May 23 | 12:00 am
In 18 days, I will be graduating with the Class of 2012. I have many wishes for my last days here. There are many things I have always wanted to do, but I have somehow never found the time for them. One of my greatest hopes, however, relates to the speech I will hear on the day of Commencement. There is one message I would very much like to hear from the speaker. I want her to tell me, and my whole class, that we kind of suck.
More»May 23 | 12:00 am
It’s no longer possible to escape from the reality of a shrinking world. As bonds between the United States and the rest of the world become tighter, so too must the bonds between the rest of the world and Dartmouth. College President Jim Yong Kim’s appointment to the presidency of the World Bank has triggered a wave of interest in Dartmouth throughout the world. The College must now utilize the opportunity generated by this interest to enhance the value of the Dartmouth brand internationally.
More»May 22 | 12:00 am
Last Monday, I attended City University of New York professor Cindi Katz’s lecture, “Superman, Tiger Mother: Aspiration Management and the Child as Waste.” Katz claimed that the “Asian mode of parenting” described in Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” is producing a society of strivers, in which the middle-class Asian family compels students to experience constant pressure to succeed in order to stay competitive. While Asian-American families do value success, it is inaccurate — and definitely harmful — to perpetuate the idea that Asian families are unique in their regard for “traditional” academic success. Unfortunately, Katz is not alone in her belief that Asian students, particularly at the high school level, are soulless, grade-grubbing automatons fixated on admission to a top university.
May 22 | 12:00 am
We applaud the email that College President Jim Yong Kim sent on May 11 to the Dartmouth Community notifying us of two “bias incidents” and reiterating the College’s condemnation of such acts (“Kim notifies campus of harassment incidents,” May 14). We would, however, like to call attention to a May 14 blog post on Dartmouth Gender Sexuality XYZ.
May 22 | 12:00 am
To the Editor: In the year leading up to the recent Dartmouth Dance Theater Ensemble production of “Undue Influence,” Dartmouth became an even more dangerous environment for women.
May 21 | 12:00 am
Many experts have suggested that democracy is an inevitable byproduct of revolution and that in the wake of the Arab Spring, new Middle Eastern democracies will rise from the ashes of dead dictatorships to reflect the egalitarian views of the people. Optimists like journalist Matthew Kaminski point to Tunisia — where a successfully elected parliamentary coalition government has moved away from religious extremism and includes political and ethnic minorities in the democratic process — as an influential example of post-revolutionary democratic success in the Middle East.
May 21 | 12:00 am
There is a sense of terror associated with having too much knowledge. When we have all the answers and there is no more room for questioning, we find ourselves burdened by an enormous sense of responsibility that we’re particularly inclined to avoid.
May 18 | 12:00 am
The last few weeks have seen an outburst of students expressing interest in seeing the administration address persistent student concerns. One prominent issue that has been widely discussed is the need to reform and revamp academic advising. Students often complain that they struggle not only in navigating the complex process of meeting distributive and major requirements but also in crafting a cohesive academic plan that takes into account their diverse interests that extend beyond their coursework.
May 18 | 12:00 am
Author Ray Bradbury, famous for his dystopian visions of America’s future, once called science fiction “the art of the possible.” With the powerful effects of phenomena like Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns — which states that information technology increases exponentially in power while simultaneously decreasing in size and cost — showing up more and more obviously in our daily lives, it often feels as though the possible and the inevitable are converging.
May 17 | 12:00 am
On Tuesday afternoon, former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a lecture on the global economy in which he argued that the world is becoming ever more interconnected and that many problems will need to be solved through greater international cooperation (“Brown discusses global economy,” May 16). While Brown’s argument is certainly true with regards to some pressing issues, further centralization of political power isn’t a wise idea in general.
May 17 | 12:00 am
Since 1819, Daniel Webster’s famous assessment of our school has captivated generation after generation of Dartmouth students: “It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it.” These words have remained more fundamental to Dartmouth’s identity than perhaps almost anything else from the College’s long history.
May 16 | 12:00 am
The New York Times recently published an impressive piece about student loan debt. The amount of debt with which current college students are graduating is not only staggering, but it is burdensome to the point of nihilism. My heart goes out to them.
May 16 | 12:00 am
As the U.S. presidential and congressional elections approach, a number of key political races are shaping up across the country. One of the most intriguing competitions pits Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., against Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren. This campaign for Ted Kennedy’s old seat has already turned out to be the most expensive Senate race in the nation. But a recent distraction has refocused the attention from the rivals’ political views to Warren’s ancestry.