Dartblog

One of the standard lines on diversity from the propaganda apparatus on 7 Lebanon Street is that the level of racial and ethnic diversity at Dartmouth is greater now than ever before, and exists on a steady, permanent and triumphal rise.

Curious, then, what the Admissions Office let slip for an article in The Dartmouth last week.

One hundred members of the Class of 2012 identify themselves as African-American, a 1.3 percent increase from the Class of 2011 and the highest percentage matriculating in over 20 years, the Admissions Office reported.

One hundred members of the Class of 2012 is 8.9 percent of the class.

The spin here is incredible. It went over my head on my first reading. I wonder if the author of the article noticed. The translation is that a greater proportion of Dartmouth students were African-American back in the ’80s than are today.

In a rare moment of lucidity, the propoganda apparatus admitted last June on its “AskDartmouth” website that the single Dartmouth class with the greatest proportion of African-American students ever, 10 percent, was the Class of 1973. That is not a typo.

Not to equate the presence of one historically wronged group with diversity, but how well can Dartmouth really be doing if next year’s incoming class is down by more than a percentage point in this crucial statistic from 39 incoming classes ago?