Dean Lively Chooses Fire and Brimstone

On Monday, April 13th, Dean of the College Kathryn Lively finally found the long-awaited confidence to write an original and un-paraphrased email. Unfortunately for Dean Lively’s debut into the realm of unique content, her first grand œuvre falls into the wonderfully misfortunate category of serious literature that would have fared much better as satire. As with any such work, her purpose rests on tangible concerns—and in this case, concerns which are reasonably unsettling—and yet she uses them to draw ludicrous conclusions. In effect, her writing to campus to complain about the unverified actions of some purportedly deviant individuals culminated in nothing by levying unwarranted threats to the student body, a message that would be slightly less unsettling if her own obvious hysteria wasn’t poking through.

To give somewhat of an objective overview of her message to campus, Monday’s email was prefaced with a brief paragraph explaining that her concerns only are directed at a few individuals—that she’s sure that the rest of the student body is being more responsible—though apparently, that confidence wasn’t adequate to preclude penning the message in the first place. She goes on to detail several incidents of this alleged improper behavior, including gatherings at private fraternities, students being observed (reportedly from a distance) congregating in public spaces, and students misreporting their whereabouts on their check-in forms to conceal their residence in Hanover. In accordance with any and all common sense, these incidents could have easily been dealt with on merely an individual basis without emailing out to all of campus. However, apparently, that wasn’t enough—they were too convenient, too tempting—because they were all too useful in their capacity to justify turning the College’s Standards of Conduct into Kathryn Lively’s personal scourge of pandemic morality. If the intent was any otherwise, the message could have been easily and painlessly rephrased into a friendly reminder.

Regardless, obviously, all of these listed behaviors are very imprudent given the times, but it’s difficult not to be skeptical. For instance, a group of students living together off-campus going for a walk on the Green is no different than a family doing just the same: not dangerous. Even more dubious are the reports of partying. Whereas claiming to have any knowledge of the incident in question would be misleading, some fraternities felt unfortunately impelled to deny residence to brothers who were unable to return home to their families. The reasoning behind this concerns precisely what Lively threatens in her email; given the administration’s stance towards Greek Life and the College’s apparent fondness of unannounced walkthroughs, it wouldn’t be beyond them to cite two brothers-in-residence playing pong in the basement as a community-endangering violation of social distancing guidelines, and a perfect justification for dealing out a hefty punishment. The displaced brothers were pushed into dorms, in contact with a variety of unknown persons, and forced either to leave isolation to eat at College dining facilities or cook in under-equipped communal kitchens. Obviously, both of these are terrible alternatives compared to living in a private house solely with familiar people where it’s easy to prepare and monitor one’s own food. Those houses which didn’t close their doors I suspect are related to the incidents of students misreporting their whereabouts during check-in; they likely had the same mentality but attempted in vain to slip under the radar. 

Nonetheless, even if the reports which Dean Lively cites can, in fact, be taken at face value—and I don’t intend to suggest that she would deliberately mislead the student body, just to illuminate some examples where similar behaviors might be acceptable—using them as a tool to threaten campus is absolutely and utterly iniquitous. The College has every right to enforce its guidelines, but it’s also under the moral obligation to not allow its administrators to become tyrannical. Obviously, students ought to be encouraged to adhere to social distancing guidelines, but threatening to take disciplinary action upon students who break these suggestions—and they are only professional recommendations after all—is outright cruel. Especially given the circumstances that most students face, pent up behind their laptops at home with their families, emails like this do the absolute opposite of inspiring confidence: they scare people. For the students still on campus, the implications are obviously far worse; and remember, many of those who remain oftentimes do so because of socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, sometimes meaning that their continuing education is a beacon of hope for struggling families. It introduces an unfathomably stressfully slurry of questions: Is walking around town with a roommate going to get somebody suspended? Is saying hello to somebody on the Green going to result in some severe disciplinary response? As a result of Dean Lively’s apparent power-grab from the Committee on Standards, any answers to these questions are ultimately impossible to ascertain until the administration actually takes action to set an example. Altogether, much of this ridiculous uneasiness is attributable to Lively’s email reading more like an appalled reaction to reported incidents than an actual collection of lucid guidelines for the current pandemic. Is this really the proper and warranted response to some isolated campus incidents?

Equally as ludicrous is Lively’s poorly-disguised attempt to blame many of these issues on a purportedly reckless Greek system. At least she had enough situational awareness to realize that nobody quite respects her opinions of Webster Avenue, but including a third-party quote from some self-described “pro-Greek Life” source who chides the behaviors of fraternity brothers only made it more obvious how badly she wants to prove to campus that Greek Life is a terror to the Dartmouth community. Plus, of all the trespasses she listed, she only felt so inclined to include an external opinion on a very specific single one; if anything, it’s just further proof that Lively is refusing to let a good crisis go to waste, especially when it concerns an opportunity to cement her oh-so-immaculate House Communities as the new prevailing dominant social spaces. Why would she ever pass up such an opportunity, especially when none of the houses are around to defend themselves?

All in all, if the Dean of the College has any desire to be trusted by students ever again, she has no choice but to take two easy, and immediate steps: (1) send an apology to campus for threatening students with disciplinary action over a group of ambiguous isolated incidents, and (2), recognize the authority of the Committee on Standards—which does have the power to convene remotely—such that students are reassured that they’re not under the morality-litigating gauntlet of an autocratic regime. Still, and regardless of her response, this incident speaks highly of the Dean’s character, and it has certainly left an impression upon students that is unlikely to be forgotten.