An Interview with Nate Fick '99

By Adam I. W. Schwartzman

The Dartmouth Review: In what capacity have you been involved with the College since graduation? 

Nate Fick: I’ve ben on the Board of Visitors of the Rockefeller Center since 2006 or 2007. Rocky had a big impact on my life—I went to see a talk there in the late ‘90s when a journalist named Tom Ricks, who was then the Wall Street Journal’s Pentagon correspondent, came up to campus and talked about the Marines. Attending his talk when I was an undergraduate was actually one of the things that led me to join the Marines after graduation. Rocky played such a pivotal role in my life that when I had the chance to stay involved as an alum, I jumped at the chance.

TDR: You’ve highlighted administrative transparency as an essential component of Dartmouth. As a trustee, what steps are you interested in taking to ensure such transparency?

Fick: I run a small company right with about 50 employees and a 15-person Board of Directors. When I was in the Marines, I ran military organizations of between 50 and 100 people. I’ve always found that better policies resulted from a more inclusive process and you got more buy in when people knew what was going on. I think its human nature. We want to be included in decision-making, we want to understand what’s happening, and I think transparency makes for better decisions and results that stick. As philosophi cal principle, I think its something that’s part of good management and good leadership. In terms of what you can do, from the standpoint of a trustee, frequent interaction with all of the different constituent groups on campus is important: students, faculty, administrators. I respect that there are decisions that have to be made within the privacy of the boardroom—that’s just part of governance—but my hope is that I can be a very present and very engaged member of the Board, whether it’s giving out my personal email address or my personal phone number, just making myself available to students. I want to be free and willing to engage with people anytime.

TDR: Are you concerned about President Kim’s departure?

Fick: I’m not concerned about President Kim’s departure. I had been looking forward to working with him, frankly, and I have met with him a couple of times throughout [the trustee election] process. His nomination to lead the World Bank surprised me, but I think—and this is going to sound like a cliché—I’ve gone through enough leadership transitions to know that no single person is ever indispensible. Even when you have a respected and valued leader move on, that open seat represents an opportunity. I think we need to focus now on filling the president’s seat with the best candidate we can find and I think we’re going to attract a lot of great candidates.

TDR: What qualifications are important to filling that role?

Fick: President Kim was a non-traditional candidate. He brought with him a background that was different from most university presidents. He’s also younger than most university presidents. It would be easy for us as a community to be gun shy about non-traditional or young candidates who, because of the stage in their career, are going to move onto something else eventually. I don’t think we should shy away from them. We should still look at the non-traditional, young candidates. Beyond that, you need someone with impeccable academic credentials. You need someone who is a capable manager and has demonstrated leadership ability. Management and leadership are two different things: you manage an organization, but you lead people. There are people who are great managers but not very good leaders and there are people who are good leaders but not very good managers. We need to hold out and find someone’s who’s both.

TDR: Does that involve looking internally, externally, or both?

Fick: Both. Drawing on my own experience—I’m doing a leadership search in my company right now—we’re looking both internally and externally because both kinds of candidates are valuable for different reasons. Internal candidates know the culture, they’ve come up in the organization, and they’re lower risk in a lot of ways because they’re more known to you. It also sends a valuable signal to demonstrate that you can promote from within and that upward mobility exists inside a company or university, but at the same time you shouldn’t limit yourself. Dartmouth is a respected enough institution that the world is our body of candidates. Bringing someone in from the outside injects a fresh perspective, new energy, and new enthusiasm. At the beginning of the process we should consider both internal and external candidates. 

TDR: Now to switch gears a little bit, you said in your statement to the Association of Alumni that you wanted to embrace traditions while innovating constantly, what did you mean by that?

Fick: I guess I’m shaped in that regard by time in the Marines. I don’t want to overdraw the comparison between the Marines and Dartmouth, but they’re about the same age. They were founded within six years of each other and they’re both organizations that pride themselves on their history and they draw a lot of their strength from their traditions and their culture. At the same time, if they’re going to win in what they do, if Dartmouth is going to win in what we do—in recruiting, retaining and educating the best students—and the Marine Corps is going to win the nation’s battles, it requires innovation. So, your tradition has to be a source of strength, it can’t be something that holds you back. And you have to simultaneously do both. You can’t lose sight of what made you great, but you can’t rest on your laurels, either. Doing something a certain way just because it’s the way you’ve always done it, in my book, isn’t a good enough reason. There’s inevitably a balance there you got to strike.

TDR: In that spirit, what traditions do you hold as the most important personally, and what do you hold as most important for Dartmouth? 

Fick: I’m a big fan of the D-plan. My sophomore summer meant a lot to me. It was one of the great bonding experiences of my life. One of Dartmouth’s defining competitive advantages is its geography, its place in Hanover, and everything that has to do with being in Hanover. The traditions having to do with Mount Moosilauke, freshman trips, and, getting back to the D-plan again, having an entire class up there in relative isolation for a summer, those things mean a ton. They make Dartmouth different from any other school. There isn’t any other school that brings world-class reputation, faculty and facilities to a remote location in Northern New England. So, I think that we need to play off that strength.

TDR: What about the Greek system?

Fick: I’m a fan of the Greek system. I know a lot of my social life at Dartmouth revolved around the Greek system. People are going to naturally associate and the efforts to ban or end the Greek system when I was an undergraduate were misguided. All you’re going to do is drive that activity off campus. You’re better off recognizing that adults—and students over 18 are adults—are free to associate. Obviously there are elements of it that need a little bit of oversight. Again, I was a member of an organization, the Marines, where there are rites of passage, rites of organization, and they actually have a valuable place in forming cohesion and building teams and building relationships. Then again, you’ve got to be attentive. They can cost a lot, and if you’re not using good judgment, you’re going to end up causing a lot of problems and hurting people. I think that gets back to that tension between tradition and innovation, and recognizing that traditions matter, but at the same time, you need to be careful that they evolve in the ways that our norms and our society evolve.

TDR: I’d like to tie that thought to something you just mentioned and also wrote about in your statement, which is the importance of attracting good talent to Dartmouth, whether it’s students, faculty, or administration. Do you think that goal is undermined by the recent hazing controversy?

Fick: I think that press matters and attention matters. In the same way that one student’s experience may not, in any way, reflect the experience of the broader student body, winning a football championship, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have a better experience at school because of the positive press that surrounds something like a high profile athletic victory. Dartmouth has to be really careful about how it is portrayed in the public mind. We do have this negative stereotype that we continue to adhere and play into the whole “Animal House” image, and it’s a cheap, easy trope for journalists to use. It’s an easy laugh line and it’s an easy metaphor to build a story around. I think it has negative repercussions and I think that it influences some of the college counselors, some of the high school teachers, coaches, some of the parents. It does matter, and I think we have to be careful about our public narratives and be conscious of our public image.

TDR: One thing you’ve mentioned in relation to both Dartmouth and the Marine Corps is “cultivating habits of the mind.” What do you—as a Classics and Government Major—think of that principle in light of your background and in light of Dartmouth’s commitment to the Liberal Arts.

Fick: I was a classics and government double major, and I have a deep, visceral belief in the value of a liberal arts education. The cliché is that the whole point of an education isn’t to teach you the facts; it’s to teach you how to think and to ground you in an intellectual tradition, to give you a framework with which to assimilate new ideas and think about new information. I haven’t encountered anything that beats a classical liberal arts education at doing that. I think that one of the great things about Dartmouth is its commitment to undergraduate teaching, its commitment to the undergraduate experience, and its commitment to a broad-based liberal arts education. I don’t think that that education and undergraduate commitment are mutually exclusive factors. I actually think that these two things are very closely tied, and are increasingly closely tied. Have you read the Steve Jobs biography by any chance? By Walter Isaacson?

TDR: No, I haven’t gotten a chance to yet.

Fick: One of things that really struck me in that book was Jobs’ sense that where he wanted to be was a nexus of the liberal arts, science, and technology. He wanted to combine technology and aesthetics in a way that would transform how human beings interact with technology and how they would access ideas. He makes a very compelling case in that book that science and the arts are not at diametrically opposed ends of the spectrum; they’re actually related. So, when Dartmouth invests in its hard science programs and invests in research, I actually that that strengthens the liberal arts curriculum.

TDR: So, I take it that you’re not wary of that trend towards the hard sciences?

Fick: I’m not, because I think that Dartmouth is strong enough to accommodate both. The old laugh line for decades has been “Don’t turn Dartmouth into Harvard!” I spent time at Harvard in graduate school, and I’d agree with that—don’t turn Dartmouth into Harvard. But I don’t think that strengthening our science programs and providing greater resources for research poses any risk of turning us into Harvard. The difference between Dartmouth and Harvard is not primarily one of research and science; it’s a difference of culture. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to losing that defining culture that makes Dartmouth special.

TDR: We’re winding down here, but is there anything that you want to jump in on immediately as a trustee? Something at the forefront of your mind?

Fick: I guess there are two things. One is something that is very near and dear to me, and one that is more a factor of circumstances. The factor of circumstances is the presidential search. I think that we all are going to find ourselves involved in a search for Dartmouth’s next leader, and that’s going to have be a top priority from Day 1. The second thing has been very much on my mind through this whole process and is one of things that Jim Wright did a great job of: encouraging veterans, especially wounded veterans, to continue their education, and to do it at Dartmouth. A Marine I served with is among those guys who came to Dartmouth and graduated after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think that’s important. It’s important to Dartmouth and it’s important to our whole society. I think that’s a moral obligation, and it’s something that I’d like to be attentive to as a new trustee.

TDR: Thank you very much for your time, Nate

Presidential Search: Who's Next?

By J.P. Harrington

What do we need in our next president? The best place to begin is with the clear failures of this president – and how best to remedy the mess he left us in. The first clear qualification for the next president is a simple one, but important, particularly since it seemed to have been ignored in the selection of Dr. Kim. Our next president needs to want to be the president of the College.

It seems shocking that I have to even state what should be obvious – but after the past three years, it needed to be said. How many times did I see Dr. Kim walking around campus in three years? Never. Even when I attended a lunch with Dr. Kim and about ten other students, I was struck not by his care for Dartmouth nor by his intellect, but instead by his lack of engagement with the students. His face dull, Dr. Kim uttered a few platitudes about change, never forgetting to tout his seemingly interminable list of committees meant to eventually bring change, but never truly engaged with the students. The other students passionately clamored for reform, for understanding, for changing the Greek system, but all they got was a half-hearted politically vague promise for some sort of eventual reform. Perhaps another committee.

Yet, when I would later see president Kim at a fundraiser in my home state of Colorado, I could barely recognize him. His face was beaming. It was a smile a minute as he gripped the hands of potential donors and parents and extolled the liberal arts system. The speech was brilliant – everything I wanted to hear from the president of my college. The problem was: I’d heard it all before. It was the same promises and fancy phrases of his matriculation speech. Nothing had changed in over a year.

This time, the trustees need to select a candidate that truly wants to be President of Dartmouth College. Not just president of some prestigious school that can catapault him to an international position. Not just president for three years and then the next job title. No, we need someone who is devoted to Dartmouth. And that’s why we need an alum. We need someone who has been to Dartmouth, loves Dartmouth and bleeds green. Not crimson or brown.

There are many arguments for a president who is a Dartmouth alum, but the two most pressing are our culture and our prestige. Dartmouth has a unique culture. Even the most humble among us must agree upon that. We’re isolated in the middle of New Hampshire, we’re insular, and we even have our own language. Who doesn’t remember going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas break only to discover that words like ‘A-side’ or ‘grim’ or ‘facetime’ were about as foreign to our old friends as that obscure foreign language we had just decided to study in college? That culture, beloved as it is by us, is different from the generic collegial culture. We need someone who understands and embraces that difference. As odd as it may have appeared in attack pieces published in leftwing news sources of debatable merit, our culture is ours – and we still love it. We need someone who will defend it as ardently as we students do. Someone who experienced that culture firsthand.

And while we’re on the topic of the current press surrounding our college on a hill, it’s necessary to stress that we can’t select another prestige-seeking candidate. We are currently in the midst of a firestorm of public opinion – that much is obvious. While now is neither the time nor the place to comment on that specific issue, it is clear that we need a president who is willing to withstand the public pressure to force some sort of unnecessary, irrational, and impractical supposed solution upon the student body. If we’re not careful, the dreaded Student Life Initiative may rise from the grave to stumble over to Webster Avenue. That’s why the next President of Dartmouth College needs to be an alum. An alum who loves this college more than themselves or their future career will stand firm to public opinion and choose the correct path forward. Not the correct path forward for themselves, but for the College.

But what exactly is that path forward? Well, allow me to make a few proposals. We need a president with business acumen. Someone who has run a real business efficiently, as opposed to a series of non-profits or even worse, other educational institutions. Why? Dartmouth needs to be set on a firm footing financially. We’ve still only made about 85% of the cuts that Kim introduced and DDS needs to be reformed substantially. We’ve allowed the SEIU to dictate the meal plans of students which has resulted in a system with less meal times, less good food, and less choice. Not to mention higher prices. As students attempt to flee the meal plan, expect an exodus off-campus that will threaten our precious culture and a corresponding decline in food quality as less and less students buy into the system. We need someone who can come in and allow free competition. More small vendors like KAF. A return to the a la carte system. An increase in efficiency – and the courage to fight unions for the benefit of students. Perhaps someone with experience in the world that works, to borrow a phrase from former Speaker of the House Gingrich, can understand that we the students are the College’s consumers. And the consumer is always right.

Finally, we also need a president who embraces the fact that Dartmouth is a college. We don’t call ourselves the College on the hill for nothing. Dartmouth isn’t a university and never should be. Our most recent president seemed to forget that at times. While he extolled the liberal arts system with his mouth, both his hands were pushing Dartmouth in a very distinct direction. In all my life, I’ve never heard of something that sounded so distinctly non-liberal artsy as The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science. In fact, I’m not entirely certain I would ever have heard of such a so-called field if it had not been for Dr. Kim. At least he taught me one thing in three years. Despite the joking attitude I have maintained towards this rather ridiculous expansion of the College’s offerings, it is a serious and troubling point.

Dartmouth is the last remaining bastion in the Ivy League of a liberal arts education. It’s what makes us difference. Small classes, interaction with professors, and interdisciplinary learning. We can’t compete with Harvard or Columbia in terms of research. And we shouldn’t. We offer a completely different product – and we need a President who can understand that. Perhaps someone who has been involved in a business can understand that we need to remain in our wheelhouse.

So, which alums could possibly fulfill this dual role of CEO and president of a liberal arts college? I can propose three: Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, and Dinesh D’Souza.

Let’s begin with Mr. Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Now on the face of it, I’m convinced that a certain contingent at the College will immediately begin protests at the very mention of Paulson’s name for the position. No doubt, these small, but loud protests would draw from the Occupy Dartmouth movement along with a few other centers of liberal ideology around campus, perhaps even the semi-dormant People’s Coalition. While I can at the very least praise the Occupiers for their longevity and devotion to their cause, I unfortunately cannot do the same for their abilities at fact-checking, debate or even making a logical argument. In a no-doubt vain hope to stave off the unwashed masses that would carry signs at these protests, I would just like to tout a few pieces of his record.

First of all, Paulson would embrace the liberal arts atmosphere of the College. Contrary to popular belief, Paulson wasn’t an Economics major. Instead, he was an English major – who later became the head of Goldman Sachs. Now, if that doesn’t speak worlds about the value of a liberal arts education, I don’t know what does. At the same time, Paulson was also a very successful offensive lineman who would win an All-American honorable mention (along with an All-Ivy and All-East award). Perhaps he could bring a much-need touch of experience to our lagging football team? At the same time, Paulson was a member of the Greek system and wouldn’t rush to end it merely to gain points with the loud, but marginal cohort of anti-Greeks on campus. Not to mention that Paulson would bring a much-need dollop of prestige to the College. His acceptance of the Presidency would reinforce the fact that we have a devoted alumni base – that every Dartmouth student loves Dartmouth and that even in its time of trouble, our most famous alumni will still step forward.

The same could be said of current Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner. It’s known that he will not remain a member of the Obama administration – and so we must wonder what his future plans are. While he lacks Paulson’s business experience, Geithner has spent a great deal of time in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve and could strengthen our economics department. At the same time, Geithner himself is a Government and Asian Studies double major. Again, another alumni who strongly believes in liberal arts – and without the baggage of working under George W. Bush or at Goldman Sachs, his selection would brook less protest from the Occupiers, etc.

Now, let’s turn to my last and no doubt, most controversial nomination: Dinesh D’Souza. He’s an English major who has published several best-selling books, has experience leading educational institutions, and has demonstrated his devotion to Dartmouth, continually returning to provide lectures. The firebrand academic, who is often more cool-headed than his opponents would prefer to acknowledge, has much more experience in the education sector than either Paulson or Geithner. D’Souza is a former editor of The Dartmouth Review, a former ad- visor to the Reagan administration, and at the moment the President of a private college at The King’s College in New York City. This small college focuses on liberal arts almost exclusively, offering majors in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Education) and MCA (Media, Culture and the Arts). D’Souza would have learned at King’s not only how to build a college around the study of liberal arts, but how to balance a budget without the massive amounts of resources of Dartmouth College. Nominating D’Souza would no doubt lead to protests among those who did not share his political philosophy – but that shouldn’t disqualify him as a candidate. In fact, aren’t colleges supposed to present all sides and theories to encourage thoughtful debate?

So, we have several choices from our alumni who could lead the College in a new direction away from the bureaucratic, university, and disengaged approach of Dr. Kim. All three of them care about the College. They all three have relevant experience and would bring a hint of prestige to our currently troubled school. Finally, we can be assured that none of them will bow to the popular press and attempt to impose radical, unnecessary, and ridiculous change on the student body simply to silence a PR nightmare or garner political approval for their next job. We need someone who is a loyal son of old Dartmouth and who will love her till death.

Presidential Search: Who’s Next?

What do we need in our next president? The best place to begin is with the clear failures of this president – and how best to remedy the mess he left us in. The first clear qualification for the next president is a simple one, but important, particularly since it seemed to have been ignored in the selection of Dr. Kim. Our next president needs to want to be the president of the College.

It seems shocking that I have to even state what should be obvious – but after the past three years, it needed to be said. How many times did I see Dr. Kim walking around campus in three years? Never. Even when I attended a lunch with Dr. Kim and about ten other students, I was struck not by his care for Dartmouth nor by his intellect, but instead by his lack of engagement with the students. His face dull, Dr. Kim uttered a few platitudes about change, never forgetting to tout his seemingly interminable list of committees meant to eventually bring change, but never truly engaged with the students. The other students passionately clamored for reform, for understanding, for changing the Greek system, but all they got was a half-hearted politically vague promise for some sort of eventual reform. Per- haps another committee.

Yet, when I would later see president
Kim at a fundraiser in my home state of Colorado, I could barely recognize him. His face was beaming. It was a smile a minute as he gripped the hands of potential donors and parents and extolled the liberal arts system. The speech was brilliant – everything I wanted to hear from the president of my college. The problem was: I’d heard it all before. It was the same promises and fancy phrases of his matriculation speech. Nothing had changed in over a year.

This time, the trustees need to select a candidate that truly wants to be President of Dartmouth College. Not just president of some prestigious school that can catapault him to an international position. Not just president for three years and then the next job title. No, we need someone who is devoted to Dartmouth. And that’s why we need an alum. We need someone who has been to Dartmouth, loves Dartmouth and bleeds green. Not crimson or brown.

There are many arguments for a president who is a Dartmouth alum, but the two most pressing are our culture and our prestige. Dartmouth has a unique culture. Even the most humble among us must agree upon that. We’re isolated in the middle of New Hampshire, we’re insular, and we even have our own language. Who doesn’t remember going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas break only to discover that words like ‘A-side’ or ‘grim’ or ‘facetime’ were about as foreign to our old friends as that obscure foreign language we had just decided to study in college? That culture, beloved as it is by us, is different from the generic collegial culture. We need someone who understands and embraces that difference. As odd
as it may have appeared in attack
pieces published in leftwing news
sources of debatable merit, our
culture is ours – and we still love it.
We need someone who will defend
it as ardently as we students do.
Someone who experienced that
culture firsthand.

And while we’re on the topic
of the current press surrounding
our college on a hill, it’s necessary
to stress that we can’t select an-
other prestige-seeking candidate.
We are currently in the midst of a
firestorm of public opinion – that
much is obvious. While now is
neither the time nor the place to
comment on that specific issue, it
is clear that we need a president
who is willing to withstand the public pressure
to force some sort of unnecessary, irrational, and impractical supposed solution upon the student body. If we’re not careful, the dreaded Student Life Initiative may rise from the grave to stumble over to Webster Avenue. That’s why the next President of Dartmouth College needs to be an alum. An alum who loves this college more than themselves or their future career will stand firm to public opinion and choose the correct path forward. Not the correct path forward for themselves, but for the College.

But what exactly is that path forward? Well, allow me to make a few proposals. We need a president with business acumen. Someone who has run a real business efficiently, as opposed to a series of non-profits or even worse, other educational institutions. Why? Dartmouth needs to be set on a firm footing financially. We’ve still only made about 85% of the cuts that Kim introduced and DDS needs to be reformed substantially. We’ve allowed the SEIU to dictate the meal plans of students which has resulted in a system with less meal times, less good food, and less choice. Not to mention higher prices. As students attempt to flee the meal plan, expect an exodus off-campus that will threaten our precious culture and a corresponding decline in food quality as less and less students buy in to the system. We need someone who can come in and allow free competition. More small vendors like KAF. A return to the a la carte system. An increase in efficiency – and the courage to fight unions for the benefit of students. Perhaps someone with experience in the world that works, to borrow a phrase from former Speaker of the House Gingrich, can understand that we the students are the College’s consumers. And the consumer is always right.

Finally, we also need a president who
embraces the fact that Dartmouth is a college. We don’t call ourselves the College
on the hill for nothing. Dartmouth isn’t a
university and never should be. Our most
recent president seemed to forget that at
times. While he extolled the liberal arts
system with his mouth, both his hands
were pushing Dartmouth in a very distinct
direction. In all my life, I’ve never heard
of something that sounded so distinctly
non-liberal artsy as The Dartmouth Center
for Health Care Delivery Science. In fact,
I’m not entirely certain I would ever have
heard of such a so-called field if it had
not been for Dr. Kim. At least he taught
me one thing in three years. Despite the joking attitude I have maintained towards this rather ridiculous expansion of the College’s offerings, it is a serious and troubling point.

Dartmouth is the last remaining bastion in the Ivy League of a liberal arts education. It’s what makes us difference. Small classes, interaction with professors, and interdisciplinary learning. We can’t compete with Harvard or Columbia in terms of re- search. And we shouldn’t. We offer a completely different product – and we need a President who can understand that. Perhaps someone who has been involved in a business can understand that we need to remain in our wheelhouse.

So, which alums could possibly fulfill this dual role of CEO and president of a liberal arts college? I can propose three: Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, and Dinesh D’Souza.
Let’s begin with Mr. Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Now on the face of it, I’m convinced that a certain contingent at the College will immediately begin protests at the very mention of Paulson’s name for the position. No doubt, these small, but loud protests would draw from the Occupy Dartmouth movement along with a few other centers of liberal ideology around campus, perhaps even the semi-dormant People’s Coalition. While I can at the very least praise the Occupiers for their longevity and devotion to their cause, I unfortunately cannot do the same for their abilities at fact checking, debate or even making a logical argument. In a no-doubt vain hope to stave off the unwashed masses that would carry signs at these protests, I would just like to tout a few pieces of his record.

First of all, Paulson would embrace the liberal arts atmosphere of the College. Contrary to popular belief, Paulson wasn’t an Economics major. Instead, he was an English major – who later became the head of Goldman Sachs. Now, if that doesn’t speak worlds about the value of a liberal arts education, I don’t know what does. At the same time, Paulson was also a very successful offensive lineman who would win an All-American honorable mention (along with an All-Ivy and All-East award). Perhaps he could bring a much-need touch of experience to our lagging football team? At the same time, Paulson was a member of the Greek system and wouldn’t rush to end it merely to gain points with the loud, but marginal cohort of anti-Greeks on campus. Not to mention that Paulson would bring a much-need dollop of prestige to the College. His acceptance of the Presidency would reinforce the fact that we have a devoted alumni base – that every Dartmouth student loves Dartmouth and that even in its time of trouble, our most famous alumni will still step forward.

The same could be said of current Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner. It’s known that he will not remain a member of the Obama administration – and so we must wonder what his future plans are. While he lacks Paulson’s business experience, Geithner has spent a great deal of time in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve and could strengthen our economics department. At the same time, Geithner himself is a Government and Asian Studies double major. Again, another alumni who strongly believes in liberal arts – and without the baggage of working under George W. Bush or at Goldman Sachs, his selection would brook less protest from the Occupiers, etc.

Now, let’s turn to my last and no doubt, most controversial nomination: Dinesh D’Souza. He’s an English major who has published several best-selling books, has experience leading educational institutions, and has demonstrated his devotion to Dartmouth, continually returning to provide lectures. The firebrand academic, who is often more cool-headed than his opponents would prefer to acknowledge, has much more experience in the education sector than either Paulson or Geithner. D’Souza is a former editor of The Dartmouth Review, a former ad- visor to the Reagan administration, and at the moment the President of a private college at The King’s College in New York City. This small college focuses on liberal arts almost exclusively, offering majors in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Education) and MCA (Media, Culture and the Arts). D’Souza would have learned at King’s not only how to build a college around the study of liberal arts, but how to balance a budget without the massive amounts of resources of Dartmouth College. Nominating D’Souza would no doubt lead to protests among those who did not share his political philosophy – but that shouldn’t disqualify him as a candidate. In fact, aren’t colleges supposed to present all sides and theories to encourage thoughtful debate?
So, we have several choices from our alumni who could lead the College in a new direction away from the bureaucratic, university, and disengaged approach of Dr. Kim. All three of them care about the College. They all three have relevant experience and would bring a hint of prestige to our currently troubled school. Finally, we can be assured that none of them will bow to the popular press and attempt to impose radical, unnecessary, and ridiculous change on the student body simply to silence a PR nightmare or garner political approval for their next job. We need someone who is a loyal son of old Dartmouth and who will love her till death.

 --J.P. Harrington

Dartmouth Psycho

By Joseph Rago '05

I know, you know, we all know all about the College’s work-hard, play-hard, murder-hard ethos. Yes, the fraternities are the center of the campus universe, engender a culture of narcissism and entitlement, and inspire crime rates rivaling those of lower Manhattan, circa the 1980s. Yes, these bastions of heteronormative oppression and white-male privilege condone hazing, substance abuse, anti-intellectualism, and murder. Yes, the violence that is at the heart of Dartmouth experience would be unacceptable anywhere else, but here, it’s just the way things are.

If I make the College sound like a place that would only appeal to a sociopath, oddly enough, it kind of grew on me. For the record, it no longer appeals to me today, in the unlikely event you haven’t heard. I now realize that I lost my dignity when I joined a Dartmouth fraternity, even my humanity, as did the countless people I murdered.

Yet who among us is fearless enough to defy Greekthink, no matter how unpopular his views might make him among his peers? Who will pop the Dartmouth bubble and make the students think, I mean really think, perhaps for the first time in their lives? Who will be the one to blow the whistle on Dartmouth’s murder culture, once and for all? Me, that’s who, reporting for duty.

In recent months I have trashed the College’s character and reputation in dozens of publications nationwide. Last week my anti-Dartmouth campaign culminated in 9,000-word tirade in that crown jewel of American journalism Rolling Stone, by Janet Reitman, last seen spinning the fake Duke lacrosse rape fiasco into a fable of racist depravity.

My penchant for unabridged truth-telling has ruffled a few feathers. I was prepared for some blowback, though honestly, I’m surprised. See, I’m not one of those people who abandons his beliefs the moment they are no longer convenient, like that guy who quit Goldman Sachs in the New York Times because his bonus was too small. I did admire the million-dollar book contract he landed. But that only goes to show that good things come to those who make lurid accusations in the most obnoxious and self-aggrandizing ways they can imagine. In my case call it Alma Matricide, with malice aforethought.

          * * *

When I fell off the turnip truck as a freshman, just a small-town boy from Anytown, U.S.A., I took the idea of creating an identity really seriously. By that I mean I was most concerned with finding and fitting into groups. I’ll admit it was a little disconcerting at first when kids mysteriously disappeared from frat basements and turned up days later stabbed, strangled, or drowned in the Connecticut River, though soon enough I got to climbing the greasy pole. Your status at the College, after all, is measured by how much you hang out, your sex exploits, and your cumulative body count.

Navigating this finely calibrated hierarchy could be daunting. One afternoon I recited my randy anecdotes about the girlfriends I’ve sated, in particular this really hot skanky cheerleader. In retrospect it was a mistake to do so at a Women and Gender Studies mixer. Another early misstep was mentioning an adolescent hit-and-run rampage, which seemed to shock all and sundry. Hard guys apparently consider vehicular manslaughter Mickey Mouse murder.

I rushed the house I did because I heard it had the hardest pledge term on campus. I won over most of the brotherhood because I am a handsome kid with tousled brown hair and a polite, almost self-effacing manner. I heard though the grapevine that certain elements in the house wanted to ding me——me of all people——mainly because they were perturbed by my habit of lurking behind shrubbery while brandishing sharp objects. A sophomore bumping off a brother normally would be a faux pas, but I did it on the sly, boring the holdouts to death with my cultural commentary.

On Sink Night my pledge brothers and I lined up in the chapter room known, somewhat ominously, as the “execution chamber.” A long silence was broken by a sharp report and I turned to see a poisoned dart protruding from the neck of the fellow next to me, before he slumped bonelessly to the floor. Within seconds other pledges joined him. From the gloom emerged the pledge master, holding a blowgun in one hand and a traditional fraternity murdering stick in the other. Its rich patina from decades of accumulated viscera flickered in the tea lights. “Tonight we murdered at random,” he explained. “From now on you’ll be murdered for cause.” I adjusted my collar nervously.

The abuses I witnessed since that evening could fill a motion-picture treatment (fingers crossed). In order to become a brother, I was forced to drop a quick six from goblets made of human skulls. The pledges were commanded to swim in a kiddie pool filled with organs and disarticulated limbs. Alongside the vomit-omelets——a playful but mysterious little dish——we were served, well, the Bloodiest Mary I’ve ever had. Basement practices such as “pulling the trigger” took on a whole new meaning. The upperclassmen made us play pong using a corpse as the median. Their demands on us were so unremitting that I could barely commit my extracurricular side-murders. We were forced to swallow nails, gravel, and broken glass until some of us ended up in the morgue. Sure, we could have refused these orders, but the peer pressure to murder or be murdered was too extreme for most to resist: It was the only way we could gain social acceptance. By Hell Night, only a handful of us were still breathing.

At last we were initiated, and since we had discarded any remnants of ourselves as individuals, right then and there I smothered the social chair with a throw pillow to affirm my new communal identity. As I descended into the gaping maw of frat life, my nights were soon consumed by binge murdering and other ritualistic high-risk murdering behaviors. I introduced hemlock to our champagne formal. As a prank, I submitted a torso instead of a term paper. I developed an illicit drug habit. I returned some videotapes. It’s true what they say: There really is nothing to do in Hanover but party and murder.

This one time, I wanted to shoot pool not people, so I retired to the billiards room and cut out some monster lines on a composite. There was a knock at the door. “Wait a sec,” I yelled. “I’m signifying my elitism.” Then this one brother burst in and called the cops. Who knows how he managed to evade the tractor beam of brotocol and bromocide and retain a shred of probity, the point is that I was hosed. It turns out that felony possession and witness tampering are not among the baptismal rites of the new power elite.

I was Parkhursted. I lost the Fisher Account that I had secured through corporate recruiting. The medical school turned down my standing offer to donate my brain to science as an unused specimen. It was so unfair, so hypocritical. The 1% gets away with murder, yet when I murder, I am the victim, in addition to my actual victim.

I needed a new identity, fast. My high-school classmates voted me most likely to nominate myself for a Nobel Prize in literature, so I started to write a generational tale in the manner of Scott Fitzgerald and Jay McInerney. And Bret Easton Ellis, why the hell not. My memoir will be a lyrical meditation on coming of age, haunted by a sense of loss. Publishers and literary agents will swoon over the tell-all chapters where I deconstruct the mystique of “the Ivy League frat boy” and disclose the casual, matter-of-fact way otherwise well-adjusted, high-achieving gentlemen become homicidal maniacs.

I handed over a dossier of my fraternity’s dysfunctions to the College establishment and described my crimes in graphic detail. I named names. I told them about the murdering stick, the kiddie pool, the human-skull goblets, the throw pillow, and Paul Allen. But they only looked at me like I was some troubled young man whose credibility and motives were open to question. One more teaching moment in Dartmouth’s lax “murderers will be murderers” discipline! I went berserk. I threw my Keystone in the dean’s face, stormed out, and, in an existential act of rebellion, bludgeoned an S&S officer to death with a plastic folding chair.

The Hanover police followed up with an investigation, despite the fact that the population of the Upper Valley had not plunged by a third or more due to murders, as I had claimed. I tipped them off about my fraternity’s plan to enact a bacchanal and sacrifice a virgin, but when an undercover team staked out the altar, no one showed. Don’t the powers that be understand that the cover-up is worse than the crime?

I could never get justice behind closed doors. I showed the crusading female journalist where all the bodies are buried. I found an elderly blogger who was so credulous that he would circulate any claim, no matter how far-fetched, even from an admitted murderer, so long as it made Jim Kim look bad.

In order to stop the killing, the system needs systematic reform. But the College cannot come to terms with the horror show because the fraternities enforce a code of silence. Undoubtedly my nuke-frat-row plan will also encounter resistance from some of the most reactionary fringes on campus, such as the student body. Two-thirds of the kids eligible to join a fraternity or sorority do, as generations did before them.

My critics concede that no institution is perfect, but note that the Greek system’s popularity wouldn’t be reaching modern heights if everyone was getting murdered all the time. It’s no mystery, they add: College students tend to like fun, and fraternities tend to be fun. Another part of it is that strong friendship is more important at Dartmouth than at other schools; and because Dartmouth people tend to care about each other, they generally have the moral sense and basic decency not to go on killing sprees, let alone perpetuate the other atrocities I say they do. Omerta!

          * * *

Then one day——maybe this is the psychosis talking——I looked around and saw that the College was beautiful, more beautiful than any place has any right to be. The nearby woods and hillsides were awash in green and gold, the sky was pale blue, almost white, and the breeze carried the smell of the elms and the pine boughs. Dartmouth’s culture was more beautiful still. Everybody around me was in high spirits, and everything about the old school inclined toward joy. The Baker bells struck the hour and played “Twilight Song”:

Brothers while the shadows deepen

While we stand here heart to heart,

Let us promise one another

In the silence ere we part.

We will make our lives successful,

We will keep our hands from shame

For the sake of dear old Dartmouth,

And the honor of her name.

For the dear old college home, boys,

For the happy, happy days;

For our glorious Alma Mater,

Shake the campus with her praise.

In that moment I couldn’t help but wonder at how extraordinarily lucky I was, stupefied that as a Dartmouth undergraduate I had the opportunities and the time to do virtually anything I desired. It was my choice.

So here’s what I chose. I chose to crucify myself in the center in the green, and made my martyrdom complete. “There are no more barriers to cross,” I said to no one in particular. “All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape.” It is a small College, but there are those that hate it.

A Lohsing Battle

By Blake S. Neff
Like a molasses tsunami (look it up), Janet Reitman’s exposé of Dartmouth in Rolling Stone came with plenty of forewarning but was nevertheless unstoppable and unavoidable, not to mention inextricably linked with alcohol. Reitman had been spotted all around campus weeks beforehand conducting interviews, while her main source Andrew Lohse had already tipped his hand with his infamous January editorial.

When the April 12 issue hit newsstands, then, there was very little that was surprising about it. Lohse’s major hazing accusations were repeated at greater length. His tale was fleshed out with juicy gossip and misleading anecdotes to complete an anti-1% narrative conducive to Rolling Stone’s audience. The article quickly drew over twelve thousand Facebook likes and was linked from sites such as Business Insider, Jezebel, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. While legions of Dartmouth students and alumni lost no time coming to the school’s defense in the article’s comments section or in their own articles over at Slate and the New York Daily News, needless to say the damage has been done. Thousands will read Reitman’s article and come away with a very negative impression without ever giving a glance to less notable responses which might rebut it.

This is distinctly unfortunate, because like most Rolling Stone pieces Reitman’s article is journalism so yellow it’s surprising it didn’t reignite the Spanish-American War. Beyond the framing story about Lohse and his hazing accusations (more on that later), the article is a cobbled together mess of anecdotes, innuendos, and generalizations that don’t stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Dartmouth’s hostility to “social and political progress” (which Reitman equates with banning frats) is demonstrated by the College being “one of the last Ivies to admit women,” which is a rather biased way of saying the College went fully coed before either Columbia or Harvard and trailed Brown by a single year. The Dartmouth Review’s destruction of illegal and unsightly protest shanties on the Dartmouth Green back in the 1980’s, meanwhile, is used to imply campus sympathy for apartheid. Reitman even makes a strange glancing remark about the college president having a three-story house.  

Becca Rothfeld ’14 alleges that “no one wants to discuss [hazing] – just like they don't want to talk about racism, sexism, homophobia, classism." I sincerely wonder if Ms. Rothfeld actually goes to the same school I do, because as far as I can tell Dartmouth never shuts up about those things. Whether it’s PRIDE Week or the annual performance of The Fallopian Filibusters, Dartmouth doesn’t really lack for opportunities for students to indulge in their hatred of –isms. Even hazing was already a major issues last fall due to the College’s ham-fisted “safety regulations” and the probations handed down to AD and TDX. The idea of Dartmouth being a cloistered hivemind is simply indefensible.
Reitman’s absurd unfairness is most evident in her description of Dartmouth Trips. She quotes Nathan Gusdorf ’12, who bafflingly describes the Trips process as being “hazed into happiness,” and uncritically allows Lohse to describe a bizarre alternate reality where Trips are an insidious plot to enforce the ideological homogeneity that Dartmouth is the best place in the universe and anybody who disagrees probably suffers from a mental disorder.  That’s quite the claim to make against a program which the vast majority of students seem to view merely as a deeply enjoyable way to make new friends and feel welcome in their first days living away from home. One gets the feeling that Lohse and Gusdorf might consider just about anything to be hazing, from getting potty trained to watching the State of the Union address to associating with Andrew Lohse.

In Reitman’s universe, Dartmouth is a school for men, future one percenters who pay their dues in hazing humiliations as a right of passage into the halls of the American elite. Frankly, if Reitman had bothered to take a narrow tack here, she might have produced something useful. While some of Lohse’s extreme allegations (such as the famed Kiddie Pool of Bodily Emissions) are probably false, there is ample evidence that more mundane accusations regarding “vomlets,” “ass beers,” and the like are true. Moreover, there’s quite a lot to be said for the idea that students voluntarily put up with all of this due to a combination of negative peer pressure and the belief that being in the right frat is essential to early career success. However, Reitman knows that scandal sells, and observing the pointlessly self-destructive nature of a few students at a handful of frats just doesn’t sell magazines in the same way reducing Dartmouth to a machine which exchanges puke for banking jobs does. Reitman essentially writes the rest of the school out of existence. Sororities are mentioned a grand total of three times, and the co-ed houses once. The hundreds of students in every class who graduate without affiliating at all may as well live on the moon for all that they matter in the story. Plenty of these students manage to have friends, have fun, and yes, get a good job without having to debase themselves by eating vomlets or drinking milk until they puke. By ignoring what amounts to a majority of the school and turning Dartmouth into an obvious caricature, Reitman robs her piece of any real value or integrity.

Given its manifest flaws, it’s hardly surprising that Reitman’s article provoked rage or derision not just from fraternity brothers but also from the vast majority of the school at large, including the co-eds and independents who often have little attachment to the existing social structure. Even Dartblog’s firebrand Joe Asch, who writes almost constantly and loves attacking modern Dartmouth the way SAE apparently loves vomit, has been remarkably taciturn in his response, perhaps in recognition of how Reitman has overreached.
If it’s heartening to see that most Dartmouth students will defend their alma mater from a gross hatchet job, in the grand scheme of things this might be the worst possible outcome. Dartmouth students are largely powerless to halt any damage Reitman has done to the school’s reputation or the value of their degrees, so the only way for this to all turn out better would be if it could somehow lead to positive change at Dartmouth. Dartmouth does have houses which engage in gross or dangerous hazing which cannot be entirely excused by its voluntary nature, and the hook-up culture itself is far from healthy even before one touches on the matter of sexual assault. By publishing a shoddy hit-piece which introduced few substantive criticisms while encouraging the Dartmouth student body to close ranks, though, Reitman has actually helped ensure that no substantive discussion or change will occur regarding these topics, which will be to the detriment of everybody except Reitman and Rolling Stone.
At the least, much of Dartmouth can at least take solace in the fact that Reitman’s partner in crime used Rolling Stone as a forum to immolate himself in front of millions of people. Dartmouth might look bad, but Mr. Lohse fares even worse. Reitman puts a great deal of focus on Lohse and his story comprises the narrative core.  This is all the worse for Lohse, because the longer the spotlight shines on him the more he emerges as a character who is by turns baffling, repulsive, and pitiable. It seems strange that Reitman would so dramatically discredit her primary source, but on the other hand this is Rolling Stone, after all, where characters far worse than Lohse may be lionized if they are sufficiently left-wing or at least have sold a few million records. The article’s online comments page has numerous people praising Lohse’s “bravery,” so perhaps Rolling Stone and its readership is simply off in its own little world.

That Lohse comes off so badly is especially notable as it occurs despite Reitman’s clear bias towards her subject. Besides groan-inducing descriptions of Lohse’s hair, eyes, and “sweet-faced demeanor,” Reitman often subtly slants descriptions in Lohse’s favor. When describing the backlash against Lohse on The Dartmouth’s online comments page, she puts in scare quotes the accusation that Lohse is a “criminal,” as though this is merely some opinion of a student body angry that its vomlet-gobbling days are over. Of course, as the article itself reveals several pages later, this is too generous. Lohse is literally a criminal, and if putting the term in quotes is necessary then I certainly hope Ms. Reitman will not object if I henceforth refer to her as a “journalist.”
Reitman similarly leaves out certain facts which might further impugn his already shaky credibility. While Lohse’s three-month stint at The Dartmouth Review is mentioned, she doesn’t mention the fact that Lohse quit because the paper refused to let him review a book promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories, or his embarrassing “An Ex-Reviewer Speaks Out” article for the Dartmouth Free Press, which firmly established Lohse’s reputation as a chronic backstabber with lines describing his former colleagues as people who “walk hunched-over like homo erectus mumbling gibberish.”

Fortunately, Reitman does mention other instances of Lohse’s natural vindictiveness. After burning his bridges at the Review, it didn’t take long for him to move on to his fraternity. His decision to turn on SAE is plainly driven by anger over his drug conviction, which he regards as “hypocrisy” because his drug use “wasn’t harming other people.” Aside from plainly not understanding the meaning of hypocrisy, Lohse isn’t even speaking truthfully, considering the brother who reported Lohse suffered witness intimidation and destruction of property.

In contrast to negative impression created by an objective look at known events, the hype Lohse gives himself sounds like a greatest hits collection of 20th century cultural icons. At one point, he describes himself as seeking to write a memoir, a “generational tale...part Bright Lights, Big City, part The Sun Also Rises, and part This Side of Paradise” (hopefully, he learns the meaning of words like ‘hypocrisy’ before writing it) Evidently, Lohse fancies himself as Jay Gatsby. But hold on a minute, later it turns out that Lohse traveled in Asia and experience a profound spiritual awakening that changed him completely, so he’s actually the Dalai Lama (or at least Steven Seagal). Following his return to Dartmouth, he claims to have set out on a lonely quest to change SAE.
“I saw myself as a reformer” changing SAE from the inside, claimed Lohse. Apparently, Lohse is actually Mikhail Gorbachev.

But wait! It seems that Lohse’s spiritual awakening and reformist attitude wasn’t enough to suppress his inner rebel. Apparently, the best path to reform at Dartmouth is by assaulting an S&S officer with a folding chair, an act Lohse characterizes as an “existential act of rebellion.” Perhaps Lohse was actually Cool Hand Luke all along.

Joking aside, the sad reality of Andrew Lohse is that of a man who repeatedly burns his bridges only to lash out at his former friends, behavior exacerbated by substance abuse, a desire for attention, and a refusal to ever be at fault. Lohse’s delusions of grandeur have made him co-opt a left-wing magazine and its 1.5 million subscribers in an act of petty vengeance. He has shown himself a dishonest rakehell, a maltreater of women, and a sot.

Dartmouth dismisses him at its peril.

As easy as it is to mock Lohse, or loathe him, it would be a mistake to simply grumble about how he has enabled Rolling Stone to defame Lone Pine Land. For all of its unjustified hyperbole, Reitman’s hit piece has ample content which is completely true and still disturbing to many outside readers. A summary of the article at Business Insider describing the “most shocking parts” gave just as much attention to Dartmouth’s over-the-top binge drinking as it did to culinary innovations and exotic aquatics. Dartmouth’s culture of alcoholic excess is so pervasive that even drier students are largely used to it, which can blind many to just how unhealthy it all is. Practices like boot and rally, where one induces vomiting in order to go on drinking, are enormously stupid, and nominal “games” like Thunderdome aren’t much better.
In fact, at the macro level, Dartmouth’s drinking is not simply dangerous but suicidal. With so much binge drinking going on, highlighted by dozens of Good Sam calls every year, it is almost a statistical inevitability that eventually a student will die through a tragic combination of excess and negligence, and this student might have the nerve to have good character references or even a friend. When it comes the fraternity system might be destroyed with it.

Many will dismiss this line of argument by saying that excessive drinking is a part of every college that isn’t Brigham Young, and they’d be right. That doesn’t matter. Drinking at Dartmouth is equated with the fraternities and vice versa, and as the recent open letter signed by over a hundred faculty members reminded everybody the Greek system has no shortage of enemies. Not every assault on the Greek system will conveniently self-destruct as Lohse has.

Dartmouth’s Greek houses have a long history and are an integral part of the school, and despite their flaws most students greatly appreciate them. It would be a shame for them to be extirpated from campus, but such a fate will be increasingly likely if the houses are unable to avoid dangerous or disgusting behavior. Andrew Lohse and Janet Reitman have humiliated the College, but their antics are mostly just a warning shot. A constructive response might salvage some good from this entire sad affair, and ensure that the Andrew Lohse’s of the future don’t do far worse.

SmartChoice: A Freshman's Perspective

By James M. Keating and Nicholas P. Desatnick

It’s 11:45 on Saturday morning. You roll out of bed and are still “tired” from the night before. After grabbing a bottle of water, you meet up with your floor-mates and decide to get some breakfast. At 12:02, you swipe into Foco and fashion a bowl of Frosted Flakes, only to ruin it with a blast of skim-milk from the one nozzle that is still stocked. You wolf down your light breakfast and return to your dorm. Determined to make a dent in your Gov homework, you lie down on your bed and start reading, but wake up two hours later with the packet stuck to your forehead. You roll out of bed and feel a pang of hunger, so you and your roommate decide to grab a burger and Coke from the Hop. After trekking across the Green and waiting in a not-so-long line for the grill, you and your buddy make your way to the register with your fare. One after the other, you are both told that because you had eaten your breakfast during the lunch period, you are ineligible for a meal swipe and must use your DBA instead. You protest this effrontery vociferously, but find that your overtures of reason fall on deaf ears. With a sigh, you pay for your lunch with your DBA and watch one of your 20-weekly meal swipes go to waste. Welcome to life with SmartChoice.

The new meal program, first announced in March of 2011 to “provide the widest range of options” for on-campus dining, has proven to do everything but. Ever since its inception, student complaints have been widespread and manifold, particularly amongst members of the Class of 2015. Under a rule instated by the College, all freshmen are required to purchase the 20-meal-a-week dining option, a stipulation that many find as unsavory as the food at Foco’s vegetarian station.

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Blitzmail Blitzed by Blitz-2-Blitz

By Christina Chen

Why Microsoft?

Blitzmail is commonly referred to as an “ancient” piece of technology, incomparable to today’s cutting-edge programs, so fancily styled that an e-mail sender even has the power to bold text. But despite its flaws, the program is simple, easy to use, and a quaint beloved Dartmouth institution, so ingrained in our culture that even Conan O’Brien paid his respects during his Commencement speech.

Therefore, undergraduate attitude towards the Administration’s decision to replace Blitzmail with Microsoft Online Services (MOS) has ranged widely. Some are relieved that the antiquated system is no more, some grumble about Microsoft’s user-unfriendliness, and others claim conspiracy theories of illegal payments or administrative affiliations to Microsoft.           

“I don’t like how the presentation is so limiting,” says John Guo ’13. He points at the left column of his browser page, where only a paltry sum of e-mails can be seen without scrolling.

Blitzmail excelled at sending short messages, lots of them, and rapidly (excepting campus blitzes that is) . Microsoft e-mail in comparison seems significantly less convenient. Because of this cumbersomeness, Guo predicts that MOS will dramatically alter Dartmouth’s social life as students become disinclined to the methods of furious e-mail publicity.

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Let Them Eat Cake

By J.P. Harrington

Why I Hate SmartChoice And How to Start Fixing It

SmartChoice may be one of the least aptly named programs in all of existence. Why? Well, let’s just run through a few of the brilliant new changes that this plan has now inflicted upon my life.

I now live on a tightly run meal schedule that dictates exactly when I must eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner (of course any concept of snacks long ago went out the window). The monstrosity that any true Dartmouth College student calls FoCo (and which some pitifully brain-washed members of the Worst Class Ever call ’53 Commons) is only open at the following hours: 7 am to 3 pm and from 5 pm to 8 pm. I can only assume that Jim Kim utilized his extensive medical training to determine that students never hunger after 8 pm on a weeknight. Oh, well that’s alright, if I can’t make the trek to the all-you-can-stuff-in-your-face FoCo and swipe in, I can just grab a delicious breakfast sandwich at the Hop for a midnight snack.

Oh, wait. Under SmartChoice, any one of my weekly assigned meals varies in value, depending entirely on the minute of my arrival at the cash register, with my chosen meal in hand. Every day, Dartmouth students are tested by the administration to answer the following question, oddly reminiscent of those contained in third-grade math tests.

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What's Wrong With Parkhurst?

By Mene O. Ukueberuwa

The enlightened Dartmouth student is well aware that a variety of the seemingly unrelated cultural quirks that define our college are actually bound together by a single, fundamental theme. The perennial dominance of Greek-life, the popularity of a cappella groups, the surfeit of student service organizations, and many of the odd but durable traditions that define our campus are all representative of the student control of our own atmosphere. The activities of our motivated and autonomous student body are central to the unique culture of the College in a way that seems to leave little room for the lingering presence of bureaucratic administration. And yet, in spite of their often-inconspicuous nature, the Dartmouth administration dwells within Parkhurst Hall, monitoring daily the rapidly flowing course of student life and sporadically interjecting with initiatives designed to improve it. At the heart of these operations is David Spalding ’76 who, as Chief of Staff to the President’s Office, is charged with oversight of the administrative agenda. Mr. Spalding sat down to offer a rare introspective account of the workings of the Dartmouth administration and presented several insights that may help us decode their hazy image.

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Editorial: In Hanover, Mismanagement is the Norm

By Sterling C. Beard

Perhaps it’s built into the DNA of every college student to dislike their administration. Maybe it derives from some sort of generational gap, which, when aggravated, can cause mass protests of the kind seen during the 1960s. Maybe students have too much time on their hands and need a target at which to direct their pent-up aggression. Or maybe students just seem to want to be left alone to write their papers, hook-up, get drunk, or some combination of all three.

I’m reminded of the only genuine time students “stormed” Parkhurst that I’ve seen in my time on this campus. It was the fall of 2009, just after the first wave of midterms. We received word that a group of undergrads were going to confront President Kim about Dartmouth’s environmental friendliness, or rather, the lack thereof.

I caught the group of twenty-six protestors or so standing just outside Parkhurst. It turned out that it hadn’t been widely publicized. Their objective: to, uh, hand President Kim a letter in which they compared themselves to ‘Nam era protestors and, “[envisioned] a Sustainable [sic] Dartmouth.”  To that end, their demands—which were so softly worded as to be more like suggestions— included, “[doubling Dartmouth’s] energy efficiency efforts,” “[appointing] an Energy Research and Advisory Committee,” “[raising] the funds necessary for a transition to renewable energy resources,” and so forth.

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