It’s Just SAD

By Daniel F. Linsalata | Thursday, January 25, 2007

Free speech can be a funny thing. Oftentimes, those who fight so hard to earn it, and feel empowered when they do, are shocked to learn that nobody’s listening to them. And such is the shortcoming of student government at Dartmouth. Our Student Assembly is a toothless farce, established for the apparent purpose of deluding a few sycophantic students into believing that they can sway the opinions of College administrators and trustees. Perhaps I speak too quickly; Student Assemblymen do have pull over administrators, so long as the matter at hand is of no material consequence in the daily life of the College. But nonetheless, this context is exactly the reason that the ‘scandal,’ if you can call it that, about SA and president “Tiny” Tim Andreadis’ shortcomings that have riveted the campus for the past few weeks, is so comical. A contemporary anthropologist might have a field day: so many students becoming so wound up for something that matters so little.

I will readily concede that Student Assembly at Dartmouth (SAD, if one has a penchant for eminently appropriate acronyms) provides some worthwhile services to the student body. The newspaper Readership Program, the tragically-named “Uh-Oh” reminders, Blitzmail terminal maintenance, and the online course guide all seem to enjoy unanimous support amongst students. However, all four have visibly fallen by the wayside this year but could easily be brought under the auspices of some administrative office or another.

Furthermore, the College administration has summarily ignored every large scale initiative proposed by SAD, at least during my time at Dartmouth. COS reform, despite substantial student support, has been tabled indefinitely. The Dartmoose has been tried—and rejected—several times before. The called-for divestment from Sudan only went part way. The list goes on. What, then, is SAD good for if it is impotent in the face of issues with institution-wide implications? Well, humor, for one.

The present debacle, a movement to impeach Andreadis, and subsequently to abolish SAD, unfolded like a poorly-scripted sitcom. At the beginning of the term, Adam Shpeen ’07, disillusioned with Andreadis’s leadership and the ineffectiveness of his administration—and, depending on who you ask, driven by a personal vendetta stemming from a confrontation with Andreadis in the Fall—attempted to clandestinely pack SAD with new members bent on driving Andreadis out. The SAD constitution stipulates that any student attending three consecutive meetings automatically becomes a voting member. The ploy worked and Andreadis quickly recognized the threat and went on the defensive. Though he initially refused to comment on the matter, he told anyone who would listen that planned to spin the affair as “Chi Gams [Shpeen’s’ fraternity], Reviewers, and bigots versus the first openly gay SA president.” In other words, play the victim until the problem loses momentum and goes away.

Ultimately, when Andreadis was forced to action, his tactics were no better than those of his detractors. He exploited a similar loophole and simply stacked the deck in his favor, bringing in representatives from myriad campus organizations that otherwise have no interest in SAD. Thus the truth in the paradigm that small stakes yield vicious politics. The stakes at hand for SAD could not be smaller, and, to some, the matter indeed became vicious, while merely farcical to the rest.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s confrontational meeting, mostly played out on the editorial pages of the Daily D, Andreadis never once addressed head on the charges against him. However, what exactly those charges entailed is a slightly murkier issue. Perhaps “accusations” or “qualms” better describe the matter. It seems that the primary motivator for the no-confidence vote was simply gross incompetence. By all accounts, Andreadis faithfully executed all the narrowly-defined duties of president, per SAD’s constitution. He won the office on two basic campaign promises. First, to significantly slash SAD spending. Second, to address the scourge of widespread sexual assault on campus. In the first, he has succeeded to some degree. As to the second, he has barely convinced the majority of campus that the problem is even as large as he claims it to be and has certainly done nothing to address it, save for perhaps incite a debate as to whether the problem actually exists.

I cannot fault Andreadis for his noble goals or the passion with which he pursues them. His downfall, however, has been his execution of these goals. He has vociferously and inflammatorily pushed the sexual assault issue, at the expense of the most basic aforementioned functions and services of SAD. Even more damning, his rhetoric has alienated a large portion of the campus. Granted, most students are at best indifferent to SAD, but his antics as president have touched the entire campus, to the extent that he has fallen victim to the free speech paradox: nobody’s listening to what he’s saying.

To the extent that sexual assault is a problem, I’ll allow that the Greek system probably motivates it to some degree. That being the case, Andreadis ought to be making every overture for cooperation from the Greeks. Instead, in a letter leaked last week, he unapologetically called for their abolition. (To be fair, it was later revealed that Mike Amico ’07 wrote the letter for Andreadis, in what probably amounted to a cathartic exercise. Nonetheless, Andreadis shared sentiments are no small secret.) Seems that Tiny Tim has taken a lesson from George W. Bush in wooing allies and goodwill from the corners where he most needs it.

Andreadis’s failure, then, lays not in one particular action, but rather his leadership approach. Had the typical services of SAD continued, or had SAD produced tangible results on something, or if he had made some measurable headway on the sexual assault plague—in concordance with other campus groups—then his other flaws may have been more readily forgiven. However, in his zeal to vilify Greeks, “bigots,” et alia, Andreadis dropped the ball on all three counts. But unhappily for his detractors, zeal and ideology are not impeachable offenses.

Student Assembly, in its current iteration, was created in the early 1990s. By the 1993 SAD presidential election, the Daily D already reported calls for abolition and restructuring of Student Assembly (see Daily D 5/4/1993). Candidates called the Assembly “flawed” and “broken.” But before that time, no student government existed at Dartmouth for the previous few decades. And guess what? We got along just fine.

So would daily life at Dartmouth be appreciably different had Andreadis not been impeached, or the Assembly itself abolished? Probably not. While many certainly entered passionately into the debate, even more acknowledged, “It’s just Student Assembly.” So maybe the status quo is the answer. Much as with a small child picked on by others, SAD should be neither seen nor heard, except as the butt end of a joke.

It’s Just SAD

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