Who doth not answer to the rudder shall answer to the rock

Nathan Bruschi ‘10 offers a lovely column this ayem insisting that Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees has no good excuse for expanding itself without permitting additional elections—and that opposing this Board-packing plan in court is the only way to ensure the continuing health of the College.

Mr. Bruschi writes:

David Shipler’s letter to the editor demonstrates a lot of what is wrong with the expansion plan for the Board of Trustees (“The Conservative Campaign,” May 5). He postulates that the motive behind the AoA lawsuit — designed to maintain parity between elected and appointed members on the Board — is “to allow inroads by a highly publicized and pervasively ideological brand of conservatism.” This encapsulates the perverse logic of those in opposition to the lawsuit — the assumption that we only support democracy insomuch as we agree with those who get elected.

I confess that I once supported the anti-lawsuit position. I remember being happy that the Board was going to expand itself to stop seemingly delusional and disconnected petition candidates from overtaking the Board. I remember being upset when I learned that the supporters of those petition candidates were suing the College. I even briefly joined Dartmouth Undying’s Facebook group. But in the end, it was the anti-lawsuit partisans (not the litigants) who caused me to switch my affiliation. Let me explain.

Bronzen Panegyric to Mrs. Thatcher

Hillsdale College today unveiled the United States’ first statue of Margaret Thatcher. At its base, this quotation:

The new world of freedom into which the dazzled Socialists have stumbled is not new to us. What to them is uncharted territory is to us familiar and well loved ground. For Britain has returned to those basic truths and principles which made her great—personal liberty, private property and the rule of law, on which democratic freedoms everywhere are based. Ours is a creed which travels and endures. Its truths are written in the human heart.

Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister of England, queen of first principles.

Two Reasons to Dislike Sean Penn a Little Less

1. Penn has been engaging in anti-smoking ban activism at the Cannes film festival in France, a country that on smoking, like just about every other enterprise related to pleasure, recreation, employment, commerce, etc, has enacted impediments. Penn’s particular activism here may be addiction driven but nevertheless…

2. Penn challenged Obama’s voting record, calling it “phenomenally inhuman and unconstitutional.” Maybe John McCain will get an unlikely second vote this November to add to the only other Hollywood vote I could see coming his way, that of Chuck Norris.

Just to add the obligatory Chuck Norris joke, I can see his Republican vote coming in a way that I, nor anyone else, could anticipate one of his roundhouse kicks. And, to be fair, Chuck Norris has more electoral votes than the state of California.

Poetical Diversion

John Gleason, Class of 1976, has composed a little trinket about the present Dartmouth governance spat:

Stopping by the College on a Stormy Evening
(With great apologies to R. Frost)

Whose School this is I think I know,
Their house too close to Wall Street though.
They do not like some being here,
Now the School has filled up with dough.

My old friends don’t you think it queer,
This change without a reason clear.
Between the barbs and legal takes,
The darkest evening of the year.

I give my puzzled head two shakes,
To ask why make these sad mistakes.
The only other sound’s the creep,
Of bitter winds and sorry flakes.

The School once lovely, stark, and steep’d,
But I have pockets not so deep,
And thus no means to buy a seat,
And thus no means to buy a seat.

Eddie Eagle Turns 20!

The National Rifle Association’s gun accident prevention program Eddie Eagle GunSafe is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this month. Developed in 1988 with input from law enforcement, elementary school teachers, and child psychologists, the program has a simple message for children between kindergarten and third grade: “If you see a gun: STOP! Don’t Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Adult.” This program reaches a million children each year and has been lauded by governors across the United States as well as by several government agencies.

While known for its Second Amendment lobbying efforts, the NRA is also committed to gun safety. NRA Past President Marion P. Hammer once said “Eddie Eagle has taught, tens of millions of children what to do if they see or find a firearm when they are not under the supervision of an adult. No other organization, and certainly no government can match that accomplishment.”

Congratulations to Eddie Eagle on his birthday! This is clearly an accomplishment that even the most liberal gun haters among us can acknowledge. I have been in and around firearms my entire life. I love seeing different types of guns, I enjoy clay target shooting, and I appreciate the friendships I have made through this sport. What I have noticed about shooters is that the vast majority are seriously dedicated to gun safety. Anyone who handles firearms recognizes their destructive potential, but also how simple it is to prevent firearm accidents. An unloaded gun is no threat to anyone. Guns also have safeties and can only shoot people at whom they are pointed. I think that some gun safety course should be taught in all schools. If we include sex, gang, and drug education, then a simple gun safety course could not hurt. Eliminating gun accidents is a noble goal and one that is realisable. Perhaps local governments could focus on this small step as an alternative to ineffective gun control legislation pursued on the federal level.

Dartmouth Progressives Should Get Behind Parity, says King ’02

“I am an openly gay man, a teacher, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party, the ACLU, and the Human Rights Campaign,” writes Daniel King, Class of 2002, in an essay just emailed to Dartblog. “I don’t really think my political leanings should have anything to do with how I vote in the current Association of Alumni elections,” he writes.

“The real battle going on is one between an overly paternalistic College administration, supported by a rubber-stamp Board of Trustees that has totally abdicated its oversight responsibilities—and, on the other side, loyal alumni from all sides of the political spectrum who wish to not see the value of their Dartmouth degree plummet and to preserve the historic and unique ties that alumni have to our alma mater.”

Mr. King opposes, with glee, the Board-packing plan, which would transfer oversight of Dartmouth College to a five-person unelected governance committee within the Board. Presently, oversight is shared between that committee and Dartmouth’s 70,000 living graduates, who are able to vote for half of the trustees. Dartblog has been covering the Board-packing plan, concocted impetuously in response to four straight trustee elections in which petition candidates have won out against the candidates preferred by the College’s executives.

His entire essay can be downloaded at the link above, read online at Scribd, or read just below, in the extended entry.

Unwritten Speech Codes

A few weeks ago, about the time when The Dartmouth Review blog broke the Priya Venkatesan story and Dartblog was first to publish an interview with Ms. Venkatesan, the Office of Public Affairs began to include blogs in their review of Dartmouth in the news. This did not last long, and it is not the first time. In 2005 a blog called “ViewPoints” a compendium of Dartmouth news and information largely from student blogs was begun only to mysteriously vanish.

One Dartmouth student, class of 2010, commented to Dartblog on the recent OPA reversal of policy:

Surprise, surprise, the Dartmouth Propaganda Machine will only alert you to the good things the Dartmouth Administration does. In what is essentially the largest self-call in the history of Dartmouth (Self-call is slang for egotistical statement here at Dartmouth) the Office of Public Affairs (OPA) here on the hill creates “a daily summary of news coverage involving Dartmouth, and higher education in general, that the Dartmouth Office of Public Affairs has found and compiled.” You can sign up to have this self-call blitzed to you daily. Recently, I believe it coincided with the Priya fiasco, the OPA appropriately began to include blog coverage of Dartmouth. I found this to be wonderful as I was now but a ctrl-click away from reading articles discussing Dartmouth on blogs such as this one, Dartlog, Powerline, etc.

Unfortunately someone in the Administration evidently caught on and quickly censured this informative feature, by means of some industrious and hardworking pawn, err… student intern. As of this week, the blitz from the OPA no longer includes Dartmouth mentions in blogs. You see, most of the blogging which goes on about Dartmouth is pro-reform or constructively critical of the Wright Administration. I suggest we all continue reading pieces that challenge the status quo and make us think. It’s better than propaganda.

Or not. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. After all, it may be 2008 in America, but at the Little College on a Hill, some are still trying to turn back the clock to 1984.

Conditions on the ground might not be quite Orwellian, but I wish that I could say I believed it was just a coincidence that the media sources that advocate reform and cast a critical eye towards the Administration are the news sources that are not included in the daily media roundup at Dartmouth.

Do Unto Others

Even Dartmouth trustees who endorse the Board-packing plan don’t like it when it happens to them.

John Donahoe, Class of 1982, an appointed trustee of Dartmouth College, and the exceedingly capable CEO of eBay, has found himself in a dust-up with Internet startup Craigslist, the simplex classified advertising site. As Richard Walters reports in this morning’s Financial Times, eBay’s 28% stake in Craigslist—which by rights ought to give Mr. Donahoe some boardroom influence over how Craigslist is run—is the subject of a brouhaha between Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, and Mr. Donahoe.

Mr. Buckmaster wants to deny Mr. Donahoe a chance at suggesting new ideas for the company; the contract formed between eBay and Craigslist says otherwise.

“The battle,” the Financial Times reports, “surfaced in recent weeks with a lawsuit from Ebay, the e-commerce giant which bought a 28 per cent stake in Craigslist in 2004. Ebay accuses Mr Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark, who control the company, of trying to dilute its stake to reduce its potential influence over the company’s board. […] ‘If someone wanted to come up with a dump truck and give us a lot of cash we wouldn’t say no,’ Mr Buckmaster says. But he adds that he [has] no interest in being answerable to an outside shareholder who would interfere with their unconventional principles.”

In one corner, then, a plainly hidebound company bent on avoiding suggestions from major stakeholders. It’ll take “a lot of cash”—and it’ll expend the cash without oversight; but the company’s executives have no interest in receiving intellectual guidance. No ideas, please—only checks. Indeed, it has engaged in dilutive schemes purposed specifically to curtail the influence of stakeholders. These were enacted at “clandestine meetings,” according to eBay. But, by contract, stakeholders have voting rights which cannot be diluted for nebulous ends like “protecting the long term well-being of the Craigslist community.”

In the other corner, Mr. Donahoe. He is invested in Craigslist. And he takes umbrage at Craigslist’s maneuvering to deny him the voice to which he is contractually entitled. For no reason other than the insulation of a collection of ill-considered standard operating procedures against the force of counterargument, Craigslist’s executives have jiggered the situation so that Mr. Donahoe is shut out of the decision-making process.

Mr. Donahoe and his attorneys make the following allegations, as reported by The Wall Street Journal:

The complaint says that Messrs. Buckmaster and Newmark met as a board on Oct. 15 and Oct. 25 with Craigslist’s outside lawyer, Edward Wes, without notifying eBay. It adds that the two-person board then met and initiated a series of transactions in December 2007 and January 2008 that hurt eBay’s interests as a minority shareholder.

For instance, as an “inducement” to persuade eBay to enter into a new “right of first refusal” agreement, Messrs. Newmark and Buckmaster authorized the issuance of one “reorganization share” in Craigslist for every five shares owned by a shareholder who agrees to the “right of first refusal” agreement, according to the complaint.

Both of the directors, who together own 71% of the company’s shares, immediately agreed to the “right of first refusal” and received “reorganization shares” which diluted eBay’s stake from 28.4% to 24.85% of the outstanding shares.

It sounds like—and it is—an unfair situation; not only unfair, but legally actionable; Mr. Donahoe has brought suit to correct the dilution of his influence; to undo Craigslist’s consolidation of power. Moreover one must confess that the decision by Craigslist executives to shutter outside influence is also bad for the company, which makes it bad for Craigslist shareholders. John Donahoe, understanding all of this, is calling a foul.

The analogy may now be overripe, I confess, but observe that Mr. Donahoe, failing to see the Dartmouth governance fight from the side of the College’s stakeholders, has raised arms on the wrong side. He has taken up with the deaf imperials, supporting a brash Board-packing plan that would destroy 117 years of equal alumni equity in the College, concentrating all oversight power in a five-person governance committee.

We now know that, if Mr. Donahoe were on the other side, he too would arise in protest. At Dartmouth the golden rule, as ever, applies. It is never too late to flash to the side of light.

‘Report from the Ground’ Corrected With Facts from the Ground

In today’s issue of The Dartmouth, religion professor Susan Ackerman ‘80 opines on the alumni responses to the Board-packing plan. I think that professors should certainly play a vital role in the debate over the future of Dartmouth, just as students and alumni should. This is not a given, indeed this is what the whole debate is about (the right to vote (parity) versus the loss of alumni voting power (board-packing). Yet I think a few of Professor Ackerman’s points need further elaboration.

1. The title of her column (which admittedly was likely not written by Ackerman herself, but still) implicitly claims that the information below represents some sort of empirical valid or at least experientially substantiated fact pattern. But I don’t know that Ackerman has seen the banner student rejection log, flurry of instructor permission card stresses at the start of each term, or sat in on a Government or Economics class lately. Students are still shut out of courses, class sizes are still large in many departments, and the number of faculty have grown little, if at all over the past few years, especially compared to the size of the administrative bureaucracy. See a full and referenced validation of these facts, by students, professors, and data here.

2. Nobody wants to be in court! But as I have written,

The lawsuit could be stopped in 9 seconds! I timed it. All it would take is a phone call from Board of Trustees chairman Ed Haldeman to the Association of Alumni that said: “We are going to honor the 1891 contract giving alumni the right to elect 50% of the Board: Parity. We are going to stop the Board-packing scheme.

3. Ackerman expresses fears of “turning back the clock.” In this context I wonder what could be more regressive and more backwards and more dated than curbing democracy and the right of the class of 2008 and all other alumni, past and future, to vote! A very long time ago we operated on the principles of kings and dictators who would appoint themselves and their cronies. If anything is “turning back the clock” it most certainly is not democracy.

The Malaise of the Mail Monopoly

I read on CNN today that the price of stamps is going up again, 1 cent more this time up to 42 cents for a standard letter. The Post Office has apparently come up with the cute little gimmick of “Forever stamps” which can be purchased at the going rate (e.g. now 41 cents) and used forever, even if postage rates change. Still I thought it would interesting to post the Cato Institute’s view on the matter:

Mail service in the United States is slow and unreliable because the government has a monopoly. The implicit motto of every monopoly is, “The public be damned!” As long as the Postal Service has no competition, it will have little or no incentive to treat its customers with the respect they receive elsewhere in a competitive economy.

With over 800,000 employees, the Postal Service is the United States’ largest employer. It has added more new employees—150,000—during the Reagan years than have been cut by all other federal agencies to reduce federal employment. However, the more workers the Postal Service has hired, the worse service has become, and the more incorrigible the system appears to be….

A 1976 New Yorker cartoon expressed what could be the Postal Service’s new motto, “Neither lethargy, indifference, nor the general collapse of standards will prevent these couriers from eventually delivering some of your mail….”

The United States should recognize that the words “monopoly” and “public service” will almost always be a contradiction. The public is best protected when citizens have the right of free choice. We have a choice of blindly trusting to the generosity of government bureaucrats or of relying on competing entrepreneurs. Is there anyone who would say America would be better off if the government outlawed Federal Express and UPS? Is there anyone who thinks that America would be better off if the Postal Service ran the telephone system?

Then why should we continue the Postal Service’s monopoly over first-class mail, simply because our ancestors also endured a postal monopoly? It should not be a federal crime to deliver the mail faster than the U.S. Postal Service.

Here is a link to the full, particularly well-written report. This report was written in 1988, twenty years ago, yet none of the underlying facts seem to have changed and of course the USPS has not learned.

Faculty: Wright’s successor should be ‘efficient,’ ‘a leader,’ ‘smart’

I too attended Friday’s meeting for faculty with Board Chairman Ed Haldeman ‘70 and Presidential Search Committee Chairman Al Mulley ‘70, concerning criteria for the selection of Dartmouth’s next president. See Zak’s comments below.

My views on the next president are here.

Three professors’ comments towards the end of the meeting stood out to me as particularly insightful.

John Winn of the Chemistry Department expressed measured praise for the current administration for keeping the “lines of communication” open between faculty and the senior administration. But then, as a counterpoint to that, he expressed desire that the next president would be able to restructure the College’s sprawling bureaucracy in a more efficient manner. It’s good to know I’m not alone in my views as I harp on about Dartmouth’s ridiculous bureaucracy.

Prof. Winn then expressed a strong desire that Dartmouth’s next president will have the courage and audacity to be a major player on the national higher education stage, rather than merely follow Harvard’s lead on policy, as the current president has done. I could not agree more.

John Watanabe of the Anthropology Department, the penultimate speaker, wants a president who will articulate a broad-strokes vision for Dartmouth but who will nonetheless allow individual departments the autonomy to manage and grow themselves, with no meddling. Was this also a comment on the current administration?

Prof. Watanabe then expressed desire that the next president have experience serving on a faculty, and who thus “understands the peculiar dynamics of academic politics.” Notably, he did not say he wants a president whose only prior work experience is as an academic.

To the academic politics point, Trustee Mulley had an uncharacteristically funny response: “I often wonder whether Woodrow Wilson didn’t leave Princeton, and go on to become Governor of New Jersey and then President, in order to get out of politics.”

Finally Susan Ackerman of Religion, the last to speak, made perhaps the most important point of the night. She simply wanted to “throw out the adjective ‘smart’”—by which she meant both politically savvy, she explained, and smart “just in terms of raw brainpower.” She said she wanted a president as smart as the professors, or, “ideally,” smarter. (At this, an incredulous wave of muttering swept through the room.) She added that a smart president would be confident enough to appoint “other smart people” to senior administrative posts—and at that, Provost Barry Scherr, who was on stage as moderator, bucked up in his seat.

As Steve Jobs says, “A people hire A people; B people hire C people.”

Why would a professor specifically request a “smart” president? And it’s not just one professor—Trustee Mulley, in his reply to Prof. Ackerman, specifically stated that he has received “many” comments echoing her sentiment.

Why is there all of a sudden a groundswell of voices clamoring for someone “smart”—a characteristic that should be a given for an Ivy League president? How could that make sense? Only if there is a widespread fear that the trustees will appoint someone who lacks that characteristic.

And why would such a fear exist? It must be because many people feel that the current president lacks the characteristic.

Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy rhetoric comes to Dartmouth

I couldn’t blog about this all last week due to some confusion at The Dartmouth about posting the following letter online, but here it is now, anyway. The letter was printed Monday the 5th.

Former trustee David Shipler ‘64, who authored the letter, has no idea what he is talking about. He doesn’t even really attempt to hide that fact. He just appropriates the tired “vast, right-wing conspiracy” rhetoric and stamps it, with no apparent analysis or thought whatsoever, on the Parity slate in the current Association of Alumni election.

Here’s the letter:

To the Editor:

The election in the Association of Alumni, which began this week, is critical to impeding the radical right’s long-term campaign to control Dartmouth. The new “unity” slate led by John Mathias ‘69 would end a lawsuit against the College. That suit seeks “parity” in trustee selection to allow inroads by a highly politicized and pervasively ideological brand of conservatism. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is about Dartmouth alone. Higher education remains one of the last institutions beyond conservative domination, and Dartmouth is merely a convenient target in a larger strategy.

Otherwise, why would people who claim to love the College invite the courts and the legislature to interfere in running it? Why would conservative champions of “judicial restraint” apply the principle only when it gives the result that they like? What is it that the conservatives want to conserve? Not the exceptional diversity and global engagement of 21st-century Dartmouth, apparently, but some throwback, frozen in amber, that could never maintain its excellence in modern times.

The answer to Mr. Shipler’s first rhetorical question in the second paragraph is that those of us in favor of Parity firmly believe that Parity on the Board of Trustees is what pulled Dartmouth out of the gutter at the end of the nineteenth century, and what has kept it great ever since. The full argument is here—and I would encourage Mr. Shipler to read it before writing another letter on a topic about which he very clearly knows nothing.

I haven’t even responded to the many lies in the letter, such as the propaganda about the “radical right’s long term campaign to control Dartmouth,” and the lie that anyone “invited” any legislature to “interfere” at Dartmouth, ever.

Mr. Shipler’s letter is a disgrace to honest, good-faith discourse. That’s all there is to say.

Is this really the best the Board-Packers can do? If I were an alum, I would want to vote Parity just out of fear of association with this kind of anti-intellectual drivel.

Don’t Worry—Be Happy

The final installment of Peter Robinson’s interview with novelist Tom Wolfe has been posted at National Review. Hear Mr. Wolfe’s thoughts on America and her multifarious whiners.

Faculty Presidential Search Commitee Meeting

About 40 professors showed up for a meeting on the Dartmouth presidential search with Board of Trustee Chairman Ed Haldeman ‘70 and Trustee Al Mulley ‘70.

Among the criteria enumerated by various professors for choosing the next president were an academic background, the ability to express a clear vision consistent with the desires of Dartmouth, setting a good tone for Dartmouth’s academia, and retaining the highest quality faculty. One professor commented that the next president should not just be a Jim Wright replacement.

One particularly insightful line of commentary came from Professor Ivy Schweitzer of the English and Women and Gender Studies Departments, who spoke about the need for the next president to articulate a vision for Dartmouth. “We have the ability to be the top in liberal arts and the humanities,” Schweitzer said, and it is this superior liberal arts education that is what makes Dartmouth special and this vision that the next president should proudly articulate.

Professor Kevin Reinhart of the Religion Department spoke about considering whether the next president him or herself had an undergraduate liberal arts education, which Professor Reinhart said could be a decisive factor in understanding what the goals are here at Dartmouth. Reinhart also spoke in support of going outside of Dartmouth to hire the next president to gain a fresh pair of eyes, and that this candidate should be in the mold of a president like John Sloan Dickey in promoting an understanding of the world.

Professors also spoke about the need to create a climate the encourages, in the words of Colin Calloway of the Native American Studies Department, “true diversity.” He talked about the need to push candidates under consideration on the issue of diversity and the ability to consider how to treat free speech that might be insensitive to others. Following up Al Mulley responded that “Diversity that can be quantified is not enough” but that we must be “sensitive to the differences that can be understood.”

Computer Science professor Scott Drysdale began his remarks by saying that “the elephant in the room” is the trustee battles and election. The next president needs to put this to rest and get everyone to agree on what the mission for Dartmouth should be. Elaborating on this mission, Drysdale spoke about upholding the unique balance Dartmouth has struck between teaching and research, and that as much as we do not want to become a second-rate Harvard we also do not want to become a second-rate Williams.

Another professor spoke about “intellectual sustainability” and cultivating “superior effort, growth, and opportunity” towards the kind of liberal arts education that can play a role on the national academic stage. Another spoke about the need for “intellectual leadership” from the next president that does not interfere with particular departments (i.e. academic freedom) but has a broader idea of where the institution should go, perhaps a former faculty member or academic.

Vox the Vote for Democracy

One distinguished alumnus, class of ‘67, put the ongoing Association of Alumni election in perfect perspective:

I hope those of us with the brains to vote against being disenfranchised in the current AofA election end up in the majority.

That is exactly what this election comes down to, will Dartmouth alumni vote to preserve their right to elect 50% of the Board of Trustees (Parity) or will they vote for the slate that would dilute that long-standing democratic right (Board-packing).

Student Satisfaction Report Released

On Monday, Dartmouth’s Office of Institutional Research (where eager dirt-diggers can find many a fascinating document, by the way) released its report of Dartmouth’s results from the 2006 “Senior Survey.” The Survey is a detailed questionnaire administered annually by an outside group, the Higher Education Research Institute, to graduating seniors at participating American colleges and universities. The questionnaire examines student opinion on a wide variety of aspects of instruction, administrative services, student life, etc. Dartmouth participates in the Survey every other year. This is the first time that one of these reports, which Dartmouth’s bureaucrats presumably prepare biannually each year Dartmouth participates in the Survey, has been made public.

The report—there it is in all its 19-page pdf glory—contains a surprisingly detailed and technical analysis of the collected data. I was mildly impressed—the bureaucrats put a lot of time and effort into this.

The report compares Dartmouth on a variety of dimensions to three “peer groups.” Peer 1 is “highly selective, co-ed liberal arts colleges,” so Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, Rice, Oberlin, etc. Peer 2 is “highly selective, private institutions in Northeast,” which would seem to overlap greatly with Peer 1, unless you assume that by the word “institutions” the bureaucrats mean “research universities,” in which case we have the rest of the Ivy League, MIT, NYU, etc. Peer 3 is “highly selective, private institutions beyond Northeast,” which also seems to overlap with Peer 1, but I’m assuming the bureaucrats mean Stanford, Caltech, Wash. U, U Chicago, Northwestern, etc.

The overall sense one gets from the comparative section of the report is that Peer 1 students are happier than Dartmouth students, who are happier than the students in Peers 2 and 3. (Figures for the peer groups are not given school by school, but as aggregate numbers—presumably averages across the schools in each group, but possibly medians or some other central tendency measure.) That finding doesn’t surprise me at all—overall student satisfaction appears negatively correlated with the size of the school.

There are two particular variables of interest. First, in “pre-major advising,” Dartmouth stinks. We are far worse than all three of the peer groups, and on a four-point scale of “Very dissatisfied,” “Generally dissatisfied,” “Generally satisfied,” and “Very satisfied,” fully 65 percent were “very” or “generally” dissatisfied. Only six percent were “very satisfied.” And “satisfied” is a far cry from pleased.

Second, and I feel like a broken record here, Dartmouth is worse than all three peer groups in “Administration’s responsiveness to students.” Dartmouth students rated that item as the third-worst aspect of Dartmouth. One has to wonder how the bureaucrats preparing the report felt when they wrote that.

The end of the report contains some interesting summary graphs that examine which aspects of Dartmouth are important “drivers” of student satisfaction. These graphs plot the “importance” to students of each item on the vertical axis, against student satisfaction with that item on the horizontal axis. Thus, the upper right-hand sector contains “key strengths,” aspects of Dartmouth students like and find important; the upper left-hand sector “key weaknesses,” aspects of Dartmouth students dislike but find important; the lower right-hand sector peripheral strengths, and the lower left-hand sector peripheral weaknesses. Here are two of these graphs, the first for academics and instruction, the second for campus life.

There are a few points of interest here, particularly in the campus life graph. First, notice the high rating students give to “Social life.” With this in mind, the administration’s simmering distaste with Greek-letter organizations and the recent campus obsession with finding “alternative social spaces” look a lot less useful, and a lot more like ideologically-driven social engineering.

Second, notice the position of the item “Diversity of campus.” It’s in the peripheral weakness sector. Students apparently find the level of diversity on campus unsatisfying, but don’t particularly care. Is that not the exact opposite of the standard line from the propaganda apparatus at 7 Lebanon Street?

As a final note, one has to wonder to what extent, if at all, the figures in the report were spun. As the report was not initially prepared for public viewing, but rather by Dartmouth bureaucrats for Dartmouth bureaucrats, there was presumably not much of an incentive to smear away from the truth. And as I have discussed, there are elements of the report that paint an unflattering picture. But it is a question nonetheless.

You might wonder how a number can be spun—a number is a number. With a little clever presentation, it’s not hard. Take for instance the graphs above. The impression a reader takes away isn’t based on the numbers behind the graphs, but on the graphs themselves—where the data points are located with respect to the four strength/weakness sectors. But realize that if you were constructing one of those graphs, you could place a given data point anywhere you pleased—it’s just a matter of choosing intelligent axis scaling. For example, if the horizontal axis scale extended up to 4.0 instead of 3.9, all the data points would shift to the left—and students would appear less satisfied.

With this in mind, notice that there is not a single data point in the “key weaknesses” sector of the academics and instruction graph, but that “Course availability” is extremely close. I would not be surprised if the bureaucrat who created that graph fiddled with axis scaling for half an hour to find just the right numbers.

Only in College…

For your amusement. I was recently forwarded the following blitz:

– Forwarded message from granitebrain@gmail.com ––––––––––––––––––-

In honor of senior spring, and because you can only get
away with this kind of shit in college, I am going to try to
organize the largest mass streaking event in Dartmouth history.
My goal is to get over 100 people. I have no idea if this will,
in fact, be the largest, but it’s a good number to shoot for.

Here’s what I need from you:

1) If you are interested in participating in what will
hopefully be a momentous, historic event blitz me at
granitebrain@gmail.com with the subject line “Streak”

2) If you are involved in any sports, clubs, or CFS
organizations, please blitz them. Tell them if they want to
participate, to blitz granitebrain@gmail.com with the subject
line “Streak”

3) Though this is a mass event, I want to try to keep it as
much on the DL as possible (due to its illegal nature, and
because this will be all the better if its a surprise). Please
do not tell anyone who is organizing this — only refer them to
the e-mail address: I think an air of mystery will help this
build.

If we get enough people, I will blitz those participating with
more details. If you’ve never streaked before, this is the
perfect opportunity to try, retaining a certain degree of
anonymity, and being part of something (hopefully) big. Spread
the word.

-******

– End of forwarded text –

Certainly intelligent of the streaker to use a non-Dartmouth e-mail address.

P.J. O’Rourke’s Commencement Address

“Fairness, idealism and other atrocities.”

“Eggheads and African Americans…”

Is how Democratic strategist Paul Begala described Barack Obama’s base of supporters, saying that the party could not win with that constituency alone.

Said Hillary Clinton in a USA Today interview:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here.”

Meanwhile in Washington D.C., a number of ‘persons of spurious intellectual pretensions,’ out of touch with real-life concerns, denounced the comments and reaffirmed their support for Obama.

Our Uninformed Trustees

In the daily student newspaper, The Dartmouth, Joe Asch ‘79 censures Dartmouth’s imperious trustees—exception the four petition candidates, of course—for running the presidential search in just the way they have, before the era of petition candidates, run the College: from a long, long distance.

The Word Was Good

If you have not been watching Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge in its new, non-PBS incarnation, you have made a grave error. This week Peter has been talking to novelist Tom Wolfe about the state of literature, language, and rationality. There is no better interview program around.

Israeli Independence Day

60 years ago today according to the Hebrew calendar, the State of Israel declared its independence. I think it is still a point of pride that it only took the United States 11 minutes before we became the first country to formally recognize Israel, and that today we remain one of Israel’s strongest allies.

Even 60 years later Israel’s principles of independence are inspirational:

Eretz Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books….

Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland….

[The State of Israel] will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex….

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land….

Mazal Tov, or good fortune and congratulations to the the tiny state of Israel, 60 years later still under attack but still committed to the same righteous principles of her founding.

The full Declaration of Independence can be read here.

Board-packing Slate Candidate, John Mathias ‘69, Opines

In his column in today’s issue of The Dartmouth, the Board-packing candidate for president of the Association of Alumni John Mathias ‘69, makes a number of statements well off the mark.

Mr. Mathias begins his column, admirably, by talking about the need to “focus on undergraduate education” and “administer highly complex operations wisely and efficiently” with “institutional vision and dynamic personality.” Mr. Mathias almost seemed to be running on the ideas of recently elected Trustee Stephen Smith ‘88.

In any event the opinion piece quickly went south. Mathias started up with the old refrain that the lawsuit is frivolous and divisive, the same position he evidently takes on Trustee elections. Frivolous? A New Hampshire Superior Court Judge has ruled that the lawsuit has merit on 3 separate counts? Divisive? What is divisive about supporting the right of alumni to vote? See here for how the Association of Alumni lawsuit can be brought to an end in 9 seconds.

Next, Mathias attempts to polarize the issue by contending that somehow The Dartmouth Review is linked with the lawsuit. This is a deliberate obfuscation of the issue, and not a very good one at that. Firstly the Review was hardly around in 1891 when the contract for Parity was made. More importantly, the democratic right of alumni to vote for 50% of the Board of Trustees is not in any respect a partisan issue.

Then Mathias turns to the cost of the lawsuit, which even according to his assuredly partisan figures, costs significantly less than the hair that occupied the library last spring and summer.

Finally Mathias attempts to promote the diversity of his slate, a woefully inadequate claim. There is simply no getting around the fact that opposition to democracy is an inherent affront to diversity. Democracy, which is to say the right of alumni to elect members of the Board of Trustees (or the A of A for that matter), means the ability to consider persons with all types of ideas and opinions and backgrounds for the positions. It is decidedly regressive to believe that diversity might come from a handful of trustees handpicking (or packing as the case might be) their successors in a smoke-filled backroom.

Mathias calls for unity, but if Dartmouth unified in his direction we would have serious problems. In addition to being unified, it is also probably a good idea to be right. And what better way to ascertain rightness than to have free and fair elections? That is exactly what this debate is about. The Board-packing slate wants all the trustees to think alike, to think like them. The Pro-parity slate wants to preserve the right of all Dartmouth alumni to give their input and opinions and suggestions and criticism through the democratic ballot box.

Further reading:

A breakdown of the lawsuit

Some thoughts in support of the lawsuit

An analysis of Parity

A little Board-packing satire

Ending the Lawsuit in 9 Seconds

I will publish a full review of John Mathias’s ‘69 misleading opinion column in today’s issue of The Dartmouth, but for now I just wanted to make a comment on the Association of Alumni lawsuit against the Board of Trustees.

The lawsuit could be stopped in 9 seconds! I timed it. All it would take is a phone call from Board of Trustees chairman Ed Haldeman to the Association of Alumni that said: “We are going to honor the 1891 contract giving alumni the right to elect 50% of the Board:Parity. We are going to stop the Board-packing scheme.”

The current Association of Alumni election has the Board-packers on one side led by John Mathias versus the Independent Pro-parity slate led by J. Michael Murphy ‘61.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

An editorial in the Washington Post recently discussed the qualities of students at Ivy League universities. Drawing on her experiences at Princeton University as an undergraduate and an additonal year at Yale Law School, Amelia Rawls generalized to students at all top notch schools. She stated that though she found the students to be inspirational, they lacked compassion. In other words, they weren’t very “nice”. While acknowledging the many accomplishments of Ivy League students, she also described them as hypocrites:

“Sometimes some of these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to “do what is right.”

I am glad to report that I’ve never felt that way about students at Dartmouth. They are incredibly motivated to do good in the world. While many do follow the path of corporate recruiting and investment banking, many others work for non-profit organizations. Every year, a significant number of students choose to join the Peace Corps or work for Teach for America.

A friend from Dartmouth wrote this reply to the editorial:

Amelia Rawls was far off the mark in her May 1 op-ed, “Best and Brightest, but Not the Nicest.”

In my experience at Dartmouth College, in the icy north where you’d expect people to be, well, cold, I have found more classmates than I can name who are caring, conscientious, compassionate and downright nice. And it isn’t unexpected, or impossible, that they are also strong-willed, ambitious and astonishingly talented.

I have every confidence that my peers will do a lot of good in this world. I’m sorry that Ms. Rawls doesn’t feel the same.

MAURA PENNINGTON

I’m glad to see that my experience is not unusual. The education at Dartmouth is not only stellar, but the students are wonderful as well. Perhaps the uncaring students of whom Ms. Rawls speaks are found in Trenton and New Haven, but I think most would agree (we’ll leave Ms. Venkatesan out of this) that here in Hanover, one finds students with not only intelligence, but a great deal of kindness.

ZAK adds: I just wanted to ‘correct’ or reinterpret one of Jenn’s implications. Jenn wrote that “students at Dartmouth. They are incredibly motivated to do good in the world. While many do follow the path of corporate recruiting and investment banking, many others work for non-profit organizations.” This, I think, implies that work for corporations or investment firms is somehow not in line with doing good in the world. I would amend the statement to read: “In seeking to do good, many follow the path of private corporations and others the non-profit sector…”

Paging Ivory Tower Politicians

Of all three candidates for president I can’t decide whose position on the proposed gas tax cut bothers me the most. The plan in question originated when John McCain, “the presumptive Republican presidential nominee called for a hiatus in the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day until Labor Day - the period when vacationing Americans spend the most time on the road.”

Probably the most palatable stance is Barack Obama’s, because it is clear that Obama simply doesn’t get the logic behind allowing people to keep more of their own money. Hillary Clinton on the other hand supports this particular measure but, as evidenced by proposals like her mandate for socialized healthcare, it is not because she believes that people have the capacity to make intelligent, autonomous decisions that affect their own lives. McCain’s stance is somewhat lacking as well, especially because he understands that people have a right to (more of) their own money. This makes me think “he knows better” and to expect more from him generally. Instead of cutting taxes on gas, the revenue of which goes to funding legitimate highway projects, wouldn’t it be more prudent to cut taxes on, say, income? Income taxes go to fund a whole range of ridiculous programs and projects, and there is no reason (as far as I can tell) to disincentivize earning money.

What the gas tax episode reveals to me, above all, is how detached these politicians are in many ways. There is probably no compelling reason not to cut taxes on gas, and giving people more of their money back should presumptively be considered good. But at the same time, it seems to me like politicians should be doing a lot more (or rather stopping the many bad things that they try to do) to help people. See Thomas Sowell: “There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse” or Ronald Reagan: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

No Respect for the Dead

Just twenty minutes south of campus in Hartland, Vermont, another legal battle is taking place. In Hartland, a 130 acre farm with mountain views and rolling meadows sits waiting for a new family to arive. Michel Guite signed an option to buy the farm in December on one condition: he wants to move a family graveyard on the property in order to build his house and barn.

The graveyard includes the three graves officially registered with the town: Noah Aldrich, a war of 1812 veteran who died on January 15, 1848 and two of his grandchildren who died in 1850. Historians say that others are buried in this graveyard as well, including Aldrich’s wife, and the parents of Jerome King of Hanover, N.H. who owned the farm until the 1980s. Relatives of the Kings still visit the graves several times a year.

Guite stated that he did not want to see a graveyard near where his children are playing, but his request to move the graveyard is insensitive. It is true that graveyards have an aura of sadness, but they also have great emotional significance and historical value. On 130 acres, I would suspect that there is more than one suitable location for a house and barn. While graveyards have occasionally been moved through eminent domain for public buildings, I hardly think that a man’s personal preference for the location of his house justifies such disrespect for the dead.

Bridgewater American Legion member Jim Bulmer also opposes the move. “You’ve got a veteran in there from the war of 1812, who has come to his final resting place and let the poor guy rest in peace. He served his country. Why do we need to move cemeteries to accommodate an individual who has a particular agenda?” said Bulmer. I could not agree more. While personal property rights are very important to me, I find the idea of disturbing graves for such a silly reason to be objectionable.

Historical graveyards are part of what makes this region of New England unique. In Southern California, cemeteries are very large and less personal, spread over sprawling hills filled with strangers from all around the area. Graveyards here, including the one on campus, are steeped in history and filled with people who once knew each other or who share a connection through the town and the land. I can only hope that Guite will reconsider and appreciate that this graveyard has sat on that spot for at least 160 years and is as much a part of that property as the trees and meadows he loves.

The Rise and Fall of the Study of the Rise and Fall of Rome

In the latest New Criterion, Bob Paquette, professor of history, tells the whole story of the Alexander Hamilton Center at Hamilton College.

A specially relevant extract:

Truth be known, I work on a beautiful campus with a critical mass of colleagues who are truly outstanding teachers and scholars. As an insider, I told a friend recently, whose high-school-age daughter was considering college, I could shepherd the student through an educational experience hard to beat anywhere else since I know the players and would insist that she take courses by professor, not by subject. That said, however, the story of the rise, fall, and rebirth of the AHC as the independent Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) should serve as a cautionary tale for those seeking to sanitize the dark precincts and arcane corridors of the academy. Most trustees understand them dimly. They spend little time on campus. They visit perhaps three or four times a year. They have tight schedules and shepherded experiences that leave little room for information-gathering on their own. Detachment and arrogance tend not to breed discriminating judgment. Since successful businessmen predominate on most boards, crises tend to become a managerial problem resolved by thickening layers of the bureaucracy and by resort to public relations departments with little platoons of information managers who, along with some trustees, sincerely believe that image is reality.

Priya Bulletin

My friend Joe Rago picks up the Priya beat in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. A “hostile” environment? Hardly, Joe writes. “[A]t …putatively superior schools, students are spoiled for choice when it comes to professors who share ideologies like Ms. Venkatesan’s. The main result is to make coursework pathetically easy. Like filling in a Mad Libs, just patch something together about ‘interrogating heteronormativity,’ or whatever, and wait for the returns to start rolling in.”

I’ve interrogated heteronormativity; it held up rather well.

The Dartmouth administration, meanwhile, is on a tear about the bad press all of this student and alumni activism is hoisting upon it. Four independent reform trustees, elected? An attempt to rig the trustee-election rules, sunk? A second, more ribald, attempt at same being fought in court? Reduce all the din to its elements and one finds a series of considered criticisms of the actual, real, material quality of instruction and administration at the College. Eliminate those errs and perhaps all the “bad press” will go away. Or are we to blame democratic trustee elections for Priya Venkatesan, too?