As President Phil Hanlon gears up to present his final Moving Dartmouth Forward plan to the Board of Trustees next week, some student leaders and faculty members have expressed skepticism as to whether the new policies will effectively change student social life, while others are hopeful and supportive. His presentation to the public, which will take place on Thursday, Jan. 29 at 8:30 a.m. in the Moore Theater, represents the final step in a nine-month process to generate feedback and create new campus policies to combat harmful student behaviors and exclusivity.
Hanlon formed the Moving Dartmouth Forward initiative last spring to address high-risk drinking, sexual assault and exclusivity. The presidential steering committee, a group of 10 individuals comprised of faculty members, alumni and students, gathered feedback from members of the Dartmouth community over a period of five months and created recommendations. Chair of the presidential steering committee Barbara Will submitted the committee’s final recommendation report to Hanlon on Monday. Hanlon is currently reviewing the recommendations to inform his final policy.
Student leaders from across campus have varying priorities in terms of what they most hope the new policies will address and how they will be implemented.
Student member of the steering committee John Damianos ’16 hopes that he, along with the other committee members, will continue to be consulted while the recommendations are being instituted. He also said that Moving Dartmouth Foward was created to make large-scale changes.
“The goal in Moving [Dartmouth] Forward is not to create small policy changes but to add new programs to have students become more intellectually enriched and to become safer on campus,” he said.
Former Gender-Inclusive Greek Council president Noah Cramer ’16 said he would like to see Dartmouth work more extensively with WISE — a non-profit in the Upper Valley that provides services for those affected by domestic and sexual violence and stalking — reevaluate the Dartmouth Bystander Initiative training program and require more effective sexual assault prevention and response training for Greek leaders.
Cramer said he is worried that the recommendations may target the Greek system as a whole, which he said would be unfair for the gender-inclusive Greek houses and undergraduate societies.
Gender-Inclusive Greek Council president Matthew Digman ’15 said that he would not be surprised if new alcohol policies were put in place.
Student body president Casey Dennis ’15 said that he does not expect the recommendations to contain anything surprising to students, and believes that Hanlon has recognized the work that student leaders have done create a safer and more inclusive community.
In terms of the Moving Dartmouth Forward process, steering committee member and student body vice president Frank Cunningham ’16 said that there could have been more transparency, and that having a larger representation of the student body during the re-engagement phase, during which recommendations were narrowed down, would have improved that stage.
Professors interviewed by The Dartmouth expressed doubt that Hanlon’s policies will drastically change the social climate at Dartmouth. Writing professor John Donaghy said that though those involved are well-intentioned, the new policies will likely be “a lot of window dressing.”
“I think what is going to come out of here is some pretty snazzy policy changes that are going to look great,” Donaghy said. “It will turn what should be an embarrassment for Dartmouth into a photo op for administrators and committees and it’s not going to make a single bit of difference.”
He said that in pursuing Moving Dartmouth Forward, the administration has been reactive to several campus events, rather than pursuing a more drastic change that could possibly anger trustees and “old guard” alumni.
“It seems to me that there has to be a complete change of campus ethos, that we do in fact have to be a less extreme and exclusive institution and everyone has to see how they have been contributing to the problem,” Donaghy said.
Women’s and gender studies professor Michael Bronski said he expects small, incremental changes, such as more peer group counseling or the urging of faculty to get involved with supporting students who face problems.
Bronski agrees with Donaghy, saying that part of Moving Dartmouth Forward’s purpose is to serve as a public relations move, and worries that it may be seen as such by the public. He said for Dartmouth to see improvement, it needs to make large, structural changes.
“I think the school needs to take a really hard look at itself,” Bronski said.
For one, Bronski said, Dartmouth has underlying issues of racism that need to be examined — highlighting incidents on Bored at Baker — but he said he doubts that these recommendations will address such issues or that Hanlon will even mention them.
Bronski also challenged the efficiency of the Moving Dartmouth Forward process, saying that an outside committee would be needed to properly evaluate Dartmouth’s historical problems — such as gender equality — that have yet to be addressed.
The Moving Dartmouth Forward process had four phases. The first phase was gathering information, which consisted of consulting student groups, a variety of experts and other schools such as Bowdoin College and Amherst College to gather ideas for potential changes. Bowdoin was consulted to gather feedback on their student life, specifically the house social system that exists in place of a Greek system, Cunningham said, although that particular system will not be coming to Dartmouth.
In total, the steering committee met with over 40 student groups, read thousands of emails, talked to hundreds of faculty members and consulted with hundreds of alums, Will said.
Phase two employed discussion amongst the committee as to what practices should be considered.
The third phase included community re-engagement and the narrowing down of recommendations, and the fourth phase was the completion of the recommendation packet.
As of Monday, when the steering committee submitted the recommendations, their work is officially complete. Hanlon is reviewing the recommendations, then will decide the final policy and announce the changes to campus next Thursday.
