Dartblog

Just when I had a moment’s regret for calling the administration “an utter mess,” Dean Charlotte Johnson has come to my rescue. If you still believe that she will do a good job as Dean of the College, well, you don’t know Johnson.

Today’s D had as solid a piece of journalism as you are likely to see from the paper (ok, ok, I know that comment is a little ambiguous, but this particular article was pretty good). It reports that Dean Johnson has introduced yet another alcohol policy to the College. The highlights:

“requirements for licensed bartenders to serve hard alcohol, the implementation of random walkthroughs of student residences and fraternities’ physical plants by Safety and Security and stronger punishments for serving “punch,” or batches of mixed drinks, at parties.”

However The D’s reporter spent more time on the authoritarian manner in which the policy has been imposed on students, even though the Dean protested that undergrads were involved in its development. Greek leaders quoted by The D were very direct in criticizing Dean Johnson for disingenuousness. Take a look for yourself.

That said, we shouldn’t let a day go by without finding something unkind to say about Carol Folt. In this instance, I’d lay odds that Dean Johnson was pressured by Cliché Carol to get some kind of policy out the door, so that the world might think that the Folt Administration is not asleep. Perhaps Johnson didn’t have the nerve to tell Carol that the groundwork for the alcohol policy had not yet been laid.

Addendum: Back at Colgate, Dean Johnson threw the book at students for alcohol violations. While the local police there had no interest in emulating the Hanover Po in arresting students, the Colgate administration under Johnson cited hundreds of underage undergrads each year for alcohol infractions.