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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75 Dartmouth Faculty Protest Bush Degree: A Teachable Moment

By Professor Jeffrey Hart

The statement signed by 75 Dartmouth faculty members is so riddled with errors that it would not be worth comment, except that when the word “professor” precedes a name people are apt to assume that what follows is based on scholarly standards.

At the June 12 Commencement about a dozen graduating seniors and some in the audience stood up and turned their backs when former President George H.W. Bush was awarded an honorary degree. Many more were probably misled by the Dartmouth faculty statement but were unwilling to be rude.

I am especially concerned that Dartmouth undergraduates will believe the statements made in this accumulation of misinformation.  I will number the most egregious, and add the letter “a” as I provide the contradicting facts:

1. “President George W. Bush launched his political career in 1963 as a Goldwater Republican, aggressively campaigning against civil rights legislation while denouncing Medicare as ‘socialistic’.”

        a) Since Medicare was not passed until 1965 Bush could not have

       campaigned against it in 1963, and so he could not have called it “socialistic.”

        b) In 1964 Goldwater was the Republican nominee. As a Republican,

        Bush had to support him. This does not make Bush a “Goldwater

        Republican. It is inconceivable that Bush would agree with the agenda

        of Goldwater’s (ghost written) Conscience of a Conservative. This was

        a radical agenda, and Bush was a moderate Republican. Everything in

        Bush’s political career indicates that he supported civil rights. 

       c) Goldwater did vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which had

       come forward from President John F. Kennedy). This vote was dis-

       graceful, and had nothing to do with Bush.

2. “As a CIA Director under Gerald Ford and as Ronald Reagan’s vice

     president in the 1970s and 1980s, he was not only involved in illegal

     operations in Central and Latin America that left countless dead but also

     in the Iran-Contra Scandal.

     a) Resistance to Communist penetration of the Western hempshere was bi-partisan.

        Early in his administration President John F. Kennedy sought to

        overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the ill-fated Bay of Pigs

        operation. In view of the thousands of Cubans murdered by the Castro

        regime or consigned to the concentration camp on the Isle of Pines, this

        was not an ignoble goal. In fact, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed

        by the Bolivian military when he was trying to export revolution to

        Bolivia.

        Much has been written about the Bay of Pigs operation, and several

        professional historians agree with me that it was a CIA-Department of

        Defense operation.

        They were dealing with an inexperienced president. It was

        impossible for 1500 Cuban exiles to overthrow a government backed

        by a large regular army, a large militia, and pervasive internal security

        personnel. 

        It seems likely that CIA director Allen Dulles and his assistant

        Richard Bissell calculated that with 1500 Cuban exiles in trouble on the

        beach, NO American president could refuse to make this an all-out

        American invasion. An alternative might have been to secure the

        perimeter, and recognize the exiles as Free Cuba.

        Had Castro been overthrown, we would have avoided the Cuban

        Missile Crisis in which Khrushchev tried to move further into the

        Western hemisphere, even at the risk of nuclear war.

        And thousands of Cubans who had been murdered by Castro would

        be alive today.

        Be that as it may, this was launched by a Democratic president, and

        had nothing to with George H.W. Bush, either as CIA director or as

        Vice President.

c) REPEAT: Resistance to the spread of Communism and Soviet influence in the Western Hemisphere was  bi-partisan.

 3. George H.W. Bush was involved (as vice president) in “the Iran-Contra scandal.”

       a) In Nicaragua (the largest nation in Central America) the Sandinistas seized power in 1979 from a right-wing dictatorship. The Sandinistas subscribed to contradictory principles: 1) political democracy 2) economic equality. The latter meant a forcible equalization of wealth, Marxist and socialist ideas contradictory to democracy. Autocratic rule resulted, a ruling junta made up of five Sandinista officials, Daniel Ortega in effect the leader.

The junta allied itself with Cuba and the Soviet Union, receiving financial and military aid from both. Resistance to the Sandinistas grew, and was called the Contras. (At a reception in Washington I met a former Sandinista leader who was now a Contra leader, known now as “Commandante Zero.”)

b) The Reagan administration was determined to aid the Contras (I was aware of this first-hand) But it was blocked from providing aid directly by the Boland Amendments, three amendments attached to appropriations legislation. They were attached to legislation because they could not have mustered the necessary votes to pass them otherwise. A later Congress repealed the Boland amendments. Under pressure the Sandinistas held an election and were voted out of power in 1990.

c) The Reagan administration circumvented this by selling anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons to Iran and passing the needed funds along to the Contras.

All of this was complex, but the Boland Amendments did not specify any criminal penalties. Reagan might have cited the Monroe Doctrine and openly supported the Contras. He certainly would not have been impeached.

4.  “And who can forget the infamous Willie Horton ads exploiting racial sentiments in his [GHW Bush’s] 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis.”

a) On October 2,  Willie Horton and two accomplices robbed Joseph Fournier, a 17 year-old gas station attendant and fatally stabbed him multiple times. He was sentenced to life in prison. On parole, he showed up in Maryland and raped a woman, pistol whipping her fiancée. He was sentenced to two life terms plus 85 years. The Maryland judge refused to return him to Massachusetts, commenting that he might get another parole.

NB: Parole is usually granted to prisoners as the end of their term approaches, in order that they may live for a while in ordinary society. I know of no state other than Massachusetts that grants parole to murderers serving life sentences.

b) Dukakis ruined his chances of re-election by defending the Massachusetts parole policy. When asked about murder and the subsequent rape he gave a wonkish reply about why he opposed capital punishment. (Some years later I was chatting with former New York State Governor Mario Cuomo, an intelligent and rather charming man. The Willie Horton murder and rape came up. What would he do, I asked, if his fiancée had been raped by a convicted murderer. Mario Cuomo said, “I would hope the police got to him before I did.”

c) The “infamous” Willie Horton ads. You can see these by googling Willie Horton 1988. They show him as he was, beard, etc. And yes, he was black. 

That was not the fault of the Republican campaign.

5. The statement signed by 75 Dartmouth professors fails to mention the fact that the Reagan presidency, followed by the George H.W. presidency finally won the Cold War, which had begun during the Truman administration.

President Reagan and President George H.W. Bush win the Cold War:

President Reagan understood from Margaret Thatcher that Gorbachev might be cooperative. Indeed, Gorbachev was a reformer. Glasnost plus Peristroika: openness/truth plus new thinking (reform). Gorbachev knew that the Soviet economy was a basket case.

Reagan’s approach in a series of summits with Gorbachev was to ensure that he stayed in power. Against the advice of Nixon and Kissinger – who believed that power not personalities was what mattered – Reagan knew that US pressure on Gorbachev might lead to a military takeover. So Reagan eased Gorbachev’s position with arms limitation agreements, etc. The result was that the Soviet Union was about to become Russia again. Reagan had a backchannel advisor, Suzanne Massie, author of Land of the Firebird and an expert on Russia, who knew what was taking place behind the “iron curtain.”

In Poland, Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement, and the presence in the Vatican of the Polish Pope, undermined the power of the Soviet Union in its Polish satellite. In fact, John Paul II was so important to Catholic Poland that Bulgarian intelligence sponsored an assassination attempt; and Bulgarian intelligence did not free-lance this: it was a KGB project.

In his historic visit to Berlin, Reagan made his famous demand, “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev.” Nikita Khrushchev had ordered the wall constructed because too many East Germans were fleeing Communism and moving to West Germany.

But the Wall did not come down until 1989, during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.

The important book on what happened then is Michael Beschloss’ At the Highest Levels (1993) a study of  how President George H.W. Bush and his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft managed the transition in the Soviet Union. The Baltic states became independent. Ukraine and Georgia became independent. The Communist regimes in the East bloc were overthrown. With the Wall smashed Germany was unified. The Cold War was over. The breakup of the Soviet Union constituted, in the opinion of Vladimir Putin, the greatest demographic disaster in history. It also finished Communism., except in North Korea and Cuba. (China threw away Marx but retained Lenin: the elite party.)

6. The Statement ends with an evocation of the Recession that began in 2008 and the misery it has caused, suggesting that another honorary degree and guest might have been more appropriate. There will be another Commencement. The Recession is not going away anytime soon. But the demonstrated accomplishments of former President George H. W. Bush are certainly deserving of this recognition.

The Statement signed by 75 Dartmouth Professors gives former President George H.W. Bush no credit for his historic accomplishment. Reagan and Bush won the Cold War, completing the work of Truman, Marshall, Acheson and the containment rationale set forth by George Kennan in his Foreign Affairs article signed X. Reagan and Bush both deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. They won the Cold War without firing a shot.

The Faculty Statement lacks historical scholarship expected of Dartmouth professors. It may mislead many Dartmouth undergraduates who trust them. It also is unforgivable for academicians who are supposed to have professional standards.

SmartChoice? Highly doubtful.

While the current outburst against the new meal plan (subtly labeled as SmartChoice) began only recently, the SmartChoice plan has been in the works for quite some time. Whilst conducting research on the plan, we found a 2006 article by The Dartmouth about the future of dining at the College.  In that article, the former Dartmouth Dining Service (DDS) Director Tucker Rossiter revealed that DDS was considering the idea of moving to an all-you-can-eat meal plan. Unfortunately for DDS (and fortunately for students), no single dining facility on campus was large enough to institute that plan. The idea to institute a meal plan was largely in response to a 2004 study of DDS conducted by Ricca Associates (a food services consultant). The consultants, according to former Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman, said that things were so bad they were “amazed that [DDS was] still open.” Now, after the administration has spent millions of dollars renovating Thayer, the all-you-can-eat meal plan once again looms over campus like an inexorably approaching storm cloud.

After our research, we suspect that SmartChoice has not only been in the works for quite some time (and inspired the renovation of Thayer into an all-you-can-eat facility), but also that it was the product of the Ricca Associates study back in 2004. Just look at the smarmy title, it screams “out-of-town consultant,” particularly when compared to the current meal plans’ names which lovingly reference the College. 

Yet, we are afraid that the administration did not get their money’s worth from these consultants – or whoever designed this meal plan. The plan is supposed to derive new revenue from “missed meals” or when students do not walk to Thayer and eat the exact number of meals that they have purchased. Thinking that this plan will increase revenues is beyond optimistic to the point of lunacy – for several reasons. 

The first is that students simply will not miss meals as often here as they would at other colleges, especially those in urban centers. The major reasons that students miss meals at dining halls are quite simply: location, other options, and non-student friends. A college with a large campus spread throughout a city might reasonably expect that students wouldn’t want to make the long trek to the dining hall every few hours. We both live in the River…and we still walk to the dining halls for three meals a day. As for other off-campus dining options, let’s be realistic.

The average SmartChoice plan offers 14 meals a week. That means that students would have to eat approximately seven meals off-campus per week (one a day), assuming the normal three meals per day eating schedule. For those students currently on the Mini-Green plan (like one of the authors), they would have to eat 11 meals off-campus every week. Can we really expect that students will be eating off-campus that often? This is Hanover – the local restaurants are sparse and not exactly distant from the campus. Who would miss that many meals per week, especially when the new plan already offers so few meals? Starving students will walk a block or two to get back to campus and go to Thayer rather than miss a meal.

The final reason for missing meals would be non-student friends. If you go to NYU, but want to catch a meal with friends from Columbia (or any other of the many educational institutions in New York City), you cannot do that at the NYU dining hall. Once again, this incentive simply does not exist in Hanover. For most students, their friends are all students at Dartmouth – and they eat together at the dining halls. 

Even if we grant that the plan will increase revenues (which we highly doubt for the reasons above), it won’t fix DDS. This is just a temporary fix to a long-term problem, like raising payroll taxes half a percent to fund Social Security for another six months. This plan does not get at the fundamental problem: DDS is inefficient.

In the above-mentioned article, the former Dean Redman, said that the College and DDS were committed to providing a “living wage…” to DDS employees. Of course, that term actually means: jobs that compensate workers incredibly higher than comparable jobs in the area. The lowest union position gets between 25-50% more for their salary – and unbelievably more benefits than a local worker doing the same job. In case you didn’t know, nearly every DDS worker is unionized. Only Collis remains free to adjust to the labor market. Small wonder that Collis consistently has better service and food. Of course, SmartChoice will greatly reduce Collis’ revenue in favor of the unionized Class of 1953 Commons. We are very skeptical of the “meal exchange program” which seems clunky and will most likely frighten freshmen away from Collis and The Hop as you will obviously get less with a one-plate “meal equivalent” than with an all-you-can-stuff-in-your-face meal at ‘53 Commons. In essence, the plan will destroy the one place that doesn’t overpay workers.

For further proof that DDS is incredibly inefficient, you only need to look below the surface of their ridiculously overpriced goods. In the past fourteen years, the cost for the smallest plan has risen 1.75 times faster than inflation. That’s nearly double the inflation rate. And they are still not making enough profit? This doesn’t sound like a problem with DBA, but a problem with the DDS unions. That beast is sucking DDS dry. If President Kim really wants to find a solution, he’s going to have to deal with this root problem, not just impose a system that tries to squeeze more money out of students. That’s ridiculous on two levels.

First off, we are already paying a substantial amount of money to attend this institution. We love the College, but we don’t think that punishing students to pay for out-of-control union wages and benefits is a valid part of the College’s mission. In other words, don’t starve the students, starve the beast. Secondly, it’s just a temporary fix. What will President Kim do in five or ten years when DDS needs yet more money after costs rise at double the inflation rate again? Unlike The Dartmouth Review’s alternative, the Lone Pine Meal Plan, SmartChoice doesn’t plan for the future. The Lone Pine Meal Plan (which our editor personally presented to President Kim) is an alternative to SmartChoice which cuts costs while improving service. The entire plan can be found in this issue of the Review or online at our website.

Oh, and if you still for some reason think that DDS isn’t ridiculously costly, we’d like to note that Princeton offers an unlimited meals option at its all-you-can-eat dining facilities for $5,473. That is $500 less a year than our SmartChoice20 plan…which only offers 20 meals per week (which is less than the healthy three per day on average). So for about the same price, you will get less than the normal amount of meals per week – none of which roll over. 

At the same time, there are major issues with any all-you-can-eat plan. First off, it encourages binge eating. If students only buy the average plan or are on financial aid, they will only have an average of two meals per day. So, instead of eating smaller meals over the course of the day (personally we purchase food at the dining hall at least four times each day), students are forced to consume larger meals more infrequently. This is unhealthy. Even the College’s own recommended nutrition website recommends “a healthy meal plan of five to six small meals per day…” One would expect that a doctor would shy away from a meal plan that will so negatively impact the health of the student body.

In addition to the negative health effects, we find SmartChoice to be morally wrong. It unfairly subsidizes certain students at the expensive of others. As one alumnae pointed out, it generally subsidizes men (who usually eat more) at the cost of women. When Dartmouth first became co-ed an all-you-can-eat meal system was in place. Dartmouth women did not want to be subsidizing men’s eating habits—they found this to be sexist and campaigned for change. Subsequently, the College changed to an á la carte system. Why are we moving backwards? This plan is troubling on yet another level. With such low meal allotments it is clear students are expected to eat off-campus, however this unfairly punishes students on financial aid who are unable to eat off-campus often. We are worried about a possible split between well-off students who buy the smallest plan and eat off-campus often and students on financial aid who have to eat mostly on-campus.

Once SmartChoice is in effect, the DDS will be wary of raising prices anymore for fear of driving even more students off-campus. There will also be a large increase in the amount of food waste because students will have no financial incentive to not throw away uneaten food. Consequently, the only way for DDS to get higher margins will be to reduce food quality. Dartmouth College currently has an A- for campus dining on CollegeProwler, a third-party website that ranks colleges across the country. Only two Ivies have higher ratings – both of which are also in substantially larger towns. Interestingly enough, CollegeProwler praises Dartmouth for our “options” and our “variety, flexibility, and convenience.” Sadly, those will all be things of the past with our new dining plan. From an admissions perspective, it is essential to realize that any student wary of spending four years a miniscule town in New Hampshire will be very concerned with the quality, convenience, and choice of campus dining.

The move to SmartChoice will hurt admissions, student life, and student health as well as force students to subsidize other students’ eating habits (with tinges of sexism). Oh, and it won’t fix any problem with DDS – so you can look forward to lower quality food as DDS tries to expand its margins to break even on its ridiculously high wages and benefits packages. We realize that President Kim arrived at the College halfway into this whole process – the plans for SmartChoice and the ‘53 Commons were already in motion. Our hope is to point out the massive flaws and minimal benefits in SmartChoice in order to sway the administration into choosing an alternative that embraces competition and innovation. An alternative plan that looks towards the future and that helps students, not just overpaid union members. A plan that keeps the culture of Dartmouth as fantastic as it is now – and that doesn’t harm our ability to attract quality students in the future. We hope that our alternative, the Lone Pine Meal Plan, offers at the very least the correct structure and foundation for that plan. We do know that SmartChoice is not that plan – and in its current form it is not just wrong, but malevolently so.

 --J.P. Harrington and Stuart A. Allan

Pawlenty Pushes Capitalism at DHMC

Addressing reporters after his talk at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center

“We need to be problem-solvers and solution-providers…”

Tim Pawlenty, former two-term Governor of Minnesota, paused, his hands momentarily halting in midair. It was March 11 and he was addressing a group of doctors at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Just ten days later, Pawlenty would become the first major GOP candidate to announce a presidential exploratory committee. Despite the fact that he was not yet officially pursuing a presidential bid, the audience paid very close attention to Pawlenty’s folksy speech. The air seemed fraught with the possibility that this man might soon be the most powerful man in the country—if not the world.

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Bored@Holekamp

 By Adam I. W. Schwartzman

“Brian Holekamp” is a name familiar to many on the Dartmouth College campus. Holekamp, a member of the class of 2012, is the butt of many jokes and his name is frequently mentioned on the Dartmouth-specific anonymous online forum, Bored@Baker.

However, the joke may be on the community at large, with Holekamp, a member of Phi Delta Alpha and ROTC as well as the future president of men’s club lacrosse, now one of two candidates running for Vice President of the Student Assembly.

After Holekamp gave the Daily D a hilariously terse “no comment” on all election-related matters, The Dartmouth Review seized the opportunity to pick his brain on some issues pertinent to the admittedly inconsequential role of Student Assembly Vice President. He shared with us, among other things, his views on the new SEMP policy, Student Assembly and the current election, alcohol abuse, and sexual assault.

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Spears's Departure Triggers Questions

Acting Dean of the College Sylvia Spears announced that she would not seek a position as permanent Dean.By Blake S. Neff

No sooner did Dartmouth’s scattered children return for Winter Term than the College announced the formation of a committee to conduct a nationwide search for a new permanent undergraduate dean. Almost simultaneously, it was announced that current acting dean Sylvia Spears would not be applying for the position and would instead leave the office when the end of her term arrived in June. Somewhat peculiarly, Spears indicated that she would be willing to remain at Dartmouth in some other capacity, although she was not sure just what that would be. 

In Spears’s tenure as acting dean, and her previous role as the head of the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, she has weathered a not-inconsiderable amount of student criticism, some of it from this newspaper. In the spring of 2009, barbs were directed at OPAL over its overreaction (along with much of campus) to the scandal of AsianStereotypegate, where a student’s ill-advised jokes following the selection of Jim Kim as president triggered a campus firestorm. Last summer, the Review was similarly disappointed by the school’s unilateral closing of the Connecticut River, where Spears dutifully played her role in the bureaucratic stonewalling of student and alumni opposition (“Dock Blocked,” August 23, 2010). 

The most notable controversy with which Spears is associated, though, is the torpedoing of the Alcohol Management Policy shortly after she assumed office as acting dean in the Fall of 2009 (“Sylvia Spears Keeps it SEMPle,” October 15, 2009). The AMP, while certainly not anyone’s first-choice policy, had the general support of Greek leaders as well as previous dean Tom Crady, and would have replaced the Social Event Management Procedures, which originated with the widely hated Student Life Initiative and were due for retirement. It also would have fixed the festering sore of keg policy, the lack of resolution of which has forced fraternities to inefficiently rely on dozens of cases of Keystone Light for parties. Given the short timeframe which Dartmouth students operate within, the decision to start from scratch was an unfortunate move which only further prolonged the far too drawn-out process of reforming College alcohol policy.

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