Dartblog

Louisa Dunnigan, a student from Oxford’s recently created Keble College (it was founded 101 years after Dartmouth), has written a report on frat culture at the College for the Oxonian Globalist. Dunnigan, who studied in Hanover for one summer term (the Rockefeller Center has an exchange program with Keble), breaks no new ground in describing pong, frats and sexual assault, but there is now a generation of Oxonians who have a distinctly negative impression of the College.

IP Folt says that the College has a PR problem; I’d say we have a reality problem.

At a Faculty Meeting not long ago, IP Folt made the following comments:

● “You need to be very active and proactive to have a strong communications strategy.”

● “…as Dartmouth takes this year to develop a truly global information strategy. This is a big part of strategic planning. But even this year, they [Spokesman Justin Anderson’s dedicated communications team] even more than doubled the hits coming to Dartmouth in a single year. They’ve increased reporting about research…”

● “The media we are getting is positive. The majority of it is positive.”

I think that it is fair to characterize IP Folt’s latter comment as delusional (or stupid, or a lie). Dartmouth’s reputation has taken a serious hit for many reasons over the past ten months. Perhaps coincidentally, the number of early decision applications received by the Admissions Office dropped by 12.5% this year. Or perhaps not.