The Week in Review

Dartmouth: Christian-Friendly Space?

This Thursday, students opened up their Hinman boxes to find a card from the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance. The card had a rainbow sticker on it that students were asked to place on their mailboxes to "support diversity and GLBT rights". The back of the card listed upcoming meetings of the DRA. The Review would like to lodge a formal complaint with the College on this matter.

Students may remember that the College prohibited the Campus Crusade for Christ from distributing Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis to every student’s Hinman box. The College claimed that some students could be offended by it. It almost seems like Dartmouth is using a double standard. Shocking.

Granny D Speaks, Naps

This year’s Commencement Speaker at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire is Doris Haddock, a 91-year-old advocate for campaign-finance reform who spent 14 months crossing the country "to promote democracy," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Mrs. Haddock, known affectionately by her supporters as ‘Granny D’, accomplished this feat twice: once in 1999 and again in 2000.

In announcing the decision to have Granny D speak at commencement, Franklin Pierce’s President Dr. George Hagerty commented that "as an educational institution dedicated to preparing leaders of conscience, Franklin Pierce College is proud and honored to welcome Doris Haddock. … In speaking to members of our graduating class and to those attending the commencement ceremony, she plans to reveal some of the insights she gained in her walk …and we all serve to benefit from the valuable experiences and wisdom she has to offer us."

Dartmouth has yet to announce its commencement speaker, which has given rise to rampant speculation. An inside source at Parkhurst, however, told the Review that, in an effort to top Franklin Pierce, the commencement speaker will likely be the ‘where’s the beef?’ lady, of as-seen-on-television fame.

(Actually, the big rumor is that it will be President George W. Bush.)

Heorot Hangs On

Teetering on the brink of derecognition for failing minimum standards, Chi Heorot fraternity has begun its appeal of the ORL Review Board’s 2000 report that failed the house in 4 of 6 Minimum Standards categories. Given the College’s ‘unique’ appeals process, where Greek houses appeal their cases to the same administrator who makes the initial decision, Heorot’s chances appear to be slim.

Questions as to the fairness of Heorot’s punishment have been raised throughout the Greek system. Even the docile CFSC has pledged it’s "full support" to Heorot, citing several miscommunications on the part of ORL throughout the evaluation process (see TDR 4/30/01).

Another concern is that Heorot may be getting singled out unfairly because of its status as a college-owned house and their dorm-friendly location. The house’s infractions include keg violations (a somewhat common infraction among Greek houses), failure to keep a copy of the hazing policy in their new member education manual, carrying a house debt (which they are currently paying off without difficulty), and failing to submit house officer lists promptly. While Greek houses should certainly hold themselves to high standards, these actions hardly seem like a reasonable basis for derecognition, especially when compared to Beta’s or Phi Delt’s more serious violations.

Also, the Daily Dartmouth’s report that Heorot failed its membership standard partly because it failed to keep house residence at the required level of four less than capacity was, as we have come to expect, false.

Heorot has had no such trouble over the past years, and has even added a room to accomodate additional demand this term.

Score another one for the Daily D fact-checkers.

Outing Anonymous

The Dartmouth Review has discovered the identity of "anonymous" from the Psi Upsilon incident. She is Darby Green ’01. The Review would like to congratulate Ms. Green for not publicly standing behind her exaggerated description of the incident, even as it was used as the basis for College sanctions against Psi Upsilon and now against the several house members involved in the incident (see TDR 4/30/01).

Scalp Her

Fear not, seekers of justice: Hillary Miller has been held responsible for her despicable behavior. Ms. Miller was punished for her actions at the recent anti-Greek rally in front of Zeta Psi, said Lauren Cummings, a Safety and Security Investigator.

Ms. Miller provided some of the more colorful entertainment of the evening, kicking off the rally by repeatedly screaming, "Your dirty cunts are here" at the unresponsive house. She then proceeded to the door and kicked it in an impassioned rage, focusing her frustration on Zeta property. Ms. Miller caused noticeable damage to the door.

Fair-minded individuals had feared that this blatant incidence of property damage would go unpunished. It seemed as if the authorities condoned such actions when perpetrated for the sake of "social change."

However, according to Investigator Cummings, Ms. Miller was spoken to after the rally, disciplined, and will be made to pay the appropriate restitutions. S&S, present at the rally, allowed Ms. Miller her rant because they felt that acting on the spot would only further enrage the crowd. Ms. Miller was not a danger to herself or others, and S&S did not want to appear to be taking sides.

Maybe the Indian Isn’t That Bad

Peeved at Dartmouth’s lack of a decent mascot? Perturbed that we no longer have a brave, inspiring Indian to cheer our sports teams on? Take heart; there are some crappy mascots right in our backyard. A list:

Amherst - the Lord Jeffs

Williams - the Ephs (a big purple cow)

Trinity - the Bantams (looks like the San Diego chicken)

Conn College - the Camels

Tufts - the Jumbos

Colby - the White Mules

Bowdoin - the Polar Bears

Draconian Fascists

Upon finishing his master thesis after four years of "drudgery," UC Santa Barbara graduate student Chris Brown decided to lambast the dean, the administration, the library staff, the regents, and the governor. Where most students include an "acknowledgments" section in their thesis, some containing overly emotional praise, Brown instead wrote an obscenity-laced tirade labeled "disacknowledgments."

Highlights of "disacknowledgments" include a section in which Brown calls the graduate staff "fascists" and the library staff "Draconian." Brown wrote that former governor Pete Wilson is "a supreme government jerk who has personally overseen the demise of the university." Of the graduate administration, Brown said, "I’d rather take a hot stick in the eye [than] deal with your bureaucratic nonsense."

At first, UC Santa Barbara refused to grant Brown his degree. Though the school has now relented, Brown’s thesis remains missing from the shelves of the university library. Still feeling mistreated, Brown took the school to federal court, claiming that his right to free speech was violated. Unable to work in his field until the university relented and gave him his degree, Brown said he has spent about $12,000 on the dispute and the legal case, not including his lost wages.

On April 30, a federal judge tossed the case out. Brown plans to appeal the decision. Said civil liberties advocate Thor Halvorssen, "The university, in this case, is wrong, wrong, wrong."

Message: Don’t Come to Dartmouth

This year’s Freshman Parent’s Weekend was one to remember, as students woke up Saturday, April 28 to find the campus littered with chalk writings and posters.

Various causes were represented in the demonstration; however, they all seemed to share several similarities - such as innaccuracy, exaggeration, and myth.

One piece of graffiti claimed, "1 in 4 of your daughters will be raped." This "fact" comes from a notoriously flawed survey conducted by Gloria Steinem, in which the vast majority of respondents listed as having been raped answered ‘no’ to the question "Have you ever been raped?"

Parents were made privy to all of the "crimes" committed by the Greek system. Scrawled outside Collis were examples including the Theta Delta Co-hogs shirt and of course the Psi Upsilon "Wah-hoo-wah" incident.

The second front of the anonymous group’s assault consisted of a series of posters calling for the co-education of the Greek system. They claimed the legal basis for this move to be Brown vs. the Board of Education, however there was no mention of how the decision applies to the Greek System. One poster had a picture of a black man in the 1960s being attacked by a police dog; below this were the pictures of a sorority formal and some frat brothers playing pong. It is unclear exactly which group the black man represented and which one the dog. Another poster stated the "simple" fact that frats at Dartmouth are "Sexist, Racist, Anti-Intellectual, and Dens of Alcohol Abuse." The slogan shared by all the posters was "Live Coed".

Despite this propaganda, the scariest thing the parents faced was probably the "Weekend Warriors". This group was based on H-Croo from the DOC trips and consisted of cross-dressing freshmen wearing bizarre clothing while they sang and danced outside of Collis. Sounds like a blast.

Auburn’s Litterati

The Auburn Police Department is literally trying to clean up Auburn’s downtown bar scene. Over the weekend of April 20-22, the Auburn Plainsman reports that several university students were arrested and jailed overnight for littering. Various downtown businesses had complained of rowdy behavior during weekends. Public lewdness, criminal mischief, drinking in public and under-age drinking are among the offenses being targeted by the Auburn Police Department. Littering is another offense that Auburn Police Captain Frank DeGraffenried said "police officers were told to be on the lookout for." While some bar employees pick up trash outside after closing, DeGraffenried was still perturbed that "bottles and cans were being thrown on private property." DeGraffenried is laying the framework for a new anti-drinking SLI, the Student Littering Initiative. "Some people get arrested when they see the police and then throw their bottles down and get arrested for littering. They escape one charge and pick up another."

Professor Bore

Al Gore’s transition from public to private citizen has been mostly successful, according to an April 27 article in the Columbia Daily Spectator. The piece says that the former presidential candidate has become quite comfortable in his teaching capacity at Columbia, where he is leading a journalism seminar this semester. Leah Yoon, a student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs who is taking the course said, "Gore is the kind of guy you would love to go have a beer with—make that a Diet Coke—with." Yoon says that he has learned that journalists must "earn the trust of readers and viewers," that "being ethical is practical," and that "balance is frequently a cop-out for mastering a subject." For the record, Gore’s "Earth in the Balance" was a cop-out. And if Yoon did ever go out for a beer with the hypocrite, Gore would probably order an O’Douls.

Title IX Travesties

Title IX strikes again conquering its most recent victim: Bucknell University, in Pennsylvania. In the battle for gender equality in collegiate sports, Bucknell has decided to get rid of the men’s wrestling team and reclassify men’s crew as a mere "club sport." The elimination of 44 varsity athlete spots completes Bucknell’s campaign for gender equality, which began in 1998.

The university began its campaign by adding women’s golf and water polo to its list of varsity sports and began to cap the number of men that could play on varsity teams. However, even with these actions, men’s sports claimed 58% of university athletes while women’s sports claimed only 42% out of a nearly 50/50 ratio of men to women.

Timothy Whitman, a first-year wrestling coach at Bucknell commented, "It just flat out doesn’t make sense to drop men’s sports to get the numbers in balance. It’s not adding opportunities for women" (The Chronicle, 5/3/01).

Both the men’s wrestling team and crew programs will be allowed to continue, however, they will have to find the monetary means to sustain themselves on their own.

Kudos

After one hundred and one years, the oldest business school in the world has recently been ranked the best. In a Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive Survey of 1600 business school recruiters, Dartmouth’s own Tuck School of Business topped the charts in categories such as communication and interpersonal skills, past success with quality of grads hired, ability to work within a team, collegial environment, and came in a close second in analytical skills. The Tuck School was lauded as a classic full time MBA program with its mere 375 students, well above the likes of Harvard, Wharton, or Stanford. Carnegie Mellon, Yale, University of Michigan and Northwestern rounded out the top five.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes…

San Francisco has enacted legislation that will make it the only city in the nation to pay for employees’ sex change operations. The city will pay for genital reconstruction, hormones, and other transgender procedures deemed necessary by a doctor. Each employee is entitled to $50, 000 worth of sex change surgery, though the procedures cost $37, 000 for men and $77, 000 for women. Only employees who have worked for the city for over a year will be eligible, thereby eliminating the problem of cross-dressing freeloaders.

A transgender audience wearing pink an d green florescent stickers cheered and hugged after the measure passed. According to Theresa Sparks, a transgender commissioner in the city, "This is just one step against discrimination."

Supervisor Tony Hall disagreed. "To set one group apart and factionalize our society creates more animosity, more hatred, more bigotry. Once again, the city and county of San Francisco are paying for something that is not necessary."

San Francisco refuses to pay for other forms of elective surgery, such as breast enlargement…unless, of course, the applicant is a guy.

Yo Quiero Dinero

Hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers, known as braceros, are suing the governments of the United States and Mexico for back wages. During the years surrounding World War II, many Mexican workers were brought into the United States to perform farming and maintenance work. Part of the braceros’ deal provided that ten percent of their wages would be held in a savings account. The money would then be sent down to Mexico City, where the braceros could collect it once they were finished working in the United States.

Today, many of the braceros are complaining that they never got the money they deserved. Some say that they were not even told that they would receive money after they returned to Mexico. The case is similar to many cases involving Holocaust survivors who sued Swiss banks and German companies for 6 billion dollars in reparations. Estimates show that the United States and Mexico owe about 500 million dollars to these workers in wages and interest.

In 1998, Ventura Guitierrez discovered what had happened after his grandmother asked him if she was eligible for social security benefits. Inquiries led him to documents about the savings account. Mr. Guitierrez has spent the past two years holding rallies and seeking legal help for the braceros and their heirs.

The main problem confronting the braceros is the amount of time that has passed. Many of the workers are elderly and some have already deceased. Also, many of them do not have their identification cards anymore. To complicate matters further, some sources allege that most of the money was already paid to the workers.

The case is likely to go on for years to come. Though the workers earned wages under a dollar an hour in the 1940’s, they still feel than any money they receive will make a difference.

New Ph.D’s

The Dartmouth Trustees approved two changes for the Dartmouth Medical School. As of the meeting, there will be two new Ph.D. programs offered in the area of genetics and microbiology and immunology, bringing the number of Ph.D. programs offered at Dartmouth to 15. Also approved was the proposed academic expansion of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, which will add four new floors to the Barbara E. Rubin building.

The new Ph.D. programs will be offered under the Molecular and Cell Biology graduate program, which originated in 1994 as a group undertaking between the Dartmouth Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Dartmouth Medical School.

The four-floor expansion will provide an entire floor for clinical faculty, another for office-based research, and the last two floors dedicated to laboratories. The plans will be completed by the end of 2003.