Dartblog

The above headline seems to be the guiding principle in some precincts of the administration. Swinging on ropes over the river causes the occasional injury, so Dartmouth takes it upon itself to police up the Connecticut River, cutting down rope swings wherever they may be found.

To be fair, a sophomore was recently hurt after her rope caught on a small, cut-off branch and she swung back into the tree to which the rope was tied. She hit her head, lost her grip, and then fell a good distance onto a log that lay on the river bank. She suffered a a burst L1 vertebra and broken L2 and L3 vertebrae. Fortunately, her spinal cord was not injured.

Should that be the end of the story? The obvious answer is that different parts of the administration have different attitudes towards risk. If broken bones were the standard for ending student involvement in an activity, we’d have no more varsity sports, no more white-water kayaking (above right), mountain climbing, and frankly, any event where students come into contact with each other or solid objects. But somehow things don’t work that way. A Dartmouth student died in 2005 of injuries incurred at the Skiway, and skiing injuries are common, but skiing gets a pass.

Insurance issues or legal liability are, as usual, cited regarding rope swings, but this gambit is just a red herring (insurance is the last argument of an administration scoundrel; it is one of Carol Folt’s favorites). The College’s umbrella policy covers exactly this kind of accident — just as it covers the climbing of Bartlett Tower by intrepid mountaineers (left), for example. Nobody is proposing to raze the Tower because of the occasional accident there.

In the end, my sense is that this controversy all comes down to the decision-maker. AD Harry Sheehy does not ban a sport due to the physical risk that it offers students; he understands that such things occur in life. But fussy, risk-averse people, like the Dean of the College and the College Counsel, seem to sit up nights worrying that someone somewhere might scrape a knee doing things that lie within their areas of responsibility.

Let’s hope for some consistency from the administration in the future as regards these matters — that is one of the President’s roles — and also for some determination that students are able to choose the ways in which they have fun. Besides, new rope each year costs a fair amount of money.