Week in Review
Monday, May 19, 2008
Venkatesan’s Class Given Pass/Fail
The college notified students of Priya Venkatesan’s winter Writing 5 class that they will be given the option of simply receiving credit or keeping their original grade for the class. Concern over grades arose during winter term when students found their grades to be inconsistent with the feedback they were receiving. Furthermore, their final grades weren’t even consistent with the inconsistent grades that they had already received during the term.
For the College, arriving at a decision addressing grades was difficult. Some students suggested they should add about six points to their final grade, the difference between the fall and winter term medians. This idea was not considered by administrators. Some students felt that students with good grades should not be allowed to keep them, citing they most likely didn’t deserve them and just didn’t talk in Venkatesan’s class, and therefore did not upset her. In a meeting discussing how to handle Venkatesan’s erratic grading, one student volunteered simply to remove any evidence she was in the class at all, and to make up the credit elsewhere in her D-Plan.
Venkatesan awarded grades in the range of A through C, and while these letters don’t carry the threatening double meaning of the “two t’s in Gattaca,” (See: “TDR Interview: Priya Venkatesan, In Her Own Words” May 5, 2008) students in the lower spectrum of the range felt the grades they received during the term could not have landed them their final grade. The college’s decision to grant Pass/Fail credit seems to be the most pleasing, giving some students the option simply to receive credit without the grade, and other more fortunate students the option to keep the grade given by Venkatesan.
Gays Almost Protest the Blood Drive
Gay students nearly protested the Red Cross’s recent blood drive because of FDA regulations that prohibit homosexuals from donating blood. Gay men are sixty times more likely to have HIV than heterosexual men. But hey, if the forward march of political correctness has to put more innocent people in the path of HIV, then that’s what we have to do. That’s progress, after all.
That Diet Looks Fat on You, Seriously
In a nation riddled with obesity and horrible eating habits, one student community at Dartmouth has found the answer: protest dieting.
International No Diet Day encourages students to—what else—acknowledge their own inner perfection…despite how they look on the outside. For one day students dismiss dieting as “dangerous” and “ineffective,” taking the fork back up for some glorious, pie-filled romp. The Eating Disorder Peer Advisors (EDPAs) and College Health Services organized Dartmouth’s annual No Diet Day in Collis Common Ground last Monday to “raise awareness about the adverse effects of dieting.”
Kari Jo Grant, the Coordinator for Health Education, who oversees the EDPAs, commented that Dartmouth “intend[s] to make people aware of the dangers of dieting.” Finally, the truth: “You discover you don’t need to diet because it can be harmful to you.”
Instead, pick up a chocolate bar in one hand and a donut in the other. Go crazy. And when you’re done, when you just can’t quite stuff anymore down that cholesterol-coated throat, then—and only then—can you can finally bask in the fulfillment of your duty to yourself. Mission Accomplished. Pat yourself on the back: you are beautiful in every single way, and Christina Aguilera isn’t the only one to think so—Ms. Grant is right there too!
The event included various exhibits meant to dispel the “myths” surrounding improper dieting. A documentary, “Dieting: At War With Our Bodies,” was played throughout. Grant commented, “The documentary describes people’s struggles with dieting in the past. It also details the psychology behind dieting, why it doesn’t work and why it isn’t effective.” The kicker: anyone who attended the event had the choice of pledging not to diet…for the remainder of that day. The Review is curious: what exactly does not dieting mean? Making sure to overeat? Judging from the array of unhealthy food items offered at the event, this is the only thing we at the Review can assume—although, we did spot some diet coke floating around!
In the end, we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that the social stigmas surrounding eating disorders have finally been vanquished from Dartmouth. Campus self-esteem? Now restored. Anorexics’ self-esteem? Still in shambles. Everyone else? Back to the fro-yo machine, as you were. In the meantime, for those interested, The Dartmouth Review is preparing our annual “Solidarity against Fat Day.” The event brings awareness to those oppresive encounters with girlfriends or best-friends in which they ask, “does this [insert inconsequential item of clothing] make me look fat?” We will celebrate this day by offering carrots to said girlfriends and best-friends—one carrot for each time we’ve lied.
Sounds, Drugs, Feelings
Dartmouth linguistics professor Lewis Glinert recently submitted the new development in cancer research to the Dartmouth community. His paper, “Chemotherapy as language: Sound symbolism in cancer medication names,” claims prominent chemotherapy drugs are named in a way that convinces patients they are less damaging and harsh.
Gilnert explains as follows: “In daily life, we are constantly bombarded by very carefully orchestrated sound effects. We want doctors and patients to be aware of this, and while the people regulating our drugs in the FDA do not generally concern themselves with the more subtle sound effects that we are talking about, we think they should be aware of it too.”
The paper describes how high frequencies of “harder” sounds like ‘k,’ ‘p,’ and ‘t’ and low occurrences of “softer” sounds like ‘g,’ characterize drug titles. This, apparently, tells the patient that the drugs will be effective quickly—while in reality they require long, difficult treatments. Who knew.
[Insert hidden agenda here: those nefarious drug companies and their insidious lies just don’t know where to stop]. Back to the week piece: “As opposed to the ‘g’ sound, the vocal chords are not vibrating with the harder, ‘voiceless’ sounds such as ‘k,’” Glinert says. “We hypothesize that the ‘g’ sound suggests slowness or heaviness...There is very little awareness in the medical world about how much language affects health outcomes,” Glinert continues. “One day maybe medical schools will offer serious communications skills to doctors, but that’s a subject that is still in its infancy.”
Gilnert’s office has reportedly been flooded with hand-written ‘Thank You’ notes, suggesting cancer patients and their families everywhere are deeply indebted to this monumental discovery.
Now if only the PATRIOT Act could be renamed something more reassuring.
Shippenberg University Suppresses Speech
Shippenburg University has a history of playing fast-and-loose with the First Amendment, particularly its freedom of speech clause. In 2004, a settlement was reached after the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction against the university, ordering the administration not to enforce parts of the speech code deemed unconstitutional. Now the school has opted to disregard both this agreement and the Constitution once again, by reintroducing language into their speech policy forbidding any language that might “harass or help create conditions that support the harassment of another person,” “verbal comments…which are unwelcome,” and behavior “that creates a hostile environment as perceived by the victim.”
The public school has encountered this new round of legal trouble because it told a Christian organization how to apportion leadership positions regardless of the group’s religious inclinations. The school expelled students in charge of the group because the group wanted to reserve a majority of the leadership for men. Shippenburg has repeatedly declared that its students are “encouraged to engage in sustained, critical, and independent search for knowledge”; this just happens to mean outlawing “emotional abuse” and mandating that the university’s positions “will be mirrored in [the students’] attitudes and behaviors.” After all, what else is higher education for if not the selective prescription and proscription of “free speech?” Perhaps they can supply the boots that will stamp on the faces belonging to the rest of us.
Green ‘08 Successfully Pushes for Transparency
Student Assembly ex-President Travis Green ’08 presided over a fairly calm campus during his tenure. He successfully steered the Assembly away from controversies that SA had little to do with—the Beta or Trustee controversies, for example. Apparently all was not quiet on the SA front, however. Green successfully negotiated with the administration regarding the release of the College’s biannual Senior Survey.
Only the most recent survey, conducted in 2006, has been released so far, but already some striking themes have emerged, most of which will be no secret to Dartmouth students. The area that the College struggles with most is advising, both pre-major and major. Perhaps the Daniel Webster Program has come at the right time (see TDR 4/6/08).
Graduating students rank the school most highly in the abroad programs and general faculty availability. Perhaps the most surprising statistic considering the recent uproar about social spaces was how many people considered Dartmouth’s social scene one of its best aspects: it came behind only extra-curricular activities in Campus Life.
Both Green and the administration should be applauded for this step toward greater transparency. We encourage you to read the report for yourself; it can be found at http://dartlog.net/2008/05/more-transparency-on-way.php.
Harvard and not Harvard
Manhattan Media recently acquired 02138, a “Vanity Fair for Harvard alums.” The quarterly magazine has profiled such luminaries as the freshly famous Eliot Spitzer, among others. The magazine announced the Harvard 100 upon its founding less than two years ago, sending each honoree a complimentary bottle of scotch. They know how to treat their own, and apparently how to spot them too. This is from the inaugural issue: “We realized that we had started dividing everyone we met, read about, saw on TV, and heard about at dinner parties into two categories, ‘Harvard’ and ‘not Harvard.’” Now, if only they knew how to hang out, they could put that scotch to good use. Manhattan Media plans to increase production to six issues per year, two more issues than the folks down in Cambridge had previously blessed us with. Our reaction? Heightened indifference.
Gays and Blacks Unite to Fight Evil
Hoping to stimulate communications between the gay and black communities at Dartmouth, music professor Steve Swayne talked at Cutter-Shabazz during PRIDE week about his experiences as a gay, black, religious man. During his presentation, titled “Invisible Identities: Exploring Race and Sexuality,” Swayne spoke about how gay and black communities should not oppose each other, striving to have their voices heard in the greater community. Swayne suggested each group try to understand the other. Student reactions to Swayne’s suggestions were positive, with many students agreeing he addressed the correct issues: an admittedly hard bar to get over when he chose the presentation himself.
The event, organized by the Office of Black Student Advising, the Afro-American Society and the organizers of PRIDE week, was a collaborative attempt to bridge relationship between black and gay students. When we asked participants of PRIDE week if this “relationship” between the black and gay student groups on campus was homosexual or heterosexual, one participant responded “that’s what she said.” Professor Swayne’s presentation was typical of the many others put on during PRIDE week, a week promoting gay awareness among students.
PRIDE week ended with the perfect flourish: a dance party at Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. Where else?
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