The Dartmouth Review Interviews Tagg Romney

Dean Johnson Knows What You Want

"I get it"Although students have doubted many of Dean Johnson’s controversial policies, especially the “harm reduction policies” implemented this past summer (while three fourths of the student body was off campus); there is no need to worry because Supreme Overlord Dean Johnson knows exactly what the students want!

“There is what I like to call a silent majority of students who are 110 percent behind this policy,” Johnson said in an interview with the Daily D. “But they say it to me — they don’t necessarily say it publicly.”

So, for all of you who don’t think that Dean Johnson is taking student input into account, don’t fret. She will craft policies based around exactly what the student body and this nebulous “silent majority” want.

Well, as long as what they want is what she wants, too.

After many students cited costs as a reason against the proposed rule requiring licensed bartenders to serve hard alcohol at parties, Johnson reassured students that “we won’t let the need for financial subsidies prevent us from going forward.”

“Going forward” must mean whatever Johnson wants it mean, because I have encountered very few students who support her vision. In fact, it is much more common for students to voice concerns about not only the direction of Johnson’s plan, but also its lack of transparency and cooperation with the student body.

Perhaps we as students are not doing a good enough job of taking a stand against predatory administrative measures, but a culture in which the Dean of the College claims to best know what we want, when the truth is clearly opposite, is distressing.

If changes are to take place, it is imperative that the student body’s input not just ostensibly adds to the process, but guides it the entire way. Perhaps we are too busy with studying and other commitments, or maybe we are just being apathetic, but we cannot let an overbearing and indifferent administration gloss over student concerns.

In other news, there is a great Twitter account profiling the life of Dean Charlotte "I get it" Johnson.

-- Carl E. Marlborough IV

Blowing the Whistle

Today, Business Insider's sad junior writer covering the Dartmouth beat stumbled across another gem:

In short, a group of disgruntled Dartmouth College employees are "blowing the whistle" on what they allege to be a compromised College Endowment investment process. In particular, they released an open letter to the New Hampshire Attorney General detailing their accusations—conflicts of interest arising from the presence of a number of asset managers on the Board of Trustees, and a disproportionate allocation of endowment money to their funds. The implication  that board members are funneling assets into their stewardship - is by no means trivial.

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Irony and Agriculture

I hope he packed his SNAP Card.

To the interminable list of things that government does not do well, we can now safely add another item: irony.

Writing in Friday’s issue of The New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd revealed some interesting statistics about the nature of New York State’s food stamp program. While criticizing Governor Andrew Cuomo for his support of regulations that require recipients of New York State food stamps to submit fingerprints as part of a reformed application process, Ms. Dowd lamented that such an onerous requirement inhibits American families from “getting the help they truly need.” Citing the Governor’s own report, she noted that more than 1.4 million or 30 percent of families in the state fail to receive the benefits for which they are eligible. Rather than explaining how the fingerprinting policy was responsible the lack of participation, however, Ms. Dowd became far too preoccupied with pedantic bouts of asinine moralizing to make the connection apparent. Nonetheless, an implicit association emerged: by making the application more-fraud resistant, Cuomo and his allies in the Statehouse are working ceaselessly to withhold food subsidies from their constituents. 

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