The Hill-Wind Journals

racism and sexual assault at Duke

2006-03-31T10:17:00.000-05:00

In case you have not been following this, read these two articles about a woman who was sexually assaulted a Duke here and here. In brief, a black student from nearby North Carolina Central University was sexually assaulted and called racist epithets by three white athletes at a house party in Durham.

The District Attorney has launched an investigation, and Duke has suspended the season for the Lacrosse team, which hosted the party. According to the first article, there have been a number of protests by students, faculty and community members targeted at the team's silence about the crime and who committed it. It's those protests that give me hope -- sexual assault is a crime which, because of the sphere of privacy in which it takes place, is often suffered in isolation. When a community comes together to denounce the crime, the racism that informs it, and the protection of its perpetrators, it seems to me that there's a lot of hope for moving forward.

gender, race and achievement

2006-03-26T11:57:00.000-05:00

from the new york times (who has yet to publish any the 2,600 letters to the editor written response to the Sudan ads):

A collection of letters to the editor take up the rejection of qualified women by elite schools. One admissions officer admits that without gender-norming, which unquestionably privleges white males, "nearly all of the elite, historically male colleges would be more than 80 percent female." Why do they do it? Fundraising purposes.

if the female population soars above 60 percent, the character of the college radically changes, most notably in terms of intercollegiate sports, which are a critical tool in fund-raising.

Alumni pocketbooks and nostalgia for the good old days trump our principles, as per usual. Or maybe I'm letting my cynicism show too clearly. Another writer takes up the problem of how affirmative action can be so wrong here (where it privileges white males) and so right when it comes to race -- and she makes a distinction I hope we don't lose track of:

Affirmative action's strongest argument is that it helps level the effects of past (and present) discrimination. I have a hard time believing that men can make a straight-faced argument of historical systemic discrimination.

Past and present discrimination, on the other hand, is what Harvard professor Orland Patterson forgets in his op-ed on why black young men persist in showing low socio-economic and academic achievement. He blames culture - theirs, to be specific. They are too enamored, he reports, of "cool-pose culture" (a term coined by sociologists).

For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation's best entertainers were black.

Nevermind that the last clause is somewhat nonsensical -- don't you appreciate his equating a culture to a drug? He does try to distinguish between blaming a culture and blaming the victims, which is a nice cover for an assimilationist demand. It strikes me as odd that he advocates a cultural approach, but discusses only the minority culture, and not the white culture that controls the "economic mainstream" he claims the black male demographic is uninterested in. How can he think it's appropriate to try to explain explain racial disparities in achievement without discussing racism?

APPALLING.

2006-03-24T12:49:00.000-05:00

The New York Times recently accepted a contract worth nearly $1 million to publish advertisements for the Sudanese government. The ads went into an 8 page insert in New York area papers, and according to an email I received from SaveDarfur, "consisted of pretty words about Sudan's 'peaceful, prosperous and democratic future.'"

In accepting this contract, they have betrayed Nicholas Kristof and their excellent record of reporting on Darfur and sharply criticizing the government. To accept money from a government that sponsors genocide is disgusting, but to accept to publish its propaganda is to be complicit in the genocide.

SaveDarfur is soliciting letters to the (NY Times) editor. If you want to write one, you can do so here.

also - apologies

2006-03-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

it was finals, now it's spring break.

i'm still on campus, but i'm trying to finish a full draft of my thesis before the beginning of classes next term.

so please be patient with us. we'll be back march 28th.

UCs divest from Sudan

2006-03-20T21:10:00.000-05:00

This one is big. the UC Regents voted last week to divest from 9 companies active in the oil and energy sector in Sudan. According to the LA times article UC will only allow its funds to be reinvested in those companies "after they no longer contribute 'to the suffering in the Darfur region.'"

For a review of the arguments for divestment, read the op-ed published by UC student divestment movement leaders Jason Miller, Adam Sterling, and Adam Rosenthal in the LA Times a few days before the vote.

Other good news on Darfur is that the House has finally voted to allocate $50 million to support the African Union peackeeping mission -- something Congress should have done months ago. Though they've been effective where deployed (according to a report last year by the International Crisis Group), the force has been severely limited by a lack of funds, finding itself unable to increase the number of troops, supply them with the necessary communications and transportation equipment, or respond effectively to a rapidly evolving crisis. But they're not enough, and the lack of international support has crippled them. According to ICG's most recent report

The international strategy for dealing with the Darfur crisis primarily through the small (7,000 troops) African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) is at a dead end. AMIS credibility is at an all-time low, with the ceasefire it could never monitor properly in tatters.

ICG's recommendations include immediate increased financial and technical support for the AU, the deployment of a supplemental force by a single nation - France? - the bridge the gap, and the deployment of a UN force as soon as possible.

storm of problematic rhetoric around sexual assault continues

2006-03-07T11:04:00.000-05:00

For those of you that haven't been reading the D, I've put together a quick summary of the recent discussion of sexual assault. I think you'll agree it's all pretty problematic.

Today

Matthew Carigan '06 describes Catalano's op-ed as "vitriolic feminist rhetoric," and argues that "men have been disenfranchised from the system with respect to sexual violence" because women are never criticized for groping men on the dance floor. If there's unwelcome groping happening on the dance floor, I agree it's a problem no matter the gender of the person groping - but please do not trivialize the very real experience of sexual assault that many women live through involving much more serious violations of their bodies.

John Leyba '01 argues for a novel (and unrealistic) solution to the sexual assault problem -- students should refrain from sex. And it's not that he's wrong about the lack of maturity or the objectification that accompanies our sexual culture, or about the potentially traumatizing nature of casual sex. But it's self-righteous and narrow to argue unless you can do sex the way he thinks it should be done, you shouldn't do it. Given his perspective on casual sex, it's not surprising that he criticizes women for getting anywhere near it:

"Contrary to the assertions of one writer, women not wanting to engage in sexual activity do, in fact, bear a responsibility to avoid what my eighth grade sex-ed teacher called "sex-possible-situations." This is hardly blaming the victim -- it is simply common sense."

There are so many problems with this statement I don't even know where to start.

Last Week

Thursday, Rowan Carlsen '08 wrote a dismissive letter to the editor calling for "less whining, more partying." His inability to think critically about the social world in which he lives is depressing to me. If his piece is representative of the perspectives of other men in Dartmouth's frat basements, then the need to direct some attention to educating them is even more urgent than I had thought.

Also Thursday, Dean Larimore wrote a letter to the editor defending his position on sexual assault. It's too bad that he doesn't recognize the problematic nature of the (accurate) quote used in the op-ed on the Culture of Protection. In that quote, he essentially told sororrity sisters that they should be protecting first year women, who are not affiliated with their organizations and who may not have any connections with older women at Dartmouth. Think how those sorority sisters must feel -- not only do they have to deal with the fact that they can't always protect themselves or their close friends from sexual assualt, but they should feel responsible for hundreds of women they don't even know. It's a quintessential example of the culture of protection. I'm glad that he recognizes that men need confront sexual assault too, but that doesn't obviate the fact that the quote Catalano used was a telling one.

you can deal with gender problems on this campus, or you can ignore them. i recommend the first.

2006-02-28T09:16:00.000-05:00

Ana Catalano wrote an excellent op-ed in the D today criticizing the "culture of protection" that has arisen in campus discourse on sexual assault. According to the piece,

"The culture of protection is based on the idea that women need to be taught how to protect themselves and other women from sexual assault rather than the idea that men, who commit the vast majority of sexual violence, need to be taught not to perpetrate or normalize these crimes."

The whole piece is excellent, and courageous. She even (*gasp*) criticizes the frats and the uncritical attitude with which we accept their presence and their problems on this campus. Read the whole thing -- it's thought provoking, and provides a perspective this campus is in desperate need of.

Less courageous is the explanation of Frat Free Friday by Shannon Troutman (president of pan-hellenic council). It confirms Alex DiBranco's critique of the event as timid: Troutman admits that the event was not more broadly publicized because they were unwilling to risk "retaliation" by the frats. Here's her take on the point of the event:

"The idea to hold a fraternity-free weekend was in no way an attack on fraternities, and had nothing to do with men in general. While many students on this campus appreciate and value the social scene that the Greek system provides, the point was to encourage alternative, female-oriented social settings.

First and foremost, however, the goal was to foster relationships among women."

I am personally disappointed by the lack of vision demonstrated by her explanation; when I originally received the blitz, I had read the event as a signal that even those women who normally participate in the frat scene are aware of the problematic gender relations in frat basements, and willing to make a public statement in favor of change. And I think many of the women who participated in Frat Free Friday are aware of the problems with the frat system (I'm not sure if I count, because I've been practicing Frat Free Fridays ever since I showed up freshman year), but pan-hel apparently doesn't want to make those problems a public issue.

My take: the way masculinity is constructed and privileged is a problem on this campus, as it is in society at large. The more problematic elements of its construction are supported and even reinforced by the hyper-masculine culture of the fraternities. We privilege that dominating type of masculinity when we refuse to discuss why men assault women and how their actions stem from broader cultural patterns, and we privilege it again every time we refuse to criticize the frats for their contribution to the problem.

For those of you who are on campus, I encourage you to go to tonight's SPEAK OUT on sexual assaut (8pm Collis Commonground). We, as a campus, have a lot of progress to make in how we think and talk about sexual assault, not to mention in how we try to prevent it.

Live Free or Die?

2006-02-27T19:19:00.000-05:00

So here at Dartmouth, living in New Hampshire, most of us have at some point in time learned the state's motto: Live Free or Die.

I've never encountered a NH resident who didn't know and love the state's motto. It's a great rallying cry for just about any side of the political spectrum, depending on how you use it. To literarily or historically inclined ears, it's deeply resonant. How many of us NH transplants know the mottos of our home states? I mean, California's got it pretty good (Eureka!), but when was the last time anyone cared about Florida's state motto (it happens to be the same as that of the United States - In God We Trust - apparently they couldn't think of anything better)? New Hampshire has one fantastic state motto.

OK. I'm a liberal and I just said that. Apparently, according to Power Line via Dartblog, "liberals hate 'Live Free or Die.'"

Bullshit.

I suspect that most NH residents and politicians, of whatever political (or apolitical) stripes, like the state motto. Like I said, it's the kind of phrase you can rally with for either side of the political spectrum, and it gets used (and abused) as such by both sides.

The current fuss over the state motto vs. a horrendous marketing slogan ("You're Going to Love it Here") is not some kind of liberal-conservative tug-of-war. Really. It would be a particularly poor idea to replace the state motto, and if there was any evidence that the state's liberals had hatched some plan to do so, I'd criticize them for it. But they haven't. I've not found a news article yet that says just whose idea it was to hire a marketing firm to think of a new state 'slogan', nor have any of the articles clarified whether this slogan would be a permanent replacement to "Live Free or Die" or merely a particularly invasive and insipid tourism marketing campaign.

Brown Divests from Sudan

2006-02-25T15:39:00.000-05:00

man, the good news is just pouring in on the divest sudan movement. Brown has joined the list. In a letter announcing the news Brown President Ruth Simmons says

"This is a critically important and strong statement by the University community regarding our abhorrence of the genocidal actions being supported and undertaken by the Sudanese government. We thus declare our solidarity with the peoples of the Darfur region of Sudan whose struggle to live in peace, freedom, and security is an issue of pressing global concern.."

Reusing snow and planting trees

2006-02-24T10:30:00.000-05:00

Folks on campus this week might have noticed the snow sculpture slowly coming down with the help of some heavy machinery. What they might not have known is that a good bit of the snow from this year's snow sculpture is being reused over at Tuck for their own smaller snow sculpture. I'm not sure if it really deserves the term 'sustainable', but here's an idea for the other seasonal large object on the Green:

Why not plant trees annually to replace those harvested for the annual Homecoming bonfire?

It's relatively easy to calculate the environmental costs associated with chopping down a tree; the same goes for calculating the benefits associated with planting one. Planting young trees is inexpensive, easy, and pays huge environmental dividends. Apparently it's been done before here at Dartmouth, sometime in the early 90's - why not do it again?

I love the bonfire and I never miss Homecoming festivities. But burning that much wood in one night for a completely impractical - if fun - tradition could be made into something even longer-lasting if students were to plant trees over Homecoming weekend to replace those burned. I'm not sure from where Dartmouth purchases its Homecoming logs - but new trees could be planted anywhere - on campus, at the Organic Farm, in the Grant. In fact, you could vary the location annually - there are organizations that plant trees all over the world, and tree-planting could be tied into service trips, ASBs, international FSPs, anything.

Planting trees to repay the environmental costs of harvesting wood for Dartmouth's bonfire is admittedly a small action; compared to Dartmouth's annual energy consumption, the bonfire is a small speck, but the power of the action is in the message it sends - a commitment to preserving natural resources for the future and a recognition that sustainability can be a part of Dartmouth's best-loved traditions.

Elite Schools and Inequality

2006-02-21T15:40:00.000-05:00

For all that academic institutions like Dartmouth are predicated on the importance of critical thinking and interrogation of power structures, it seems to me that students, professors and administrators alike neglect to turn that critical eye on the institutions that house us. What is the role of elite schools in our society?

I don't think any honest or satisfactory answer to this question can be given without a serious consideration of our relationship to economic inequalities in our world. We depend upon and reproduce the economic elite. And the alums we produce seem pretty content, on the whole, to use their privilege to further enrich and empower themselves.

We should be ashamed.

At least part of any effort to make our relationship to economic inequality more constructive should involve aggressively recruiting (and fully supporting) students from lower economic brackets. Gauranteeing that we'll meet 100% of financial need is not enough to overcome the structures of disempowerment that get in the way of students applying to and gaining acceptance to colleges like our own. On models for how to do this, see what Tony Marx is doing at Amherst. In brief, his programs amount to an affirmative action program for the economically disadvantaged. Maybe we could take a cue from him; I think it's about time we got serious about this at Dartmouth.

Justice for the Women of Juarez

2006-02-20T04:51:00.000-05:00

The level of corruption within the Mexican government and the willingness to remain complacent and dismiss the injustice that has been occurring in Juarez for more than a decade is simply unbelievable!

Since 1993, approximately 400 women have been killed (with the numbers continuing to rise) and yet the Mexican Attorney General's Office this past week concluded that the murders were not related despite obvious patterns in the targets--all young women who fit a specific physical profile and work in the maquiladoras, foreign owned assembly plants made possible through our friend NAFTA. Officials attribute the killings instead to a variety of reasons including sexual and domestic violence, revenge, gang activity, robberies, negligence, fights or undetermined motives. This is just down right ridiculous. Hundreds of women have been raped and killed for more than a decade. These are calculated mass murders of women who are poor and extremely vulnerable to sexual violence and yet the Mexican government can refuse to recognize this!

I'll be going to Juarez this spring on an ASB with other Dartmouth undergrads. It has definitely crossed my mind that ten days of "service" will not make a huge impact. We're not there to save these women. As students, we don't have the money, skills or time to even know where to begin. We're also not there to have a pretty postcard experience in which our end goal is simply to educate ourselves and as a good friend puts it, to contribute to the perfect, glossy image of the Tucker Foundation. We actually care about what's going on and we want to be there to let people know that we give a damn about the women and that other people need to give a damn as well.

On that note, I am going to shamelessly plug our fundraising event tonight at the Canoe Club. 10PM-Midnight. Show some support. Show some concern.

* I will be adding more information to this post soon with links to more reporting on Juarez as well as to organizations that have been doing long term work there.

Black. White. : race and entertainment in America

2006-02-18T23:45:00.000-05:00

"Black. White." , and I mean the entire concept, production, and release of this show, is definitely unacceptable. I am ashamed that Ice Cube, as a Black person, would be behind this, but then again, he is of course entitled to his perspective and not all Blacks feel the same way about what is best for our race. Then again, what could you expect from the man who came out with "You Can Do It, Put Your Ass Into," (not that I don't like to dance to it at Tri-Kap occasionally).

I mean, honestly, if we as a country have learned anything about race over the course of the last century, and I think we have, then we know that racial understanding is not something that you can FORCE on anyone. It seems to me, at least according to this article, that both families already have a set perspective on race. The one thing in the article that I was glad to read was that the children in these families, at least, seem to be above the "we can't get along because we are different races" ideology.

There is a lot of hypocrisy in the show's aims/objectives. From what I can surmise from the article, the show's objective is to elucidate some of the more subtle forms of racism, yet tries to achieve it in a very impractical and ridiculous fashion. I would rather not get into the historical significance of Blackface; I think we all know its original intent, and we all know that it was never intended to make anyone better "understand" what it means to be Black. Furthermore, because this type of racial transformation has been satirized by comedians like Eddie Murphy and the Wayans Brothers, putting on Whiteface has garnished a similar stigma of ridiculousness and is perhaps equally as offensive (minus the centuries of oppression and the relative dearth of positive representations of Black people in entertainment of course).

How is putting on Blackface - a historically demeaning and objectionable act, and putting on Whiteface - a more modern, but perhaps equally as offensive act, for a period of, I'm guessing, two weeks supposed to enlighten anyone about the Black or the White experience in America? These experiences take a lifetime. The father of the family who said he expected to flat out be called the N*word clearly has a limited perspective on race in America. It is not one isolated event of discrimination or racism that makes Blacks and others, and I do not speak for my entire race here, believe and affirm that these detestable phenomena exist, but a continued pattern of discrimination and racism throughout history that has set the standard.

This is not to discount the gains our country has made in terms of race. Today, Blacks and Whites can sit together in a classroom and a White cashier, in most parts of this country, wouldn't shudder at the thought of taking money from a Black patron, but one only need to look at the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina or at the communities affected most by the heat waves in Chicago in 1995 (again mostly neighborhoods housing lower-income Blacks) to see that racial discrimination against Blacks persists.

Finally, this show does what I think many Americans are guilty of: it puts race, once again, in terms of Black and White instead of including the entire diversity of this country. It inherently excuses discrimination/racism against other marginalized races and ethnicities (and let's face it, genders, religions, etc. too!) by not even including them in the conversation and trivializing any tensions that may exist among perhaps Blacks and Koreans or what have you.

I just want to reiterate how disgusting I find this show to be. I fear that it will only serve to perpetuate stereotypes about both Blacks and Whites - stereotypes that suggest that all Whites lack racial understanding and that all Blacks are overly sensitive about race when there "really isn't a race problem in the United States." I fear most of all that this show, like many others before it, will entertain instead of educate and as we have seen, entertainment can be a very dangerous weapon.

Guest blogger,

B. Jones

coke boycott

2006-02-17T22:12:00.000-05:00

In response to Coca-Cola's human rights abuses, students have initiated campus campaigns to kick Coca-Cola off of college campuses. For the past week or so I made a concerted effort to avoid Coca-Cola products and failed miserably. Here's a short list of drinks available at on-campus dining facilities that are bottled, distributed, or manufactured by a the Coca-Cola company or a subsidary:

Barq’s
Canada Dry
all types of Coke
Dartmouth Water
Dasani
Evian
Fanta
Fresca
Fruitopia
Hi-C
Mello Yello
Minute Maid
Nantucket Nectars
Nestea
Odwalla
Orangina
POWERade
Seagram’s
Schweppes
Silk Soymilk (parent company half-owned by Coca-Cola)
Sprite
Yoohoo

Non-Coke products:

Hood Milk & Orange Juice

If anyone manages to find a non-Coke drink on campus, please comment. Until then, I'll be drinking Hanover tap water. Yum.

Frat Free Friday

2006-02-17T13:13:00.000-05:00

An email has been circulating among the women on campus declaring tonight a "Frat Free Friday." The idea is that if women avoid the frats in massive numbers tonight, we can demonstrate in a very tangible way that we are integral to the social scene on campus and should be treated better if they want us to stick around. It's a demand for respect, and a signal that women who do choose normally to participate in the frat scene are aware of and concerned about the problematic gender relations facilitated by such a system.

Please spread the word, and may there be many more frat free fridays.

**note: the frats targeted by this boycott do not include co-ed houses or affinity houses.

tickle-me-jimbo

2006-02-16T00:38:00.000-05:00

one of the more ridiculous things i've seen this week...

Yale Divests from Sudan

2006-02-15T16:24:00.000-05:00

In yet another victory for student activists, Yale announced today that it has decided to divest from 7 oil companies active in Sudan.

according to the press release,

Yale's decision to divest from these oil companies, which are actively conducting operations in Sudan, is based on the finding that more than half of the Sudanese government's revenue is derived from oil. As the source of such revenue, the companies are presumed to be committing "grave social injury" by providing substantial assistance to the perpetrators of genocide. Yale has attempted to engage in dialogue with the companies regarding their business activities in Sudan and has asked whether any actions on their part have advanced efforts to end the genocide in Darfur or aid the victims. The Yale Corporation took its divestment action after those attempts generated inadequate responses from the companies.

More information on this decision and the research that informed it is available here.

V-Day at Dartmouth

2006-02-14T08:16:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day, Dartmouth.

I got a little early celebrating in yesterday at the 4th annual Sex Festival. It must be said that for an event that features sex toys, costumes, and low red lighting, the atmosphere was surprisingly comfortable and thoughtful. The students running the booths were friendly and funny without being pushy, and I saw lots of students taking advantage of things like free condoms - definitely a good thing.

That said, though, I haven't seen much else in the way of sex-ed related events this week. The Vagina Monologues will go on tonight and tomorrow night, and apparently there was a Sextravaganza discussion in Mid Mass, but that seems to be the extent of Dartmouth-sponsored events. Why not use this week, already saturated with cheesy V-day fundraisers, to start a bigger campus discussion? Full disclosure: I definitely participated in one of those cheesy fundraisers for my own organization. But all week, as my inbox has been filling with invitations to get some Speed Dating, "Crush" cans, cards, chocolate, and flowers, I've been thinking - is this all?

Monday's D reported on Sex Week at Yale, which includes speakers, events, and a whole 60-page booklet, all ostensibly about relationships, sexuality, and love. Perhaps Dartmouth should shoot for something on a larger scale too.

Having not experienced "Sex Week at Yale", I don't know if it's necessarily a perfect model. But walking around Dartmouth's Sex Festival, I wondered how many students might be turned off by its flashiness. Why not make those educational resources available in other ways, for those who aren't interested in wearing glittery heart antennae and strolling underneath the red lights? What about a speaker? A website? Discussion forums? A publication? (Supposedly Yale will be sending Dartmouth their Sex Week publication - great, but why not have our own?) It seems that the people who most need the resources, advice, and ideas that something like the Sex Festival offers would be the least likely to stop in and check things out. But they might pick up a booklet or attend a discussion forum. Some will say that students could just as easily self-educate themselves about sex or relationships, and that the College should butt out of students' personal lives. But this neglects to account for the way that campus dialogue on contentious or challenging issues can jump-start people into thinking about things on a deeper level. Some of the best discussions about issues like gender relations in the Greek system have come from candid, thoughtful student-run discussions. When dialogue becomes indoctrination, though, you lose that opportunity.

So hooray for the Sex Festival - but just the same, there's a place for respecting and listening to those who have views that differ from the Sex Festival's pro-sex atmosphere. Why not hold student-run discussion forums through campus religious communities? Political groups? Greeks? First-year dorms? There's a lot that goes unsaid about love, sex, and relationships here, and now seems like the perfect time to start talking about it.

disclosure

2006-02-12T23:07:00.000-05:00

Some clarification regarding our decision not to publish our full names:

Yes, we're using our first names, not pseudonyms.
Our intention is not to hide or to maintain an aura of secrecy. All of us are seniors who have been active in / are strongly affiliated with various student organizations and communities. We want readers to evaluate our posts based on content, not our personal affiliations.
We're also looking for jobs at the moment. Given the power of Google and the interest that some of us have in pursuing government jobs, we'd rather not deal with unnecessary blog-related job search anxiety. If they ask, we'll tell. Otherwise...
The Dartmouth community is pretty small and it's not hard to figure out who we are (DND, Facebook, etc.). If you don't figure it out, blitz hillwindjournals@gmail.com and we'll tell you.

On sexual assault....

2006-02-11T22:33:00.000-05:00

In reference to the D's three part series on sexual assault at Dartmouth, I would like to point out that the articles failed to mention former SAPA coordinator Abby Tassel's resignation last spring.

In an open letter to the campus, Abby cited lack of support within the administration as the primary reason for her departure. Although she was overworked and being constantly utilized by students as a major resource, administrators not only didn't try to seek additional support for her, but criticized her for being too "student-focused." She felt that the deans of the college were not taking her recommendations seriously and altogether disinterested and disconnected from her work. So as much as I agree with Dean Larrimore and Mark Reed in that students need to be more responsible for changing the culture of sexual assault on campus, I would also emphasize that it is the administration's role to set the example.

What I would like to know is how the college has addressed the issues that have been brought up in Abby's resignation letter. How can we ensure that our new SAPA coordinator will not face the same obstacles? When do we get to hold the administration accountable so that they're not paying mere lip service to the students and really commiting to putting an end to sexual assault at Dartmouth?

And in response to Joe Malchow's questioning of justice in the system of reporting, I would have to agree with Andrew Seal in that Malchow clearly trivializes the seriousness of sexual assault. I don't think he understands the incredible challenges that victims face when making the decision to report the assault and their need for some level of comfort in doing so. It is not about seeking vengeance but about confronting the situation and breaking the silence and the shame that paralyzes victims into staying victims. Increased numbers in reporting (including by third-parties) does not imply that those who are being accused are already presumed guilty or become more susceptible to being falsely accused. As Seal points out, this defensiveness is clearly a form of victim blaming.

Granted, incidences of sexual assault will never be black and white but does this automatically mean that any reporting of such incidences are inherently unjust? Why is justice defined only in terms of protecting the individual who is accused? What about the victims? Do they not deserve to seek their own justice and confront the experience they must live with or should they remain silent, especially if they themselves were not sure if they had been raped? God forbid, what if all victims spoke out? Imagine what that would lead to! Men will without a doubt be punished! How unfair! Clearly they will be disadvantaged in such a system and men can not be disadvantaged! That's reverse sexism! That's injustice!

thoughts on winter carnvial

2006-02-11T22:21:00.000-05:00

Niral Shah's article in this issue of the Dartmouth Free Press documents Winter Carnival's unexpectedly interesting history. The misogyny and racism of earlier years should be surprising to no one (see for example a WWII era sculpture depicting a Japanese man carting a US Marine in a rickshaw). What is more surprising is a history of progressive activism during Carnvial. In 1979, students spray-painted the sculpture red, green and black to protest low minority enrollment. It was spray-painted again in 1991 to protest the Gulf War.

I don't know why Carnvial is not the target for activism that it used to be. Maybe because, thanks in part to a movement of conservative alums, "tradition" has regained the moral authority to trump questions of social justice? Maybe because we are too eager for the drunken catharsis of three nights of unrestrained raging?

Many students see these sort of holidays as the moments when the entire College comes together. Such is, afterall, the reassurance of tradition -- that there is a worthy community which is created and reaffirmed in these rituals. In the spirit of challenging the hegemony of tradition, though, let me just note that Carnival these days does give occasion for another, quieter form of activism: in small but significant numbers, students who feel alienated by a culture centered on drinking and partying are simply slipping away, ducking the cultural Mack Truck that is Winter Carnival. It's not quite the same as protesting the institutionalization of white privilege, but maybe they have a point.

(links to the article and pictures will be posted once this issue of the DFP is put online)

Dean of Faculty Search

2006-02-09T04:14:00.000-05:00

Last week, the D reported on a search that is currently under way to appoint the next Dean of Faculty (DoF). Although this article highlighted the importance of this position and the challenges that come with it, there was no mention of the relationship (or lack thereof) between the DoF office and the student body. Granted the DoF does not serve students directly, but the decisions made by the DoF still have a tremendous impact on students' academic experiences. Among other things, the DoF is charged with overseeing educational policies and curriculum development. These issues are clearly relevant to students as evidenced by op-eds and articles in campus publications in recent years regarding the elimination of the human biology program, the elimination of the speech department, oversubscribed courses, the disturbing pattern of women and people of color in the faculty leaving under unusual circumstances, and the lack of leadership on establishing Asian American Studies.

Besides campus publications, students have few avenues for voicing these concerns. Last term, the McKinsey consultants met with several student organizations to get feedback on how well different parts of the administration were serving students. When concerns about course oversubscription and the accessibility of the DoF office were raised, they made it clear to us that the DoF office was off-limits-- no further discussion, criticism, or review allowed. Furthermore, finding opportunties for meaningful dialogue with the DoF office on these matters is near impossible. My presonal interactions with that office have only confirmed that the DoF has no interest in seriously engaging students questions and concerns.

While I appreciate the challenging nature of the job (especially the difficulty of navigating faculty politics) and understand that the DoF's primary obligations are to the faculty, students deserve substantive answers when they raise legitimate questions... Or at least something more than superficial P.R. efforts and pat on the head.

we might lose our valuable meritocracy! wait...

2006-02-06T14:43:00.000-05:00

Sara del Nido's generally well argued op-ed in today's D rightly criticizes the federal spending cuts on student loans, but when she raises a cry of alarm about the imminent destruction of our meritocracy, I have to raise an eyebrow.

"Let's fast forward five or 10 years down the road. How would Dartmouth's student body be different if students who required financial aid were no longer able to obtain it? What would America's college and university system look like?

The meritocracy that we have today -- already fragile and turning into an inherited meritocracy -- would have little chance of surviving. Instead of being selected based on test scores and grades, low-income students applying to colleges would self-select on the basis of whether or not their families can afford the strain that paying a high-interest loan would incur."

How does she think it works now? Anyone that came here from a public school can probably think of a dozen of their erstwhile classmates who deserved - in her meritocratic schema - an education like ours, but who decided to attend lesser universities because they simply could not take on the debt burden necessary to finance an ivy league degree. The proof that the meritocracy, if it ever actually existed, is already in shreds can be found in her own article. She cites the statistic that 56% of Dartmouth students are on financial aid. Think about that number for a moment. That means that almost half of Dartmouth's student body can afford to pay upwards of $40,000 per year without assistance. That puts them in the wee top percentages of our country's economic stratum. And as far as I can tell, this is nothing new.

And she's right, the federal cuts are pointing the country in the exact wrong direction. But let's not fool ourselves about where we are.

Amherst Divests from Sudan

2006-02-02T09:25:00.000-05:00

Amherst has voted to divest from some two dozen companies (for a full list, see the article in the Amherst Magazine) whose business relationships with the Sudanese government render them morally complicit in the genocide. Significantly, Amherst voted not only to refrain from direct investments, but to also pressure their funds managers to avoid investing in those companies.

The Amherst Board of Trustees, which voted unanimously in favor of divestment, includes Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who is quoted in the press release noting the lack of any benefit to the Sudanese people arising from the activities of these companies.

The Amherst list is much more extensive than the short list of companies now formally excluded from Dartmouth's direct investments. Our Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility is seeking to expand its research to include more companies guilty of moral comlicity in the genocide, and this decision from Amherst provides good precendent for such expansion. The ACIR is also considering purchasing a product by KLD which would provide information on the involvement of 120 different companies active in Sudan.

an outsider's view of the frats

2006-01-31T20:20:00.000-05:00

A group of us from this blog went to Chi Gam last night to discuss with some of the brothers the specific brand of sketchiness associated with Chi Gam in particular and fraternities on this campus in general. It was my first time in that house, and perhaps only my fifth time inside a fraternity. I think I learned a lot.

Let me be honest about my prejudices: I have no love for the greek system. As someone who has largely spent college outside of it, I may be influenced by the worst stories and unaware of the better ones. I tend to perceive the frats as places where alcoholism, objectification (primarily of women, but let's be honest, it goes both ways), and sexual assault take root. I think both the alochol culture and the hook-up culture are symptomatic of (and reinforce) social, emotional and cultural problems we desperately need to confront. But that's just me. Like I said, I haven't spent much time there, and I guess I've missed out on the fun, and rage, that so many laud.

The brothers we spoke with at Chi Gam pointed out, rightfully, that people go there of their own free will, and that the sort of activities I disdain are exactly what some people seek for their college experience. The frats did not invent either objectification or alcoholism, and if those cultural flaws insinuate themselves into otherwise good fun, the fun shouldn't be blamed.

And they're right, reliance on alcohol as a social lubricant and the tendancy of women to seek affirmation through sexual attention, even objectication, exist in our society regardless of the influence of the frats. The question, then, is whether frats reinforce and worsen the problem? I believe strongly that they do. To the extent that they integrate new members of the greek scene through alcohol and objectification, and they reward people based on their willingness to participate in both, they entrench those values and patterns of interaction. They are perceived by many students as exercising a monopoly over Dartmouth's social scene. The choice to stay out of the frat scene can seem to some to be a choice of voluntary social isolation (certainly some of my friends have accused me of that) -- a choice that many may be unwilling to make. The role of the greek system on this campus is unassailable, apparently, and as long as it persists our community cannot avoid being affected by its pathologies.

In our conversation with Chi Gam's thoughtful new programmer, we kept coming back to what fraternities could do to resolve these problems. Changing the internal culture of the fraternities, so that brothers learn to take women seriously, was one suggestion. Reaching out to communities of color and women's groups was another. Both might make the frats a more positive and constructive presence on campus. But in discussing these possibilities, we kept coming up against the momentum of frat culture: what brothers would and would not attend, who brothers would and would not take seriously, and the limited reach of occasional programming compared to the social scene constructed by pong and dance parties. I think we need to seriously ask ourselves if the greek system is something that can be fixed, and if we're willing to let the more sinister aspects of its influence on the campus continue unabated.

seven bad ideas about how to cut costs in higher education

2006-01-29T20:33:00.000-05:00

In a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, William Coplin suggests 7 Ways Colleges Can Cut Costs in Their Classrooms. Each of his seven suggestions proposes an alternative to professors, or even PhD students, actually teaching classes. They cost too much, apparently. It'd be more efficient to outsource or rely on adjuncts and undergraduates to cover the teaching load.

My first reaction was, "this is ridiculous!" One of the best parts of my Dartmouth education has been working closely with professors -- a rare privilege for an undergraduate these days. I like TA's, I think peer tutors provide a valuable service, and I agree that a little bit of real world experience enriches a college education - but to suggest that students teach themselves or that the organizations and companies they intern for take responsibility for their education entirely ignores the subject-matter expertise professors have to offer.

My second reaction was, "this is RIDICULOUS!" Academia is not just about preparing students for the work world (Coplin is also the author of the book "10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College" ). Academia serves as a forum for advancing human knowledge and understanding. Our society needs a stronger, not a weaker, academic voice to inform the social, political, economic and scientific choices we make. For example, respected academics Larry Diamond and Juan Cole agree that the disastrous outcome in Iraq could have been avoided had the Bush administration paid attention to what was common knowledge to academics who study the Middle East, democratization, political development, and civil war. Cutting into research budgets, cutting back on tenured faculty positions, and reconceptualizing professors as "managers of their students' education" would dangerously weaken that voice.

My third reaction was, "this is offensive!!!" Our country has its share of problems, but a shortage of resources is not one of them. If we are really concerned about opening up college opportunities to those who can't afford to pay tuition at its current levels, wouldn't a better strategy be to increase state support for education rather than lessen the quality of the education those students will be able to access? Where a society puts its resources says a lot about its values, and it's about time we started valuing education and deliberative discussion on issues of great relevance to society more than we value the efficient production of good employees.

Panel on Religion and Human Rights

2006-01-23T17:33:00.000-05:00

The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee put on an excellent discussion this afternoon on religion and human rights. Among the questions raised, and answered only tentatively, were the following: Are human rights universal? How can we differentiate between beliefs about what human rights are and who deserves them -- beliefs that will be inevitably influened by religious world views -- and the human rights themselves? Are human rights located in individuals or in some sort of communities? (if they are to be located, we need to consider the linkages between religion and the building of communities) How can we live our claims about human rights?

They recommended almost as many books to us as questions. Here are the books whose titles I managed to write down:

Betrayal edited by Dartmouth professor Susanna Heschel
Gathering Storm by Morris Dees
Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer
God's Politics by Jim Wallis
A World Made New by Mary Ann Glendon

UC's put off divestment decision

2006-01-20T12:14:00.000-05:00

The UC Regents did not take action on a proposal to divest the UC system from all holdings in Sudan. According to the article in the LA Times:

University of California regents on Thursday stopped short of a decision to pull UC money immediately out of investments in Sudan but instructed their fund managers to express the university's concern about firms that have "significant business relationships" in the war-torn African nation.

The regents promised to revisit the issue in March, when they are expected to hear a detailed plan for divestment by a newly appointed task force that will include regents, faculty members and students. They could vote on the issue then.

Dartmouth began to consider divestment from Sudan over a year ago, and now we are one of only four colleges to have effectved such divestment. It's hard to know whether to be pessimistic or optimistic about the movement. We've come a long way, especially in terms of research and organization. But violence in Darfur continues unabated, and the international community has yet to make serious commitment to ending the conflict. I only hope the ongoing divestment movement will help keep pressure on those who have the power to do something about the Darfur conflict.

Hovey and Orozco - "offensive" art?

2006-01-19T20:00:00.000-05:00

Two conversations this week, discussing two sets of campus murals, have brought me to a question:

Just what is the place of offensive art on campus?

On one hand, Dartmouth has the Orozco murals (24 fresco panels, in fact) in Baker Library's Reserve Corridor. These came up in a class last week, where the discussion focused on whether or not the piece's message is diluted by its presence on a (mostly) liberal college campus far from the minds of those who might benefit from its admonishments. Most students probably don't find these murals offensive, but at the time of their completion in 1934, they were intended to create a stir, as this quote from the companion booklet shows: "Passive acceptance has no legitimate place in the educational process, and the double-edged incisiveness of controversy is one of the major educational values to be derived from work as positive and vital as Orozco's." Today we see them as a powerful cultural critique and pictorial history of the Americas. Yes, he was a Communist; yes, the piece is an attack on ideologies many hold sacred, including religion and war. But do the murals regularly inspire dialogue among students? The community? The nation? Perhaps they did fifty years ago, but you'd think they were invisible for the notice students give them on a daily basis.

On the very same day as this class discussion, another friend brought up another controversial set of Dartmouth murals and some students' plans to have them unveiled for discussion. In the basement of Thayer dining hall, lost from the institutional memory of most of the current student body, a different set of murals molders behind the walls of that game room you've likely never visited. Painted by Walter Humphries '14 in the late 1930's, the Hovey murals are a pictorial representation of the song "Eleazar Wheelock," which was written by Richard Hovey 1885 (also the composer of the original version of Dartmouth's Alma Mater).

The song begins with:

"Oh, Eleazar Wheelock was a very pious man;
He went into the wildernes to teach the Indian,
With a Gradus ad Parnassum, a Bible and a drum,
And five hundred gallons of New England rum.
Fill the bowl up! Fill the bowl up!"

I will note that I have not seen the actual murals - apparently, one can request special permission to view them, but I have not done so. From campus publication archives, one can gather that the pieces are done in a gaudy "pub style" and depict a rotund Wheelock surrounded by intoxicated Native Americans; the Review has described the scenes depicted in the murals as "whimsical and comic", the Free Press, "racist" and "insulting". Humphries painted the Hovey murals as a direct response to the Orozco murals, and, if various Free Press and Review articles are correct, he had prior campaigned for the removal of the Orozco art from Dartmouth. The Hovey murals have been covered since the 1970's. Why? Some members of the Dartmouth community (most notably, and understandably, the Native American community) found them offensive.

--

I find it pretty fascinating that the Orozco murals have become less controversial over the years as the Hovey murals have become more so. So what's the distinction here? Why is one piece given prominent display in the Reserve Corridor and one piece hidden away?

Part of this comes back to what I mentioned at the start - a (mostly) liberal college campus is the very place where Orozco's ideals are debated, discussed, and handled safely with academic gloves. We can separate ourselves emotionally from what his murals stand for. The Hovey murals are harder to deal with; it's hard not to read their message as simply the dated, racist humor of a time long past. They aren't speaking to any great ideals, however misguided, they're just making a joke.

There are other reasons too. I might get into those later. But mostly right now I'm thinking of the question I've been trying to answer lately:

In light of their controversial subject matter, should the Hovey murals be covered?

The short answer is sort of.

The long answer is that the Hovey murals do serve a purpose at Dartmouth, but that purpose is not to be boldly displayed at all times in a public space. There is absolutely a distinction between the Hovey murals and the Orozco murals, just as there is a distinction between mediocre art and great art, or between thought-provoking controversy and crass offensiveness. It's fine if your distinction between the two is qualitatively different than mine. But at Dartmouth, in a public space such as the Reserves or the Hovey game room, we are obligated to respect the opinions of the Dartmouth community. So why not open this up to a campus discussion? I'll say that the Hovey pieces should be archived - if not in their actuality (removing murals is tremendously difficult), in digital form - for everyone to see and to discuss. Hiding them in their current fashion reflects the implication that Dartmouth wishes to hide its past, not learn from it. That said, if the piece is as blatantly racist as has been claimed, its role is not as public art - its role is as learning art in Rauner or the Hood, as part of the rest of the history of Dartmouth and a recognition that controversy does indeed serve a purpose at this College, even that which does not fit neatly into any convenient ideas of what is appropriate or artistic.

more on writing at Dartmouth

2006-01-18T20:08:00.000-05:00

Director of the Writing Program, Tom Cormen, responds to Joe Asch's op-ed here.

Joe Asch is wrong about RWIT, part II.

2006-01-16T23:18:00.000-05:00

From Joe Asch's op-ed in yesterday's D:

"After a 2002 outside review of the Composition Center, a review that one faculty member described to me as "scathing," the Center's name was changed to RWiT [Student Center for Research, Writing and Information Technolog] However, its organization and the role of its revolving group of undergraduate student tutors remained substantially the same."

Turns out he's wrong about the report. The review was not just of the Composition Center, but of the way Dartmouth teaches writing. He's right that the review was scathing; I was told by the director of the then-Composition Center that Dartmouth received an overall failing grade. She also told us that the Composition Center was in fact the only part of Dartmouth's writing program to receive praise from the reviewers.

I'm trying to get a copy of the report to verify all this... Sorry to resort to the "take my word over his," but I'm pretty sure he's wrong.

One more thing that bothered me about his op-ed: his scale of comparison is pretty strange. Rather than compare the cost of putting a Departmental Editor in every department to the budget of the Writing Program (reported in the article to be $400,000 for its first three years, less than the entirety of what he spent on 3 DEPs since 1998!), he compares it to the overall administrative spending of the college!

Andrew Seal has some thoughtful comments on writing at Dartmouth and the teaching of writing here

"the right to be who i am"

2006-01-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

The "What is a Living Wage" article from this Sunday's NYT Magazine seems to be generating a lot of buzz on campus, but the one that grabbed my attention was the article on covering:

Now a subtler form of discrimination has risen to take its place. This discrimination does not aim at groups as a whole. Rather, it aims at the subset of the group that refuses to cover, that is, to assimilate to dominant norms...

...The demand to cover is anything but trivial. It is the symbolic heartland of inequality - what reassures one group of its superiority to another. When dominant groups ask subordinated groups to cover, they are asking them to be small in the world, to forgo prerogatives that the dominant group has and therefore to forgo equality. If courts make critical goods like employment dependent on covering, they are legitimizing second-class citizenship for the subordinated group. In doing so, they are failing to vindicate the promise of civil rights.

You may need Times Select to access the article directly, but you can still access it without Times Select here.

Sororities and the Question of Space

2006-01-15T01:57:00.000-05:00

Heather Strack's Free Press article "A Seventh Sorority, Will One More Help?" made the case for both working within the Greek system as well as beyond it as crucial for creating and maintaining social spaces for women at Dartmouth.

Firstly, I would like to point out that a physical space designed to meet Dartmouth women's needs, social and otherwise, already exists. Students, faculty and administrators began petitioning for a women's center in 1986 and two years later, the College agreed to create the Women's Resource Center, now the Center for Women and Gender. The goals of the Center were to bring women together, to address and take action on issues such as gender discrimination and sexual assault, and lastly, to serve as social and personal support to women. These goals have also been extended to the other gender(s) as the name change indicates.

CWG has been fairly successful in achieving these goals through programming but the actual physical space itself is mostly underutilized, especially for social purposes. Located at the end of Choate Road, the Center is too far on the margins of campus for women to want to use it on a daily basis. Even women's groups choose to forgo the Center in favor of more central locations to hold meetings.

Other marginalized spaces include affinity houses like the Asian Studies Center and LALACS. I can safely assume that the majority of Dartmouth students have never entered these spaces, for many different reasons, including that of inaccessibility as well as unwillingness/fear to enter spaces that do not belong to the dominant culture, i.e. Greek houses. The issue of space, access to space, and utilization of space, therefore, not only affects women at Dartmouth but other minority groups as well. The Pan Asian community and the GLBT community resource rooms in Robo are not only small but also have to be renewed each year through proof of usage. Many political, performance, cultural and recreational organizations do not even have a space of their own.

So to go back to the question of whether or not adding another sorority will help create more social spaces for women, the answer as Strack points out is yes and no, but there are also more important questions that we neglect to ask when we only focus the conversation around the Greek system: How is space at Dartmouth allocated? Who gets to claim a space and who doesn't? Who enters what space and why? What are the boundaries between spaces and how do we break them? How do we cross them?

mixed feelings about the National Security Language Initiative

2006-01-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

President Bush recently unveiled the National Security Language Initiative, a new plan to increase the numbers of Americans who speak languages judged critical to our national security, such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Central Asian languages. The program, outlined here will provide funding and incentives for foreign language study through a variety of channels -- some more sinister than others.

Reactions from college presidents and heads of area study programs have been mixed - some are welcoming the the prospect of increased funding for foreign language instruction, and others are voicing concerns about security interests infiltrating academics. I can see both sides of this one.

Some parts of the program sound excellent, like the proposed increase in Fullbrights to fund foreign study language, and the expansion of Gilman scholarships, which give money to enable underprivileged students to study abroad. In many senses, expanding the population of Americans who can speak other languages and have spent time living in other cultures can hardly fail to be a good thing. Living abroad can heighten sensitivity to other cultures, moderate ethnocentric nationalism, and remind us that we live in stunning privilege -- all of which I think our society needs a lot of these days. Not only that, foreign study should not be a privilege confined to the elite. Nation wide, less than 2% of undergraduates study abroad in any given year -- compare that to close to 54% of students at Dartmouth. And please don't think this is because Dartmouth students are uniquely motivated, or interested in the rest of the world -- I have plenty of friends at state-schools who would have done anything for the sort of opportunities we have here, what with FSPs by the dozen and ready funding from Dickey and Tucker for off-terms spent abroad.

Given the goals of this new initiative, however, there may yet be reason for concern. Almost a quarter of the funding will go into the National Security Education Program, a program which requires scholarship recipients to commit to working for the US national security aparatus -- the DoD, Homeland Security, the State Department or the intelligence communitiy -- after they gradute. As for the rest of the money, it is yet to become clear exactly how the strings will be attached, and colleges are right to question how close a relationship their students should be obligated to have with organizations that have been responsible for horrific violations of human rights abroad.

measuring "merit"

2006-01-12T03:17:00.000-05:00

Last week, Joe Malchow proposed that the best way to combat racism is to simply ignore race and to stop practicing racism. Clearly, it's not that simple. Unfortunately, we haven't made nearly as much progress as Joe would like to think. This is evident in the persistence of blockbusting in the real estate industry, racial profiling and other discriminatory law enforcement practices, and employment discrimination. Within the admissions process, white privilege is preserved in the form of legacy status.

We also need to accept that there is no neutral measure of "merit". GPA and SAT scores are as much a measure of access to privilege (race, class, etc), as they are an indicator of scholastic aptitude and work ethic. To believe that we can rely on such indicators to accurately gauge "merit" or to determine "natural talent" is to engage in willful ignorance. In the admissions process, Dartmouth should take into account not only race, but also class. Andrew Seal has some novel ideas about this.

Joe Asch and his inefficient editing program

2006-01-10T17:19:00.000-05:00

Joe Asch's Departmental Editing Program is about to be cancelled, according to an article in the D. This is not, in my opinion, a major loss for writing at Dartmouth.

In the interests of transparency, let me make my affiliation clear: I have worked as a Writing Assistant in the Writing Assistants Program - formerly under the Composition Center and now under the Student Center for Research, Writing and Information Technology (RWIT) -- for the last two and half years. I find it odd that, rather than cooperate with the Writing Assistants Program, which has been running smoothly since the mid 1980s, Asch thought it necessary to start his own program. Might this choice have had more to do with his anti-establishment philosophy than with any practical advantage to be garnered by creating a competing program?

The very idea of a writing editor is actually a slap in the face not only to the Writing Assistants Program but also to the idea that writing can be taught, rather than simply "corrected." Asch's program, according to the article, was meant to address students' poor grammar and to help them with writing conventions specific to each discipline. If this copy-editing view of writing is indeed the focus of the program, it represents a strikingly shallow understanding of student writing and its most common pathologies. Copy editing simply cannot teach students how to struggle through the writing process on their own, how to diagnose and resolve their own style problems, or how to make well-supported arguments -- all of which, I might add, writing assistants like myself are trained to teach them, in addition to helping them with mechanics and disclipine dependent conventions.

The piece of information from the article that most struck me, however, was how inefficient and expensive Asch's program is, something I find particularly ironic given his criticism of administrative waste. Writing Assistants (like me) cost about $500 per term and work with a class of 15 to 20 students on their papers throughout that term. It wasn't clear from the article whether each Departmental Editor worked with 60-75 students per term, or if that was the number for the whole lot of them, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that that's a per-Editor number. Four Writing Assistants could cover that same number of students for $2,000 each term -- which is quite a bit less than $10,000 (a quarter of a Departmental Editor's yearly pay). Bottom line -- we could do their job for a fifth of the cost, and I'd argue that we could do it just as well or better. Now who's wasting money?

Look What The Wind Blew In...

2006-01-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

We've finally stumbled out of Five Olde and onto the internet. Enjoy.