The Week in Review

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Tuck Again Secures Top Rankings

While Dartmouth’s undergraduate program has struggled in national rankings of late, the Tuck School of Business continues to excel. Both the Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine recently ranked Tuck as the top M.B.A. program in the nation.

The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive ranking was based on a survey of 4,430 recruiters between December 19, 2006 and March 23, 2007. Respondents “repeatedly praised Tuck students for being down-to-earth team players.” Graduates were also praised for being ethical, hard working, and well-rounded.

The Forbes rankings used a different tack, ranking schools based on the return their graduates receive on their investment after five years. While returns have universally dropped since the last ranking, Tuck still garnered a median return of $115,000, or $13,000 more than second place Stanford and $21,000 more than third place Harvard Business School.

New Dean of the College a Scholar of Hanging Out

Thomas M. Crady has been named the new Dean of the College. Dean Crady was formerly the vice president of student services at Grinnell College in Iowa. He will take over his post from Dean Nelson, who has been the Acting Dean of the College since 2006.

Crady was chosen from a shortlist of four candidates who were being considered for the position. After one of the candidates dropped out of the contest, Crady was given the job. The individual who dropped out was the College’s first choice, and Crady was chosen only after that person turned down the job.

Crady’s received his doctorate from Iowa State. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Written and Unwritten Rules: The Use of Alcohol by Fraternities: A study of One College.” Grinnell does not have a fraternity system, and Crady admits that the findings in his dissertation may not apply to Dartmouth. He does assert, however, that binge drinking is a problem on college campuses, and he plans to emphasize that view in his role as an administrator at Dartmouth.

Democrats, National Press to Descend on Hanover Wednesday

On September 26, Dartmouth will host the Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate as eight contenders vie for the Democratic nomination. Tim Russert, the Washington Bureau Chief of NBC, will moderate the 90-minute discussion featuring candidates Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Mike Gravel. Through a joint effort by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Social Sciences and the Dartmouth Office of Campus Affairs, the College is once again the subject of national media attention as we host this critical juncture in the race to the party nomination. This year, Dartmouth is partnering with MSNBC, the Democratic National Committee, the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and New England Cable News to bring this exciting and dynamic debate over the future of American politics. One College employee summed up the importance of the debate by saying that if there were no parking spots available that day, she would not go to work.

American Council of Trustees Blasts Trustees

The American Council of Trustees & Alumni’s President, Anne D. Neal, issued a memo on July 30 in response to a request made by Frank Gado, Second Vice President of the Alumni Association, for an evaluation of the governance review process, which had not at that point been completed. Neal concluded:

“The stated purpose of the Dartmouth Governance Review is to examine best practices in the field. However, the Dartmouth governance structure—and, particularly, the conduct of the review itself—would appear to constitute a case study in ‘worst practices.’

“According to best practices, the President’s prominent role in the governance review process would be unacceptable at major corporations in America and most public universities. Moreover, the President’s substantial involvement in the Committee appears to be in clear violation of Dartmouth’s own conflict of interest policies.

“The direction of the current Governance Committee ‘study’ raises serious concerns. Already exerting de facto control over the appointment of Charter Trustees and the reappointment of all Trustees to a second term, the Governance Committee may now be considering eliminating the one source of independent oversight of the Board: the longstanding ability of the alumni to vote on half its membership. And far from being disinterested, the Governance Review is being sustained by the one person who stands to gain the most—the President—who will potentially hold the power to pick and choose every Trustee to whom he ostensibly reports.

“Far from modeling best practices, Dartmouth’s possible interest in creating a self- perpetuating board runs counter to growing federal and regulatory calls for transparency and independence—not to mention the desires of the thousands of alumni who have voted for independent oversight in the last four elections.”

The memo in its entirety is available online.

National Association of Scholars Blasts Trustees

The National Association of Scholars released a stern reprimand on September 10 of, again, those blackguards, the trustees. An excerpt:

“Faced with the results of four successive elections in which the independent candidate beat the administration’s hand-picked candidate, the Dartmouth administration clearly had to act. The appropriate action would have been for President James Wright and his compliant chairman of the board, Charles E. Haldeman, to resign their positions. The Dartmouth alumni had, in effect, voted no confidence in their leadership in four consecutive elections. Instead of resigning, however, these individuals conspired to diminish the role of the Dartmouth alumni in governing the College. Their recourse, when faced with serious criticism, was to build a Chinese wall to keep the critics out.”

Alumni Association Blasts Trustees

Immediately following the Board of Trustees’ decision to pack the Board with charter (board-selected) members, to the detriment of alumni representation, the Dartmouth Alumni Association’s Executive Committee issued a statement condemning the “trustee power-grab.” The release echoed the sentiments of an alumni poll taken in August in which 92% favored maintaining the parity between charter and alumni-elected trustees. The Committee also emphasized that they had been on record “consistently urging the Board of Trustees to maintain this historic balance.” The statement indicated the Executive Committee is consulting the law firm of Williams and Connolly about its legal options, as the Board’s decision “effectively wipes out” an 1891 agreement between the trustees and the Association.

Student Assembly Blasts ‘Fat’ Eleazar Wheelock, ‘Dumb’ Lone Pine

Student Assembly has produced two astonishing video advertisements in favor of the moose qua mascot. Both feature testosterone-filled soundtracks. There are clever cinematic techniques, such as when the word “Yale” is superimposed over a photograph of a tutu-clad bulldog. This is meant to redound to Yale’s discredit. Eleazar Wheelock is derided as “too fat,” the lone pine as “dumb.” They are viewable on the Assembly’s web log. Good job, fellas.

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