The Week in Review

Friday, February 8, 2008

Rhetoric Returns

The study of rhetoric has had a long and eventful history at Dartmouth—that is, until its untimely death in 2005. The 1980s and 1990s saw Dartmouth’s historic Department of Speech decline, having been downgraded to the Office of Speech in 1979, and then suffering numerous resignations and retirements. By 1995, the office consisted of only one man: Professor Jim Kuypers. A staunch advocate of rhetoric’s centrality in a liberal education, Kuypers taught five classes a year and wrote five books over his decade at Dartmouth—but was never given tenure. Kuypers, along with support from faculty like future Provost Barry Scherr, consistently fought for recognition. Yet by 2005, the administration’s continued neglect finally forced his resignation. In his controversial farewell, Kuypers voiced frustration over meetings with Dartmouth’s higher-ups, labeling current Dean (and rumored Wright acolyte) Carol Folt “utterly ignorant of the role of rhetoric within a liberal arts tradition.”

Less than three years later, the College has suddenly and emphatically changed its tune. On Wednesday, January 30th, officials unveiled the new Institute of Writing and Rhetoric, proclaiming, “the ability to communicate ideas clearly and persuasively is an essential feature of a liberal arts education.” The Institute will eliminate exemptions from the Writing Requirement, ensuring all future Dartmouth students take two courses. It will also “add two faculty positions in public speaking, introduce upper-level writing instruction in non-writing intensive disciplines, offer a wider array of [more sophisticated] writing courses...[and] expand student support services.” Dean Folt stated the program will “provide Dartmouth students with an exceptional opportunity to develop vital skills that will last them a lifetime.” Indeed, revitalizing rhetoric is an important step towards continuing Dartmouth’s decorated history in the liberal arts. Ironically, Folt led the charge against Professor Kuypers in 2005, when she “resolutely stated that...were she to have extra [resources], she would not give any to speech.” The Dartmouth Review is intrigued by Folt’s and the administration’s change of heart. But in the end, the Institute’s classes on rhetoric will bring new hope to a dying Dartmouth legacy. That’s good news for all of us.

Funds Drive Passes
$1 Billion

The College recently announced that it had passed the $1 billion mark in its fundraising “Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience.” In a statement, the College said that as of December 31, the total funds raised stood at $1.012 billion. The administration is targeting a total of $1.3 billion by the end of 2009, and said that it was on track to meeting this expectation. According to the College, over 65% of alumni have donated to the Campaign. Of the Campaign’s four strategic imperatives, the most successful has been Residential Campus Life, with 85% of its target $186 million met. Financial Aid has been the least successful, with only 57% of its $166 million goal raised. The Campaign has endowed several professorships and constructed new academic, athletic and residential facilities on campus, but has yet to break ground on new dining and academic facilities.

Presidential Parlance
Patterns Plumbed

In a recently published study, economics professor Bruce Sacerdote and ’08 Owen Zidar analyzed hundreds of speeches by the current presidential contenders in an effort to uncover patterns in the candidates’ word choices. The pair calculated the frequency of certain key words in the public addresses of presidential hopefuls. While the two acknowledged the limited scope of the study, their work offers intriguing insights into this year’s election rhetoric. Their findings were presented in two ways: First, they tried to determine how “negative” a candidate is by tallying the number of times they mentioned an opponent by name, under the assumption that most of these references are actually disapproving in nature. On this scale, Hillary and Obama are the least negative campaigners, while Romney takes the prize as the most negative. The study also compared candidates to historical figures based on similarities between their speech vocabularies. One of the more interesting findings shows how strikingly similar Hillary’s speech patterns are to that of her life-partner, Bill. Either 33 years of marriage can force people to sound the same, or perhaps the Clinton family speechwriters are struggling to come up with some new words. Also, despite all the talk about the youthful—comparing Obama to JFK—it is actually Hillary who is most like JFK with her word choices. In the Republican sweepstakes to see who can be the most “Reagan-esque,” McCain comes out on top due to his heavy usage of the words “economic, ” “future,” and “courage”—just a few of Reagan’s favorites.

Finally: An Explanation

New York University Press recently published the book Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus. A sociological study by Kathleen A. Bogle, the book attempts to uncover the intricacies of ‘hooking up’ on college campuses. Bogle says she compiled the background for her research through email interviews with primarily white, heterosexual students from two East Coast universities. In her interview questions, she asked students to differentiate the common perceptions of ‘hooking up’ and the realities of the ‘college hook up scene,’ concluding, “Students tend to overestimate what their peers are doing.” She hopes that this research will help college students better understand each other, and that the book will serve as a guide for college administrators and parents attempting to understand the social lives of college students. With her research sample, Bogle states that, “The college environment is very conducive to hooking up. On campus there is a relatively homogenous population of young men and women living in close proximity to each other with no strictly enforced rules monitoring their behavior.” She also says, “Fraternity members were among the most likely to hook up frequently with a large number of different partners.” You can buy this salacious volume, complete with a risqué cover of a young male attempting to unhook a woman’s bra, for $12.21 on Amazon. Snag this hot item before it sells out.

Beta to Return
to Campus

The Trustees of the Omega Alpha chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity recently reached an agreement with the College stating that the organization, derecognized in 1996, will be reinstated on campus in the fall. The Trustees also announced their intent to return as a chapter of Beta national instead of as a local fraternity, despite the fact that the Beta national organization has yet to grant re-recognition to the chapter. In addition, the Beta national charter has prohibited alcohol at every Beta physical plant. This fact, should the chapter be re-recognized nationally, will profoundly impact the fraternity’s social role on campus. Beta’s announced return abruptly created profound implications for Alpha Xi Delta sorority, which has rented out Beta’s Webster Ave. mansion for the past decade. AZD will be ordered to evict the house by June, and while the sisters are “exploring other housing options,” the sorority potentially faces a autumn without a physical plant. Recent complaints bemoan the College’s dearth of “female-controlled social spaces,” a phrase so overused as to be a campus cliché. Nevertheless, the College must wait until the fall to accurately gauge Beta’s impact on Dartmouth’s strained sexual politics.

Keeping up with
the Joneses

Recently, Dartmouth announced a drastic change in its financial aid policy, akin to similar restructurings that have occurred at other Ivy League universities recently. Commencing with the 2008-2009 school year, families whose annual income are less than $75,000 will receive free tuition, accompanied by expenditure scholarships. With the incoming 2012 class, loans will be eliminated entirely in favor of grant-based aid packages. Meanwhile, current students can look forward to a fifty percent reduction in their loan expectations beginning in the fall of 2008. This measure, intended to reduce the debt burden on students upon graduation, will hopefully stave off the phenomena of Dartmouth’s best and brightest: marrying for money rather than for love—at least until law school loans roll around. In addition, starting with the class of 2012, Dartmouth will extend its need-blind admissions policy to all international applicants. Previously, only applicants from the United States, Canada, and Mexico received a need-blind consideration on their applications, and students from all other countries were subject to a cap on their financial aid. Dartmouth has also eliminated its leave term earning expectations, essentially giving its financial aid students the equivalent of an additional $2,950 scholarship to pursue their dreams during one off-term in their Dartmouth career. This term, which can be taken at any point, can be spent volunteering, doing research, working at an unpaid internship, or simply lying poolside, mojito in hand. Despite the many changes, study abroad and health insurance assistance from the College remain the same. Under both current and new policies, Dartmouth contributes to half of the costs of each, leaving the remainder up to the students’ families or loans. Work-study expectations and the College’s policy on outside scholarships also remain ossified. According to the New York Times, this new plan will cost the College an additional $10 million per year, financed by an increased annual draw from the College’s $3.8 billion endowment. It is in tune with a substantial increase in financial aid costs over the past decade—rising nearly three-fold from $24.5 million a year in 1998, to $61 million today.

Students to Crown Mr. and Ms. Moose

This year, the students of Dartmouth are bestowed with the opportunity to proclaim emphatically their school spirit in the intervals between their disgusting binges. In the midst of Winter Carnival’s festivities, on Friday, February 8th, Dartmouth Hall will be hosting the “1st Annual Mr. and Ms. Big Green School Spirit Competition.” Yes, Student Assembly had something to do with this.

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