Politics as Usual
By A.S. Erickson | Monday, August 11, 2008
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” Dick the Butcher ranted to a crowd of his cohorts. Taking pot-shots at lawyers has a long history; stretching back to Shakespeare and beyond, I’m sure. There has certainly been no shortage at Dartmouth as of late. In this case, Dick lists this as one of the great facets of his utopia. It was a crowd pleaser.
As attractive a possibility as that is for some people, it is a condition of the time we live in that the law profession reaches ever-greater heights of importance and necessity. Yet that doesn’t mean people aren’t weary of the seemingly ceaseless parade of litigation throttling the country. They are. And they were evidently weary of the Association of Alumni’s (AoA) lawsuit against the Board of Trustees.
The AoA lawsuit may have been about parity, but for many alumni the recent AoA elections had nothing to do with Board of Trustee proportions, and it had everything to do with the disgrace brought upon the College by the lawsuit.
For the most part, I will resist the temptation to parse the meaning of the overwhelming defeat of the ‘Parity’ slate (how many of the 60 percent were simply against the lawsuit, how many are against proportional representation, etc.), and simply note that the recent victory of the ‘Unity’ slate over the ‘Parity’ slate delivered the lawsuit’s coup de grace.
More interesting than reading subtleties into the vote, is figuring out where the parity side went wrong. The fascinating thing about this vote is how many people voted against their self-interest. It would be just as strange if, all of a sudden, American voters decided that they no longer wanted to elect their own senators and repealed the 17th amendment. That’s not to say there aren’t arguments for removing this right from voters—and it’s not to say that there aren’t reasonable arguments for doing away with proportional representation on the Board of Trustees (though the Board itself has failed to come up with any such arguments)—but it’s curious that voters would deem themselves incapable of making such decisions. Yet that is precisely what graduates of Dartmouth have done.
During post mortem examinations of political defeat, it’s always tempting to cry afoul of the other side or to wring one’s hands at the ignorance displayed by the voters. But that is just the problem: what was fundamentally a non-political issue became a political lightning rod. The other side didn’t play dirty, and intellectually honest people could find themselves on either side of this issue.
In a sense, the parity side was hoisted by its own petard. The excesses of their rhetoric and—more awkwardly painful—the excessive rhetoric of their ideological allies painted the College in an impossibly unattractive light. Current students and recent graduates couldn’t possibly take seriously all of the Doomsday bombast floating around. It just didn’t jive with their Dartmouth experience.
Most problematic, however, was the implicit (and sometimes explicit) bundling of the petition trustee movement with the back-and-forth baby-boomer culture war. Instead of greater versus lesser administrative transparency it was right versus left; instead of larger versus smaller bureaucracy it was right versus left; instead of great professors versus ideological hacks it was right versus left; it became political. And the parity side invited this upon itself.
What was essentially an issue of better management at Dartmouth became a political cause and a rallying call for the institutionalized right. Editorials were published in right-leaning editorial pages; calls to arms were issued by right-leaning think tanks; and the some of the petition candidates looked like tools of the institutional right. In short, the call for proportional representation, which is in the best interest of all alumni, was conflated with unpopular right-wing causes like the war in Iraq. It’s no wonder, then, that the vote turned out the way that it did.
Dartmouth doesn’t benefit from being at the center of a political battle. Students don’t benefit if the College is dragged now more to political right and now more to the political left. Students benefit from free, frank, and open discussion. Political orthodoxy is always oppressive, no matter the particular flavor.
Undoubtedly the biggest advantage to having the lawsuit now behind us is the renewed focus on the things that brought about T.J. Rodgers initial run for the Board, much of which was obscured by the lawsuit. So what has the lawsuit been obscuring? Well, there are several things. Bureaucracy continues unchecked. Numbers from the Office of Institutional Research show steady growth in non-faculty staff over the last four years. Not only that but the administration is cleansing its own ranks of innovators. The recent dismissal of Andy Harvard ‘71, Director of the Outdoor Programs Office (OPO), provides a case in point. During his four years at the OPO, which oversees the DOC, Harvard restructured the Outing Club to the point that it was almost entirely student run. More than that, he was wildly popular with DOC members and an excellent fundraiser.
Chris Polashenski ’07, the force behind the new Harris Cabin, voiced common fears in a letter circulated amongst DOC members: “Andy promoted bottom-up student leadership in a world which increasingly promotes top-down staff driven activities . . . . I greatly suspect and fear that his vision for a club which is student run and which expands and changes to always better itself, more than the flaws of his methods, is why he was fired.”
The administration, through Acting Dean of Student Life Joe Cassidy, remains stonily silent about the reasons behind Harvard’s departure. Though this lack of transparency may be business as usual in Parkhurst, it bodes ill for the ongoing presidential search: innovative leaders beware, Dartmouth is not the place for you.
Another trend was highlighted by the recent departure of philosophy professors Julia Driver and Roy Sorenson; namely, the College’s inability to hold on to big name professors. James Wright’s tenure has been marked by Dartmouth’s physical expansion and renovation. With the recent unveiling of plans for the urban chic Visual Arts Center, the administration’s focus continues to be on all things architectural. But students don’t choose Hanover over New Haven because they’re drawn by Dartmouth’s urban aesthetic. The next leader of the College, in contrast, will need to focus on Dartmouth’s intellectual expansion and renovation. World-class facilities make a college pretty. World-class faculty make a college thrive.
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