Dartmouth's Silly Season
By Emily Esfahani-Smith | Monday, May 5, 2008
Late summer, every year, a span of time exists that exasperates editors at publications across the nation: it is called the silly season, when writers pursue the outlandish, lacking anything of substance to say. Here at Dartmouth, the silly season comes earlier than elsewhere and often, affecting not our journalists, but our community at large. Either sheer boredom or the unseasonable weather inclines otherwise intelligent people to squeeze the silly-sponge for every last drop of angry meaninglessness.
Exhibit one: the now infamous Bonnie Lam letter, which was an appeal for the like-minded to vote for the board-packers fellow travelers slate for the Association of Alumni (vote from now until June 5). Ms. Lam began circulating a letter that may or may not have been sponsored or written by the ever-clever Dartmouth Undying, a group in favor of ending the lawsuit against board-packing and presumably speaking in the voice of the royal “we.” In the letter, Ms. Lam claims to represent student leaders of differing backgrounds and political affiliations across campus in her disavowal of the suit; in an e-mail with the letter attached, she politely asks, “Please DO NOT distribute it to people you KNOW would not be receptive.” Oh, those people.
On to exhibit two. Can it be called anything less than silly, Monte Pythonesque really, when a top-flight law firm and a major investment firm’s main-man are reduced to getting their news from this humble college paper, The Dartmouth Review? I’m talking about Putnam’s top lawyer, James Carroll, and Putnam’s Board Chair, John Hill. Both expressed a burning desire to become a part of the Review’s legacy and have their writings published in The Dartmouth Review. We can’t even get the CEO and current Dartmouth Board of Trustees Chairman to speak to us, let alone pen editorials! But truth be told, these two would-be-journalists were neither entertaining nor very informative in their efforts. However, their two-cent submissions (in fact we wonder what their hourly billing rate actually was, and who was paying) were mean-spirited and dogged enough that it was almost funny enough to print. So of course we did! (See page 2.)
How could we deny these established and esteemed men the iconoclastic opportunity of getting a leg-up in the Ivy League press? In the future, though, I do ask that free-lance submissions to the Review be submitted directly to me, the editor of the Review, and not to the Dartmouth Public Affairs Office to strong-arm us. Moreover, if we are going to honor these circuitous requests in the future, we will insist that the Dartmouth Public Affairs Office not leak these submissions to their house journal, the Daily Dartmouth, before we print them—even if the Daily D’s editors agree in advance to toe the administration-line in its propaganda hit-jobs, as they did in the bit of dishonest drive entitled, “Haldeman ’70 denies connection to scandal” (April 23, 2008).
Exhibit three: On April 27, 2008, the Review broke the news that Professor Priya Venkatesan—being rather put-out upon discovering that Dartmouth is in fact not a real research university and that, equally bad, Dartmouth is a veritable coven of bigoted buffoons incapable of making her feel special and loved—is now threatening to sue her knuckle-dragging students for violating “anti-federal discriminatory laws” (see page 8-9). The Review, ever sensitive to shrill cries of the highly sensitive, has conducted a swift and immediate investigation of such “anti-federal” laws. After having editors working on this one in shifts for days-on-end, we have determined that the existence of such laws shows a blatant disregard and contempt for the ordinary decencies of civil life, not seen since the worst excesses of the French Revolution, and the second season of Desperate Housewives (!).
We take a firm editorial stance against such anarchy, bad taste, and poor form in general. As for Dr. Venkatesan (Ph.D.) who, in one of her publications, thoughtfully asks, “Is there room for literary theory within the framework of the laboratory?”—the Review kindly and politely refers her to the other campus rags, which, like the doctor, publish articles that are too ‘deep’ for us to ‘get.’
Basically, we couldn’t make this stuff up if we wanted to—and trust us, we want to more than we should. So for reasons that may or may not be obvious, here at the Review, we love Dartmouth’s version of the silly season, and even each actor playing his part. We hope the College and its deep thinkers keep throwing their silly our way. n
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