The affair. The report. The tapes. The President Clinton sex scandal, involving then-21-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky, has been the focus of national attention for months. Speculations, gossip and discussions surrounding this issue have inevitably reached the halls of Dartmouth.
In a BlitzMail poll conducted by The Dartmouth yesterday, exactly half of respondents indicated they think Clinton should remain in office, while 33 percent think he should resign and 11 percent think he should be impeached.
The Dartmouth sent out surveys to 1,916 student selected at random, and it received 710 replies, for a response rate of 37 percent. The Dartmouth also conducted telephone interviews with several students.
Rob Sutton '02 said he thinks Clinton should be impeached. Sutton said the president can no longer act as chief executive officer and lacks the necessary trust of the people. He said having Clinton as president is like "riding in a car with a driver who can't see over the steering wheel and decides which road to take based on his feelings instead of a map."
Jim Noonan '01 said he thinks Clinton should stay in office. "I think it's been blown out of proportion," he said. Referring to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's investigation, he said, "It is not justice, it is not due process, it is just trying to screw the president."
Bridget O'Malley '00 expressed a similar opinion. "I don't think it is anybody's business," she said. She said she is fed up with the public for being so concerned about the matter and that the scandal is turning the newspapers into tabloids.
Other students said they think Clinton should resign. Heather Stocks '02 said he should "be responsible for his own actions."
Janna Merryfield '00 said it "will be best for the country" if the president resigns. "Right now, as more info comes out, it damages the presidency. It is not good for our country," she said. "We're becoming the laughingstock of the world."
Government Professor Constantine Spiliotes teaches Government 35: The Presidency, and is Dartmouth's resident expert on the country's leadership position. He said he does not think there is any incentive for Clinton to resign given the level of public opinion and that all preliminary signs show Clinton is strongly supported.
Reactions towards Starr's aggressive investigative tactics also vary widely among the student population. One quarter of students indicated they have no opinion regarding Starr, but 56 percent responded that they think he is overstepping the bounds of his duty. Only 19 percent indicated they think Starr is performing his job well.
Jeff Lee '02 said he thinks Starr has gone "overboard" and that there need to be checks against what he is doing.
Noonan said he thinks Starr is not after justice, but instead has something against the president.
Other students said they think Starr is bound by duty and has not exceeded any boundaries. Merryfield said, "He has been made out to be more of a bad guy than he really is."
Sutton said Starr has been performing his job "superlatively." He said Starr's name has been "dragged through the mud and if any shred of neutrality remains it is to Starr's credit."
Spiliotes said Starr has not sufficiently made a case for impeachment because of the broadness of the mandate. He criticized the focus Starr's report had on the last months of a multi-year investigation. Spiliotes said he does not think Starr has a personal vendetta against Clinton, but that he is probably not enamored with him.
Regarding the explicit details of Clinton and Lewinsky's sexual relations as laid out in the Starr report, reactions were divided. The majority of students who responded to The Dartmouth's poll (61 percent) said they think the report should have been made available to the public, and 56 percent said they read part or all of the report.
Merryfield said the details were necessary because of Clinton's semantic games. She said if Starr had not delved so deep with his questions, the public "would have hounded out [the details] anyway."
O'Malley offered a contrary opinion. "The event has been sensationalized and a lot [of the Starr report] did not need to be printed. We don't need every detail," she said.
Approximately half of respondents to the poll indicated they thought Clinton's Grand Jury testimony should have been released to the public, and 40 percent said they watched all or part of the testimony on television Monday morning.
