To the Editor:
I am all for improving the academic environment here. However, the First-Year Plan has fundamental problems. The administration thinks we haven't read it, but I have spent a lot of time analyzing the plan, and thus I have formulated my current opinions.
The more important issue, however, is how the administration has gone about presenting the plan. When the plan first came out, many were immediately against it. The administration, fairly, asked the students to wait and read the report. So we did, and just as many people are still against it. Yet the administration still believes that we are not smart enough to know what's good for the school. I think it unfair of the administration to proceed with a plan that a strong majority of the underclassmen is against.
The administration would realize that the students are not against change. They are against the methodology the administration has chosen to implement this change. Most students believe the current system works well. If the administration worked on improvement within the current framework, I think all parties would be more willing to let Dartmouth evolve like it needs to in order to keep up with the rest of academia.
The administration is only aggravating the students by drawing battle lines between itself and the undergraduate body. This will compel most students to take reactive and regressive views (and to become unhappy alumni). If changes are proposed in such a way as to make the students feel like they are part of the solution, they will be more likely to go along with it. To make proposals that all students are vocally against and then ignore the sentiment of the students sets a dangerous precedent. It will also send a message out to prospective Dartmouth students: We are becoming the Yale of the 1990s.
