Dartblog

When I converse with students about Dartmouth’s bureaucracy problem, the vast majority express frustration with the situation. Occasionally, though, they are puzzled. Usually I find this reaction among students who are well-connected in one or more of the major, establishment-type student groups on campus, such as Student Assembly and the Council on Student Organizations.

They question how I and others can be so anti-bureaucracy when the deans are just such nice people. They’re so friendly, I hear; some of them are even cool. How can I be against them?

But of course, I am not. Excepting those I mention by name, I am neither “against” nor “for” any particular Dartmouth bureaucrat. The personality of a given bureaucrat is a childish canard, a distraction from the real issue. What I am against, in many cases, is the bureaucrat’s job.

It is the deanery that is the problem, not the deans.

If you are a duplicative Dartmouth dean paid to shuffle paper and answer simple questions with wildly different responses from those of your distinguished colleague at the next desk, you could be an awesome Ph.D. transsexual African-American/Native American feminist from Oxford and I would still prefer to spend your resources on a professor.

In a heartbeat.