<p>I love Dartmouth. I am sure there will be some changes coming. I hope this doesn't turn off people. I am sure it will remain the most conservative of the ivies.</p>
<p>This battle has been going on now for a while...</p>
<p>Actually Dartmouth is not the most conservative Ivy, it sits alongside Cornell, Penn, and Princeton all of which have conservative older alumni but liberal administrations and student bodies. A TheDartmouth poll had students voting 80% for Kerry in 2004, above Princeton, Cornell, and Penn.</p>
<p>Unfortunately there is a big gap between the newer Dartmouth and "old" Dartmouth. These trustee votes tend to go the "old Dartmouth" way because you have decades of older alumni (pre-1990) voting against the last two decades of alumni. Also older members are more likely to vote, increasing the gap.</p>
<p>The good news for those who love the way Dartmouth has changed is that only 4 out of 18 board seats are held by petition candidates. And the Dartmouth faculty, administration, and student body overwhelmingly understand the value of issues such as diversity. </p>
<p>Dartmouth had the most diverse class in its history enroll this past year as evidence that a few hard-liners on the board of trustees will be hard pressed to shift the "New Dartmouth."</p>
<p>check this out .. <a href="http://thedartmouth.com/2007/05/23/opinion/conservatives/%5B/url%5D">http://thedartmouth.com/2007/05/23/opinion/conservatives/</a></p>
<p>That editorial was horrible, even by The D's standards. It rambles on for a long time and ends in a very anticlimactic manner. For a much better article about the meaning of tradition and the difference between real tradition and cheap tradition, look here:</p>
<p>And regardless of the actual number of "conservative" alums on the Board, there's definitely a demand for change. Joe Malchow put it pretty well - the faction of dissenting alumni have won 5 in a row (4 candidates plus the rejection of the new constitution... find it here: <a href="http://www.dartblog.com/data/2007/05/007291.php)%5B/url%5D">http://www.dartblog.com/data/2007/05/007291.php)</a>. It's also shortsighted to think about this as a liberal/conservative split. Wanting fewer administrators, more reserved spending, more undergraduate (as opposed to reasearch) focus, an active Greek life, and a more allowing alcohol policy isn't simply "conservative". Especially when it comes to issues like making it easier for students who are convicted of rule breaches to defend themselves and frats to throw parties, how can you possibly call that conservative?</p>
<p>And slipper, what makes you think increased diversity at Dartmouth would be threatening to petition candidates like Rogers and Smith? As long as each successive class of Dartmouth students is of increasing caliber, it doesn't matter. If, on the other hand, the quality of the enrolling classes of Dartmouth students starts to drop, then this is cause for alarm in ALL of the Trustees - regardless of how diverse or homogenous the particular class may be.</p>
<p>I also take issue with the fact that peole bring up the percent of Dartmouth students who voted for the Democrat in the last election as proof of the political climate on campus. What if, in the next election, more people voted for Guliani than for Edwards? The Republican/Democrat split doesn't fall squarely along liberal/conservative lines there. People shouldn't care what the climate of Dartmouth is when they decide whether to come or not - all they should be worried about is the quality of the education you can get here (top-notch). Contrary to popular belief, not everything in life is political. The education you receive, the friendships you form, the personal growth you experience - none of this is predicated on politics, and attempting to force politics into these realms leads to a seriously simplified, immature outlook.</p>
<p>My two cents - I feel that the "old Dartmouth" people are really in the minority. The real issue here is that the administration of Wright (and, to a lesser extent, Freedman before him) has been SO inept, SO bumbling, and SO polarizing that the "old Dartmouth" people have basically been able to attract ANYONE disenchanted with the direction in which they are leading Dartmouth. And no, this has nothing to do with diversity, tolerance, or anything like that. It's how they are doing it that is the problem. They are shortsighted and, quite frankly, they refuse to compromise with anyone, friend or foe. They apparently have no understanding of what it means to compromise. And this has become the problem. Basically, all they've done is taken very justifiable, very laudable ideals and tried to implement them in such a misguided and clumsy matter that they've given voice and power back to the old Dartmouth, the one that we will hopefully never go back to. I was talking to a Dartmouth Class of 1960 alumni and, well, it wasn't a very nice place back then. It's great that the Wright administration claims to want to make the campus as open, accepting, etc as possible but they are going about in a way designed to achieve exactly the opposite. One look at a recent history of the Wright administration's policies will convince anybody that the administration simply doesn't know what it's doing. It's very easy to lose confidence in them or be directly alienated by the morons at Parkhurst. So no, I don't like Stephen Smith at all and I wish he hadn't been elected (and this is considering he supports my fraternity). But this conservative backlash is simply a function of the Wright administration's absurd, uncompromising policies. In a way, he reminds me of Bush - different beliefs obviously, but both are characterized by a refusal to compromise, a single-mindedness and an insistence on going it alone that has all simply brought a massive backlash against them. I just hope that one day soon Dartmouth will get a president with real vision and a plan to put all of these vocal conservative minority voices to rest, not just the mindless "I'm going to close down all fraternities because they are all obviously EVIL."</p>
<p>And to the OP - if you were to actually bother to expend one iota more effort than simply clicking a link and did some actual research, you would quickly discover that Dartmouth is not, in fact, "the most conservative Ivy."</p>
<p>Uninformed opinions for the win!</p>
<p>Xanatos: Your post is full of generalizations. Exactly what "refusal to compromise," etc. has the Wright administration done that has so aroused your wrath?</p>
<p>Darcy - I apologize for not writing a thesis. I guess I should go before the COS for not citing my sources. Anyway, since my purpose on this site is to get people to come to Dartmouth and not scare them away from it, I'll PM you. Not now, because I'm busy, but within the next few days.</p>
<p>The CNN article is particularly absurd.</p>
<p>So absurdly biased as to be almost comical. Apparently the alumni board elections have been a struggle between rich white males (now known as the "football and fraternities faction") and oppressed women and minorities (Apparently the fact that Steven Smith is African-American has no effect on the AP writer)</p>
<p>Apparently the current Dartmouth administration has provoked the ire of the "football and fraternities faction" by "investigating racist and anti-semitic incidents" and (in a sentence whose particular irony is surely lost on the author) "the college improved its graduate programs and commitment to research." Only right-wing neanderthals would oppose such a thing!</p>
<p>Or, as James Wright puts it, "For those people who don't like goals that include diversity, that don't include faculty doing scholarship."</p>
<p>That article... well, there's no point in wasting valuable time in commenting at length about it now. I'm sure Dartblog, Super Dartmouth, or Dartwire will cover it in the near future anyway.</p>
<p>(For non-Dartmouth students who are interested, that's <a href="http://www.dartblog.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.dartblog.com/</a>, <a href="http://superdartmouth.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D">http://superdartmouth.blogspot.com/</a>, or <a href="http://www.dartwire.com%5B/url%5D">www.dartwire.com</a> respectively).</p>
<p>
[quote]
And to the OP - if you were to actually bother to expend one iota more effort than simply clicking a link and did some actual research, you would quickly discover that Dartmouth is not, in fact, "the most conservative Ivy."</p>
<p>Uninformed opinions for the win!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>hmmmm......"expend one iota"......? or ...</p>
<p>@Xanatos..Please, I do not know who the hell you think you are, but spare us your rhetoric. My opinion has nothing to do with "clicking a link". Dartmouth, is the most "elite" and "conservative" of all the ivies.... Its traditions has something to do with that as well.</p>
<p>Let me give you back your "two cents" plus an extra quarter...so you can work on your grammar...</p>
<p>Princeton is more conservative than Dartmouth. Dartmouth has tradition and a rich history of doing things our own way, but Princeton's conservatism is, to borrow a friend of mine's phrase, far "yuckier" than Dartmouth's.</p>
<p>Case in point - Greek system versus eating clubs.</p>
<p>I agree completely with that last statement.</p>
<p>Attacking a person's grammar on an Internet forum - as I've said elsewhere, the last resort for a person with an indefensible argument.</p>
<p>Not to mention, your post is completely unclear as to exactly what grammatical error you are trying to point out...</p>
<p>Good point Xanatos.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>There are conservatives and liberals on campus.
This is America, after all.</p>
<p>Albeit a thin slice of America, and there are of course far more liberals than conservatives in Hanover NH (a rather conservative state outside the campus green); but there is a reason why Dartmouth has a general reputation for being "conservative" within the context of elite college campuses. Below is a very clarifying example of this phenomenon.</p>
<p>In the current dustup between what many call--quite loosely-- conservatives and liberals over the democratic election of the last 4 petition candidates to the Board of Trustees (in fact they have swept the last 4 elections) and the old guard’s response to their fair election to the inner sanctum of the Board of Trustees.
[quote]
IF YOU CAN'T WIN THE GAME, change the rules!
"Petition candidate Stephen Smith ’88’s recent accession to Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees has inspired the unhappy Alumni Council and the Board of Trustees to change the rules by which trustees are elected. As outlined in two speeches given during the Alumni Council’s annual Green Key meeting in Hanover this year, the Board may take drastic measures during their June 10th meeting to revamp the current election system for alumni trustees. Insiders seldom yield power to outsiders without a fight.”
[/quote]
<a href="http://www.instapundit.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.instapundit.com/</a></p>
<p>For an extensive discussion look here:
<a href="http://dartlog.net/2007/05/faster-alumni-council-kill-kill.php%5B/url%5D">http://dartlog.net/2007/05/faster-alumni-council-kill-kill.php</a></p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Dartmouth's alums in my opinion tend to be more libertarian than conservative. Anyway the faculty, students, ad recent alums are overwhelmingly liberal. Dartmouth has been more diverse than Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, etc for years. Things HAVE changed and god bless the changes.</p>
<p>Interesting article on the subject from the Valley News:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.vnews.com/06032007/4019169.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.vnews.com/06032007/4019169.htm</a></p>