Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/09/22/what_you_know_is_wrong.php
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Congratulations, pea-green freshmen, you've passed the swim test and survived your DOC trips. By now, you've probably heard a variety of things both about Dartmouth and the Review, most likely from admissions staffers and DOC apparatchiks. Without being too downbeat, let me assure you that almost all of it is wrong. Articles in this issue of the Review will provide advice to help you pick your classes (see "Courses of Note," page seven), seek out the luminaries on Dartmouth's faculty while avoiding the dullards (see our "Best and Worst Professors, pages five and six), make the most of Webster Avenue's offerings (see our Greek guide, pages eight and nine), and even hint at what lays in store for you budding '09 writers (see page fourteen).
Before you get to any of that, though, allow me to explain to you what the Review is, and why what everyone has been telling you is wrong. First of all, we aren't racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist, or any other slur, although we don't suffer fools gladly. As you may have already noticed, much of the mandatory diversity and sensitivity programming that has already been foisted upon you is rather foolish, and Dartmouth's indoctrination agenda will only become more pronounced the longer you're here. We are, however, unabashedly traditionalist, that is to say, we firmly believe that there is a right way and a wrong way of going about the business of a college education. That right way means emphasizing the classics of Western civilization, preserving Dartmouth as a bastion of liberal arts education, and sticking close to the traditions and values that enabled us to reach this point. You might wonder why we are so persistently and determinedly focused on Dartmouth and higher education, rather than the larger world. After all, most college newspapers with an ideological slant (c.f. Dartmouth's own mediocrities, the Free Press and the Beacon) wax inelegantly on national and international affairs. The Review, though, prefers to speak only on subjects we can offer unique and insightful commentary upon, and that subject happens to be Dartmouth. And, as you are discovering, Dartmouth itself is a complex and exciting subject, full of controversy, scandal, and vibrancy. We not only relate what the state of the College is, but offer a vision of what is should be: an institution providing the best liberal arts education in the nation, steeped in the classics and centuries of tradition.
None of that would seem especially controversial: after all, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone at Dartmouth, ranging from Parkhurst bureaucrat to Buzzflood braggart, who would publicly argue against the famous Daniel Webster quote that "it is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it." But yet, there are those who do seek to destroy the spirit of that peroration through a slow process of enlarging Dartmouth and eliminating her traditions until it is rendered unrecognizable, a second-rate research university rather than a first-rate liberal arts college. But understanding them, and the issues confronting Dartmouth today that you'll read about in the Review, requires a digression into history.
When the Review was founded, twenty-five years ago, John G. Kemeny was president and the College was on the cusp of one of the largest transformations in its history: the effects of admitting women, abolishing the Indian symbol, leftward drifting of the faculty, and incorporating computers into daily life were far-ranging and left almost no remnants of "old Dartmouth" unaltered. The Review was founded by disaffected Daily Dartmouth staffers in 1980; the proximate cause being a controversy over an the election of John Steel to the Board of Trustees, but the underlying causes were a reaction against many of the changes from the Kemeny era.
David McLaughlin assumed the presidency in 1981, and the Review was hostile to him and his administration, perhaps unjustly so. (McLaughlin, the last president to have attended the College as an undergraduate, passed away this past year. For Editor Emeritus Joseph Rago's obituary, see TDR 6/12/2005). McLaughlin was caught between animadversions from alumni and the Review who found McLaughlin's handling of the controversies of the early 1980's unacceptable and an increasingly dogmatic liberal faculty who would countenance no compromises and saw McLaughlin, whose experience was in the corporate world, as antithetical to academia. Having lost the faculty's confidence, McLaughlin was forced to resign in late 1986, but his replacement, James O. Freedman, was far more radical and ideological.
Freedman came to the College from the University of Iowa, fresh on the heels of a scandal over an ill-conceived Laser Center, and wasted no time stirring up controversy at Dartmouth. Freedman absolutely refused to understand Dartmouth or her traditions: he did his best to destroy the Greek system, his vision of the ideal Dartmouth student was the "creative loner" who spent his time "mastering the cello or translating Catullus" rather than enjoying the camaraderie of his classmates, and made plans to vastly enlarge the campus, building Berry library and planning to double the undergraduate enrollment (Freedman is also who you can thank for the postmodern monstrosities known as the East Wheelock cluster). He launched mawkish crusades against the Review, leading "anti-hate" rallies and attempted to have some of the paper's staffers expelled. In short, as an academic himself, Freedman may have been more acceptable to the faculty, but he did irreparable harm to the College and endeared himself to few.
Freedman's departure in 1998 gave way to our current president, James Wright, who, while not educated at Dartmouth himself, was rumored to have been a fine history professor before he entered the College's administration. Wright is many things, but he is no Freedman: far more skilled as a politician and far more cognizant of Dartmouth's traditions, Wright has made a number of missteps. Chief among them was Student Life Initiative (SLI) of 1999 that was intended to "end the Greek system as we know it," but ended up doing very little at all, as well as the expulsion of Zeta Psi fraternity in 2001 for publishing a lewd internal house newsletter. Wright is responsible for the construction of new dormitories that envelops campus today, but his aims are to alleviate over-crowding and pave the way for the destruction of the River Cluster, rather than enlarge the student body.
Recent years, in fact, have seen substantial progress towards the goals of preserving Dartmouth's liberal arts instruction and traditions. The past two years have seen the victories of three alumni Trustee candidates: T.J. Rodgers '70, Peter Robinson '79, and Todd Zywicki '88, all of whom realize the importance undergraduate quality of life. This past year alone, the Wright administration backed off of freedom of speech restrictions, loosened SLI-inspired regulations on fraternities, resolved a crisis within Dartmouth's library system, and hired a new football coach, Buddy Teevens '78, to revitalize a broken team. More challenges and obstacles lie ahead, but the victories of the past two years make it clear that the Review and those who agree with it are steering the course of campus events. So stumble through your orientation events, pick up a free t-shirt or two, and join us in trying to make your next four years here as worthwhile as possible.