Dartblog

While budgets are being cut, so are rope swings. The College still seems to have the manpower to police the Connecticut River, even cutting down swings on land that does not belong to Dartmouth — as the Valley News reports:

Workers from Dartmouth College gave the ax to four rope swings along the Connecticut River last week after an undergraduate student was hospitalized overnight with minor injuries related to a rope swing jump.

But while the student’s ill-fated swing prompted the dismantling, college spokesman Justin Anderson said the swings would have met their fate sooner or later, anyway. Dartmouth workers periodically inspect the Connecticut River for swings every summer.

“This is an annual thing,” he said. “The rope swings go up, and we cut them down.”

Gone for now are swings on two parcels of Dartmouth-affiliated properties in Hanover: behind both the CRREL parcel and the Rivercrest housing parcel on Route 10.

Also resting in pieces are swings formerly swung on both the Hanover and Norwich sides of Gilman Island. Dartmouth cut those down as a courtesy to the municipalities. (Trees are not altered during the process, Anderson said.)

If the standard for forbidding an activity is minor injuries, let’s make a list of other things that students do that might result in slight bodily harm: almost any sport; any outdoor recreational activity; moving furniture… the list goes on forever. Shall we forbid everything?

We’ve written about the administration’s bizarre evaluation of risk before. Who are the people that make these decisions?