<p>I'm a high school junior and a few weeks my gc made what I thought was a very good suggestion -- that a look online at the student newspapers of the colleges I think that I am interested in. He said that he thought that this was an excellent way to sample the feel of various colleges from a distance. </p>
<p>So for the last few weeks every couple of days I have been checking out various college dailies and the feeling that I am getting from The Dartmouth is that the atmosphere between the administration and the students at Dartmouth is much more contentious and less supportive than it is at other schools. For example in just the past few weeks I have read about:</p>
<ul>
<li>the woman who heads a program dealing with sexual abuse resigning because of lack of support from the administration</li>
<li>students routinely complaining that they can't get into the classes they both want to and need to for requirements in their majors and the administration denying that a problem exists
-a foreign study program being cancelled without letting the students who signed up for it know that it wasn't being offered even though they had planned their other courses and residency terms around this program</li>
</ul>
<p>I don't want to be a flame-thrower and the reason I added Dartmouth to the list of colleges to look into in the first place was that it seemed like such a great place, but these stories make me wonder. I know that no college is perfect, but is the administration particularly unsupportive and unresponsive at Dartmouth? Current students, please share your thoughts, thanks</p>
<p>Show me a school where the student paper isn't moaning and groaning about something most of the time, and I'll show you a school that is boring and not worth attending.</p>
<p>This might sound nuts, but having been to both Columbia and Dartmouth I have a theory. Students at Dartmouth write these articles because they know they will be heard. Other schools have so much red tape you feel like a number. Dartmouth is the kind of place where you can email the president and he will have lunch with you.</p>
<p>Agreed. When I was trying to get the flag lowered for Pope John Paul's passing, I contacted Dean of the College Larimore and President Wright via blitz. I got responses from both of them within three hours (even more impressive considering Wright was on vacation in Florida at the time).</p>
<p>And in response to the zippy reply thing -- before I even committed to Dartmouth, I emailed one of the linguistics professors and got a reply within an hour, emailed her again, and got another two replies before the day was done. I was ecstatic.</p>