Next week the Class of 2000 will visit en-masse, descending on the College with innocent faces and maps in hand. But a close examination of prospective week reveals the worst in the administration's racism and misguided values and may partially explain the racial segration that is pervasive on campus.
Although the prospectives will all visit the same campus, the Admissions Office has very different experiences planned for them, depending on whether they are classified as minorities (blacks, Latinos or Native Americans) or not (whites and Asians).
The bulk of the prospectives will visit next Monday, Wednesday or Friday as part of the "Dartmouth Experience" program, and the Admissions Office has planned all the usual events for these days.
But on Tuesday evening and Wednesday a separate program is planned, titled "Perspectives on Dartmouth" and, according to the pamphlet mailed to accepted minorities, is "specifically for minority students." (Recall though that Asians are not considered minorities )
Minorities are requested to visit, if at all possible, on Wednesday, rather than Monday or Friday. While the minorities will attend a financial aid presentation, activities fair and faculty student panel with their white and Asian counterparts, they will eat breakfast separately and be given a barbecue not on the regular schedule.
Tuesday night they have a faculty lecture, dinner and ice-cream social. Wednesday night there is a "multicultural panel," "cultural expressions," "multicultural receptions," and a "party/step show."
While the Admissions Office assured me these events are open to whites and Asians as well, the "Perspectives" schedule most definitely does not say this, and the events are notably absent from the Dartmouth Experience schedule. It's clear that Admissions is far more concerned with entertaining the admitted minorities than with providing activities for everyone.
The titles of these two programs, "Dartmouth Experience" and "Perspectives on Dartmouth" are especially ironic since their separate existence ensures almost none of the prospective students get a real picture of the Dartmouth experience.
Imagine visiting on Monday or Friday and seeing almost no black, Hispanic of Native Americans among your future classmates.
And then there are the students who visit Wednesday and probably marvel at the incredible diversity of their future classmates, at least during the scarce few events where interracial mingling is allowed.
If this skewed impression of Dartmouth was the sole problem created by the separate programs, it would be tempting to not complain. Indeed, one could argue that the racial segregation these programs create provides an accurate representation of campus life.
But the Admissions Office does more than provide free food and extra programming for minorities. In a policy that is nothing short of blatant racism, it pays for part or all of the travel expenses for needy minorities who live outside the Northeast, while snubbing equally needed whites and Asians.
When I asked Assistant Director of Admissions Christine Pina about this, she kept referring to the fact that all students are allowed to ride a bus chartered from New York City to Dartmouth. But it was impossible to hide the fact that for students not from the Northeast, their only hope of receiving financial assistance with their travel expenses is to be a minority.
" We feel it is necessary to offer this type of assistance so that students who would otherwise not have the chance to visit Hanover can see the campus. We have done this for many years and find that it does help to convince students to select Dartmouth," Pina explained, as if equally needy whites can grow money on a tree to buy an airline ticket.
Apparently the competition among elite schools such as Dartmouth for qualified minority students has grown so fierce that even blatant racism is no longer off limits in the quest to increase the number of minorities in the student body.
One would hope that similar efforts are made to recruit the truly exceptional students, academically, that are admitted. Historically Dartmouth does very poorly attracting students who are also admitted to schools such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford.
But it appears that skin color is more important than academic merit, not only in deciding who to admit, but in choosing who among the admittees to recruit.
The special events, including a dinner with President James Freedman at the Hanover Inn that used to occur during prospective week for the most exceptional admitted students has been eliminated.
How sad that the battle for minorities leads to such aggressive, and racist, recruiting devices while the few remaining methods of recruiting top students to the school fall by the wayside.
While the Class of 2000 wanders wide-eyed around campus next week, envy their innocence. For they are likely, and luckily, still ignorant of the racial politics and disregard for fairness that drive so much of life at Dartmouth, and in the Admissions Office.
