Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: Can You Hear Me Now?
There is a concept in engineering known as the “signal to noise ratio” – when a signal is transmitted in any communication system, the receiver will detect the signal along with a certain amount of background noise. The idea is to keep this ratio above 1:1, so that the signal is more prominent than the background noise. Otherwise, the information the system needs to operate will be lost.
While this has been a banner year for Dartmouth, which is rapidly becoming the media’s poster child for campus dysfunction, change is happening on our campus. The College released a sexual assault policy calling for the expulsion of convicted students. The Greek Leadership Council unanimously passed a policy banning any “events or activities that usurp the culture or identity of other groups.” These are important changes and steps that should be celebrated. And yet campus climate has gotten worse.
I am frustrated, and I suspect many of you are, too. I am tired of pretending that the noise on campus resembles anything close to a dialogue, or that there is even any interest in having one.
Shortly after the “Freedom Budget”was sent to campus, a meeting to discuss its specific points was held in Collis Common Ground, attended by easily over 100 students.Described as “open,”the moderators instead started the event by declaring the entire meeting off-the-record, effectively denying those who were unable to attend the chance to read a detailed account of what was said. It was disheartening to see a group of students so clearly passionate about their cause unwilling to be as transparent as possible about their thought process.
While students asked College President Phil Hanlon questions at his open office hours, instead of listening and responding, they chose to openly mock him, insult him and cut him off in the middle of dozens of sentences. When other students spoke up, they were treated with disdain and met with laughter. One student was openly jeered and laughed at when he described his experiences working with impoverished children abroad, as if being a white male automatically divests him of a social conscience. The same student was told that part of “white privilege”is never having to hear others tell him that he had only been admitted to Dartmouth because of his skin color. Approximately 30 seconds later, the student said he had, in fact, been told this. The protestor's response? “But you did only get into Dartmouth because you're white.” I am disappointed that some students purportedly fighting to make Dartmouth a safer, more welcoming place, possess in such meager quantities the respect they demand others afford their experiences.
Frankly, I am amused that a student described the Parkhurst sit-in as a “hostage situation” – when was the last time you read a news story about hostages who needed to be asked multiple times to leave their imprisonment?
The trope that “I’m not here to educate you or to contribute to your social consciousness or cultural knowledge” has become standard. It was most recently employed in the comments section of The Dartmouth, when students questioned how a fundraiser reduced Cinco de Mayo to a drinking holiday with the “inappropriate usage of cultural clothing.” The theme of the April event played on the participating organizations’ names with a word that has long been integrated into the English lexicon, with no alcohol and a ban on costumes.
I am tired of being told that the student body is a hotbed of racism, sexism, chauvinism and any other “-ism” you can think of. I am tired of having to repeat that racism is something that we all think is bad, as it if wasn’t already obvious. Others are tired, too.
Perhaps activism in its purest form does not require explanation. Perhaps in many cases, conditions are so dire that explanation is not necessary. The problems we face today, though no less real, are far less obvious than the disenfranchisement of black citizens in apartheid-era South Africa or the segregated schools of the Jim Crow South. No Dartmouth student needs information beyond a description to understand why these eras were demonstrations of humanity’s lowest moments. But students may need more to understand why a certain behavior, College policy or school tradition makes a group of students feel two-dimensional and exoticized.
Saying “you are on the wrong side of history” will not change minds or policy. If an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, isn’t a community where everyone actually understands how their actions affect others better than one where accusations of racism and appropriation are made after an incident occurs? Asking questions is not an attempt to diminish – it is an attempt to understand and move toward that kind of community. Avoiding those questions or answering with a string of buzzwords, for better or worse, looks like a feint.
In engineering, if your signal-to-noise ratio is off, you have two options. You can change the environment in which your receiver is placed, or you can tweak the receiver to better detect what is essential information and what is background buzz.
Standing up for what you believe in is always impressive. Being open to changing your mind about something you always thought was true is commendable as well. But refusing to further understanding of the issues you seek to fix is not. It’s time to separate the signal from the noise.