Note: This is an annotated version of my letter to alumni, with
citations in red text. For the letter as it was originally formatted, go to:
http://www.stephensmithtrustee.com/letter2.pdf
To my fellow
Today,
If you want a
Trustee who will support the administration no matter what, then I’m not the
candidate for you. Similarly, if you believe that seats on the half of the
Board elected by alumni should be rewards for big donations, then, once again,
I’m not the candidate for you.
If, however, you
believe that what we need from Trustees is ideas and critical
independence—that Trustees should have a deep understanding of all that makes
Dartmouth so special and the willingness to fight to preserve it—then please
read on, because I would like to earn your vote.
My
Journey to
The path that
took me to
But my mother
refused to tolerate self-pity. “You’re a welfare recipient,” she would tell me,
“but be the best anyway.” Throughout my youth, my mother repeated that lesson,
insisting that I remain in school, taking my education seriously. Be the best. I had
many fine options for college. I chose the best. I chose
During my four
years in
Since graduating
from the College, I have clerked at the United States Supreme Court, practiced
law at leading firms in Washington, D.C., become a full professor of law at the
Let
As an independent candidate, I owe my place on the ballot
to my fellow alumni—to the thousands of you who signed petitions on my
behalf—not to any official vetting committee. I am therefore free to tell you
exactly where I stand on the issues facing the College.
By recommitting
itself to these values—by letting
A “small college” just doesn’t need a
bloated bureaucracy. The current administration has chosen to invest in sprawling
bureaucracy. It has done so at the expense of academics and other areas that
directly benefit students.
Over the last six
years, a period during which total inflation was only 17.1%[3], the administrative
budget grew a staggering 79.8%.[4] As
Professor Hoyt Alverson wrote in an open letter to President Wright in January
2003, this was a period that saw “[s]ignificant cuts . . . in the instructional
budgets of academic departments, in the number of courses departments and
programs can offer, in library acquisitions, and in recreational and varsity
sports, to name a few examples.”[5]
Even with subsequent increases in funding for the slashed
academic and athletic programs mentioned by Professor Alverson, the bureaucracy
has still come out far ahead.
The 2006 report of the College’s
consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., bears this out. Over the last five years, the administration has created more than twice as many new
positions in the administration (“111 new positions”) as on the faculty of Arts
and Sciences (“50 new positions”).[6] So the
bureaucracy is growing faster than the faculty. Moreover, during the
same period, the McKinsey report finds, “[a]dministrative
compensation grew more quickly than . . . faculty compensation.”[7] Furthermore, between 1996 and 2006, while the
undergraduate student body remained roughly the same size, the size of
the administration more than doubled.[8]
At a time when students
are complaining of large class sizes and insufficient course offerings,[9] it makes
far more sense to hire more professors than to hire more administrators – and
to increase pay to attract and retain the nation’s best teachers and
researchers. At a time when the cost of a
At a “small college,” undergraduate
teaching comes first. Large,
crowded lecture halls, though perhaps acceptable in certain introductory-level
courses, used to be the exception. The rule was that students would be taught
in the small, intimate settings that are most conducive to learning—and taught
by accomplished scholars employed as tenured or tenure-track professors, not
graduate students, part-time instructors, or short-term visitors.
Today, the
College is becoming more and more like a large research university—like the
“university in all but name” that President Wright has proclaimed
As a
Students shut out of courses. This phenomenon has
become so common that students are now required select
a backup course for every enrollment-capped course they want to take.[13] As The Dartmouth
noted in its January 2005 editorial, students “linger on lengthy waitlists for courses offered by
small and large departments alike” while some “have even resorted to buying
spots from other students.”[14] One member of the
Class of 2006 wrote an op-ed in The
Dartmouth describing his troubling “oversubscription
odyssey”[15]
during his junior year, in which he got none
of his top twelve choices for classes in four different departments.[16]
In popular majors, class sizes have increased. Even when they aren’t shut out of
the courses they want, students today often find themselves in large lecture
courses. According to The Dartmouth, “some students have
to sit in aisles or stand in the back of lecture halls that are filled beyond
capacity to take courses needed to graduate.”[17] As he or she signs
up for classes, a Dartmouth student today stands
only a one in three chance of landing in a class with fewer than 20 students.[18] Among the Ivy League,
The rise of the “rent-a-prof.” Professor
of Economics Meir Kohn, one of the most respected figures on campus, has
condemned the administration’s use of part-time instructors and visiting
faculty to teach courses at
At a “small college,” students should be
treated with respect. How could it be otherwise when undergraduates
are the very reason
To allay student
fears of being Parkhursted or otherwise unfairly disciplined, the Student
Assembly convened a task force to review the College’s disciplinary procedures.
After months of study, the task force issued a report last year recommending eight changes
designed to guarantee students basic due process rights.[26] Among
these are the right to question witnesses against accused students and to be
represented by counsel or another representative in all “closed” hearings. The
Task Force also asked for the College to release demographic data so that the
Student Assembly could ensure that minorities are treated fairly in the
disciplinary process.
The
administration has refused even to consider these
reforms at this time.[27] In the words of the
Acting Dean of the College, what matters is that the administration’s
disciplinary procedures “regularly receive accolades from other institutions
and at meetings of professional associations.”[28] An attitude that defers to the views of “professional
associations” while rejecting those of
Our
Values, Our College
These priorities,
I believe, reflect the values that made
A word about the tone of this campaign.
During my most recent visit to
Once again,
balloting begins on April 1st and ends on May 15th. You will be able to vote
either over the Internet or, using the ballot you will receive from the
College, by mail. Whichever means you choose, please cast your ballot. The
College we love needs your input.
For my part, I
would be deeply honored to receive your vote. If in the next few weeks you have
any questions for me, please call me or e-mail me. I’m eager to listen—and to
serve.
Very truly yours,
/s/ Stephen
F. Smith ’88
[1] For a profile of my
background, see The Washington Post’s
[2] From 2000-04, I served as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights
Reviewing Authority, having been appointed to that post by then-U.S. Education
Secretary Rodney Paige. I have been twice elected by my county board of
supervisors to serve as a community representative on the Police Citizens
Advisory Committee. I have served on the Executive Committee of the
[4] The College’s financial
statements and annual reports list $16,884,000 and $30,536,000 in the “Administration”
budget lines for 1999-2000 and 2005-06, respectively – an increase of 80.8%,
slightly more than the 79.2% figure given in the text. The financial statements and annual reports
give the following figures for spending on “Administration”:
|
1996-97 |
$13,742,000 |
|
|
1997-98 |
$14,183,000 |
+3.2% |
|
1998-99 |
$16,807,000 |
+18.5% |
|
1999-2000 |
$16,884,000 |
+0.5% |
|
2000-01 |
$20,466,000 |
+21.2% |
|
2001-02 |
$25,339,000 |
+23.8% |
|
2002-03 |
$26,470,000 |
+4.5% |
|
2003-04 |
$26,780,000 |
+1.2% |
|
2004-05 |
$28,972,000 |
+8.2% |
|
2005-06 |
$30,536,000 |
+5.4% |
[5] The letter by Professor
Alverson quoted in the text can be found on the website of The Dartmouth Observer at: http://dartobserver.blogspot.com/2003_01_01_dartobserver_archive.html. Once you’re on that page, scroll down to the
blog post dated
[6] The quote comes from the
Executive Summary of the McKinsey Report.
(The administration has declined to release the full report.) The Executive Summary is available on the
College’s website at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~presoff/report/summary.html. As one a member of the Class of 2008 lamented
in The Dartmouth’s
[7] This is a direct quote from
the Executive Summary of the McKinsey
Report. See Footnote 6 above.
[8] According to the College’s
own financial statements, $30,536,000 was spent on “Administration,” more than
double the $13,742,000 spent for “Administration” in 1996-97. See Footnote 4 above.
[9] For a representative sample
of student complaints about class size and course availability, see, for
example, "Majors in high demand face teacher shortages," The Dartmouth, Jan. 14, 2005;
"Recent hirings do little to relieve crowded departments," The Dartmouth, Jan. 24, 2005; Editorial,
"Verbum Ultimum," The Dartmouth, Jan. 28, 2005; "Students find
promises of small class size unfulfilled," The Dartmouth, Feb. 3, 2005; "Oversubscription Odyssey,” The Dartmouth, Apr. 12, 2005.
[10] See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~vox/0607/0402/bot.html:
“The Board set the College's tuition for the 2007-2008 academic year at
$34,965, an increase of 5 percent (or $1,668) over the current year's tuition
rate. With room, board, and mandatory
fees, next year's overall charges will be $45,483. The rates apply to all undergraduates as well
as students in the arts and sciences and Thayer School of Engineering graduate
programs.
[11] See, for example, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~presoff/speeches/1998/0406.html:
“
[12] See Editorial, "Verbum
Ultimum," The
[13] See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ugar/premajor/faculty/handbook/placement.html:
“Students elect their course choices through the BannerStudent system. (www.dartmouth.edu/bannerstudent).
Students request the courses they would like to take. For any course that has limited enrollment,
the system will request that a student enter an alternate choice.” (Emphasis added.)
[14] See "Verbum
Ultimum," The
[15] See Alex Tonelli ‘06,
"Oversubscription Odyssey, The
[16] As a member of the Class of 2006 wrote in response to efforts to
minimize the problem of students getting shut out of courses:
“[I]t remains a fact that a
nauseating number of students end up on the waitlist of many social science
courses — more courses than Professor Sa’adah (‘Debunking the Drift Myth,’
March 4) or Dean Folt (‘The Fact of the Matter,’ March 3) have cared to
acknowledge. In reality, students are
lucky if they can get into any 30s/50s government or 20s economics classes in a
given term. Seven out of eleven
non-senior government courses offered next spring will be at or above their
cap, and economics is worse off.
Although Sa’adah claims that ‘many’ classes exist that don’t push their
cap (four, doing the math), she declines to mention that her department’s
definition of a ‘cap’ is usually fifty students. Hardly a bragging matter. One
would expect this of large universities — not Dartmouth.”
The
[17] The quotes in the text come
from The Dartmouth’s editorial entitled
"Verbum Ultimum," dated
[18] As reported in an article
entitled “
[19] According to the 2007
edition of The Princeton Review’s Complete
Book of Colleges, four Ivies have lower student-faculty ratios than
Dartmouth (Columbia, Penn, Princeton, and Yale) and only two (Brown and
Cornell) have higher ratios.
[20] The
[21] I measured
change in the size of the faculty by comparing the total number of persons
listed in the College’s Faculty Directory as members of the Arts & Sciences
faculty at two different points in time.
I found that the total number of faculty in Arts & Sciences – that
is, tenured and tenure-track faculty and their full-time equivalents (i.e.,
visiting faculty from other institutions and adjunct instructors) – dropped
from 624 in 1996 to 575 in 2006.
[22] See Footnote 8 above. Consider the following as examples of the
tremendous administrative growth that has taken place. The Dean of the College office had sixteen
full-time equivalents (FTEs) in 1996; in 2006, it had twenty-six. Even though the Dean of the Faculty is only a
half-time position, the Office of the Dean of the Faculty nearly doubled in
size, going from fourteen FTEs in 1996 to twenty-seven and a half in 2006. The Office of Student Life tripled in size
over the same period, jumping from three FTEs to nine. Comparing 1996 to 2006, the staffing in the
Provost’s Office increased from six and a half FTEs to eleven and a half.
[23] See Footnote 10 above.
[24] See “Thirsty for a
Reasonable Alcohol Policy,” The
[25] The following chart,
reporting data provided to me by the College, shows the total number of
disciplinary cases for five of the last six years and the number of those cases
that involved alcohol violations:
Disciplinary
Cases Alcohol Violations
2001-02 490 341
2002-03 588 438
2003-04 588 400
2004-05 666 467
To put these
numbers in perspective, consider the following observation from an article by The Dartmouth dated
October 17, 2006 concerning the significance of the disciplinary statistics for
2004-05: this “means that greater than
one out of every eight Dartmouth students was punished by Dartmouth’s
disciplinary system in that year alone.”
The
[26] The report of the Student
Assembly’s COS Task Force is available at: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~belinsky/COS.pdf.
[27] The following account comes
from an op-ed entitled “Overseeing COS Reform” by the Chair of the COS Task
Force in The Dartmouth’s
“Students on campus care deeply about the College’s disciplinary
system in general and the Committee on Standards specifically. Last fall I was the chair of a Student
Assembly task force that, after conducting several interviews, focus groups and
investigations over the course of six months, produced a report, which received
near universal support from members of the Assembly, outlining recommendations
to the Dean of the College for COS reform.
Since then, Acting Dean Dan Nelson has decided to postpone any action to
improve the
[28] See: Letter from Dan
Nelson, Acting Dean of the College, to leaders of the Student Assembly’s COS
Task Force.