On Feb. 23, the Dartmouth Student Government Senate met for its seventh weekly meeting of the winter term. Led by student body president Chukwuka Odigbo ’25, the Senate discussed alumnus Steve Upton’s ’77 proposal for the new undergraduate school of Arts and Sciences to be named “Dartmouth College.” The Senate was joined by Upton and outgoing Provost David Kotz ’86, who co-led the project that originally proposed a school of Arts and Sciences.
At the meeting, the Senate voted 4-12-3 against endorsing Upton’s proposal, despite voting 10-5-1 five days prior in favor in a GroupMe poll. Odigbo said he vetoed the Senate’s online vote prior to the meeting because he wanted the Senate to both have “more robust conversation” about the proposal and to hear Kotz’s perspective about the undergraduate school’s name.
"I'm not thrilled that the DSG reversed its prior decision, but I'm glad that the DSG did have the opportunity, as a group, to hear different perspectives and discuss the issue among themselves," Upton wrote in a statement to The Dartmouth after the meeting.
Kotz said he plans to propose to the Board of Trustees that the undergraduate school be named the “School of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth College.” The “at Dartmouth College” stem is currently used by the College’s four graduate schools — the Geisel School of Medicine, the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, the Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business.
Upton said proponents of a name for the new undergraduate school have the “heavy burden” of demonstrating a need for a change, which they have not met.
“[Dartmouth College] has become one of the preeminent names in American higher education — it’s a tremendously powerful brand name,” Upton said. “It’s not broken. Why fix it?”
However, Kotz said he would “personally” find it “confusing” if the university as a whole and the undergraduate school had the same name. He added that Upton’s proposal is based on a “flawed premise,” since there had never been an undergraduate school at Dartmouth until the Arts and Sciences project established one.
“We’ve never had an undergraduate college that is distinct from Dartmouth as a university, and so there’s no change in the name,” Kotz said. “There’s no way to change the name of an undergraduate college that doesn’t exist.”
In an email statement to The Dartmouth after the meeting, Kotz clarified that “although [the College] began as an undergraduate-only institution, it became, in effect, a university in 1797 when it founded the medical school, and later added schools of business, engineering and graduate study.”
General house senator Ikenna Nwafor ’27 asked how the name of the undergraduate school would be written on undergraduate diplomas. Kotz said that undergraduate diplomas “might” read “[the School of] Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth [College].”
Kotz clarified that all student diplomas will continue to “say ‘Dartmouth College’” in some capacity in a follow-up email to The Dartmouth.
Kotz said during the meeting that a focus on undergraduates has “long been a core” of the College’s] “identity.” Kotz added that he “[doesn’t] see that changing.”
After Kotz and Upton left the room following their remarks — so that the Senate could “continu[e] deliberation,” according to Odigbo — North Park senator Jude Poirier ’28 said he would “like to keep” Dartmouth College as a name for the undergraduate school.
“We are an undergraduate college,” Poirier said. “We’d like to keep the college name.”
Poirier added that while “Dartmouth College of Dartmouth College” sounds “bizarre and redundant,” he believes the change would only affect administrators’ titles.
“I think [naming the undergraduate school the School of Arts and Sciences] is a stray from tradition for the sake of the convenience of accountants who have to fill out budget reports,” Poirier said. “I don’t really care about the convenience of accountants. I care about 250 years of tradition.”
At the Feb. 23 meeting, the Senate also voted unanimously to allow DSG’s student issues survey — an annual questionnaire collecting student opinion data that is used by DSG in presentations to College administrators — to be sent out to campus before Friday. In an email statement to The Dartmouth, West House senator Samay Sahu ’27 wrote that the Senate voted 15-2-2 for a “$20,000 budget” for the survey, which will pay for gift card incentives in the coming fall term.
Non-voting representative Jacob Markman ’27 proposed that a question about students’ experiences with “anti-Semitism” and “Islamophobia” be added to the survey.
Poirier said that asking about “religious discrimination” was “not within [DSG’s] purview.” The suggested addition was not voted upon.
School House senator Hanna Bilgin ’28 proposed a question about what food options students would “like to see” during Late Night at the Class of 1953 Commons, which was added to the survey.
Poirier called for a vote of unanimous consent on the survey, but Nwafor objected, after which he proposed that the Senate add a question to the survey asking students for their opinion about the school of Arts and Sciences.
Poirier said it would not be “statistically responsible” to ask a question about the name of the school of Arts and Sciences because the responses DSG received would be “biased.”
“I think you’re only going to get responses from people who are very educated by Steve Upton and very much against [the name], and not a lot of passionate responses [from] people who think it’s a good idea,” Poirier said.
At the suggestion of non-voting representative Daniel Pruder ’27, the Senate agreed to vote on the survey “as it originally was” and discuss Nwafor’s amendment further after the meeting.
The motion passed unanimously during a subsequent roll call vote.
DSG Senate meetings occur weekly on Sundays at 7 p.m. in Collis 101 and are open to all students.
Jackson Hyde '28 is an intended philosophy major from Los Angeles, California. His interests include photography, meditation, and board game design.
