After Dartmouth removed Core Power shakes from most dining locations — a result of a switch from Coke to Pepsi products in August — a Change.org petition titled, “Bring Back Core Power to Dartmouth: We Need Our Protein!” began circulating on social media, garnering 23 signatures. The petition is meant to be comedic, but it reflects an underlying problem at Dartmouth — the College does not understand what students want.
Two years ago, as a freshman running for Dartmouth Student Government, I spoke to many students about the concerns they wanted the College to address. The one issue that seemingly unified students was their ire toward Dartmouth Dining — which still seems the case two years later. The College’s meal plans force many students to ration DBA anxiously, while some even resort to stealing food from on-campus dining locations.
To be sure, Dartmouth Dining has made some improvements since my freshman fall. This summer, for example, senior vice president for capital planning and campus operations Josh Keniston announced an increase in meal equivalencies. However, the College’s decision to implement this modest reform followed nearly two years of continuous DSG advocacy — and addressed just one area where the College falls short of student wants and needs. Many students feel the administration is not listening to their concerns about course election, enforced medians and respect for freedom of expression, to name a few. Blaming these grievances on the administration’s lack of effort would be easy, but that would not be completely accurate.
College President Sian Leah Beilock has recently tried to make herself more available to receive student input. For example, she has offered walks around Occom Pond and lunches at Pine Restaurant with small groups of students. However, no amount of dialogue is equal to having a seat at the table where so many decisions are made. If the administration truly values student voices, we should be included in crucial conversations. One way to accomplish this: put a student on the Board of Trustees — the College’s top decision-making body.
The Board of Trustees is charged with the critical responsibility of overseeing the College’s mission, ensuring its long-term financial sustainability and setting strategic priorities. As stewards of the institution, the trustees are responsible for approving major policy decisions, such as campus development projects, budgeting and academic initiatives. They appoint the College President, assess leadership performance and provide guidance on issues ranging from diversity and inclusion to faculty recruitment and retention. The current Board includes mostly alumni from the 1980s and 1990s, including notable figures such as Jake Tapper ’91 and Shonda Rhimes ’91.
Throughout my time in DSG, I’ve heard multiple student leaders describe the Board as out of touch, most notably with regard to the Main Wheelock District. At the 2022 Hanover Town meeting, a zoning amendment legalized high-density housing on West Wheelock Street, allowing Dartmouth to build a 285-bed residence hall, to be known as Russo Hall. This zoning amendment got on the ballot due to a student campaign and “passed in large part because of the student participation.” On a significant reform that would change the face of campus, students were driving the change — and the College, it seemed to me, was asleep at the wheel. Perhaps former student body president David Millman ’23 put it best.
“I felt like if students didn’t do something about [the housing problem], nothing was going to be done,” Millman said in a The Dartmouth article in May 2022.
For issues like dining and housing, trustees are simply not the best equipped to understand what’s happening on campus. They don’t dine at campus locations or live in campus housing.
A fundamental disconnect exists between those making the decisions and those affected by them. This disconnect is not just an inconvenience — it represents a structural flaw in how the College governs itself. When the institution’s most powerful body is slow to respond to or even wholly unaware of its students’ needs and initiatives, the College fails in its mission to serve the community effectively.
What we need is not just more dead-end dialogue, but a structural change that embeds student perspectives directly into the decision-making process. A student trustee would bring an essential, real-time perspective to the Board’s deliberations, ensuring that student concerns are heard and fully integrated into the discussions and decisions that shape the student experience on our campus.
Dartmouth has significantly changed in the past decades, and the lived experiences of alumni are very different from ours. Yet, the youngest trustee graduated in 2005. We are more diverse than ever, and our lives have been shaped by experiences unique to our time, such as growing up during a pandemic. A student trustee would be essential in representing this new Dartmouth and its unique problems while serving as a vital bridge between students and the College’s decision-makers. They would improve communication and foster a greater sense of transparency and trust. They would ensure that the Board’s decisions are informed by students’ lived experiences rather than relying on secondhand reports or outdated assumptions.
Critics might argue that students need more expertise to be trustees. However, students have firsthand knowledge of what affects students — as other institutions have learned to appreciate. Cornell has elected student trustees since the 1970s, and many public university systems, such as the University of California, also have student trustees. The presence of a student trustee does not diminish the expertise of the Board but rather complements it, ensuring a more well-rounded approach to governance that doesn’t rely on retellings of on-the-ground realities.
Appointing a student trustee is not just a good idea — it’s a necessity. A student trustee would address the growing disconnect between the College and its students by making us an integral and equal part of the decision-making process. For an institution claiming to value inclusion, Dartmouth should put its money where its mouth is. If we want a College that genuinely understands and serves its students, we must start by giving them a seat at the table.
Sabik Jawad is a member of the Class of 2026 and a senator in Dartmouth Student Government. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
