Lacessit Me: Operation Gadfly

Monday, September 22, 2008

The stupid party—that’s us if we’re to believe John Stuart Mill’s take on conservatives. To a philosophy department chairman from Duke University, the so-called stupidity of conservatives explains their gapping absence from college campuses: “We try to hire the best, smartest people available…. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.” We wonder if admissions committees employ similar reasoning to the students they admit.

But we don’t need the Duke professor’s loopy logic to know the academy is loaded with liberals. The good news is, Dartmouth tends to attract a rather moderate and pragmatic student body (the loons, as is their wont, are drawn to Brown and Columbia); the bad news is, as Yeats says, the most vocal students, professors, and administrators are full of passionate intensity raging on the fringes of their leftist ideologies, and they are the ones you hear and the ones who dominate the “public conversation” on this campus. These people, not easily contented, are certainly less than happy with Dartmouth and what they see as the College’s infinite problems: Greek life and its “patriarchic issues,” or the campus’ “gender issues,” or its “classist issues,” or whatever the “issue” du jour is…the possibilities are endless.

When a paper like ours challenges the malcontents’ incessant caterwauling and social engineering, they cry that our humble paper is either sexist, or homophobic, or racist—or something worse, because there is always something worse: that we tend conservative, for instance. Really, here at The Review, we just love the school they tolerate, and don’t want them to change Dartmouth into…Harvard.

Though, to the regret of our detractors, The Review is neither sexist, homophobic nor racist, but we certainly do not suffer moping fools gladly. The problem is, a college campus is perhaps the greatest locus of bumbling and pretentious fools, the kind Socrates was constantly bitch-slapping, questioning, and exposing as hypocrites and idiots, often with hilarious results. We like to think we’re following in his great tradition by playing the role of the gadfly. Of course, Socrates died for his efforts—and though we hope to have a happier end, we know it takes no small degree of courage to take on the morose crazies, especially when their hyperbolic cries of sexism, homophobia, racism, and what-have-you seem to drown ours out. In that case, we just talk among ourselves, crack a joke, and have a beer. This is college after all, not the Cold War Hanover-style—and humor and fun will always win more arguments than strident rallies and protests.

But still, The Dartmouth Review has work to do, especially in the upcoming year, as the College searches for a new president to replace James Wright, Dartmouth’s current “make Dartmouth a research university in all but name” president. If the administration and trustees, who are orchestrating the search, try to continue the legacy of President Wright in the new president, you can be sure we at The Review will take them on…again. The problem with President Wright, for the benefit of the freshmen who may not know, was that he sought to dilute, and in some cases eliminate, the qualities that make Dartmouth unique; in fact, the very things that make Dartmouth, Dartmouth.

Despite what you have heard from administrators, alums, or the DOC cabal that welcomed you to campus, The Dartmouth Review is not an organ of bigoted meanies—we are simply a group of student-writers that love this college and want to remind others why this place is so great. Granted, we step on some toes, but to quote a former TDR editor, “sometimes The Review has to go too far so that others will go far enough.” That is our editorial motto in a nutshell.

Fleshed out, it means: we have a healthy skepticism of do-gooder authority, with college administrators and academic ideology ranking chief among such authority; we respect and adhere to the traditions that have defined the College, and make her what she is today, a place we all love; change and novelty, for the sake of change and novelty alone, are sources of anxiety to us; ideas that have been tested and refined by time are of more value to us than the flippant and ephemeral tantrums of trivial and angry college activists; we believe in a classical education, and we call political correctness out for what it is across campuses nationwide (see page 7); on a campus, where intellectual elitism and snobbery can solidify into the order of the day, we give space to the eternal voice crying in the wilderness. Above all, we are guided by our love of Dartmouth and her evergreen spirit—so we like to have a good time, and raise some eyebrows while we’re at it.

If this sounds all right to you, freshmen, then we invite you to join our ranks. To the budding writers, reporters, thinkers, or those who want to stop by for some free food and a good time: we welcome you first to Dartmouth, and second to the voice of Dartmouth’s past and future: The Dartmouth Review. Operation gadfly is underway.

We’ll drink to that.

Lacessit Me: Operation Gadfly

Article Tools

Related Articles