Week In Review

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

College Sued by Parents of Late Student

A little more than three years ago, Christina Porter, a Dartmouth sophomore, collided with a tree on the Dartmouth Skiway. By the time she reached the hospital she was in a coma. She died eleven months later. On February 2nd, 2007, the day before the statute of limitations expired, her parents filed suit against Dartmouth for damages of $20 million, alleging the College “breached its special duty of care to their daughter,” who was enrolled in a Dartmouth ski physical education class when the accident occurred.

Dartmouth has treated the incident as a “terrible accident,” but the Porters have noted a number of concerns including a failure to require helmets and a lack of experienced ski instructors. The instructors involved in the accident have only been named anonymously in the suit, but could be specified as individual defendants later on.

Dartmouth to Host Primary Debates

Primary debates for both the Republican and Democratic parties will be held in Hanover this coming Fall. New England Cable News will host the debates, with the College playing a mostly logistical role by providing a forum in which the debate can occur and taking care of all the security for the event. The College has agreed to participate on the condition that Dartmouth students are able to fully participate in the event, and has made clear its intent to give students full access to the debate. Both the College Republicans and Democrats will likely have a crucial role to play as well.

Organizational challenges that the College faces include finding a way to accommodate the increased population during the time of the event, including 200 members of the media alone. New Hampshire’s prominent position in the primaries sharpens the focus on the upcoming debate and may be a critical factor that influences the course of the election.

‘Girls in our day had great boobs.’

Speech Program to Return in Different Form

The College recently announced plans to introduce a new speech program. The preceding program was expunged two years ago after a long and ugly break-up, starting with the demotion in 1979 from ‘department’ to ‘office.’ Most believe the reason for the ultimate disestablishment was Professor Jim Kuypers frustration with the administration—in particular, Dean of Faculty Carol Folt.

Refer to the 4/22/05 issue of TDR for extensive reporting on Kuypers’s resignation. Based on that article, Professor Kuypers, on a panel he had led, made numerous suggestions to the administration in the form of a report: “in order to face the world beyond college, students must speak effectively, be able to organize cogent arguments, and be ready to function in an increasingly team-oriented workplace.” However, these suggestions were ignored by higher-ups in the administration, and Kuypers’ frustration precipitated his resignation.

A speech program seems more crucial than ever these days. Math majors, debate team members, drill instructors, that irritating guy in your seminar class, close-talkers in the basement, and the class of 2011 have all set Daniel Webster spinning in his grave.

‘I thought sexist was the same as 'girl crazy'’.

Heart-Pounding Drama as ‘Wiki’ Rivalry Heats Up

The Student Assembly took its continued fight for legitimacy into cyberspace last week, challenging CollegeWikis.com for the hearts, minds, and user-generated content of the Dartmouth student body. In response to a campus-wide ‘e-vitation’ by CollegeWikis to “join the Dartmouth e-mail list and wiki,” Student Assembly fired off an e-mail informing students that it had been planning a wiki of its own, and that use of an unofficially sponsored site prior to the release of the “Official Dartmouth Wiki” could result in “a lot of negative consequences.”

By Monday, the Daily Dartmouth deemed the virtual challenge front page news, publishing an article detailing how hard the Student Assembly has been working on its wiki version since the “middle of the winter term,” while admitting that the “project is still in its formative stages.”

Not to be outdone, CollegeWikis founder Joe DiPasquale posted an opening statement on the up and running (though wholly unofficial) Dartmouth Wiki, challenging the Assembly’s characterization of his site as an “outside commercial venture,” writing that his organization’s “only intention is to provide other college students with a useful and informative resource,” and that it is “not profiting from the website.”

DiPasquale went on the attack, trashing the Assembly’s appetite for control and general pandering to the Administration’s lust for regulation, and suggested that the Assembly’s outright plea for students not to use CollegeWiki was akin to government censorship. “If I were a student,” DiPasquale writes, “I’d be disappointed that the Assembly 1) thought they could dictate what websites I should go to, and 2) told me not to use something that could be of great value when they have no viable alternative. I would be even more disappointed if my classmates followed that order.”

Sadly, SA has yet to respond with a counterattack, but reports suggest they are too busy working on their Official Wiki, set to debut in the far-flung future, in collaboration with the forthcoming Galactic Federation. Meanwhile, some clever writer has seized the uncensored power of CollegeWiki.com and created a page for the Student Assembly, which reads: “The Student Assembly is the do-nothing, ineffectual, and presently pointless student government of Dartmouth College.” Whether this information is official or unofficial has yet to be verified.

Alumni Snipe in Letters, the Boston Globe

Alumni rhetoric is flying fast as trustee election voting begins. In a reaction to a mass mailing sent to the Dartmouth Lawyer’s Association endorsing alumni petition candidate Sandy Alderson, supporters of petition alumni trustee Stephen Smith have sent out a mailing of their own. The letter, which states that it means “no disrespect either to the authors of the earlier letter or to Sandy Alderson,” is nonetheless a calculated counterstrike against Alderson’s endorsement letter. The letter describes Stephen Smith as “a remarkable man” and boasts of his impressive achievements before, during, and after his attendance at Dartmouth. A law school graduate and law school professor himself, Smith’s law background is accentuated to appeal to the recipients of this letter: law school graduates. This heated alumni election is now grabbing the attention of the national press. Stephen Smith’s identity as a conservative candidate is beginning to be seen as part of a bigger education reform movement. An article recently published in the Boston Globe went so far as to raise the question, “Is Dartmouth the first domino in a national war on the allegedly liberal, politically correct Ivory Tower?” According to Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the phenomenon of trustee campaigning is part of a “significant trend” that includes campaigns by conservative candidates in schools such as Colgate University and Hamilton College.

If this trustee election is an indication of a massive education reform movement, then the previously-thought impenetrable academic “Ivory Tower” is going to have to assemble an impressive line of defense. With well-funded campaigns run by motivated conservative alumni at Dartmouth and at schools across the country, a War of Academia could alter the landscape of higher education for generations to come.

‘Ask Dartmouth’ Feature Clears Up Any and All Confusion

The PR geniuses at Parkhurst once again display a Shakespearean level of human understanding as they launch a website entitled ‘Ask Dartmouth’ to combat ‘misinformation’ spread via trustee election campaigning. ‘Ask Dartmouth’ fills its pages with rebuttals to various constructive criticisms of the College, not-so-subtly disguising its PR blitzkrieg and tired argumentation as informational “answers” to rather amusingly dim-wittted questions, including inter alia: “Were the funds for the varsity football building on the capital campaign priority list BEFORE alumni heard about the Furstenberg letter?”; “Is it true that Dartmouth created 111 new administrative positions, while only adding 50 positions to the faculty of the Arts and Sciences?”; and, a personal favorite, “Is the COS fair?” Each page of questions and answers, divided into categories like “Academics” and “Athletics”, follows a predictable pattern of “Is [anything ever said by Stephen Smith/The Dartmouth Review/anyone not in the Wright Administration] true?” answered by a reassuring “Sit down, buddy, kick off your shoes. You need a rest.” To the extent that Dartmouth alumni respond to condescendion and enjoy being treated like tykes, this initiatve will go off famously.

RIAA Rattles Saber at Students

Last month, several lucky Dartmouth students received pre-litigation letters from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) giving them opportunities for settlement. The RIAA tracked down 11 ‘IP’ addresses through the College network that had been involved in illegal on line file-sharing. The several students identified by their IP addresses will have a chance to work out an out-of-court settlement with the RIAA, with a typical settlement being about $5000. But if the RIAA files a lawsuit, it can sue for $150,000 per violation, and each downloaded song counts as one violation. Senior Associate Dean Mary Liscinsky tried to prevent more students from illegally sharing files by urging them to remove any “illegally obtained copyrighted material and/or peer-to-peer applications” in a blitz she sent out last month, although students still remain liable for past activity. These instances are part of nationwide crackdown on illegal fire-sharing by the RIAA. Despite the RIAA’s crackdown, some students refuse to take precaution. One student explains: “After a while I was like, no, I like music too much. I like things that are free too much. I’m going to continue greedily downloading things for free.” That or for $150,000.

Alumnus Stephen Colbert Recalls His College Days

Accalimed television host Stephen Colbert came clean about his disreputable past at the Aspen Comedy Festival last month. Time’s Ana Marie Cox reported that Colbert, who impersonates a Billy O’Reilly-style television host on his show on Comedy Central, has invented an eleborate back-story for his on-scren persona. “He went to Dartmouth, where he worked on The Dartmouth Review with Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingraham,” says Cox. “He was exposed to a good education ‘but basically wasted it.’” Colbert then went on to make a unprintably rude remark about Ingraham.

Week In Review

Article Tools

Related Articles