Where I Stand
If elected to represent you on the Board of Trustees, my goal will be to reclaim the Dartmouth we knew and loved. Our “small college,” as Daniel Webster put it, must be devoted to the education of undergraduates and to the formation of well-rounded students. It must also aim for nothing short of excellence in everything that it does–not only in the instruction of undergraduates, but also in athletics and student life.
This is not a reflexive argument against change. The choices the College faces are not living in the past or throwing off the past. Another choice–the right choice for a school as steeped in hallowed traditions as Dartmouth–is to maintain continuity with the past while changing to meet the needs of future generations of undergraduates. The task must be to ensure that change, though inevitable and good, does not come at the expense of the features that have long given Dartmouth a distinctive, and decidedly superior, place in the pantheon of higher education.
Keeping Dartmouth College a “college”
Guaranteeing due process for students
Investing in excellence, not bureaucracy
Ensuring genuine freedom of speech
These are some of the leading issues facing Dartmouth today. I also feel passionately about two other things: Ensuring that the Dartmouth social experience is not altered by overzealous administrators, and rejuvenating the athletics program.
Dartmouth’s Unique Social Life
I believe that one of the distinctive aspects of Dartmouth was that education wasn’t confined to the classroom. With so much talent and diversity in the student body, we had as much to learn from our classmates as we did from our professors. Consequently, then as now, entering students began their Dartmouth careers not in lecture halls or Baker Library, but rather with camping trips – and green eggs and ham! – in the wilds of New Hampshire. This baptismal rite, as well as the vibrancy of social life (including, for those who wished to participate, fraternities and sororities), showed that student interaction was understood to be an essential means of forming well-rounded students. Student life was the mechanism by which a diverse group strangers was infused with an enduring sense of community and given the interpersonal skills necessary to succeed in the world.
My own experience was typical. I came to Dartmouth as a shy sixteen year old who felt more than a little out of place with students whose backgrounds were so different from mine. I quickly developed a sense of belonging living in Richardson dormitory and playing college sports (football and, for a time, basketball) and intramural athletics. Later, my Sigma Nu brothers elected me to various leadership positions. Through these and other extracurricular activities, I developed self-confidence and social skills, and formed friendships that, in many cases, have lasted more than twenty years.
Unfortunately, in recent years the administration has charted a course that threatens to dampen the vibrancy of student life in Hanover. Instead of merely expanding social alternatives to fraternities and sororities, the administration embarked on the so-called “Student Life Initiative” that would, as The Dartmouth put it, “end the Greek system as we know it.” This initiative was so unpopular on campus that, in 1999, students cancelled Dartmouth’s celebrated Winter Carnival in protest.
We don’t hear the words “Student Life Initiative” anymore, but the problems remain. Until this year’s trustee election was underway, Zeta Psi fraternity remained derecognized, years after its alleged transgression, with no indication from the College when – if ever – Zeta Psi would be permitted to return to campus. In January 2007, the College suddenly reversed course, announcing a plan finally to re-recognize Zeta Psi. Even so, at the very earliest, it will be several years before Zeta Psi can return to campus.
This issue is of broader concern to the Greek system as a whole. Although Zeta Psi is now on the long path toward re-recognition, other fraternities, such as Beta, remain outlaws in the eyes of the administration. If elected, I will encourage the administration to take all necessary steps to enable Beta and other derecognized fraternities to regain recognition from the College on fair terms without undue delay.
With the departure of the Dean of the College who presided over the administration’s assault on the Greek system, we now have an opportunity to select a successor who will appreciate the role of a vibrant social life in forming well-rounded students. As much as the administration might wish it were otherwise, the fact is that fraternities and sororities play an important role in the vibrant social life, and interconnectedness of the student body, that is so characteristic of Dartmouth. The excesses of the administration’s failed “Student Life Initiative” must not be repeated.
Our Athletic Priorities
While the administration and its athletic director have been devoting substantial time and energy in recent months to criticizing the American Indian mascot of the University of North Dakota men’s hockey team – which, incidentally, beat Dartmouth in the recent Hanover tournament – they overlooked a more pressing athletics issue closer to home: the dismal performance of several of Dartmouth’s athletics programs. The prime example, of course, is football.
For years now, “Big Green” football has finished at or near the bottom of the Ivy League. Seasonal variations in win/loss records are to be expected; perennial last-place finishes that threaten to make us – the team with the highest historical winning percentage in Ivy League football – the laughingstock of the Ivy League aren’t. In my day, Dartmouth Football was fully supported by the administration in its quest for excellence, and that should be the case again. All Dartmouth athletics teams should be provided with the funding and support they need to allow our scholar-athletes to be the very best they can be. Excellence in athletics is not at all inconsistent with excellence in academics.
Given that we cannot offer athletic scholarships, we must redouble our efforts to recruit and admit highly talented scholar-athletes for the football team. This cannot be done as long as our admissions office is headed and staffed by someone who subscribes to what might be called the “Furstenberg Manifesto.”
This Manifesto is a letter written on Dartmouth letterhead by Dartmouth Admissions Dean Karl Furstenberg to the president of Swarthmore College praising it for dropping its football program. Furstenberg declared in that letter that “football, and the culture that surrounds it, is antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours.”
Although football was the main sole focus of Dean Furstenberg’s diatribe, he also criticized other sports. “[C]lose examination of intercollegiate athletics within the Ivy League,” he added, “would point to other sports in which the same phenomenon is apparent.” That is, football isn’t the only sport that is “antithetical” to Dartmouth’s “academic mission.”
Consistent with the views expressed in Furstenberg’s letter, Dartmouth coaches experienced difficulty getting some qualified recruiting prospects admitted. This difficulty is documented in a book by Chris Lincoln, entitled “Playing the Game: Inside Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League” (2004).
In an interview with the Big Green Alert Blog, a blog devoted to Dartmouth football, Mr. Lincoln recounts the difficulty that Dartmouth coaches have experienced getting the Admissions Office to admit qualified recruits. Following the football team’s amazing 10-0 season in 1996, Mr. Lincoln explains, ”[Dartmouth football coach John] Lyons and his staff were not always supported by Karl Furstenberg.” This experience wasn’t unique to football, according to Mr. Lincoln, because “other coaches in other sports were also frustrated by the Dartmouth admission office at times.” Mr. Lincoln summarized the coaches’ dilemma this way: ”You bring forward a strong candidate for admission, with [an academic score] that falls within the school’s range, place him high on your list, and then sit back and watch the kid get rejected.”
Mr. Lincoln gives the following picture of recruits turned down by Dean Furstenberg’s admissions office:
“I do know of cases where players were rejected by Dartmouth and wound up at other Ivies—in one case at Columbia (as an Ivy Player of the Year in men’s basketball), in another case at Harvard (as a men’s soccer captain). I also know that a men’s soccer player was turned down at Dartmouth and went on to become a first team All-American at Stanford. Last year, a recruit was turned down by Dartmouth in early decision, and he’s now playing lacrosse at Yale.”
The interview with Mr. Lincoln is available at http://biggreenalertblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/playing-game-with-chris-lincoln.html.
Years later, of course, when the Furstenberg Manifesto became public, the administration was forced to retreat from Dean Furstenberg’s extreme position, under heavy fire from students and alumni alike. The outcry confirms the obvious – that athletics, far from being a foreign presence at Dartmouth, is part and parcel of the Dartmouth experience and of the College’s institutional goal of forming well-rounded students committed to excellence.
Dean Furstenberg’s upcoming retirement this year presents the College with the opportunity to hire an admissions dean who will work closely with the athletics department to achieve excellence on the gridiron and other fields of contest. I will work to ensure that the next Dean of Admissions will recognize, in word and deed, the integral role that athletics plays at Dartmouth and will be as committed as our accomplished new football coach, Buddy Teevens ’79, to returning to the College’s winning ways in football.
