorial cartoonist), an interview with former Trustee John Steel from the same issue, along with an article by Peter Robinson on how Prof. Jeffrey Hart, a bulwark of the Review over the years, influenced the early days of the paper. By looking back at what the Review has come through over the past twenty-five years, we can gain a sense of how both Dartmouth and the paper itself have changed, as well as what might lie ahead for the next twenty-five.
Perhaps Peter Robinson himself is emblematic of the change over the past twenty-five years. The very fact that he, a former Review contributor, will now be sitting on the Board of Trustees is a sign that what was once thought of as radical and extreme is now mainstream. A quick glance at the campaign statements from the various candidates in this year's Trustee election shows little substantive difference between the "renegade" petition candidates' positions and those of some of the official candidates. One of the official candidates, Gregg Engles '79, campaigned to ensure that Dartmouth "remain focused on undergraduate education" and offer a curriculum based on "the foundational principles of Western Civilization and American society." Another, Ric Lewis '84, emphasized his commitment to the values of "old Dartmouth" that breed "fierce loyalties among it students and alumni." When the statements of the official candidates mirror those of former Review writers, campus debate has clearly shifted. And since the election of Robinson and Todd Zywicki comes on the heels of last year's upset victory by T.J. Rodgers, momentum likewise favors those who seek to restore the College to its traditional mission of undergraduate education.
Since its founding, the Review has always been—and remains today—the only independent voice at the College, shedding light on the administration's excesses. But if the Review has lost some of its fire-brand flavor over the years, it is because conditions no longer merit them. James Wright does not fanatically support left-wing causes like James Freedman did, and, as Scott Glabe notes on page nine, Wright and his cohorts have retracted some of their restrictions on free speech. Many of the College's most liberal professors, William Cole and his ilk, have left for elsewhere or gone into retirement. Of course, some left-wing nuts remain (Marysa Navarro, one of the subjects of the very first issue of the Review comes to mind, as does the kooky Shelby Grantham), but the liberal faculty's outspoken lunacy has by and large been subdued. Professors like Thomas Luxon of the English Department and Bruce Nelson of the History Department may have profusely bleeding hearts, but they keep their politics outside of the classroom. The new construction projects dotting the Hanover landscape promise to alleviate the dormitories' chronic over-crowding and permit the destruction of the dungeon-like Choates and River clusters.
But, in celebrating twenty-five years of the Review, we cannot become complacent with the progress of recent years. Robinson and Zywicki were elected because so many of the College's alumni are fundamentally discontent with the College's direction, and one does not have to look hard to find many of the same feelings in the student body. Government and economics classes are perpetually over-subscribed, the administration remains secretive and heavy-handed in its decisions, and Zeta Psi fraternity remains permanently expelled for an incident that, while disgusting, was trite and jejune compared to the offenses of other fraternities. Furthermore, as Joseph Rago notes in his seminal investigative article on the secret papers of the Student Life Initiative (pages ten and eleven), a concerted plan still exists to drive the Greek system into extinction, or, at the very least, change it radically. Karl Furstenberg, the embattled Dean of Admissions, also remains at his post despite the emergence of a letter he penned supporting the elimination of the football team. Kale Bongers, in his article on pages twelve and thirteen, details the sorry state of Dartmouth football over the past few years. While the hiring of Buddy Teevens '79 will hopefully reverse that trend, the task of making the College a better place is by no means complete.
As the College moves ahead, then, we must remain cautiously optimistic. Recent changes have been for the better, but it would naïve to believe that the trends will continue unless the Review and others who care about the College continue their hard work. James Wright is now more than 65 years old, and with his position greatly weakened by the results of the Trustee election, it cannot be long until he starts to think of retirement. The next president, whoever he may be, will have the choice of continuing the work of the Wright administration or setting a new course for the College. At stake will be whether Dartmouth continues to become a research university "in all but name" or decides to restore its focus to undergraduate education, along with a myriad number of other issues. Let us hope, then, as we prepare for a new chapter in the both the history of the College and the Review, that the progress of the last twenty-five years will not have been in vain.