|
May 21, 1999
Learning Together, Learning From Each Other
I am very pleased to be with you this evening. I have addressed the Alumni Council on many occasions over the past 30 years and I have a tremendous sense of pride that Dartmouth has such a loyal alumni body. I thank you for all that you do for Dartmouth and for sharing your time here this weekend. I am happy to affirm what I told you in December — I have a wonderful job! I have enjoyed the last six months — I taught my old political history class, Susan and I had the opportunity to visit over 2,000 alumni, parents, and friends at various clubs, we have attended many terrific athletic events at which our teams represented us well, and I have participated in an important series of discussions about the out-of-classroom experience at Dartmouth.
Tonight I would like to share with you some of my reflections on this subject. This is a terribly important issue for Dartmouth. Any time that the Trustees suggest that they are going to invest tens of millions of dollars into a program to enrich Dartmouth, it is incumbent upon us to explain the need for that expenditure and to provide you, the alumni — the living endowment of this College — with a fuller sense of the factors that have led to this initiative.
My own interest in the out-of-classroom experience dates back to my first years at Dartmouth. As a teacher I have always understood that my role in educating my students did not stop at the classroom door; faculty must be involved in what happens outside of the classroom. Because Dartmouth is a residential College, the faculty recognizes that education happens in many different areas of our student's lives.
My service in subsequent years as a member of ad hoc committees and as an administrator taught me to better appreciate not only the tremendous opportunities we enjoy at Dartmouth, but also the complexity of some of the problems that we face, issues dealing with the nature of residential life, the options in social life, issues having to do with alcohol and student culture, and with the dominant role the Greek system, especially fraternities, have played in student life.
Dartmouth's enduring strength must continue to derive from its academic quality. But our love of this place derives from the sense of community that we have shared — the friendships, the special sense of place, the empowerment that comes from learning, the College's historic commitment to diversity.
We need to look for ways to continually reaffirm our sense of community. But this reaffirmation needs to build upon what we have rather than attempt to recreate the past. And we need to understand fully the complexity of the past. Alfalfa Bill Murray, the depression-era governor of Oklahoma, said that history is just one god-damned thing after another. And so it has been.
Dartmouth's past has not all been soft September sunsets and the crunch of feet on snow. Indeed, the first student protest regarding living conditions at Dartmouth coincided with the Commencement of 1774.
On that occasion a student smuggled out a sample of the bread served at the College, asking the Governor, in his capacity as a trustee, to intervene on behalf of the student body. Governor Wentworth called President Wheelock's attention to the quality of the food, describing it as neither "wholesome nor plentiful." The governor argued that this poor diet caused Dartmouth students to be "unhealthy and debilitated, their constitution impaired, and their friends and parents highly disgusted." Wheelock admitted that on occasion the students had perhaps been served tainted beef.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the housing situation at Dartmouth was so appalling that students refused to live in many of the residence halls. Professor Sanborn observed in 1845 that many College buildings at Dartmouth "are uniformly assailed, windows are broken, doors are mutilated and frequently the rooms are grossly defiled." It was common practice by students to break the windows of freshmen dormitories and lecture halls. The rooms in Wentworth Hall were described, with words worthy of Charles Dickens in his bleaker moments, as "cold, dark and dirty, not receiving the sun at any season of the year nor at any time of the day and they were also infested with bugs."
At the end of the nineteenth century, President William Jewett Tucker introduced more modern dormitories as part of his plan to modernize Dartmouth. During Tucker's presidency, Dartmouth grew in reputation and attracted a larger-than-ever student body. Older dormitories like Thornton, Reed, Wentworth, and Hallgarten — all now incidentally academic buildings — were soon outgrown, and the administration erected several new dormitories including Richardson, Fayerweather, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire — a major architectural legacy to the College of today.
Coincidentally, two technological breakthroughs further improved the quality of student life. These were the introduction of running water, which in turn made possible the flush toilet and daily bathing. Second was the introduction of electricity. Alumni grumbled, however, about the "incoming of luxury." Mollycoddling the students! What was good enough for Daniel Webster should be good enough for the twentieth century as well.
This century has been marked by a continuing process of strengthening Dartmouth. This is the heritage that we honor and this is the responsibility that I have assumed. We are a strong and attractive institution. Yet much remains to be done. I have said on more than one occasion that "Dartmouth is a work in progress." As Fleetwood Mac put it: "We can't stop thinking about tomorrow." Apathy is not an option.
The initiative that the Trustees announced in February was hardly the first attempt to look at student life at Dartmouth. Our history is one of returning again and again to examine critically the sort of experience that we offer to our students.
Dartmouth has evolved from the smaller, more homogenous, all-male school I came to in 1969, a place where there was a clear sense of belonging, into the far more complex institution of today. Beginning in the 1970s Dartmouth became a coeducational institution. We went to a year-round calendar. We substantially expanded both the faculty and the student body, we have achieved a student body that is more diverse racially, socially, and economically. We operate major programs around the world. Our curriculum has expanded in substantial ways and we have seen a major overhaul of the degree requirements. We accomplished these transitions with more success in some areas than in others.
The quality of our academic program is among the very best of any institution in the country. We are continually ranked among the most attractive schools in the country, and our admissions record is among the most competitive of any college or university. The athletic programs have fully adapted to the demands of our current student body. We have reached substantial gender parity with our athletic teams and I am thrilled with how well so many of our women's teams did this year.
In other aspects of the Dartmouth experience we have not done so well. The social life on this campus, in particular, has not changed as much as it should have. And, to be honest, we introduced some problems by the expedients we used to move to coeducation. The Trustees decided it was important to maintain the number of male students and to add women and thus increase the size of the student body. Preserving the number of men assured alumni and others that the campus and its programs would not change too sharply.
Adopting a year-round calendar allowed the College to enlarge the student body without making the capital investments that adding beds would require. Apart from the intellectual and personal opportunities the D-Plan provides, we have to acknowledge that it was not constructed as an academic plan as much as it was a practical expedient to facilitate coeducation. The decision regarding year-round education was taken primarily for practical and political considerations and it succeeded brilliantly for those purposes. Twenty-seven years later we continue to face the difficulties that year-round operation brought with it.
The year-round calendar — or the D-Plan as the students know it — has many advantages for both our faculty and our students. It allows them greater flexibility in planning their academic schedules, it provides students with some advantages when they apply for internships and leave-term jobs, and it facilitates the rich array of off campus programs in which our students participate in record numbers.
The D-Plan causes significant discontinuity for our students. Virtually all students are away from campus for at least one term, randomly, during their sophomore and junior years. When they return to campus they may find their friends are on leave or are in Blois. There is virtually no continuity in housing during these years. Such a disruptive system makes it difficult to maintain an overall sense of community and forces students to create their own communities within Dartmouth. And our social space to encourage even these arrangements is inadequate. Collis Center is a wonderful facility but students regularly remind us that it does not meet all of their needs.
Our failure to build residential or social spaces to accommodate our students has meant that many of our residence halls are overcrowded and some students who would like to live on campus cannot. We have an urgent need for additional housing.
The Trustee Initiative has invited the community to participate in a discussion of addressing these too-long deferred issues of infrastructure. I am not aware that this has generated any controversy. Instead our debate has focused on matters more directly having to do with some aspects of student culture — the Greek system and the role of alcohol.
Dartmouth's fraternities date back to 1841 and the founding of Psi Upsilon. I have not needed to be reminded of the important role these organizations have played in the College's history — although a number of friends have reminded me in any event!
Over the years, the Dartmouth administration and Trustees have had concerns about the Greek system. Presidents Hopkins and Dickey surely had their frictions with the fraternities, frictions that may be summarized as having to do with community values and the role of private residential organizations within a private residential college. These two presidents regularly reminded students that the College and the matriculated class and not their teams or organizations should be the main focus of their identity at Dartmouth. They both insisted that organizations conform to the values and purposes of the College. And President Hopkins initiated and President Dickey concluded the movement to make certain that no Dartmouth fraternity would have in their charter language restricting any student from joining.
Some of you will recall that in the early 1970s the fraternity system at Dartmouth was pretty weak. There were some strong houses certainly, but 1950s concepts of fraternity were not so attractive to students in the late 1960s through the early 1970s. The houses were physically in pretty bad shape and were deteriorating. I was advisor to a couple of different houses during this period, one of which Pi Lambda Phi we had to close it down because we couldn't maintain it. But with the decision to adopt coeducation through a significantly expanded student body, some of the calculations changed. The administration decided to shore up the fraternities — certainly we needed the beds and we also wanted to preserve a part of the traditional culture. We moved Rush back to the freshman year in order to expand membership and many students and alumni worked to improve the housing.
This period of shoring up the system was quickly followed by one of questioning it — the faculty voted to discontinue fraternities in the late 1970s and the Trustees insisted upon "minimum standards" in the early 1980s. During the 1980s a separate sorority system evolved. For the better part of the last 20 years the College and the Greek organizations have been in a relationship that has been marked by tension and by sparring about roles and responsibilities and about the nature of the community.
By default, we have allowed the Greek system to shape student social life at the College. The question is not one of whether Greek organizations as presently constituted are good for individual students — obviously they are for some students. The issue we face now on the cusp on the 21st century is one of affirming the importance of Dartmouth as a community, as a residential college. Half of our upper class students belong to private organizations, few of which organizations individually represent the range of the student body, and these same groups essentially control the social life of the College. The issue is less one of individual choice and more one that concerns the culture of the College.
To strengthen the sense of community at Dartmouth we have initiated a full discussion about how we might introduce some fundamental changes to the current fraternity/sorority system. Such change should result in a stronger more varied, residential and social environment that provides students with greater choices, opportunities, and responsibilities, and is more closely integrated with the College's educational mission. Residential student organizations need to be more inclusive, more representative of the student body, and should be fully integrated into the residential and social life of the College. None of this is to debate whether there should be opportunities for men to be with men and women with women; of course there should.
And, finally, you know that alcohol has been a long-standing concern at Dartmouth. This is a complicated issue. It is perhaps the case that our students today drink no more than students at some times in the past but that our sensitivity to the issue has increased. It may be that drinking at Dartmouth is not significantly different than the pattern at many other campuses. But we must confront the dangerous circumstances we see.
I assure you that my concern about alcohol does not grow out of a desire to be telling students what to do with their spare time or a desire to ruin their fun. I have no secret goal of stopping drinking and harbor no illusions that we could do that. Colleges are about choices and freedom — and responsibility. But there is a difference between having fun and potentially harming oneself or someone else. My concern is with what is called binge drinking — which seems to have increased here, and increased upon an already worrisome base. And I am concerned about the impact that alcohol has on the educational experience Dartmouth provides.
As we see the tragedies caused by alcohol and as we look at our own statistics on alcohol abuse, it is clear that for some of our students alcohol interferes with the academic mission of the College. Too many students report that alcohol has had a negative impact on their studies. While the number of students who are abstaining from alcohol altogether is increasing, the number who abuse alcohol or who binge drink is also increasing. We have a polarization of behavior, but unfortunately the group that abstains is only half the size of the group who binge drink.
As a teacher and adult member of this community, indeed as a parent and grandparent, I worry about this aspect of campus life. As Dartmouth's president, I cannot ignore it. There is not a college or university president in this country who is not concerned about the abuse of alcohol on his or her campus. At Dartmouth, we have increased the staffing of our education efforts in this area and we are trying some new programs. We need to continue to emphasize education as the way to make progress on this issue. We have to work on shifting the cultural norms and expectations. This is not about policing but it is about teaching. And I am a teacher.
When I became President, I suggested to the Trustees that the range of issues they were considering — new residence halls, the future place of the Greek system, alcohol policies, social space — needed to be addressed comprehensively rather than piecemeal. We needed to engage students in finding solutions to these problems. And we needed to make a major financial investment in this area if we hoped to really make progress.
The Board stepped up to this challenge. They came to an agreement about the five principles that they thought should influence and define any future system of residential or social life at Dartmouth, and they then initiated a process whereby the community could discuss these issues.
Dartmouth's future is exciting. Using creative approaches and significant investment we can build upon the best of what we have today. There has never been a time in the history of this College when the Board and the administration have made such a comprehensive commitment to improving the social and residential life of the community. And there has never been a major decision here that has been so open to participation.
The last three months have been full ones. We have had some good discussions. I am sorry that the early stories suggested that we had concluded rather than initiated a process. You know better now because of the time you have spent today with Trustees Susan Dentzer, Peter Fahey, and Nancy Jeton, as well as members of the administration, discussing this issue. I intend to continue to participate in the discussions as we move forward. To be frank I was a bit taken aback by some of the sentiments I have seen. But I also have been encouraged by the support we have received. And I have been inspired by the sense of caring that so many members of this community have expressed.
If you had been a student here this past term, you would have seen our women's lacrosse team win the Ivy League championship; you could have attended the dedication of Rauner Library — a beautiful renovation of Webster Hall designed by Robert Venturi; and you could have taken a class in Cognitive Neuroscience. When I came to Dartmouth in 1969, none of these things were here. We did not have women's athletics, Webster Hall was a building looking for a purpose, and Cognitive Neuroscience was not yet part of the undergraduate curriculum. Yet all three define the strengths of Dartmouth today. They represent changes for Dartmouth; changes for the better.
We have undertaken an important process — One that will shape a Dartmouth education for many years to come. And shape it for the better. I am excited at the possibilities and intrigued by many of the suggestions we have received so far.
We — alumni, students, faculty, and administrators — have a shared responsibility to assure that Dartmouth can be the best institution of higher learning in this country. Ideas are the lifeblood of colleges and universities — but here we have long recognized the obligation of nurturing as well a physical place that symbolizes and enables a powerful sense of belonging and learning. Here on this plain on the eve of a new century is an enduring example of what Thomas Jefferson described as an "academic village," a place where faculty and students form a community — learning together and learning from each other. What a wonderful opportunity we have. I couldn't imagine anywhere I would rather be than right in the middle of this discussion at this place.
Thank you.
|
