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February 12, 1999
Dear Dartmouth Students, Parents, and Colleagues:
The Dartmouth Trustees recently asked members of the campus community to join in a process of discussion about change that will significantly enhance the social and residential experience of students at the College. They issued a statement earlier this week that described their commitment to making Dartmouth’s residential and social system even stronger than it currently is and to providing the resources to support the necessary changes and improvements.
They also articulated a set of fundamental principles that should characterize the residential and social system:
- There should be greater choice and continuity in residential living and improved residential space;
- There should be additional and improved social spaces controlled by students;
- The system should be substantially coeducational and provide opportunities for greater interaction among all Dartmouth students;
- The number of students living off campus should be reduced; and
- The abuse and unsafe use of alcohol should be eliminated.
The Dartmouth community has been invited and challenged to spend the next few months exploring and proposing ideas for how those principles might best be achieved in how we structure and support and organize student residential and social life. As the Board said, "The achievement of these principles will necessitate changes in the current residential and social system, including the fraternity and sorority system, dining arrangements, and other aspects of student life. The Board will consider proposals for building additional residential halls, providing a greater range of living options, and creating new and improved social spaces."
I have been asked to convene a task force to gather proposals in response to the Board’s invitation from students, parents and staff of the College. The purpose of this task force is to invite and collect ideas and proposals, to summarize those ideas, and to share them with the senior officers and Trustees. The Task force, which will serve as a conduit to senior officers and Trustees, will not make any recommendations of its own.
The members of the task force are:
- Dan Nelson, chair, Acting Dean of the College
- Mary Liscinsky, Acting Dean of Residential Life
- Holly Sateia, Dean of Student Life
- Prof. Ulf Osterberg, Chair, Committee on Student Life
- Jaimie Paul '00, President, Co-ed Fraternity Sorority Council
- Josh Green '00, President, Student Assembly
- Andy Louis '00, President, Sigma Phi Epsilon; Chair, Winter Carnival; Collis Student Manager
- Shauna Brown '99, Palaeopitus; President, African-American Society; East Wheelock Cluster Area Coordinator; Alumni Affairs Intern; Admissions Senior Interviewer
- Eric Buchman '00, Class President, Council on Student Organizations
- Aaron Akamu '01, Undergraduate Advisor; Native American Program Intern
- Sope Ogunyemi '00, Collis Governing Board Chair
- Josh Warren '02, '02 Class Council, President
- Melanie Blanchard 'G, President, Graduate Student Council
The task force will carry out that charge by scheduling a series of meetings with a variety of campus student constituencies to gather ideas about how to achieve the Trustees’ stated goals. Those meetings could include, for example, all of our residential living clusters, the residential academic affinity groups, the Co-ed Fraternity and Sorority Council, the Student Assembly, the Green Key Society, the Student Programming Board, Palaeopitus, the Committee on Student Life, and the College Committee on Alcohol and Other Drugs. We will also write to a large number of other student organizations, teams and groups on campus, soliciting their ideas. In particular, we will want to encourage discussion and planning that involves different groups and individuals across campus working together. The Task force will also provide opportunities for open meetings and focus groups for any interested individuals on campus.
A web site has been established, accessible through the Dartmouth home page (http://www.dartmouth.edu/), which will contain the full text of the Trustee statement, a letter from President James Wright, information about the activities of the task force, and a means for interested individuals to submit their ideas and proposals. If you would rather send the task force a letter, it should be addressed to: Residential/Social Life Task Force, 6003 Parkhurst Hall, Room 111, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3529. Because of the volume of response we hope to receive, we will not be able to acknowledge individual correspondence, but I wholeheartedly encourage you to share your good ideas, and assure you they will be incorporated into the work of the task force. We want to hear from all interested students, parents, employees of the College, and various groups and offices.
The task force will maintain a collection of all the ideas, suggestions, and proposals that are communicated over the course of winter and spring terms. In the late spring or early summer, we will prepare a report that summarizes what we have received. We will not be presenting to the Board an independent proposal reflecting our own ideas but rather representing, the best we can, the ideas that have come from the Dartmouth community.
Dartmouth is embarking on a process of implementing the most significant change and improvement in student life since the 1971 decision about co-education. I don’t know of another time when the Dartmouth community has had such a striking opportunity to inform the perspective of the Trustees about the shape of the future. I am particularly pleased to be a part of this process because of the capacity of the Dartmouth community to respond with creative ideas and because of our shared commitment to the excellence of this institution and to the quality and vitality of students’ experience here.
Sincerely,
Daniel M. Nelson
Acting Dean of the College
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