The Dartmouth 09/24/2021

VOL. CLXXVIII NO. 17

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Labor shortage strikes DDS as long ‘Frankfurters’ arrives in lines force students to wait, skip meals town and ‘Tacos y Tequila’ restaurant prepares for mid-fall opening

BY JACOB STrier

The Dartmouth Staff

As the summer wraps up, Frankfurters — a new hot dog stand at the corner of Wheelock Street and Main Street — reports a successful first season of business. Meanwhile, just down the road, “Tacos y Tequila” — a new Mexican restaurant — is preparing to open in the location formerly occupied

by Skinny Pancake this fall.

NAINA BHALLA/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Long lines have plagued Dartmouth Dining Services locations across campus since students returned in early September.

BY Kristin Chapman The Dartmouth Staff

As hoards of students return to campus for the start of fall term, many have expressed frustration with long lines at Dartmouth Dining Services locations around campus.

Ethan Dixon ’24 said he had learned to balance his part-time job at Collis Cafe last year with school work and other commitments. Yet, at the start of this term, he said, he was unprepared for the shifts during which he would serve a constant stream of students.

“Last year it was so chill –– I would just sort of sit back and make a couple of orders,” he said. “But this year, I work four-hour shifts, and I’ll be dishing meals the entire four-hour shift.”

Dixon said he thinks the higher number of students on campus is one of the causes of the longer wait times.

However, he said he believes the primary reason for the long lines is a labor shortage at DDS. “I think the deeper issue is the College’s ineptitude in hiring enough workers,” he said. “There’s a pretty big labor shortage in all the dining locations –– I can only speak on Collis, really ––

RAIN HIGH 72 LOW 54

but I’ve heard about shortages in other areas, and that’s a lot of the reason why we can’t open late night.”

In an email statement, DDS director Jon Plodzik wrote that “pandemic concerns, severe labor staffing challenges and supply chain issues” have proven challenging for DDS. Plodzik added that although no one on the DDS staff lost their job due to the pandemic, the labor shortage has delayed the muchanticipated opening of snack bars around campus as well as late-night options at Novack Cafe and the Courtyard Cafe in the Hopkins Center for the Arts.

Currently, he said, DDS human resources is “working tirelessly” to find new employees — including 150 additional student workers.

In a separate email statement, Plodzik wrote that the staff shortage is “clearly a result of the pandemic.”

“We have never had such difficulties attracting and hiring staff,” he wrote. “It is a national phenomenon as [evidenced] by every service business you go [to].”

He added that DDS lost workers who were concerned about working in a pandemic for health and family reasons, while other part-time help never returned.

“Hopefully things

The Dartmouth Staff

CLASS OF 2025 LARGEST IN DARTMOUTH HISTORY PAGE 2

OPINION

VERBUM ULTIMUM: OUT OF LINE PAGE 3

ARTS

NEW AFRICAN AMERICAN ART AT THE HOOD MUSEUM PAGE 4

SPORTS

HALL OF KRAME: LEAVING ON THE EARLY COACH PAGE 5 FOLLOW US ON

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SEE LINES PAGE 2

Wooten to head Office of Greek Life temporarily as Joyce, Barloga depart

BY Pierce Wilson

NEWS

will get more positive in relation to hiring quality applicants and we can return to a more normal level of staff to serve the community,” he wrote.

According to Piper Stevens ’25 and Jordan Miller ’25, the long lines have made it difficult to balance meal time with in-person classes and activities. Stevens said she frequently struggles to find time to eat in between volleyball practice and class because there are no quick options.

“I have 30 minutes in between my end of class and lift training, so if I want to go to [the Class of ’53 Commons] there would be almost no way for me to go,” she said. “Then, in the evening, there [have] been times when we go straight from practice to team meals, and there [have] been times I’ve had to skip a meal because the line was too long and I couldn’t get in.”

Miller explained that it’s been difficult for students to eat balanced meals, as unhealthy meals are quicker and more easily accessible.

“A lot of people will be deterred by the really long lines and won’t get the food that they want, or will only be willing to wait in one line, so they’ll end up eating cereal instead, or just chicken and not a

During the summer, former Office of Greek Life director Brian Joyce and former program coordinator Jessica Barloga both departed from the College, effectively leaving the OGL with no leadership staff. Since then, associate dean of residential life Mike Wooten has filled the role of interim director of Greek life. Laura LaMontagne remains the office manager, according to the OGL’s website.

Both taking jobs at George Washington University, Joyce assumed the role of director of fraternity and sorority life with Barloga starting as fraternity and sorority life student program associate this month, according to their respective Linkedin pages.

Wooten said that both their departures were motivated by new opportunities. “[Joyce] had an opportunity to be the director of fraternities and sororities at George Washington University and it was a great opportunity for him,” Wooten said. “I think he and his family were excited for a lot of reasons to live in [Washington, D.C].”

Wooten said that Barloga was similarly excited to live in Washington, D.C and left the College under “good circumstances.”

Wooten said that the College has contracted Spelman Johnson, a national executive search firm, to find a new OGL director. The firm has been meeting with the Greek Leadership Council — which exists to serve the interests of students affiliated with Greek organizations and to oversee the five Greek sub-councils — and other advisors for Greek life such as administrators and office of residential life staff to create an appropriate hiring profile for the position and make sure the College’s interests are represented. “[Having] someone hired by the end of the term would be our goal,”

Wooten said.

Wooten said that it was “unfortunate” that Barloga and Joyce both left this summer because they both did “great work.” He added that Barloga “still works in a part-time consulting capacity” to support Dartmouth’s Greek organizations as they begin the rush process this fall.

Inter-Sorority Council president Molly Katarincic ’22 said that she previously worked “very closely” with Barloga.

“She was very experienced in sorority leadership, as well as recruitment,” Katarincic said. “She really assisted us in every facet of our council, from managing day-to-day operations to organizing the bulk of recruitment, as well as helping us with chapter development and leadership skills.”

Over the summer, Joyce and Barloga oversaw the OGL’s decision to shut down the traditionally held annual “Masters” pong tournament due to safety concerns and violations of hazing, drug and alcohol policies.

According to past coverage, Barloga also wrote that the OGL will continue to offer training programs centered around alcohol management and sexual violence prevention this fall.

However, Katarincic said that since Barloga’s departure, the ISC has had to push some of its initiatives — such as a week of training around alcohol consumption — to the winter term in order to support sorority rush.

“All of the time I would have spent on [the alcohol consumption programming] is now essentially dedicated to recruitment,” she said.

“Because I am now the highest authority when it comes to recruitment questions, I have to be available to be able to answer [them] or to manage any situations that come up.”

According to Wooten, other offices across campus such as the Student Wellness Center have also stepped in to support Greek organizations since SEE OGL PAGE 2

Frankfurters Frankfurters opened in June 2021, according to co-owner Molly Hopkins.

The stand sells 15 to 20 hot dogs per day, as well as fresh lemonade and cold drinks.

She said the cart offers specialty hot dogs like the “Joan”— inspired by Hopkins’ late grandmother who operated a hot dog cart for ferryboat passengers in Maine. As a child, Hopkins said that she helped her grandmother run the stand in the summer.

According to Hopkins, one of the stand’s most popular items is the “dirty water dog” — the brainchild of Frankfurters’ co-owner and her fiancé Joel Cockburn. The item is named after the method he uses to cook the hot dog.

“He cooks the hot dogs in seasoned water with onions, garlic and yummy seasonings,” Hopkins said. “It adds a kick but it is not overpowering; a lot of people veer toward the ‘dirty water’ dog.”

Hanover town clerk Donna Stender said that vendors like Hopkins and Cockburn pay $15 per day to sell in Hanover and must provide proof of business insurance. She added that Frankfurters must confirm that their regular spot is open and fill out and display the appropriate paperwork every morning.

Cockburn said he hopes the stand will remain open until late October before returning in the spring. He added that he has “always had a passion for cooking” and that he and Hopkins hope to evolve their business over time from a pushcart to a storefront restaurant.

Hopkins said that the cart has provided her with an outlet to work through the COVID-19 pandemic, and has helped bring her family closer together.

“I had some medical issues which made me unable to work or drive, and I was stuck at home during the pandemic,” Hopkins said. “This [cart is] a great way to interact with people, make money and save my sanity.”

Hopkins said that both her daughter and Joel’s son are involved in the business, and together, they spend time as a family outside at the stand — without “screens and videogames.”

“Joel has a son who does the cash register and my daughter — who is eight — makes the lemonade,” she said.

Cockburn said that Frankfurters has worked with West House and multiple Greek organizations to bring fresh hot dogs to their events.

Jackson Elder ’23, a member of Bones Gate, said that Hopkins had asked him about possible parties on campus where Frankfurters could set up shop. At a concert in early August, Elder explained that BG worked with the cart owners to host them outside of the fraternity, noting that members of the fraternity even helped move the Frankfurters cart to their property for the evening.

“It sounded awesome for them from

a business perspective, as there is always a line of people waiting to get in [to our concerts],” he said. According to Elder, the stand’s night at BG was a success.

“It was a big hit — they sold a lot of hot dogs,” he said.

Tacos y Tequila Down the street, restaurateur and Tacos y Tequila owner Ramiro Bravo is preparing the Mexican bar and restaurant for a mid-fall opening in Skinny Pancake’s former location.

Bravo said the restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. from Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

On Sunday, Tacos y Tequila will open at 10 a.m. and offer brunch in addition to their usual menu, available until close at 9 p.m. Bravo added that he is planning for the restaurant to have an “upbeat” atmosphere, including televisions playing sports channels.

Bravo said that his first restaurant was near Clemson University, so he is “familiar” with college campuses and would be open to hosting private events.

“We will be available for [private] functions as long as it does not disrupt dining hours,” he said.

Bravo currently owns six restaurants, including three other Tacos y Tequila locations in both Pennsylvania and Maine. Over the course of his career, Bravo said he has owned 15 different restaurants.

A self-proclaimed tequila connoisseur with family roots in Jalisco, Mexico, Bravo said Tacos y Tequila will offer “casual fine dining” with quality ingredients and authentic recipes.

Additionally, he plans to offer every type of tequila available in the state of New Hampshire.

“If there are 150 tequilas in New Hampshire, we will have 150 tequilas,” he said.

Specialty drinks will include the “cantarito,” Bravo said, which includes tequila, citrus juices and Squirt, a brand of grapefruit soda.

Allentown, Pennsylvania’s Tacos y Tequila general manager Breandon Velazquez said that the company works with suppliers in each region to order specialty tequilas and provide the best spirit selection in the state.

Right now, Velazquez said he is helping Bravo set up the Hanover location by installing tables, painting and building furniture.

“We are trying to get everything in place as quickly as possible,” he said.

Bravo said that there is currently an “extreme” level of disruption in restaurant supply chains, noting that kitchen equipment — which once took two or three weeks to come — now takes up to two months to arrive. Bravo said he has already found a general manager and the main kitchen staff for the Hanover location, but he has yet to start sourcing support staff, including waiters.

“I have heard about the labor shortage [in the Upper Valley] — hopefully we don’t run into that,” he said, adding that Tacos y Tequila will use social media and storefront advertising to find staff.

Bravo said it has been easy to work with the town of Hanover during the opening process so far. He said Tacos y Tequila hopes to serve as a “one-stopshop” for Mexican cuisine and tequila “experiences,” and will offer both a digital app and an online ordering system once the business opens.

KYLE MULLINS/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Tacos y Tequila will fill the space formerly occupied by Skinny Pancake.

PAGE 2

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

With 1,229 students, Class of 2025 largest in Dartmouth’s history

BY Daniel Modesto The Dartmouth Staff

The Class of 2025 that matriculated on Sept. 12 has earned an unusual distinction: by twelve students, it surpassed the oversized Class of 2021 as the largest class in Dartmouth’s history. The size of this year’s class — which includes a substantial number of gap year students originally admitted as part of the Class of 2024 — comes along with a higher than usual number of students opting to be on campus this fall. These two factors have created a one-two punch that has worsened the on-campus housing shortage and prompted professors to take more students into their classes compared to previous years.

Vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid Lee Coffin wrote in an emailed statement that 1,229 students enrolled in the Class of 2025; of those 1,229 students, 160 students were accepted into the Class of 2024 but chose to take a gap year.

In addition, Coffin wrote that enrollment for the Class of 2024 was 1,058 students and that enrollment for the Class of 2021 was 1,217.

According to the Office of Institutional Research, the Class of 2023 has 1,193 students and the Class of 2022 has 1,169 students.

Classes graduating between 2004 and 2020 all fell between around 1,050 and 1,150 students each.

Dartmouth has historically been the smallest Ivy League university. However, in 2017, the College announced that it was considering increasing the undergraduate student body by between 10–25%. At the time,

College President Phil Hanlon said that a larger undergraduate body would “amplify [Dartmouth’s] impact on the world.”

Coffin said in an interview that the College decided to not increase the size of the undergraduate student body in the end. Coffin also noted the large size of the Class of 2025 should be put in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, since a substantial number of first-year students — who were originally accepted in the Class of 2024 — took a gap year as a result of the pandemic.

“The intent wasn’t to enroll a larger class, the intent was to honor the deferral of the ’24s, while also keeping Dartmouth open to students who graduated high school last year,” Coffin said.

Coffin said that he sees the Classes of 2024 and 2025 as “almost twin classes” due to the pandemic, and that when adding their class numbers together, they are actually “under-enrolled” in that the sum of two classes does not exceed the sum of two classes of average class size.

Prior to this year, the Class of 2021 was the largest class to enroll.

According to Coffin, the higherthan-average enrollment of the Class of 2021 was a matter of class yield increasing dramatically — something that he said “happens once in a while.”

The Class of 2021’s yield rate — the proportion of students who accepted their offers of admission — was 58%, significantly higher than yield rates for the Classes of 2004 through 2020, which never exceeded 52%. The Classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 saw yield rates

CAROLINE KRAMER/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

160 students admitted as members of the Class of 2024 took gap years and became members of the Class of 2025.

of 61%, 64% and 54%, respectively.

The large size of the Class of 2025 has highlighted the lack of sufficient on-campus student housing, with some upperclassmen left on a waitlist for months over the summer. Coffin said that although campus may feel “overcrowded,” the close quarters are partly a result of a high proportion of students opting to be on campus in the fall, especially upperclassmen and international students who took the prior year off “for very valid reasons.” He added the reduced number of study abroads this term created an enrollment pattern “that we haven’t experienced before.”

The Class of 2025’s large student body has led some professors to enroll more students in their courses than in previous years.

Jewish studies professor Irene Kacandes, who is teaching GERM 15, “Nazis, Neonazis, Antifa and the Others: Exploring Responses to the Nazi Past,” said that her class was originally capped at 50 students, but she added 20 students to accomodate first-year students interested in the course.

Native American and Indigenous studies department chair Bruce Duthu ’80, who teaches NAS 25, “Indian Country Today,” said that in previous years, his class was

around 50 to 70 students, but that this year saw 89 students enroll, forcing his class to move from Moore Hall to Carpenter Hall.

Duthu said that the spike in enrollment for his class could be due to word of mouth, noting that he spoke to the Class of 2025 during Orientation. He added he appreciates that many first-years are taking his class, especially since it is a “gateway and introduction to Native studies.”

“I think it’s great that [the firstyear students] will make the time to take my class, and that one of the 36 courses they take will be an [NAIS] course as well,” he said.

Spread of the Delta variant disrupts fall DDS suggests alternative reopening plans at peer institutions times to get meals B Y ANDREW SASSER The Dartmouth Staff

As Dartmouth students settle into their first week of fall term, the College has looked to peer institutions and how they are returning to in person classes and dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks.

While Dartmouth, like many other schools, has opted to reinstate an indoor mask mandate and increase testing frequency for vaccinated individuals, interim Provost David Kotz previously announced that the College is not currently considering any outdoor mask mandates, gathering restrictions or social distancing requirements.

In the Community Conversations livestream on Aug. 18, former co-chair of the recently disbanded COVID-19 Task Force Lisa Adams said that the College has been looking at how peer institutions have been reacting to COVID-19 in their fall reopening plans as a “benchmarking process,” not a “directive.” In a Sept.

15 broadcast, executive vice president Rick Mills noted that many of Dartmouth’s peer institutions experienced surges in the first few weeks after arrival, before case numbers went back down.

Dartmouth decided, in part due to outbreaks that had happened at other schools, to adjust the format of First-Year Trips at the last minute by having students return to campus each night instead of camping outdoors.

College spokesperson Diana Lawrence wrote in an emailed statement that it is difficult to predict what policy changes might be needed in the future if Dartmouth faces a spike in COVID-19 cases. She added that the College’s objective in its making policy is to keep the campus open, maintain the student experience and minimize the risk for anyone — especially those who cannot be vaccinated — that falls seriously ill from COVID-19.

As of Monday, there are 12 active

cases on the COVID-19 dashboard – 10 among undergraduate students and 2 among faculty and staff. An additional 5 faculty and staff are in isolation.

Within the Ivy League, all schools have either maintained or reimposed indoor universal mask mandates for students, regardless of vaccination status. All of these schools have also implemented some required surveillance testing for vaccinated individuals, though the frequency of testing is varied. Like Dartmouth, Princeton University, Yale University and Cornell University require once weekly testing for all vaccinated individuals.

Harvard University, meanwhile, requires testing three times per week for all students living in on-campus housing, but only once per week for those living off campus. Likewise, Brown University has mandated twice weekly testing for students. The University of Pennsylvania requires testing twice per month, whereas Columbia University “randomly selects” a portion of students, faculty and staff to test each week.

While Dartmouth’s Ivy League peers have maintained COVID-19 restrictions, they have had varying degrees of success in limiting spread of the virus on their respective campuses. Both Princeton and Penn have not seen any evidence of transmission on campus. Over the week of Sept.

4 to Sept. 11, Princeton reported a campus positivity rate of 0.09%, whereas Penn had a positivity rate of 1.11%.

However, other Ivy League universities have had to implement more stringent measures to combat the delta variant. For example, in response to an uptick in asymptomatic transmission, Brown halted indoor dining, required all student groups to meet online and restricted social gatherings to five people or fewer. Due to similar increases in transmission, Columbia restricted indoor gatherings to 10 or fewer individuals, and Cornell implemented an outdoor

The College maintains that future policy changes are difficult to predict.

mask mandate and canceled most of its Homecoming events.

Among other peer institutions in New England, both the University of New Hampshire and the University of Vermont have recorded upticks in cases. As of Sept. 14, UNH had 157 active cases on campus, and as a result opted to expand its mask mandate to all indoor spaces and barred non-school visitors from entering dormitories. The University of Vermont has seen 44 cases among students, faculty and staff since Sept.

6.

Other liberal arts colleges in the northeast have also implemented restrictions in response to the threat of the delta variant. Bowdoin College closed indoor dining and banned private gatherings after 14 students tested positive over two days. Amherst College, citing the variant, moved to require double masking indoors, banned events with alcohol and restricted students from going to bars and restaurants in the town of Amherst. The move sparked significant student backlash, which prompted the College to partially reopen indoor dining, expand its travel radius and allow registered social events.

While many colleges and universities around the country have returned to in-person learning, some have also shifted to remote learning in response to outbreaks. Rice University delayed the start of its fall semester by two days, imposed an indoor alcohol ban and moved all classes online for the first two weeks due to a rise in COVID-19 infections of vaccinated individuals.

Connecticut College temporarily transitioned to remote learning, shut down athletic practices and banned indoor gatherings after 169 students tested positive in one week. Similarly, the University of Dallas suspended in person classes for two weeks when it ran out of on campus isolation housing. However, unlike Dartmouth and many other colleges, the University does not have a vaccine mandate for its students.

MADELINE DOERR/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

FROM LINES PAGE 1

salad, for example,” Miller said.

Nicolás Macri ’24 said his back-toback classes in the middle of the day make it difficult to grab lunch on the go.

He added that the exceedingly long lines at the Class of ’53 Commons sometimes leave him no choice but to skip dinner.

“At dinner time, you might have a lot of club commitments and whatnot, so you can only get dinner quickly,” he said. “When the line is very long at [the Class of ’53 Commons], you sort of just get discouraged and put it off until later, and sometimes that means you might not be able to eat that day.”

Some students had hoped they could grab late night as a substitute for dinner, but the delay in the start of late night service has eliminated this possibility.

Dixon added that he consistently struggles to find food when his work shift at Collis ends.

“Honestly, I’ve had to order Dominoes a couple of times,” Dixon said. “That’s another issue: nothing’s open when I get off at nine, and so now I just have to take food home from where I work.”

According to Plodzik, Novack Cafe resumed normal hours of operation on Monday and will stay open until 12 a.m. Sunday through Thursday going forward. He wrote that he believes DDS will have enough staff to keep the Courtyard Cafe open until 12 a.m. daily starting Sept. 26.

“I realize, as does all of the staff working in dining, that these additions can’t come soon enough,” he wrote. “We simply are doing the best we can under these circumstances, and realize they are not all optimal for everyone at this time.”

Peer institutions are also grappling with long lines as schools transition from virtual to in-person instruction. The Daily Princetonian reported on Sept.

13 that Princeton University’s dining services were experiencing a severe staff shortage, and the Brown Daily Herald reported on Wednesday that students are experiencing “overcrowding, prolonged wait times and dissatisfaction with meal options.”

Dixon noted his disappointment with the College’s failure to attract new DDS workers.

“The College really flunked this one in that they didn’t realize there would be a labor shortage, and they didn’t raise the wages enough or advertise these positions enough to make up for it,” he said.

Plodzik recommended the GET mobile app, on which students can use their DBA to order food ahead of time and potentially cut down their wait time.

He also suggested a number of ways to avoid inconvenient lines, such as visiting dining spaces during low volume hours.

“Just like any good restaurant that has a wait for a table on Saturday night at 6 p.m., visiting any of our locations at peak times will result in a delay for service,” Plodizk wrote. “I encourage everyone to consider coming to dinner outside of the hours of 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on campus to avoid that congestion.”

On Thursday, a sign appeared in the entryway to ’53 Commons advising students on how to “beat the crunch when you come to lunch.” High volume times to avoid for lunch service, it states, are 11:30 a.m., 12:55 p.m. and 2:20 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as 12:15 p.m., 1:25 p.m. and 2:35 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.

Search for new OGL director ongoing FROM OGL PAGE 1

Barloga and Joyce departed.

“The Wellness Center continues to do some work around [the Dartmouth Bystander Initiative] and making sure that folks have the right wellness initiatives under their belt as they consider joining organizations,” he said.

In his new role, Wooten said he spends time in the OGL suite on the third floor of the Collis Center for Student Involvement, attends GLC meetings and meets with students both one-on-one and in small groups to ensure that Greek organizations are receiving the support they need.

Wooten acknowledged that after primarily working in other aspects of residential life for the past 20 years, there are disadvantages to his filling the OGL director position. However, he added that his previously built relationships will be advantageous in bringing the

OGL “closer to some of the decision makers at the College.”

GLC chair Brandon Zhou ’22 echoed Wooten’s sentiment.

“It’s been helpful that [Wooten] is higher up in the administrative organizational chart,” Zhou said. “So we’re able to go more directly to the source and know that our concerns are being heard.”

Zhou added that since Barloga and Joyce departed, the work of supporting Greek life has become “less centralized” around OGL. Acknowledging this new reality, Wooten said that he and Zhou are currently in conversations about the College paying student leaders in Greek life for their administrative work.

“We have had to figure out who we will reach out for certain things, knowing that specific items and tasks and policies that used to be centralized may be passed on to different offices or groups in the meantime,” Zhou said.

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

PAGE 3

THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD

Verbum Ultimum: Out of Line The dining situation on campus is simply untenable.

’53 Commons lines extending to Parkhurst.

Courtyard Cafe lines snaking to Hinman.

Crowds of students squeezing past each other to get to dining stations.

For the first two weeks of this term, these chaotic scenes have defined the student dining experience at Dartmouth. Thanks to a combination of an unprecedented number of students returning to campus and pandemicinduced labor shortages in the Upper Valley, barriers to food access on campus have been formidable, and student frustrations with Dartmouth Dining Services have reached an all-time high.

While the immediate focus must be on finding short-term solutions to the current situation to ensure that students can, well, eat, it’s clear that in the long term, the College has substantial work to do in addressing the current lack of reasonable dining options on campus and fulfilling a basic obligation to its students.

Throughout these first couple of weeks, long lines have not only made it difficult for students to manage their time — simply grabbing lunch at the Hop has become an hour-long commitment — but they have also forced some students to skip meals in order to fulfill their academic, extracurricular and work obligations. This situation, it goes without saying, is a concerning one —especially so for students living with or recovering from eating disorders. Long dining wait times also exacerbate existing inequalities on campus: Not everyone can afford the alternative of eating in town or ordering takeout. This inequality is only exacerbated by the dearth of on-campus dining options available on

the weekends: This past weekend, for instance, no dining options were open before 12 p.m. on Saturday apart from ’53 Commons.

Apart from long lines and unreasonable weekend hours, this term has also seen late night dining scaled back from pre-pandemic operations. Late night at Collis will not return, and the Courtyard Cafe will only be open until midnight. Novack and the snack bars have finally opened their doors, but Novack, too, will close at midnight Sundays through Thursdays, 5 p.m. on Fridays and 7 p.m. on Saturdays, leaving the various snack bars as the only options for students returning from — or headed out to — social events on on nights. These reduced hours impose barriers to food security for the many students who stay up late and eat at irregular meal times, while forcing students to choose off-campus options (so, Dominos and CVS) instead.

These critiques are not meant to be a dig at the hard-working Dartmouth Dining employees and management — labor shortages are not their fault. Indeed, the DDS staff are the ultimate victims here, no doubt stretched extremely thin as fewer employees try to serve more students than ever. But because there is not currently enough staff to meet increased demand — and because the opening of new locations in King Arthur Flour’s former location and on the western portion of campus may only further strain staff — something must be done on the supply side.

As a start, DDS should raise wages to attract more full-time and student workers. Out of the on-campus jobs available, a position at ’53

STAFF COLUMNIST KATHERINE ARRINGTON ’24

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

Modern society has placed too much emphasis on work, neglecting the power of leisure time and the fulfillment it brings.

This article was originally published on September 23, 2021.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

This is a question we hear time and time again, starting almost from the moment we learn how to speak. For many of us, the answer changes — I know that for me, it has. When I was five, I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my parents and be a teacher. Then I wanted to be an archaeologist until I found out what exactly archaeologists did.

Over the next few years, my answer bounced from diplomat, to lawyer, to social worker and finally to my current answer: I don’t know.

To be candid, I came into Dartmouth thinking I would easily figure out exactly what I wanted to be. I worked hard all of high school to be here; Dartmouth is supposed to be a place that sets me up for any career I want and helps me make a name for myself in whatever profession I desire.

Except, in the past year, as I have attended classes, participated in extracurriculars and all the while thought about my future, I have realized that the career that makes me most passionate, what makes me most excited to be alive, is none of them.

Coming to this realization was puzzling for me in many ways. For one thing, the hyper-capitalist society we live in puts an expectation on us, consciously or unconsciously, to work 40 or more hours a week, to label ourselves by how we spend that time, and to derive a lot of our worth as people from this work. And yet, this norm is a relatively new one. In hunter-gatherer societies, people only worked roughly 15 hours per week — meaning that for 95% of history, people worked no more than 15 hours per week.

Furthermore, this norm is not one that has been proven to increase happiness. In fact, the opposite seems to be true: As a recent Forbes article highlights, a recent study found that higher-paying, more prestigious jobs often come at the expense of important relationships and creating memories — and, thus, happiness. The Atlantic, in a similar recent article, noted that based on studies conducted by professors at UCLA and Wharton, working people need at least two and a half hours a day of leisure time to feel fulfilled in their life, although they note that people can still be busy during this time.

Working excessively is also associated with numerous health issues. These include fatigue, stress, cardiovascular problems, negative mental

health effects, increased dependence on alcohol and drugs and more. Prioritizing a time-consuming and stressful career is, in many cases, not worth the trade-offs in physical, mental, and emotional health.

Working also often means that we are, in effect, selling our time for money. Even if we love our jobs all of the time, we are still spending the bulk of our waking hours thinking, producing and creating for other people instead of ourselves. As a result, we neglect our hobbies — activities that give us time to think, produce and create for nobody but ourselves.

Many of these hobbies, such as reading for pleasure, playing a sport, or creating art, are associated with better mental and physical health outcomes. There is thus value simply in doing something for no other reason than that you want to.

I am not arguing that people should not work, and I am not saying that I myself will not work and find a way to support myself financially. However, what I am arguing is that we should recognize the deleterious impacts of a culture that emphasizes work above all else and causes us to neglect our personal interests and relationships.

So I come back to the question: what do I want to be when I grow up? Here is my answer: I want to be someone who questions everything and works to make change to create a society I want to live in.

I want to be someone surrounded by a community of people I love, whom I can trust to be there for me. I want to be someone who is creative every day, who engages in art for its own sake. I want to be someone who chases adventure and tries new things for the thrill of it. I want to be someone who is excited to explore the world I live in, who is grateful to be alive.

I do not, on the other hand, want my life to be shaped entirely by what I do for a living, and I do not believe that I am losing out by choosing not to have my life to revolve around work. Our lives should not have to be defined by 40-hour plus work weeks, by bosses, emails and deliverables — and, most importantly, by an extreme lack of leisure time. I would like to see a society that not only recognizes such a philosophy but openly celebrates it. Taking the time as a society to deconstruct our norms regarding work — questioning the labor laws that contribute to overworking, revolting against career education being prioritized over artistic pursuits in schools, and examining the priorities we have in our own lives and how they relate to our own contentedness — can only lead to a happier world.

SOPHIE BAILEY/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Commons, for instance, is likely less attractive than the alternatives — it is active, difficult work that can be uncomfortable and messy. Thus, in order to compete with other on- and off- campus jobs available to students and residents of the Upper Valley, DDS must significantly raise wages — certainly higher than the “$12-$14/ hour” currently advertised on signs around campus.

Reinstating pandemic-era food tents and subsidizing other options for students on financial aid are two more quick changes that would greatly improve the student dining experience and reduce food insecurity on campus. While the weather permits, Dartmouth should set up tents similar to those operated last year, which allowed students to quickly pick up to-go meals during peak times. Secondly, DDS ought to provide students on financial aid with stipends to purchase groceries — something already done during winterim — on days in which they do not have time to wait in lines.

While the above options represent important “quick fix” solutions, it is clear that the current situation also calls for more systematic change.

In the long term, Dartmouth should explore partnering with popular local restaurants to allow students to use their dining dollars — or even swipes in exchange for pre-set meals — in downtown locations. This sort of system, common at other universities, would not only help alleviate the burden on DDS and reduce inequalities between students, but could also function to strengthen the College’s relationship with Main Street. Put bluntly, DDS has no grounds to reject this idea — if, as has been the case this term, DDS cannot fulfill its responsibility to feed every student in a reasonable time frame, its continued monopoly on dining at Dartmouth is indefensible.

The editorial board consists of opinion staff columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-in-chief.

STAFF COLUMNIST MAX TESZLER ’23

Congress Has No Choice

With abortion rights in peril, Congress must act to protect the right to choose.

This article was originally published on September 21, 2021.

In the late hours on the first night of Sept. 1, the Supreme Court allowed Texas’s law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy to go into effect. The decision leaves the door open for further litigation, but in the meantime, the consequences have been disastrous. Abortion services have ground to a near-halt in Texas, depriving thousands of people of access to a vital form of healthcare. The decision was a legal travesty, best summed up by a line in Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s sharp dissent — “a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”

Yet for all the focus on the Court’s ruling — and what it may mean for long-standing rulings like Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v.

Casey — there has been little emphasis on the most obvious place to solve the issue: Congress.

Indeed, the legislative branch has the power to enshrine abortion rights through a civil rights law.

The Senate and House, both under Democratic control, should act immediately to codify a positive right to abortion; failing to do so would leave the health and autonomy of millions to fickle court precedents.

Since the landmark 1973 Roe decision, the federal judiciary has served as the final backstop for abortion rights. Yet, despite the tremendous significance the case has accumulated in the past 58 years, it’s worth keeping in mind what it really is — a judicial opinion that has been whittled away by successively more conservative courts. Supreme Court precedent, under the 1992 Casey decision, merely protects against an “undue burden” on receiving abortion. Many states have thus sought to push the envelope on what restrictions are allowed, slowly degrading the right to choose. These repeated attempts to restrict abortion rights have resulted in high hurdles to receiving care — for instance, six states have just one abortion clinic. Texas is simply the latest, boldest example — abandoning the previous approach of piecemeal restrictions in exchange for effectively banning the procedure.

Without action, the United States risks imposing an incredible injustice on hundreds of thousands of women forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Additionally, this burden will likely fall disproportionately on the poor and vulnerable, as the wealthy have more means to travel to a a state in which abortions are legal and accessible. If we continue to rely on courts to protect abortion rights, large swaths of the U.S. risk a tremendous backslide.

Democratic-controlled legislatures across the country have recognized this approaching reality — in the late 2010s, a number of liberal states moved to repeal their old laws banning abortion, which would come back into effect if the Supreme Court ever decides to overturn Roe. A handful of states have gone even further, enshrining a positive right to

KYLE MULLINS, Editor-in-Chief SAVANNAH ELLER & REILLY OLINGER, News Executive Editors COALTER PALMER, Production Executive Editor

abortion in their laws or newly requiring Medicaid funding to be available for abortion procedures.

Congress must follow these states on the federal level and pass legislation to protect abortion access. Such a law would make Roe welcomely redundant, setting in stone the right to abortions and preventing states from adopting laws like those in Texas or Mississippi — the latter of which’s law banning abortion at 15 weeks is up for review by the Supreme Court later this fall. A proposed bill already exists for this direct purpose; the Women’s Health Protection Act, which is sponsored by the vast majority of Democrats in both the Senate and the House. Using Congress’s regulatory powers, the act codifies the right for care providers to provide abortions and for patients to receive them — thus pre-empting any restrictions states may try to enact.

The law bans medically-irrelevant restrictions such as waiting periods before abortion, protecting against subsequent piecemeal erosion of the right to choose.

In other campaigns for civil rights, though the courts played their role, legislation from Congress was ultimately responsible for strengthening protections. Brown v. Board may have helped to kickstart the Civil Rights era, but the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were needed to expand democracy in segregationist states. Additionally, some of the most important protections against sex discrimination — Title VII and Title IX — were enacted by Congress.

Federal legislation has been vital to expanding rights in this country. Yet when it has come to abortion, Congress has sat by and let increasingly shaky judicial precedents form the basis for access to essential healthcare and the right to bodily autonomy for millions of women.

Admittedly, congressional statutes have their own limitations. A mere right to abortion would not instantly solve the problems of access across the country. There’s also no way to stop a future Republican-controlled Congress from repealing a law protecting abortion rights — although such a move would likely face intense political headwinds, given the high level of public support for abortion rights. Even in this current Congress, the Women’s Health Protection Act faces many obstacles, likely requiring the votes of pro-choice Republican moderates like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins — and thus could fall short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

Yet, this moment — the most trying test of abortion rights in the 50 years since Roe — demands every effort possible. With a narrow Supreme Court majority clearly unwilling to defend the right to choose, congressional Democrats must act to get legislation protecting abortion rights across the finish line and into law. For politicans who claim to support abortion rights, it is now or never to demonstrate a true comittment to health access and autonomy.

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THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Hood Museum acquires ten works by African American artists

BY MADELINE SAWYER The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on September 23, 2021.

With its recent acquisition of ten pieces from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, the Hood Museum of Art has expanded its collection of American artwork highlighting African American artists from the southern United States.

The new pieces include painting, sculpture, quilt and mixed-media works from eight different artists.

Hood director John Stomberg expressed excitement about the acquisition.

“Here at the Hood, for example, we have long been interested in art by multiple sources, art from multiple sources — not just New York, not just trained — but this is a real bold step for us,” Stomberg said. “The goal is to do a social good and also to change art history with these sales.”

The Souls Grown Deep Foundation, founded over a decade ago by art historian William Arnett, boasts the largest collection of works by southern U.S.-based Black artists.

Through grants, the foundation invests in artists’ communities, aiming to support educational initiatives, economic empowerment and racial and social justice.

Arnett initially founded the Souls Grown Deep Foundation as a way to share his personal art collection. The Foundation’s mission is to incorporate a higher number of Black, southern artists in the American art canon, according to its website.

Stomberg described the new acquisitions as representative of a “direct and urgent form of art” and mentioned that the museum will not separate the works, but

instead integrate them into the larger collection.

Hood curatorial research associate of African art Alexandra Thomas, curatorial research associate of African art at the Hood, agreed with Stomberg about the significance of these works.

“It is really important to highlight the kind of philosophy of what Souls Grown Deep Foundation is because the works… [highlight] a really deep tradition of African American artists in the U.S. South making art that has been erased from a lot of modern art history,” Thomas said.

In acquiring the new pieces, the Hood joins a prestigious group of institutions that have worked with the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

“We feel pretty fortunate at the Hood Museum to be on that list and to have gotten such a wide range of work from a number of different artists and in a range of different media, too,” said Hood curator of academic programming Amelia Kahl ’01.

According to Kahl, works acquired by the Hood include paintings, assemblage, a sculpture and a rare Gee’s Bend quilt.

Despite the differences among their works, Thomas said, the artists are all influenced by certain common traditions and practices.

“These are African American artists who are also kind of directly inheriting certain African art traditions, too,” Thomas said. “The idea of assemblage is very central to Western and Central African art practices. The Gee’s Bend quilts, for example — a lot of [the artists]

NAINA BHALLA/ THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

are living on former plantations where their ancestors were enslaved, so there is a direct connection from Africa and slavery to these artworks.”

Thomas explained that assemblage and bricolage, techniques used in these works, involve using readily available items and using them as materials to create something new.

Malia Chung-Paulson ’24, along with other attendees of the event, had the chance to view part of the acquisition at the Hood’s reopening celebration this past weekend.

Information about the collection and the Souls Grown Deep Foundation accompanies the three works by Thornton Dial currently on display.

“I think that there is really

something to be said about the artists using everything and making everything out of it,” Chung-Paulson said. “That’s art in and of itself, regardless of the medium or the story that you are trying to tell.”

Elizabeth Li ’25 shared this respect for the artists’ innovation. She said that she immediately noticed the use of unconventional materials in Thornton Dial’s Heaven and Hell on Earth, one of the paintings on display.

“Art stems from our daily lives, so it is really cool to have these common, everyday objects presented in a different way to evoke a feeling that is greater than their normal use in life,” Li said.

Both Thomas and Kahl

emphasized the commonalities of these pieces.

“There [are] a lot of themes of resilience and resistance and ancestral memory,” Thomas said.

Kahl noted her appreciation for the artists’ resourcefulness and said she was excited about how the artwork reflected their backgrounds and experiences. She noted that she hopes the pieces acquired by the Hood will influence how viewers perceive and understand American art.

“Certainly, as a New England institution, this helps to broaden the story of contemporary art,” Kahl said. “And also — and this is to quote John Stomberg a little bit — the story of who is included in ‘American art.’”

Review: “The Chair” nails the idiosyncrasies of the academy

BY SHERA BHALA

The Dartmouth Senior Staff

This article was originally published on September 23, 2021.

It’s a brisk day. Students flit between classes, cutting through the college quad and ivy-covered buildings. Sound familiar? I thought so too. However, these images of a New England college campus are not of Dartmouth, but rather the opening scene of “The Chair.” This Netflix original, released on August 20, delves into the academy at the fictional Pembroke College. For me, “The Chair” is a winner. It captures the peculiarities of academia and balances tragic realities with satiric comedy.

I should preface my review of “The Chair” by stating that I watched it with my parents — my dad is a chaired professor, and my mom is a witness to faculty politics. I found it an indication of the show’s quality and good spirit that my parents enjoyed it, especially considering my dad’s three decade career in academia.

Better yet were my parents’ droll comments throughout about the realistic depictions of the academy, sans glamorization of intellectual culture.

In six 30-minute episodes, “The Chair” follows Professor Ji-Yoon Kim — played by Sandra Oh — as she navigates her new position as the Chair of Pembroke’s English department. Kim is the first female and first person of color to sit at the department’s helm in the school’s 179-year history. An Emily Dickinson expert, she has worked hard for her departmental accomplishments at Pembroke, referred to as a “lower-tier Ivy.” But tenure and chaired leadership isn’t what she thought it was.

She struggles to appease faculty members, communicate with the Dean of the College, balance a workplace romance and parent a young, adopted daughter.

Oh fully embodies her role.

After 10 seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy” as the unmistakable Dr. Cristina Yang, the CanadianAmerican actress rebrands herself as a liberal arts professor.

Her character’s development is thoughtful — she begins

as an enthusiastic Chair, but becomes increasingly hardened as scandals and tensions plague the department. Simultaneously, her personal life’s complexities reveal themselves. The man she loves, Professor Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), is a mess, and she has little time for her obstreperous daughter, Ju-Hee “Ju-Ju” Kim (Everly Carganilla). The show touches on her Korean American identity appropriately, particularly her family dynamics. Kim’s noble father, Habi (Ji-Yong Lee), who typically serves as Ju-Ju’s babysitter, remarks “how can she do what I tell her when she doesn’t speak Korean?” to which Kim responds “Appa, you can speak English.”

Some may disagree, but I think this performance is Oh’s peak.

She is suited to the role, donning a slightly disheveled professorial wardrobe and a pedagogical disposition. She renders her character, who is the show’s academic heroine, as genuinely sympathetic. Oh captures the struggle of a woman of color in a leadership position, attempting to change an institution and pave the way for those who follow in her footsteps.

From a Shakespearian perspective, the show falls more into the category of tragedy than comedy. But that makes it successful — it does not look at academia with rose-colored glasses. Rather, it presents the idiosyncrasies of academic culture. Most of the characters are aging professors scared of technology, feminist and critical race theories and becoming irrelevant. One tenured professor is so old that he can’t differentiate his green pills from his brown pills when he takes his medication at a faculty meeting. Another professor constantly fears encroachment on enrollments from a younger, more popular professor. Dobson is a wreck, accused of making a Nazi salute while teaching. The accusation takes on a life of its own, killing Dobson’s career and spotlighting a critical issue within today’s ‘cancel culture’: false accusation, rash judgement and reputational detractions. And Kim is too overwhelmed managing everyone else’s problems to deal with her personal life.

SOPHIE BAILEY/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

I was genuinely moved by the saddest scenes, which involve the older professors who fear upcoming cuts. They were great teachers, produced brilliant scholarship and served the common good.

But now university management sees them as high fixed costs and hopes they vacate their six-figure positions to make room for newer faces with many degrees. The Dean assigns Kim the challenging task of cutting the three professors who have the highest salaries but the lowest course enrollments.

One of the three is Dr. Joan Hambling (Holland Taylor), the fiery Chaucer expert. Another is Professor Elliot Rentz (Bob Balaban), who has always loved his students — memorialized forever in his book’s dedication to them – but now struggles with abysmal enrollments. The last is Professor McHale (Ron Crawford), who falls asleep in the faculty lounge and farts during meetings. The three professors refer to themselves as “dinosaurs” as they gather in the faculty lounge, fearing their fates at the hands of the cold Dean.

On the other hand, the younger professors who possess intersectional identities, Kim and Professor Yaz McKay (Nana

Mensah), are characters who represent structural change in academia. McKay, as an enthusiastic Black female professor, has classes overflowing with students, but she struggles with the lack of diversity at Pembroke and a discouraging tenure committee.

One of the show’s most successful aspects is its balancing of a realistic portrayal of academic culture with satirical humor. I found there to be several hilarious exchanges throughout the show. For instance, Kim asks Hambling when she last read her student evaluations, to which Hambling replies “1987” because she does not “cater to consumer demands.” Meanwhile, Kim’s father repeatedly disapproves of her romance with Dobson. As her father phrases it, she could be doing much better than “pining for this crumpled man.”

Not to spoil too much of the ending, but it resolves the tragedies of the previous episodes well. I considered the ending to be appropriate, un-romanticized and delivered in the right tone. The finale confirms the sympathetic nature of the characters.

For fellow students, and the Dartmouth community as a whole,

“The Chair” is a must-watch.

My recommendation is to watch “The Chair” now or in the winter, for a sensory parallel between Dartmouth and Pembroke in the New England climate. The show poignantly and comedically reveals realities of the collegiate world that tuition-payers and salary-receivers alike populate.

Of course, it is not a perfectly unbiased snapshot of reality in Hanover nor other college towns, but it is engaging to have a show focused on the unique dynamics of academia. Still, an aspect of “The Chair” that I find reflective of our small college is the depiction of the administration, which sometimes antagonizes professors and students, speaking instead of donors and the media.

As for faculty, I am fortunate to have learned from and been mentored by brilliant and kind professors, but I understand the pitfalls of academia represented in the show, including the jealous ego, from my father’s experience.

Academia is not for those with thin skin. To my professors and others who continue to be young at heart, dedicated to their students and open to shifting paradigms — thank you.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

PAGE 5

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS

SPORTS

Hall of Krame: Leaving on the Early Coach

BY JUSTIN KRAMER

The Dartmouth Senior Staff

Wi t h D a r t m o u t h s p o r t s retur ning to a full year of competition for the first time since the 2018-19 season, 12 head coaches will take the helm without an uninterrupted athletic year at Dartmouth under their belts.

That’s not to say that Dartmouth doesn’t have experienced coaches.

Dartmouth has four coaches with over 20 years of experience, including three — Peter Dodge (men’s nordic skiing), Cami Thompson Graves (women’s nordic skiing) and Bob Whalen (baseball) — who have held their head coaching jobs for over 30 years. This figure puts them in the middle of the pack, above Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

B u t by a l m o s t a l l o t h e r measures, Dartmouth ranks at the bottom of the Ivy League in head coaching tenure.

On average, Big Green coaches have 7.9 years of experience running their teams, less than all of its Ivy competition. Columbia, Yale, Princeton University and Harvard University all average over 10 years of head coaching experience. Dartmouth’s average is also much lower than the Ivy League mean: 10.4 years.

Using the mean, however, likely overstates Dartmouth coaches’ tenure. Dartmouth has several head coaches who have had particularly long careers with the Big Green, skewing the average higher than it otherwise would be, even though it’s still low compared to the average at other Ivy League schools. Since there are several high outliers, finding the median coaching tenure perhaps better characterizes how much (or how little) experience Dartmouth head coaches have in their current roles.

At only five years, the median Dartmouth head coach tenure

is much lower than the mean.

Notably, this figure is also the lowest in the conference— much lower than Penn, Princeton, Yale (9) and Harvard’s (12.5) median tenures. Among women’s teams, median coaching experience is even lower: at a mere three years, Dartmouth sits at the bottom of the Ivy League.

Moreover, the Big Green’s 12 head coaches with two or fewer years of experience ranks atop the league both as an absolute number and as a percentage of total head coaches (37.5%). On the flip side, Dartmouth also has the lowest number of head coaches with 10 or more years in charge.

While it can be helpful to bring in fresh faces to change a team’s trajectory, it can also take time for coaches to establish recruiting infrastructures, implement their c o a ch i n g p h i l o s o p h i e s a n d establish training regimens — time that many Dartmouth coaches have not yet been afforded with one or two seasons ravaged by the pandemic. This could put Dartmouth at a disadvantage compared to Columbia, Harvard and Princeton, which only have three coaches with two years or fewer at the helm. Conversely, it may provide a needed change of pace for struggling Big Green teams.

How did Dartmouth athletics end up in this situation — with the most head coaches with two or fewer years’ experience in their role, the fewest with 10 or more years in their role and ranked last in the Ivy League in both mean and median coaching tenure?

Part of it is circumstantial.

Equestrian coach Sally Batton stepped away two springs ago after a well-decorated 29-year career and men’s hockey coach Bob Gaudet hung up his suit in 2020 after 23 years with the Big Green. Men’s cross country and track and field coach Barry Harwick also retired in August 2020 after 28 years directing the

JUSTIN KRAMER/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Dartmouth has the lowest median active head coach tenure length in the Ivy League.

program. The women’s track and field program tragically lost Sandy Ford-Centonze to cancer on Dec. 14, 2019 after 28 seasons leading the team. Though Dartmouth retained most of its coaches after cutting and reinstating five teams last year, Jamie Holder declined his offer to return as head coach of the men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs.

Other coaches, especially on the women’s side, stepped down following a string of challenging seasons. Amy Fowler, who coached field hockey for 20 years, departed after seven consecutive seasons in the bottom half of the Ivy League.

Former women’s basketball coach Belle Koclanes left earlier this year to manage a non-profit after accruing a 34-64 conference record over seven seasons, and Laura Schuler made her exit from the women’s ice hockey team last

August after posting a 13-48-5 Ivy League record in her three years as head coach.

Concerningly, however, several of the most successful Big Green coaches have left in search of greener pastures. In 2018, former men’s soccer coach Chad Riley departed for his alma mater, Notre Dame University, after winning four straight Ivy League titles and securing three Ivy League Coach of the Year awards. Later that year, softball coach Shannon Doepking accepted an offer to coach Syracuse University after taking home her second Ivy League championship trophy in four years. A year later, women’s lacrosse coach Danielle Spencer ventured west to Stanford University after clinching a share of the 2019 Ivy League championship. A year after winning the 2018 Ivy League title,

men’s tennis coach Chris Drake transferred across the Ivy League to Yale.

Even 21-year veteran football coach Buddy Teevens, following back-to-back Ivy League championships in 1990 and 1991, spent time at Tulane University and Stanford before returning to Dartmouth in 2005.

The flurry of retirements among longtime Dartmouth head coaches may pose an immediate concern as their replacements attempt to rebuild recruiting and training programs — but this is only potentially worrisome in the near future. More concerning in the long run is the quick exodus of Dartmouth coaches when they attain success. If this pattern continues, Dartmouth appears likely to remain at the bottom of the Ivy League in head coach retention.

RMS UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWS, ACADEMIC YEAR 2021-22 The Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality is pleased to announce our theme, “Our Moment of Danger: Studying Race, Migration and Sexuality in the 21st Century Academy,” for the Undergraduate Fellows program for the 2021-22 academic year. The Fellowship is a two-term sequential investigation of the lessons and legacies of the work of George Lipsitz, Professor of Black Studies and Sociology, whose book, American Studies in a Moment of Danger celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

The RMS Undergraduate Fellows program seeks a small cohort of distinguished undergraduate students at Dartmouth who will be a vital part of the Consortium’s work. Our fall term will be dedicated to vetting applications and consolidating our cohort in preparation for a two-term fellowship period (winter and spring). Fellows can participate in the program in-person and/or remotely, depending on their D-plan and the contingencies of the ongoing pandemic. Fellows must be willing to attend public events and workshops organized by the Fellowship Advisor. The dates, times, and frequency of workshops will be scheduled in consultation with the cohort each term.

Details: The Application deadline is Friday, October 15th.

Students in their Sophomore, Junior, or Senior years are eligible Please check our website to see more details, application requirements, and apply: https:// sites.dartmouth.edu/rms/rms-fellows/ Please reach out to Mary Coffey with any questions: Mary.K.Coffey@dartmouth.edu

PAGE 6

MIRROR

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

THE DARTMOUTH MIRROR

Students Reflect on Experiences in Identity-Based Houses STORY

By Arielle Feuerstein

This article was originally published on September 22, 2021.

From dorm rooms to Greek houses to Zooming into class from your childhood bedroom, the spaces we live in have an incredible influence over our college experience. Greek houses in particular pride themselves on cultivating a sense of community and camaraderie for its residents, but these spaces are not the only houses of this kind on campus.

Many of Dartmouth’s Living Learning Communities also promise a unique residential experience, where students live with those who share a specific interest or aspect of their identity.

The College identifies four LLCs with physical houses on campus as “identity-based communities,” which focus on the experiences of a particular identity group: the Latin American, Latino & Caribbean House, the Native American House, the Shabazz Center for Intellectual Inquiry and Triangle House.

Some students now living in these houses — such as LALAC House resident Adriam Moya ’24 — were drawn to the space because they felt alienated from aspects of their culture or identity in traditional College housing.

“I wanted to find a place where I actually felt community and not just

[like] the outsider,” Moya said. “When I go into the living room and do some work, I just want to relax, and I don’t want to worry if I’m understanding the references or if people even understand me.”

Moya’s high school was primarily comprised of Black, Latino and Hispanic students, and he hoped that living in the LALAC House would offset some of the culture shock of attending an institution with less racial diversity.

“I didn’t realize how much of a toll it would take on me until I got here,” Moya said. “[In high school], they would understand me if I spoke in Spanish.

Coming here — to a predominantly white institution — [I realized] ‘Oh, I’ve got to speak English 24/7. That’s hard.”

Many residents agreed that their LLC is successful in providing a strong community for students. Rothschild Toussaint ’23 lives in the Shabazz Center, and he described the house as a “hub” for Black students on campus.

“Because of Shabazz’s history [as] a house for Black students, [I get] to strengthen myself with[in] the black community on campus” Toussaint said.

“Having the house as a hub is a good way for us to reconnect and find each other.”

Toussaint thinks that the physical layout of Shabazz also contributes to the

strong community, noting that living in a house increases his interactions with others in the space.

“Shabazz is a four-floor building … but the first two floors are hangout areas, so when you enter, you don’t just go straight to your room” Toussaint said.

“You have to see people. And I think that’s helped strengthen the ties.”

Additionally, many of the LLCs host mandatory events for residents in an effort to build community, often taking the form of house dinners. According to Moya, the LALAC House hosts a weekly dinner.Darren Nelson ’23, a resident of Shabazz, also emphasized his house’s weekly dinners as an important way for students to connect with each other.

Toussaint explained that faculty and other experts are invited to Shabazz’s weekly dinners to discuss both Black history and contemporary issues the Black community faces. He described these discussions as “empowering” and noted how he found value living in a space where exploring history and socializing overlapped.

While LLC houses build camaraderie among its residents, they are not necessarily every resident’s primary community on campus. Lucas Rathgeb ’22 is living in Triangle House, a housing community that, according to its description, is “centered around the

historical and contemporary experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, aromantic and allied people.”

Rathgeb began living in the house at the start of this fall term, but thus far, has spent most of their time in other communities on campus, such as the DOC. Still, Rathgeb said they appreciate the value of having a dedicated space to support queer identity.

“I think it’s nice to be in a place that feels like it is dedicated and specifically made for you,” Rathgeb said. “The entire atmosphere of the house and the kinds of books we have on the shelves provide more of a support and more of a normalization of queer identity than you would find in most places on campus — which is a really nice feeling to have.”

Nelson, who began living in Shabazz last fall, recognizes that living in an identity-based space comes with pros and cons, particularly in comparison to college dorms or other LLCs that expose students to a wide range of different cultures and identities. There are 10 LLCs open to first-years, including the Thriving Through Transitions LLC, which Nelson lived in during his freshman year. Thriving Through Traditions aims to help freshmen navigate their transition to college with

intentionality.

“I enjoyed getting to know the different cultures and hanging out with different people with identities across the board, but I feel like Shabazz feels more like home,” Nelson said when comparing his experience in Shabazz to that of his freshman LLC. Nelson added that while a typical dorm might expose its residents to a wider range of identities, residents have more control over their experiences in identity-based housing.

“I think there [are] benefits of both housing systems: In the randomized housing system, you’re going to come across a wide range of identities, but in Living Learning Communities, you’re directing the type of experience that you’re going to have,” Nelson said.

While LLCs provide their residents with an experience different from that of a traditional dorm, many of the students living in these identity-based houses find an irreplaceable community.

“I feel like I have a debt I can never repay because I feel so at home [at Shabazz] — particularly with the other Black students that live there.” Touisssant said. “It’s really created a stronger sense of solidarity. It’s very near and dear to my heart, and that high degree of respect, especially when I first came, has allowed me to be fully myself.”

Q&A: Professor Jason Lyall on The Crisis in Afghanistan STORY

By Meghan Powers

This article was originally published on September 22, 2021.

The current chaos in Afghanistan is a result of decades of global politics — in trying to understand the situation, it’s difficult even to know where to begin.

Jason Lyall is Dartmouth’s James Wright Associate Professor in Transnational Studies in the Government Department.

Since 2009, he has traveled to Afghanistan around a dozen times in order to study humanitarian aid and conduct popular surveys, among other things.

Lyall’s most recent trip was in 2017, though he won a Carnegie Grant to improve humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and was supposed to return to the country in 2020, until COVID hit and prevented him from going. Below, Lyall shares how his years of firsthand experience in Afghanistan shape his understanding of the current crisis, and offers advice on how those interested in learning more can navigate what the media has to offer.

Would you mind running me through your background with politics in Afghanistan and how it became an area of interest for you?

JL: Actually, it was mostly by accident.

I was trained in graduate school as a Russianist and I was working in the Caucuses on insurgency in Chechnya.

I actually got thrown out of the country and I had a friend who was serving in the U.S. Army who said: “Why don’t you come to Afghanistan? We have mountains, we have Islam and we have insurgency — the things you study.

Maybe you can come in and try to understand what’s going on here, get some data, things like that.” So my first trip was in the summer of 2009 and with the U.S. army, and I ended up just loving the place. I loved the country, I loved the people, I loved the history and I thought that there was a lot of opportunity to do some really interesting work that would be helpful.

I just kept on going back. I did a couple of trips with the military, and then I quickly moved over to the United States Agency for International Development and worked on development projects and humanitarian aid. I did my own survey work there, too. I had my own research agenda and I was running public opinion polling — people’s support for the Taliban, things like that — and I was working with non-governmental organizations like MercyCorps to figure out if their aid was working. Sometimes, I’d talk to the Air Force, so I’ve seen the military side, the civilian side and the aid side, and I’ve kind of moved between these communities for a decade now.

I won this Carnegie Grant that was supposed to be on improving humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, and then COVID hit. Afghanistan had a really bad COVID outbreak. Now, with the Taliban taking over the government,

it’s not clear when I’m going to be able to get back in. I’m not sure if my career in Afghanistan is over or not, but I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do a lot of work.

How much time have you spent in Afghanistan?

JL: I’ve done about a dozen trips. I think the shortest one I ever did was about ten days in the country to fix a survey that was going wrong. Other times, it has been up to a couple of months in a certain location, things like that. I’ve gotten to travel pretty extensively. I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve been lucky to be in lots of places in the East and North — sort of the central part of the country.

How would you summarize the crisis in Afghanistan to someone who knew nothing about the situation?

JL: It’s hard. It’s a two-decade war, and what’s so hard about summarizing it is that it’s not just one thing. It’s a foreign occupation, it is a proxy war, it is the largest and most expensive reconstruction of a state since World War II. It’s probably the most corruption we’ve seen in a state since World War II. It is an attempt to build an army and a state and a nation all at once. It is incredibly complicated, but if I had to summarize it, I would say: It’s an attempt by a foreign occupier to build a state and an attempt by a certain part of the population to defeat it. And that certain part of the population has won, and has toppled what was put in place in the last 20 years or so.

Do you think there’s anything uniquely complicated about Afghanistan ?

JL: The ethnic and the tribal composition of the country is extraordinarily high.

Much more so than we traditionally see in insurgent settings. The population is extraordinarily diverse — and part of the population isn’t even in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan. So the conflict is not just confined to Afghanistan. That makes it not necessarily uniquely complicated, but on the high end of the complicated spectrum I would say.

Do you think it’s important for U.S. citizens to be informed on the subject, especially those in my generation, who are still becoming acquainted with global politics?

JL: Absolutely. I’m writing a book right now on the lessons of the war, and it’s in part because U.S. policymakers and the U.S. public have a tendency to kind of turn the page and move on. It happened after Vietnam and I think it’s going to happen again after Afghanistan. What’s super interesting about Afghanistan is not just the country itself, but many of the things that were tried in Afghanistan.

Everything from drone strikes, to aid, to the nature of humanitarian aid, to the nature of anti-corruption drives — Afghanistan was a test bed for all of this. We’ve picked up all these tools and

COURTESY OF JASON LYALL

implements, and now we’re putting them around the world. But we don’t know if they work or not.

We don’t have any good sense of what worked well or what didn’t, and if we turn the page, we’re going to lose all of this. In a sense, it’s not just an Afghan problem, but a world problem, because all of these tools are being used today, and being used uncritically, without any rigorous study. So you need to know what happened in Afghanistan if only to understand what the next five to 10 years of American statecraft are going to look like.

What do you imagine the next few yearswilllooklikeforAfghanistan?

JL: The lesson I’ve learned is not to try and predict the future in Afghanistan, because you’re going to be wrong. I think my best guess right now is that you’re going to see the Taliban institute a government that’s going to look pretty much like it did in the early ’90s or late ’90s when the group first came up. It’s going to be pretty theocratic and there are going to be low levels of violence in Afghanistan; it’s kind of going to experience another round of this civil war with ISIS. I think there’s going to be a kind of more-or-less stable Taliban government, with the United States looking in periodically, conducting drone strikes or special operations raids to try and keep the terrorism threat low.

I think there are two dangers. One is that the government doesn’t hold, and it splits, and you get fragments of the Taliban fighting against each other, and the other danger is that the neighbors are all drawn in. You’ve already got Pakistan involved, Iran is involved, Russia is involved and now China’s coming in.

The danger is that Afghanistan becomes this playground again for these different competing interests.

My day-to-day concern right now is frankly humanitarian and development aid. The U.S. froze the Afghan accounts, so right now, the Taliban government is out of money and can’t pay anyone.

The state is not really functioning and

there’s just a massive humanitarian crisis.

It’s this huge population with no money, no economy and no aid coming in, so I don’t think we’re ready for the epic level of humanitarian need in Afghanistan.

And I think, frankly, there’s not a lot of enthusiasm by the world to give money to the Taliban, understandably. But if the United States and other countries don’t give money, then you’re going to have an absolutely epic humanitarian crisis, and it won’t stay in Afghanistan. It will pour over to Iran and Pakistan, and then it will come to Europe.

What do you think about the role of the U.S. in the creation of the current crisis in Afghanistan?

JL: I came in with the so-called “civilian surge.” So this is around 2009, the idea was at that time that Afghanistan was slipping out of control, but it could be redeemed if the United States just put more troops and had more civilian specialists come in. You knew then that this was going to end badly, so the outcome we’ve seen in the last couple months is not super surprising. I had a pretty close seat watching things like the Afghan army being created, and you just knew it just wasn’t working. There were high rates of desertion and lots of hazing and violence towards their own soldiers. You saw epic amounts of corruption. You can see in the opulence in certain parts of Kabul that all the aid money was just pouring to these warlords and criminals, and they were creating enormous palaces.

Then you’d go out in the countryside and they didn’t have electricity and water. There was this growing frustration that the United States was hurting civilians, the same people they said they were there to help, and not even acknowledging that they were making mistakes. Each trip I would go, and as I got out into the countryside, I could feel the population turning away from the Afghan government.

Early when I would go, the aid was welcomed: People were a little bit suspicious, but people would be more

or less receptive. By the end, there were places we couldn’t go anymore and villages that wouldn’t accept aid, even if there had been an air strike there.

There was just anger, frustration and violence against the convoys. You got this sense that you weren’t welcome there anymore. So to see it end this way isn’t really surprising.

Where do you get your news?

When you don’t have firsthand experience of being in Afghanistan, who do you trust?

JL: Honestly, the best source for me has been Twitter. I have a curated collection of Afghan journalists and reporters, and Western reporters as well, that I follow. That’s been really helpful because Afghan reporters have been able to get out into the countryside in a way that Western reporters can’t. There are still a lot of people on the ground, but it’s dried up considerably since a lot of people left. A lot of journalists are friends and people I know.

Right now, it’s problematic, because since the fall of the government, there’s been a lot of noise on Twitter — a lot of misinformation. I’m lucky that I know enough to be able to triangulate it. I also like The New York Times and The Washington Post — the classic big papers. They have been useful, and particularly if they have an Afghan journalist involved, the stories tend to be better quality.

I would say that I watch almost no TV or cable news — that stuff is just useless.

They often have people who don’t know anything about the country, but a lot of it has also been reputation laundering by the people who are responsible for the war going sideways. Now they’re on TV telling us about the way forward, and it’s like: “Dude, you’re responsible for this.”

There is one great organization that does really good public outreach stuff.

They’re known as the Afghan Analysts Network, or AAN, and they write publicfacing short pieces that are incredible. I’d recommend them, but don’t rely on TV news!