The Week in Review

Brian Daly ’74 has completed his first collection of poetry, Lesbian Trapped in a Man’s Body, the verse "split evenly between dirty stories and brutal self-accusations," according to the author. An excerpt from "Death of the Best Wine Value in America":

"Where’s the Hearty Burgundy?"

I asked me man

in the Gallo T-shirt.

"Zinfandel grapes too expensive—"

he says. "No more deals!"

Back on the porch tonight,

pen poised and

peering into the face

of an alien wine,

I see that I’m betrayer

and betrayed.

I fling my goblet to the winds

and go back inside.

Lesbian… will be available in October from Nashville’s Black Greyhound Media.

Security on Campus, inc., co-founder Howard Clery editorializes in the group’s most recent Campus Watch newsletter that "Binge drinking and illegal drugs are major scourges on most residential college campuses… The problem is lack of leadership and guts. ‘The poor dears’ solution is to try to change the law instead of enforcing it."

Clery, Dartmouth ’53 and Tuck ’54, targets the College specifically: "Dartmouth College President Jim Wright is quoted as saying ‘If there were and 18 or 19-year-old drinking age, we could address the issue more favorably. We can’t go around sniffing students’ breath or smelling their cups.’ (Jim, are you afraid of offending the clique of ‘Animal House’ alumni?)."

Clery accuses "too many" college presidents of being "afraid to require professors to give tests, quizzes, and papers due on Fridays." He challenges presidents to enact "strict enforcement of State and Federal laws, heavy fines, probation, suspensions, and Parental Notification."

In politics, such hot air is called triangulation, and it generally works. Clery is one of the very few who make Wright’s positions on student life seem reasonable in comparison. But only by matching the College’s actions with his rhetoric—for example, canceling the recently-instated program of weekly "safety inspections" of fraternities and sororities—will the President be able to really distance himself from such fascist fear-mongers as Clery.

From the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Update newsletter:

"When pro-growth Bret Schundler won the Republican nomination for governor of New Jersey, upsetting a heavily favored establishment-backed candidate, the New York Times editorial page tried to downplay the achievement this way: ‘With the low turnout in yesterday’s primary, once again we see the perils of such [negative] tactics—they leave too many voters with the idea that neither candidate is worthy of the job or worth the time it takes to vote.’ Nice try. Just once problem. The turnout in the GOP primary was the highest primary turnout for either party for decades."

For well-researched daily exposés of the Paper of Record’s left-leaning lurch, visit smartertimes.com.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the University of Georgia, saying the school’s admissions policy unconstitutionally favors minority students. The University’s system had been to give minority applicants extra points in its "Total Student Index," which it used for ranking and admitting applicants.

Lee Parks, attorney for the plaintiffs who had not been admitted to Georgia, said to CNN, "For the last 26 years, Georgia has given an objective numerical preference to minority students to try to rectify their segregated past. So you've got 26 years of an unlevel playing field."

According to Parks, the school "manipulated" TSI scores to assure ten percent minority enrollment. "That’s a quota," says Parks.

Judge Stanley Markus, for the court, wrote that the University’s policy was too broad an approach to ensuring diversity. "If the goal in creating a diverse student body is to develop a university community where students are exposed to persons of different cultures, outlooks, and experiences, a white applicant in some circumstances may make a greater contribution than a non-white applicant."

Soon after the decision, the University of Florida announced that it would cease considering race in awarding scholarships. The new policy will take effect next year, "The law has become pretty clear on this," said Vice President of the University of Florida Foundation Leslie Bram. "Race-based scholarships are increasingly becoming illegal."

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear Texas v. Hopwood, in which the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the use of race in admissions. The University of Texas has since discontinued its use of affirmative action

Weekly, if not more often, The Dartmouth Review receives a 4-page press release by fax from homestore.com headlined "College Students Prep for Living, Decorating on Their Own." The release extensively quotes website "decorating editor" Diana Lundin, who advises, "Placing furniture flush against the wall is a common mistake, especially since small spaces can use some angles for excitement."

Bad news, recent and soon-to-be graduates: the dot-com crash clearly hasn’t hit bottom yet.

Direct congressional funding for colleges, which bypasses normal rules for academic funding, jumped 61% this year over last year’s budget to $1.7 billion. And Dartmouth, of course, got its fair share. In one grant, the College received $18 million for cyber-crimes research, a specialty since the founding of the Institute for Security Technology Studies last year.

The College also received $1.25 million for ice research, destined for the Thayer School of Engineering’s Ice Research Laboratory. Professor Victor Petrenko’s recent research on the nature and breaking of ice adhesion has gained the Laboratory some publicity and is being steered towards commercial applications.

University of Virginia professor James Savage, author of Funding Science in America: Congress, Universities, and the Politics of the American Pork Barrel, derided the earmarks as "academic pork" to the Boston Globe. Boston University chancellor John Silber defends such appropriations as undermining academia’s "old-boy network."

Dartmouth ranks fifth in congressional grants. New Hampshire’s Senator Judd Gregg is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees the budgets of the Departments of Justice and Commerce, which, in turn, dole out much of the earmarked funding

Local motorcyclist Karen Coombs was injured in an accident with a bear on July 11th, according to a Hanover PD press release. The bear had been crossing Hanover Center Road when Coombs hit it. Coombs was treated for back injuries at DHMC. Her motorcycle "received minor damage." The bear, apparently uninjured, "walked off into the woods after the accident."

According to the release, "No charges are pending as a result of this incident."

In late August, middle school students at the Marie Murphy School in Wilmette, IL, and their parents received an unexpected letter from the school district just days before classes began. According to the letter, Dr. Donald Reed, who had held the position for 12 years, is no longer the school’s principal. The new principal? Deanna Reed. Dr. Reed spent her summer vacation undergoing gender reassignment.

Jon Liberman, parent of a Murphy student, told the Chicago Tribune that the announcement would be a learning experience for his daughter. "We’re trying to be open-minded about it," he said. "This is the way the world is today."

Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business has announced that it will increase the size of its student body and introduce a new core curriculum. Examining its strategy, the school also decided that it would continue to offer only the full-time MBA and not pursue part-time or distance learning.

The class of 2002 is about 30 larger than it was last year and will increase further in coming years. The faculty, which has grown from 35 to 45 over the past five years, will not.

The new core curriculum opens up electives for students in their first year of study and adds a technology strategy course to preexisting requirements. It also will strengthen entrepreneurial experience through the Tuck General Management Forum, which brings together students developing business plans and business leaders acting as mentors. eBay CEO Meg Whitman and Procter & Gamble Chairman John Pepper have been among the Forum’s participants.

Tuck was ranked the country’s premier business school in a Wall Street Journal survey of recruiters in April.

In a recent survey by the British newspaper the Guardian, Dartmouth College ranked fifth in social sciences among universities in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The rankings were determined by "bibliometrics," which takes into account an institution’s quantity of journal publications and the citations of those articles. Tufts University, second in the survey, was the only American school to surpass Dartmouth.

Brad Card, brother of White House chief-of-staff Andy, is considering a congressional run from New Hampshire’s first district. Card’s decision is contingent on current-representative John E. Sununu challenging Republican Senator Bob Smith, who will seek reelection over the pleas of most in his party. Smith tarred and feathered himself during the presidential primaries by dropping his party affiliation to run as an independent and then rejoining after a wildly unsuccessful campaign.

Additionally, New Hampshire governor Jean Shaheen has formed an exploratory committee to stake out turf on the Democratic side of the senate race.

The trial of Robert Tulloch, the elder of two teens charged in the murder of Dartmouth professors Susanne and Half Zantop, has been postponed until March 11th, in response to a request from state prosecutors.

James Parker, Tulloch’s alleged accomplice, has not been certified as an adult, according to his lawyer, and remains in juvenile court, though he was transferred in the spring to an adult jail on his 17th birthday.

Dartmouth College announced this summer the creation of the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, a program of the Provost’s office, to provide hands-on business experience to students, faculty, and their start-ups. The Network will host workshops and speakers, offer internships, help match entrepreneurs to external resources, and offer facilities and administrative services to nascent ventures. The program will be directed by Gregg Fairbrothers ’76, president and founder of Samson International, an oil and gas producer. "Anyone in the Dartmouth or Upper Valley communities who is interested in either learning about entrepreneurship, or looking to pursue and entrepreneurial idea, should definitely contact us," said Fairbrothers.

"The U.S. has found itself so frequently at war that most generations of Dartmouth students have found military service interrupting, changing, and sometimes tragically ending their lives. That is why war memorials grace so many parts of this campus, honoring those who have served their country, and especially those who have died for it," writes Charles Wood, Daniel Webster Professor of History Emeritus, in his new guide to Dartmouth’s war memorials, entitled "the Hill Winds Know Their Name."

The College recently relocated its Vietnam War memorial from the Collis center to the Zahn Courtyard beside the Hopkins Center. In the courtyard are also memorials for World War II and the Korean War. Dartmouth’s football stadium, Memorial Field, honors those who fell in the First World War.

Wood’s guide is available now through the College’s Alumni Relations and Public Affairs offices.

Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman has turned down the Zeta Psi fraternity’s appeal of his decision to permanently derecognize the house. "I believe the decision is the correct one," Redman told the Daily Dartmouth. Zeta Psi was derecognized by the College at the end of the spring term for its publishing of the Sigma Report, an internal newsletter dubbed in the press as Zeta Psi’s "Sex Papers." Fraternity members had submitted additional evidence to the dean for the appeal.

Redman believes he handled the appeal process fairly, he said to the Daily Dartmouth.

Concerned about the team name’s "racial implications" Colgate’s Board of Trustees has decided to drop the "Red" from the "Red Raiders."

The change was pushed by a group of three students calling themselves Students for Social Justice. Julie Beresny, one of the three, told the Colgate Maroon, ""We first began understanding the need for a change after viewing a film, 'In Whose Honor?' based on the struggle of a Native American woman fighting the University of Illinois over the racist connotation of their mascot and name." Beresny said the name "disrespected and distorted" Native American culture.

A university official coined "Red Raiders" in 1932, referring to the red uniforms of that year’s unbeaten football team.

The Young America’s Foundation has released its annual "Dirty Dozen" list of college courses awash in "Marx, multiculturalism, and malarkey." On the list this year:

- Villanova’s "Eco Feminism," which studies "the role of eco feminist thought in the development of a 'postmodern' societal paradigm and in a radical reconsideration of destructive and unquestioned beliefs concerning justice, peace and community."

- Harvard’s "Multicultural Biblical Criticism," the description of which claims that "African, Asian, Indigenous, Latin American, Aboriginal, American Indian, Latino-Hispanic, and Australian studies, as well as ethnicity, feminist, womanish, black, queer, liberation theological, postcolonial, and Third World studies, have begun to de-center the hegemonies paradigm of biblical studies."

The YAF’s Rick Parsons says the list, part of the larger "Comedy & Tragedy: College Course Descriptions and What They Tell Us About Higher Education Today" report, "paint a dismal picture of higher education."

"The professors and administrators have their own ideological agenda for the students," said Mr. Parsons.

Dartmouth, despite its best efforts, did not rank in this years listings. Its offerings have ranked in the past, as recently as 1998 for "The Masculine Mystique." The YAF, though, may have passed over a few great picks in Hanover this year, including "Gender and the Environment" ("a gendered approach to how we use and perceive the natural world"), "Gender and Geography" ("explore the gendering and sexing of space at multiple scales (e.g., body, community, region, nation, etc.)"), and, from the comparative literature department, "From Hand to Mouth: Writing, Eating and the Construction of Gender" ("how often have we considered the implications of eating and the incorporation into our bodies of comestible objects? … Is reading a text similar to eating a meal prepared by an Other?").

Of course it would be vogue in critical theory to say that a meal is created by the diner who eats it. Likewise, bad courses exist by students who take them. There may be something to critical response theory after all!

The Institute for American Values is "fascinated by how young people meet and mate" and so prepared a report on that topic to the Independent Women’s Forum. And what did their 16-person research team discover?

- "On most campuses today there is a widely recognized practice, usually called "hooking up," that explicitly allows sexual interaction without commitment or even affection."

- "No term for interactions between college women and men holds more ambiguity, and reflects more confusion, than the word ‘dating.’"

- "A significant number of women told us that they thought college, in theory, should be a good place to meet a husband."

Dartmouth’s library has replaced its home-grown DCIS electronic catalog with a commercial, web-based offering from Innovative Interfaces.

The new catalog offers contextual help, extensive cross-referencing, and complex subject searching. "What's great about the new catalog is the ability to do a virtual browse of the entire collection," said reference bibliographer Mark Mounts.

The new catalog can be accessed at http://libcat.dartmouth.edu.

The fall housing crunch on campus has gotten tighter as the class of 2005, the largest in Dartmouth’s history due to admissions office "yield management," threatens to push students without guaranteed housing off-campus or even into taking the fall term off.

While there are some off-campus housing options available, encouraging students to live on-campus is a goal of the Student Life Initiative.

The admissions office went so far as to offer incoming freshmen a year’s free housing in exchange for a year’s deferral. The offer attracted 14 students, raising the total deferring to 39. According to Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg, 25 students per class normally defer.

The College is constructing six "temporary" dorms, each to house 14 students in one-room doubles, in the River Cluster. The Hanover Zoning Board has asked the College to limit the use of the two-story white colonial "Tree Houses" to three years, but have no standing to demand this of the College, which in the past has constructed not-so-temporary temporary dormitories, the Choate and River dorms.

The Office of Residential Life expects four of the six "Tree Houses" to be completed by the start of classes. The other two should be ready in October; in the meantime, residents of these dorms will live in off-campus apartments and converted lounges in other dorms. All students being housed in the new buildings are members of the class of 2004 who were wait-listed after the spring term Room Draw.

Dean Furstenberg told the Review that the College, assuming a higher yield, will accept fewer students for the class of 2006 and use the waiting list as necessary.

Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees elected member Susan Detzer ‘77 as Board Chair, replacing William King, who has completed two five-year terms on the Board. Dentzer is a correspondent for PBS’s "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and was formerly a columnist for U.S. News and World Report.

Dentzer was visible on campus three years ago as one of the leading proponents of the still-controversial Student Life Initiative. She is remembered chiefly for her infamous quote regarding student’s social options, "We do strongly believe in free choice, but we want those choices to be highly structured kinds of choices."

Microsoft Executive Vice President for Law and Corporate Affairs William Neukom was reelected for a second term on the board.