The Steering Committee for the Social and Residential Life Initiative is in the process of reviewing the more than 250 pages of proposals that were submitted to the Task Force in response to the Initiative and will decide a course of action during the 1999-2000 academic year.
The Committee consists of 14 members chosen from the Dartmouth community.
In addition to Trustees of the College Susan Dentzer '77 and Peter Fahey '68, the Committee is comprised of Allen Collins '53, Thomas Csatari '74, graduate student Jesse Fecker, Susan Finegan '85, French professor Mary Jean Green, Equal Opportunity director Ozzie Harris '81, College Vice President and Treasurer Win Johnson '67, Dean of the College-designate James Larimore, Anthropology professor Deborah Nichols, Associate Professor of Engineering Ulf Osterberg, and four undergraduate students.
The student representatives are Meg Smoot '01, who was elected by the student body to the Steering Committee and Matthew K. Nelson '00, who was appointed by the Student Assembly. The Trustees selected two additional students to join the committee, Kyle Roderick '99 and Hillary Miller '02.
The Committee will meet three times during the Summer term, and once more before the start of Fall term. At their second summer meeting on Saturday, July 10, Greek houses invited committee members on a tour of all the houses. They choose not to visit all the houses, but split up into four subgroups, each of which visited about five Greek houses in approximately an hour and a half that afternoon.
Greek leaders interviewed by The Dartmouth said they received very different impressions of the Steering Committee members and their goals, depending on which subgroup visited their house.
Just after the start of the Fall term, the Steering Committee will hold town meetings in order to announce what Fahey called "an array of alternatives that the committee finds most promising." The committee decided on the town meeting format so that it will be able to obtain feedback about the ideas.
After taking community feedback into account, the Committee will then narrow down the alternatives to submit its recommendations in the form of a report to be presented to the Trustees for their November meeting. This report will include a recommendation for a course of action regarding the Initiative, and is subject to approval by the Board of Trustees.
Currently, the Steering Committee is discussing conflicting opinions presented in the Social and Residential Life Task Force report on issues such as exclusive freshmen housing, alcohol education, decentralized dining and the control of the College's social spaces.
The Task Force was formed by then acting Dean of the College Dan Nelson immediately after the Initiative was announced. Headed by Nelson, the Task Force consisted of students charged with the job of gathering preliminary student, community, administrative and parental ideas.
The Task force facilitated debates and discussion and encourage interested students and members of the Dartmouth community to write proposals as to how to implement the Board of Trustees' Five Principles.
Thirty proposals were submitted to the Task Force in addition to numerous letters from students and parents offering suggestions and commenting on the Initiative.
Although the Task Force stated it was only acting as "a conduit, not a filter," the Task Force report submitted to the Steering Committee contained only the proposals submitted with little reference made to the other responses they received.
The proposals included in the appendix to the Task Force report will represent the student opinions that the Committee will most actively consider.
"[The Task Force report] will be the primary feedback we are going to be getting back from the student body," Dentzer told The Dartmouth.
The most frequently mentioned were academics, the D-Plan, improvements to campus climate, upgrades to health services, examining the student support network, environmental recommendations and improved computing facilities.
The appendix of proposals also includes a survey by the 2002 Class Council of their class, which returned overwhelmingly negative reactions to the idea of first-year housing.
According to Fahey, the Committee received copies of the Task Force report, and members were asked to read through all of the material before their first meeting of the summer term.
Fahey said that while the appendix proposals will be the first source of input from the community, there will be other opportunities for student, faculty and administrative response.
Dentzer told The Dartmouth the values the committee will emphasize will parallel those already presented in the Initiative, as well as the comments made by College President James Wright following the plan's announcement to include substantial long-term changes to the Greek system.
The Initiative "calls for the system to evolve and change," Dentzer said. "[It] should be substantially coeducational, and I emphasize 'substantially.'"
The abuse and unsafe use of alcohol is a major issue facing the committee. Many of the Appendix reports addressed the issue of "social norms" at Dartmouth that encourage heavy drinking. Many called for the Steering Committee to try to change these "norms."
"The social experience should be on par with the educational experience at Dartmouth," Dentzer said, highlighting the need for improvements on current residence halls and residential life as a whole. "Some of the dorms are less than terrific, some of the living situations are less than terrific."
The meetings revolve around a concrete set of possible implementation strategies for the goals laid out in the Trustees' Five Principles. In the last meeting shortly before Fall term, the Committee will finish putting together a list of ideas of implementations of the Initiative that will be presented to the campus once students return in the fall.
In August, the committee will also submit a progress report to the entire Board of Trustees and receive feedback from them during the Board's retreat weekend at the College.
