The Dartmouth 05/10/18

VOL. CLXXV NO. 34

RAIN HIGH 72 LOW 43

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Room draw sees new processes

Capital campaign addresses donor gender gap

B y Isabel adler

The Dartmouth Staff

OPINION

MAGANN: THEY’RE LAUGHING AT US PAGE 6

AHSAN: UNCIVILIZED CIVILITY PAGE 6

ZEHNER: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK PAGE 7

RICHARDS: LAST PAST THE POST PAGE 7

ARTS

‘CITRUS,’ A COMPELLING CHOREOPOEM, CELEBRATES BLACK WOMEN PAGE 8 FOLLOW US ON

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MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

The senior apartments on North Park Street are often a popular choice for students.

B y eileen brady The Dartmouth Staff

Allen House residents were the last of the housing communities to pick their housing accomodations on May 3, marking the end of the room draw process for the Fall 2018 term. This year’s room draw featured a new method for assigning rooms in substance-free housing,

as well as slightly altered living options in Living Learning Communities and senior apartments, associate director of undergraduate housing Elicia Rowan wrote in an email statement.

The room draw process began on A pr. 24 and concluded on May 3, allowing for each of Dartmouth’s six housing communities to hold room draw on a different

night with two additional nights of room draw for s u b s t a n c e - f re e h o u s i n g and senior apartments. All students are assigned a housing priority number which dictates what time they can choose their room, should they choose to enter their housing community’s room draw.

SEE HOUSING PAGE 5

Historically, the College — like its peer institutions — has had a gender divide in its alumni giving, according to executive director of the Dartmouth College Fund Sylvia Racca. However, a goal in “The Call to Lead,” the College’s capital campaign announced on Apr. 27, hopes to address this issue.

One of the stated goals of the campaign is to encourage 100 donations of $1 million or more each from alumnae and encourage donations of any amount to help rebuild Dartmouth Hall — a project that will cost $25 million. Furthermore, the College hopes to expand membership of the Centennial Circle — an alumnae group of women who have donated at least $100,000 to financial aid — from its current 188 members to 250 members

by 2019, the College’s 250th anniversary.

The Centennial Circle was introduced in 2014 due to the grassroots efforts of alumnae who worked in conjunction with the College, according to director of the Centennial Circle Mindi Laine. Before the founding of the Circle, men gave 4.7 times more money than women. Since 2014, the gap has started to close; men now give only 2.5 times more money than women, Laine said.

“We have a lot of work to do, but we’re seeing that women are giving at all levels, not just $100,000,” Laine said.

Previous fundraising tactics created competition between class years, which was successful for targeting men associated with the College, but women were not receptive to it, Laine said.

SEE CENTENNIAL PAGE 3

DDS switches to paper straws for sustainability B y Claudia Bernstein The Dartmouth

Over the past two weeks, students have noticed the disappearance of an important staple at Dartmouth Dining Services locations across campus — plastic straws. Over the past month, DDS has transitioned from the use of standard plastic straws to red-and-white-striped biodegradable paper straws. This transition was spearheaded by associate director of DDS Don Reed, who said the change

is part of a larger effort to make DDS as sustainable as possible.

“DDS wants to do the right thing sustainability-wise — it’s a small step but a very important one,” Reed said.

According to Reed, DDS is participating in the Green Restaurants Association, a nonprofit organization that encourages restaurants and dining locations to meet green certification standards. Currently, the association has awarded the Class of 1953 SEE STRAWS PAGE 2

MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Red and white paper straws have replaced the plastic ones at all dining locations.

PAGE 2

Study examines stream temperatures at the Second College Grant B y JACOB CHALIF The Dartmouth

While most use the Second College Grant — a 27,000 acre area of land in Clarksville, New Hampshire — to canoe or fish, environmental studies professor Lauren Culler A&S’13 used its data to quantify the relationship between warming air temperatures and streams.

A recent Dartmouth-led study published in April found that an air temperature increase of one degree Celsius over five days corresponded to an increase in maximum daily stream temperature of 0.5 to 0.8 degrees Celsius, which could affect local ecosystems and brook trout populations. The study was published in April in science journal Freshwater Biology and was a collaboration between Dartmouth researchers and New Hampshire Fish and Game.

Culler, the study’s lead author and the science outreach coordinator at Dartmouth’s Institute of Arctic Studies, said she began working on the project in 2010 while she was a graduate student at Dartmouth working in the laboratory of biology professor Matt Ayres. Since 2001, Ayres had been collecting data on stream temperatures at the Second College Grant, which is home to the Dead Diamond River watershed, the largest watershed in New Hampshire and Maine.

At the time, Culler said she and Ayres began to discus potential research questions they could explore with “this really amazing dataset” and realized they could answer fundamental questions such as how stream temperature can vary with air temperature.

“In 2000 or so, we knew enough to understand the planet might be war ming up but what we didn’t know is how changes in air temperature would relate to changes in water temperature,” Ayres said. “In order to predict what the consequences would be for any scenario of air warming, we needed to understand what the relationships are between air temperature and water temperature.”

Culler said she spent the next three years analyzing the data. Due to the dataset’s magnitude, Culler enlisted undergraduates to work with her and build the model that was published in the paper.

She added the study is important not because it shows that streams

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

become warmer as air does, which is intuitive, but because her team was able to pin down to what extent air temperatures affect water temperatures.

“I think a lot of people could easily see the press release and think, ‘Well of course. If it’s warmer outside the water will be warmer,’” Culler said.

“But we wanted to know by how much the water is warmed. That’s what we were able to quantify using this long-term data set of hourly temperatures.”

Using the Second College Grant as a natural laboratory, Ayres said that quantifying the change in water temperatures is important because of the ways in which increased water temperature can affect the organisms that live in streams.

“The Second College Grant is a jewel of Dartmouth, of New Hampshire, really of the whole region,” he said. “The cold water streams at the Grant are home to book trout, spring salamanders and hundreds of species of beautiful aquatic insects. But the attributes of those ecosystems depend on it remaining cool, on cold-water streams remaining cold-water streams.”

Culler found that stream temperatures were buffered so they did not change as much as air temperatures do. For every degree Celsius in air temperature increase over several days, streams generally warm by 0.5 degrees to 0.8 degrees.

Even a buffered warming is alarming for the ecosystem, according to ecology graduate student Keith Fritschie. He added that increases in summer temperatures affect species like trout in three major ways: their growth and survival, life cycles and population dispersion.

According to the study, the Dead Diamond River watershed is home to the last self-sustaining native population of brook trout in New Hampshire and Vermont.

“Above a certain temperature threshold, you start to see pretty strong effects on the survivability of fish,” Fritschie said. “You could have larger die-offs because fish can’t really process the food they’re eating into growth. They can barely sustain their normal bodily functions.

There’s also a relationship between water temperature and the amount of oxygen it can hold. At some point, the water temperature gets so high that it doesn’t hold enough oxygen for fish to even breathe.”

He added that warmer waters will

stunt the growth of fish, which could decrease the number of offspring in a population.

Second, increased stream temperatures affects their phenology, which is the timing of different life history events like spawning and egg hatching. Warmer temperatures could lead to fish spawning later in the season, which in turn delays when those eggs hatch in the spring.

Third, warmer streams can potentially affect the connectivity of different populations within a watershed.

“In the same way dams or road crossings might fragment a river, temperature has the potential to have a separate populations,” he said.

One of Culler’s most interesting findings was that not all streams warm equally. Some streams — particularly smaller headwater streams, which are streams that are close to the source — are more resistant to increases in air temperature.

Ayres noted that this finding is important for trout’s ability to adapt to warming waters.

“In the Diamond River Watershed, there are a few tributary streams that stay cool even on the warmest days,” Ayres said. “We see trout using those as refuge habitats. We now have the ability to look at a watershed and identify the most likely location of these streams that can be refuges.

The population of trout within a 10 or 20 mile radius might depend on these few cold water streams.”

Preventing development in these areas could be a lesson that policymakers take away from this study, he said.

“If development or something happened to take away these cold water refuges, even though they’re not a very big percentage of the habitat, it could lead to a loss of the trout population in the area,” Ayres said.

Culler said that New Hampshire Fish and Game has put trackers on fish so they can keep track of where fish are. This will help officials think about how to allow access to different parts of streams, which can show which areas are cold water refuges.

Ayres said that this study should be a warning for people in New England.

“In New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, there’s a lot of places that used to have brook trout that don’t anymore,” Ayres said.

“This is largely due to warmer temperatures.”

CORRECTIONS We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth. com.

Students react to new paper straws

there that don’t melt or taste like cardboard like these do,” Huang Commons a three-star sustainability said.

Despite the discontent expressed certification level and the Courtyard Café two stars, out of an available by many students, Reed said that paper straws are here to stay. five, Reed said.

“We know that change is difficult He added that changes such as the transition to paper straws are to accept,” Reed said. “But every year part of the effort toward gaining a a new class of students matriculates higher certification level and making and regards these things to be the DDS locations as sustainable as they norm.”

In winter 2017, DDS transitioned can be.

According to Reed, he had from individual napkin dispensers originally put forth the idea in earlier on each table in dining locations conversations about how to make to larger wall-mounted dispensers.

DDS more sustainable and the idea This change evoked a similar was well-received. This past January, dissatisfaction from students.

Reed said that the transition he said he consulted DDS’s paper distributor about the possibility of from plastic to paper straws is a ordering samples of paper straws. As “small difference that can be easily soon as the distributor had samples absorbed” by students and staff at available in stock this spring, DDS the College.

“If you really feel that strongly ordered them, Reed said.

Replacement of plastic straws against paper straws, then you should with paper straws at DDS locations look into other options,” Reed said, has generated discontent among adding that perhaps a dislike of paper straws might encourage students to many students.

Geoffrey Huang ’19 said that invest in reusable straws.

“It is the right thing for Dartmouth while the paper straws are certainly more environmentally friendly, and our larger environment,” DDS they lack the necessary rigidity that food service director Jon Plodzik wrote in an email statement. “I hope traditional plastic straws offer.

“If you sip on it too long, it others will follow us and eliminate gets soaking wet — it’s just not as this unnecessary nuisance to beaches durable,” Huang said. “Sometimes and grounds.”

Not all students, however, are you taste the cardboard when you’re sipping your drink, which is definitely critical of the straw change.

“I think the importance of the not ideal.”

Eileen Xia ’21 said that while sustainability of the paper straws the paper straws are originally fairly outweighs the annoyance caused by rigid, once they are submerged in a the sogginess of the straws,” Lylia drink for a long enough period of Eng ’20 said.

Reed said that while paper straws time, they start to become soggy and cost a little more than plastic ones ineffective.

“It’s like eating paper and it’s — you can purchase seven plastic gross,” Xia said. “If you drink straws for every paper straw — the overall cost beverages is so small that q u i c k l y, t h e “I think the the additional sustainability cost is easy to might outweigh importance of the justify, especially t h e t e x t u r a l sustainability of g i ve n D D S ’s difficulties. If the paper straws commitment to you sip slowly, outweighs the ongoing efforts then no.” in increasing A c c o r d i n g annoyance caused by sustainability. to Huang, some One paper straw students have the sogginess of the costs only two been collecting straws.” cents, he said. straws from Reed King Arthur noted that the Flour — a non- -LYLIA ENG ’20 tr a n s i t i o n to DDS affiliated paper straws is food location — in order to save them and avoid paper only one small step in the direction of increased sustainability. According straws provided at DDS locations.

Xia said that DDS should to him, ongoing efforts by DDS to introduce “sippy” lids that do increase environmentalism include not require straws, which would expanding the Green-2-Go option eliminate the straw controversy to the Courtyard Café, encouraging reusable bags at Collis Market and altogether.

“I don’t think good straws and implementing reusable takeout sustainability are mutually exclusive silverware kits instead of plastic — there has to be paper straws out utensils.

FROM STRAWS PAGE 1

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

PAGE 3

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

Alumnae encouraged to donate

or more to the College so far. In will proceed in. comparison, four women donated at The Dartmouth Hall renovation The focus of the current initiative is least $1 million during Dartmouth’s initiatives will encourage alumnae to have women previous capital campaign, groups — like groups of friends or reach across ended in 2010, sports teams — to donate as a group, “We have a lot of which c l a s s ye a r s Anderson said.

Hribar said. There will be ways to and encourage work to do, but T h e C o l l e g e name specific classrooms and parts each other to we’re seeing that will encourage women to of the building after communities give to the donate by word of mouth, alumnae find important.

College, Laine women are giving Racca said.

“I’ve gotten great feedback from said. “ We ’ve b e e n people that I’ve seen in person, and at all levels, not Like the reaching out to individuals, I know that the Dartmouth folks just $100,000.”

Centennial but also things like the press who are going out and talking to C i r c l e, t h e release and mentioning donors are getting great feedback ... e m p h a s i s -MINDI LAINE, it at the kickoff parties We’re already seeing the momentum on alumnae were meant building giving in the DIRECTOR OF THE to help get over the c a m p a i g n CENTENNIAL CIRCLE the word out “This wasn’t Dartmouth came from about these something that Hall fund,” alumnae of initiatives,” she said. the College.

Hribar said. Dartmouth said “There’s a “To me, the “ W e ’ r e ‘We’ve got a really limited thing that I am trying to number of excited by in these initiatives is that reach out to different marketing ploy and women who they came from us,” said a founder affinity groups — we want you to help can give at of the Centennial Circle and one of really all the avenues sell it.” that level, the alumnae driving the initiative we have — to help get and that’s Caroline Hribar ’00. “This wasn’t the message out and not the only something that Dartmouth said ask them to be a part -CAROLINE HRIBAR g o a l . I t ’s ‘We’ve got this marketing ploy and of this.” about getting ’00, FOUNDER OF THE we want you to help sell it.’”

According to the entire According to vice president for Racca, there will be CENTENNIAL CIRCLE community communications at the College some direct marketing, to give a gift Justin Anderson, 53 alumnae and but the campaign has of any size to widows of Dartmouth alumni have not figured out in help rebuild committed to donations of $1 million which form this direct marketing Dartmouth Hall.”

STUDENTS PUT ON THE BRAKES

FROM CENTENNIAL PAGE 1

MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

As the weather has gotten warmer, students can now ride their bikes again.

STRESS-RELIEF ON THE GREEN

MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Students take some time to soak in the sun.

PAGE 4

DARTMOUTHEVENTS TODAY

THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS

THE ART SEES LIFE

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

DAVID VELONA ’21

12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.

Lunch: “Dartmouth Energy Collaborative Pizza Lunch,” student reflections on Dartmouth’s energy immersion trip to Appalachia, Occom Commons, Goldstein Hall

4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Presentation: “Using Computational Methods to Understand What Ancient Fingerprints Reveal About Labor Practices,” with assistant professor of Classics Julie Hruby, Haldeman 41

4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Lecture: “The Consumption and Rejection of Blackness in Contemporary Spain,” with Marquette University assistant professor Jeffrey Coleman ‘08, Rockefeller 002

TOMORROW

3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Lecture: “Halfway home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration,” with University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration professor Reuben Jonathan Miller, Rockefeller 002

8:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

Film: “The Death of Stalin,” directed by Armando Iannucci, Loew Auditorium, Black Family Visual Arts Center

8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

Play: “HAIR,” student honors project by Virginia Ogden ‘18, Moore Theater, Hopkins Center for the Arts

FROM RICHARDS PAGE 7

individual member constituencies. Thus, voters can select both a party they want to form the government in Holyrood and an individual candidate whom they wish to serve as their individual representative.

It’s not perfect, but an America with both individual representation and proportional representation of the kind that broke the two-party system would be ideal. Of course, the average U.S. House member represents 711,000 constituents, hardly denoting local representation.

Truth be told, it’s next to impossible for a country the size of the United States to have an effective representative system. Electoral reform must be

pioneered at the state level. Vermont and Maine, always innovative, could step to the fore in this matter. But of course, the better solution might be to take another lesson from Europe. A bloc of affiliated states, a union with common guaranteed rights and trade arrangements, might be a better long-term solution for this country than a federal state. A Commonwealth of New England, reformed Kingdom of Hawaii, California Republic or Carolinian Federation might be better able to ensure the representation of their populaces. Perhaps a Republic of the Yucatan, a Quebec Republic or an Acadian state could even join. Maybe they’d find better and unique ways to elect representatives.

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THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

Substance-free housing draw changes

sub-free housing, but I also thought gets quite complicated if there are that it seemed pretty useful that only 12 people picking from six Available data on the results of you didn’t have to worry about different rooms, trying to match room draw is consistent with past figuring out which room to take up the gender,” she added. “We’ve years in terms of participation or anything,” Forrest said. “You just decided to manually make the and room trends, according to an applied and room assignments email statement from director of the housing and take into undergraduate housing Rachael office sorted “We’ve just decided consideration Class-Giguere. She wrote that i t o u t f o r to manually make the people’s roommate more seniors than normal opted you.” and room assignments and preferences for two-room doubles, but added Application roommate groups.” that it has been a trend over the numbers to take into consideration Although the past five years.

Dartmouth’s people’s roommate selection process A major change for this year’s LLCs have for next year’s LLC room draw process, however, lies r e m a i n e d preferences and room assignments in the method for assigning rooms r e l a t i v e l y roommate groups.” has not changed, in substance-free housing. In the c o n s t a n t the actual housing past, students were able to select f r o m p a s t plan is slightly their own rooms on substance- y e a r s ’ , -KATHARINA DAUB, different from free floors, but this year students a c c o r d i n g ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF this year, Daub were asked to indicate their to associate said. T his past preference for substance-free ahead director of RESIDENTIAL EDUCATION year, some of the of the general room draw process. re s i d e n t i a l FOR LIVING LEARNING communities were If accepted into substance-free e d u c a t i o n housed in the North PROGRAMS AND housing, students were assigned f o r l i v i n g Park apartments a room on a substance-free floor l e a r n i n g ACADEMIC INITIATIVES r at h e r t h a n i n and were then unable to enter p r o g r a m s the McLaughlin their house community’s general a n d Cluster due to the room draw. Rowan wrote that this a c a d e m i c large size of the change was made in an effort to initiatives K atharina Daub. class of 2021. allow students for whom substance- Roughly 10 to 15 percent of each I n t h e c o m i n g ye a r, a l l free housing is a class will be communities will be housed in priority to have “We will see how well living in an LLC McLaughlin except for the eight a better chance in the coming stand-alone communities, the Max o f r e c e i v i n g things worked overall year, which is Kade German Center and the a s u b s t a n c e - once students are standard, she Hillel LLC, Daub said. free room said.

“Last spring, when we did this living on these floors assignment.

D a u b process, everything was supposed “ O ve r t h e and make adjustments a d d e d t h a t to be in McLaughlin. Then in midpast few years, as needed for next most applicants May, we found out that the size of there were got their first the incoming first-year class was students who year.” p r e f e r e n c e very large,” Daub said. “We decided indicated they LLC. that the extra first-year beds would were interested T h i s be well served to be in McLaughlin, -ELICIA ROWAN, in substanceye a r m a rk e d so we shifted some upper-class free to increase ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR t h e s e c o n d Living Learning Communities into t h e i r o d d s OF UNDERGRADUATE time that room the North Park apartments for one of getting a a s s i g n m e n t s year. Now that’s all going back.” p a r t i c u l a r HOUSING w i t h i n L LC s This shift allowed for the room type or were made by addition of more apartment options location,” wrote Rowan. “We had hand rather than through online for seniors. students for whom substance-free selection. Because acceptance into a “For the upcoming year we housing was a priority who we were LLC is binding, the new assignment moved [some] LLCs back to not able to get into substance-free s y s t e m w o r k s McLaughlin locations during room draw. This better than an “For the upcoming and opened year, students had to choose what online LLC room [those] spaces year we moved their preference was ahead of draw in which up during time.” students choose [some] LLCs back the senior Rowan added that while she their own rooms, to McLaughlin and apartment does not yet have specific numbers said Daub, who room draw,” related to substance-free housing, is responsible for opened those spaces Rowan wrote. she thought that the housing office making the room up during senior “Apartments has received fewer complaints so far a s s i g n m e n t s have been apartment room from students who were not able to w i t h i n L L C s very popular get into substance-free housing. once she receives draw.” with seniors, “We will see how well things t h e l i s t s o f so these worked overall once students are who has been additional living on these floors and make a c c e p t e d i n t o -ELICIA ROWAN, apartments adjustments as needed for next each community. ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR were added year,” Rowan said.

Daub said that to the two OF UNDERGRADUATE Delilah Forrest ’21, who applied students applying N o r t h Pa rk for substance-free housing, said that to LLCs are still HOUSING apartments she appreciated the convenience of able to indicate previously being automatically assigned to a r o o m m a t e offered (10 room on a substance-free floor. preferences. and 16 North Park), the Ledyard “I applied for sub-free housing “It used to be that folks would apartments, and Maxwell and because I actually wanted to be in pick their rooms digitally, but it Channing Cox apartments.”

FROM HOUSING PAGE 1

PAGE 5

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STAFF COLUMNIST MATTHEW MAGANN ‘21

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST SAJID AHSAN ‘20

They’re Laughing at Us

Uncivilized Civility

America’s foreign policy is failing in the age of Trump.

President Donald Trump has made a grand show of the Iran nuclear deal. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often referred to by its acronym JCPOA, enjoys broad international support. The JCPOA isn’t perfect, but it includes about as many concessions as the Iranians are willing to give. So far, the deal has worked, significantly decreasing Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons. And let’s not forget: the alternative to the JCPOA is not a better deal. The alternative is an unchecked Iran on a rapid path to a nuclear bomb.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration ignored all that. The president, seemingly unconcerned about the real-world impacts of his decision, caved to populist demands and abandoned the deal. Trump’s reckless move obliterated decades of diplomacy, putting Iran back on the path to nuclear weapons and the Middle East one step closer to war. The administration seems all too eager to go back on its word and compromise its national security because, frankly, the Iran deal has become a buzzword in domestic politics.

The Trump administration lacks any coherent foreign policy vision, preferring to throw out policy haphazardly as a means of building support. Of course, a number of America’s foreign Service officers, State Department experts and others still work to maintain our global standing, and for that they deserve immense praise. At the highest level, though, foreign policy has become a mere tool to build domestic support for the administration.

Consider Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Of all the nations of the world, only Guatemala and Israel itself have followed America’s lead. There’s good reason for that: Trump’s declaration threatened the viability of the two-state solution, and did nothing but inflame the already tense situation between Israelis and Palestinians. America’s long-held policy advocates two states, Israel and Palestine, coexisting in peace. Accordingly, despite domestic pressure to move the embassy, former presidents from both parties consistently refused to do so. They understood that the move, though popular within the U.S., would exacerbate conflict in the region and hurt the interests of America and its allies.

Unfortunately, popular support for an

embassy move never went away. And unlike past presidents, who resisted domestic pressure in order to further American goals, Trump caved in.

Trump’s Jerusalem declaration undermined decades of U.S. policy and jeopardized America’s role as a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians. Of course, Trump presumably cared more about the pro-Israel image it gave him within the U.S. That sort of foreign policy, the kind which undertakes damaging actions abroad in order to curry domestic support, is incredibly dangerous for America.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy seems to be a reaction to popular buzzwords — end the Iran deal, support Israel, stop Assad, destroy ISIS — without much broader strategic vision. The administration launches missle strikes against Assad because the optics of inaction are bad. Yet Trump and his advisors don’t follow that up with any long-term strategy.

Soon after, America turns to withdrawing from the JCPOA, a move that strengthens Iran and by extension its ally the Assad regime. This sort of haphazard, mob-rule foreign policy is intensely dangerous, both for its victims abroad and for the United States. Even as the American economy and military carry on, U.S. soft power diminishes with every irrational, soundbite-driven policy decision.

Today, with the rise of China, Russia’s increasing belligerence and a rapidly escalating Saudi-Iranian conflict that threatens to engulf the Middle East, America can hardly afford to surrender its mantle of global leadership. These years mark a significant challenge to the postCold War international order, yet under the current administration America is not there to defend itself or its values. President Trump campaigned on the false notion that other countries were “laughing at us” for America’s ineptness. That statement was clearly false at the time, but today it may just ring true.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy blunders, including withdrawing from the JCPOA, have critically gravely compromised America’s global standing. The erosion of the U.S.’s international standing, more so than the endless scandals and crude remarks, may well be the most damaging legacy of the Trump administration.

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ISSUE

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

LAYOUT: Anthony Robles

SUBMISSIONS: We welcome letters and guest columns. All submissions must include the author’s name and affiliation with Dartmouth

College, and should not exceed 250 words for letters or 700 words for columns. The Dartmouth reserves the right to edit all material before publication. All material submitted becomes property of The Dartmouth. Please email submissions to editor@thedartmouth.com.

A fixation on elite-driven civility in politics hamstrings discourse.

The current political moment is mired in vulgarity, partly engendered by the election of a walking parody of a reality show host notorious for sexual indiscretions to the presidency following a campaign that started by calling Mexican immigrants rapists. It isn’t particularly difficult to see why calls for a return to dignity ring true in the minds of many Americans. This is especially true for a certain class of educated liberals who are largely shielded from the cruelest policies now being enacted by federal and state agencies throughout the country. For these people, the deepest defining characteristic of the Trump era is a sense of embarrassment, the profound humiliation of waking up every morning to some fresh bizarre horror and thinking, “we lost to this.”

Capitalizing on this raw indignation, a coterie of frowning, extremely serious media personalities have staked their claim over political discourse, mourning the death of the great American tradition of decency in politics.

The new ideal to have is “civility,” the notion that petty ideological differences are transcended by a sense of abiding mutual civic respect. This has very little to do, of course, with anything this administration or its eager enablers in Congress and in state governments are actually doing. In fact, the ideological spectrum of these warriors for niceness spans from the usual Democratic Party operatives and talking heads to figures with politics functionally identical to those of the President, whose only real gripe is with the crassness with which the message is delivered, rather than with the content. This has included the rehabilitation in the liberal mind of individuals like David Frum and Max Boot, who rose to prominence during the George W. Bush years for their cheerleading of the disastrous and illegal invasion of Iraq. Even Bush himself has seen his image whitewashed in the wake of Trump’s election. Disagree with his policies, the refrain goes, but he had the dignity befitting the office.

America’s grand civility, it seems, does not extend to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the invasion.

What the lamentations about this loss of decency all ignore, whether willfully or not, is that for a great many, both at home and abroad, American politics have never been civil.

Chalking up the ills of this historical moment to a lack of bipartisanship or a culture of disrespect as is common in the op-ed pages of notable publications betrays an approach to public affairs more concerned with politics as a social club than with the material consequences the actions our government have on human lives. Time and time again, it is made abundantly clear that civility in politics is reserved for individuals of great wealth and power, never actually extending to the people whose lives depend on their decisions. Politicians who accomplish the bare minimum of speaking in complete sentences without embarking on bizarre, offensive tangents demand respect and admiration, whatever the cost of their actions may be. It is markedly less common to see commentators opining on the lack of civility shown to, say, immigrant families torn apart by ICE or poor people suffering from the gutting of social welfare policies.

On a campus as wealthy and as privileged as Dartmouth, students’ engagement with politics often occurs on a level largely detached from the realities faced by most people, a trend reflected in a political culture dominated by graduates of similarly elite institutions. This often leads to an attitude that treats political views as aesthetic affectations. At its least malignant, this notion leads to frivolous media nonsense, like the interminable debate over whether standup comedians are too mean to presidents and their staff — a mind-numbingly inconsequential argument that seems to consume news media once every 10 years or so — or the entire cottage industry of op-eds about how people should be nicer to op-ed columnists they don’t like. At its most pernicious however, this tendency to adhere to a very specific sort of cultivated politeness has a chilling effect on meaningful discussion with regards to the actual substance of politics. While the cry of “political correctness” has become commonplace on the Right, referring largely to the fact that there are now marginally more consequences for open bigotry, it seems the discourse surrounding the term rarely considers the actual dynamics of power. In reality, the most entrenched form of political correctness in American politics, and the most insidious, is this: an emphasis on civility and polite social relations between the privileged few able to participate in the political conversation, rather than on accountability, hinders this nation’s ability to honestly confront the human cost of its policies.

During the efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, every honest analysis of the proposed Republican replacement bill noted that the loss of healthcare by over 20 million Americans as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office would translate into tens of thousands of deaths. It is a rigorously researched fact that lack of health insurance results in drastically worse health outcomes and consequently, significantly higher mortality rates, particularly for the disabled. However, it was still considered somehow indecent or hysterical to make the clear assessment that this plan made a tradeoff of the lives of the most vulnerable for the enrichment of a select few, as if this was leveling accusations of murder at its architects rather than an honest appraisal of its effects.

There is still the notion that it is somehow gauche to point out the researched deleterious effects of policy, whether they be the documented fact that austerity policies in England have been linked to needless deaths for the poor or that climate change denial on the part of elected officials is having a devastating effect on the planet. It is almost as if such things are impolite topics of dinner conversation, as if any attempt to meaningfully reckon with the impact of the decisions made in the halls of power is an attack on the honor of one’s fellow guests. Politics, of course, is not a dinner party; for the people on the margins, politics is life and death. Any standard of politeness that asks people to ignore suffering for the sake of courtesy is not civility at all, but brutality adorned in a laced bow. If one must be “uncivil” to be civilized, so be it. Any commitment to politics truly based on respect for human dignity demands it.

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

PAGE 7

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST CALLUM ZEHNER ‘21

SENIOR STAFF COLUMNIST PARKER RICHARDS ‘18

The Empire Strikes Back

Last Past the Post

In its current form, the Commonwealth is meaningless.

There is certainly something endearing own irrelevance. To illustrate, when surveyed, about the notion of a group of geographically- a quarter of Jamaicans believed that the disparate nations coming together to perform head of the organization was Barack Obama broad values-based activities. And against a rather than Queen Elizabeth. And, in general, growing trend of inward-looking nationalism, Commonwealth citizens do not know what the the Commonwealth of Nations certainly has organization actually does or what it stands for a distinct appeal. However, although it should — half of Britons and Canadians were found presumably be considered a paragon of grand to be unable to name a single Commonwealth multilateralism, the Commonwealth is effectively activity. The only time when the coalition of powerless in its current state. The organization states truly receives any prolonged attention are puportedly has two aims: advancing democracy the quadrennial Commonwealth Games, and and human rights and aiding economic that hardly merits the continuance of the bloc. development. It struggles to do either, and it The Commonwealth’s lack of fame or must be reformed for there to be any reason to substantive impact on the global stage can keep it. be at least partially attributed to a scarcity of To be fair, the Commonwealth has had its funding. The U.K., the largest economy in the good moments. It assisted in group, contributes only spearheading a slew of strict “...In general, 0.07 percent of its sanctions on South Africa annual international Commonwealth in 1986, helping to cripple development budget to the the Apartheid regime. It citizens do not know Commonwealth Fund for drafted the new constitution what the organization Technical Cooperation. of Swaziland and created The CFTC’s total annual an independent electoral actually does or what budget was a measly $40 commission for Cameroon. it stands for — half of million in 2017, dwarfed Its impact on trade is also the European Union’s Britons and Canadians by fairly positive, with it being annual spending of $100 estimated that the members’ were found to be billion on economic common language and legal unable to name a development. As another systems reduce the cost of point of comparison, doing business within the single Commonwealth the size of the entire bloc by 20 percent. And activity.”

Commonwealth the coalition itself remains Secretariat staff is smaller broadly popular, with those than the number working from developing member states more likely to at the cafeteria at the United Nations headquarters. favor it. This popularity is evident in the long list Having the resources to expand operations would of countries hoping to join the body, including allow the bloc significantly more clout in the Burma, Ireland and Kuwait. international system.

Yet, despite its positive aspects, the Treacherously, the Commonwealth is often Commonwealth is inherently flawed. Firstly, fundamentally viewed as a conspicuous attempt the organization has proved itself impotent in by the U.K. to cling onto some former imperial dealing with states that are either undemocratic prestige. This has certainly affected relations or perpetrating human rights violations. For within the group, with President Yahya Jammeh example, the 2013 Commonwealth Summit removing Gambia from the institution in 2013, in Colombo was rife with controversy as it was referring to it as a “neo-colonialist institution.” conducted by Sri Lankan president Mahinda Many of the more recently added member states Rajapaksa, a man charged with committing have taken issue with the perceived dominance of atrocities in the country’s civil war. As a result, the “white” countries — chiefly the U.K., Canada the leaders of multiple nations refused to and Australia. This notion of mellow imperialism attend. In addition, the fact that Brunei, ruled is only compounded by the fact that the Queen by the firm hand of Sultan Bolkiah, is included remains the figurehead, with Prince Charles as among the member states is a testament to the her likely successor. Yet the dominant developing institution’s flexible definition of democracy. countries — such as India and Nigeria — appear Beyond this, however, it is obvious that a plethora consistently unwilling to take up larger roles in the of abuses have been perpetrated by many of coalition. the 53 member states over the years, such as the In the wake of the Brexit referendum, many anti-sodomy laws in Malawi and Gambia, that in the U.K. have held up the Commonwealth the Commonwealth has simply chosen not to to be the ideal replacement for the E.U., calling recognize, let alone condemn. for revived ties with old associates. Yet seeing It is because it lacks the ability to enforce its an expanded role for the Commonwealth is ideals of democracy and human rights that the incredibly ambitious. At the moment, the coalition organization can only go so far in pursuing them. is, at best, a roundtable that gives a louder voice As the member states have no legal obligations to smaller nations dotted around the globe. to one another, the Commonwealth’s only tool Ultimately, the bloc lacks money and influence for coercion is suspension of members, which and even defies its primary objective of pursuing is often ineffective. This can be seen in the fact democracy and human rights. Put simply, the that Zimbabwe was pushed into withdrawing in Commonwealth has a tremendous amount of 2002 — over violence-marred elections — yet potential, and could do well by all of its members.

Robert Mugabe continued to govern unhindered If it reforms, may it become a major force. But as President until only last year. until then, at least people have the Commonwealth The Commonwealth also struggles with its Games to keep them entertained.

It’s time to change the American voting system.

In the United States, as in many Anglophone countries, each voter lives within a legislative district and is awarded one vote. The voter then casts that vote for a candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Each district elects one member, has one vote in the given legislative body. It’s simple enough. It sounds good, too.

But there are problems. The system, called first-past-the-post, is inherently biased toward a two-party status quo. When only one candidate can win, and the highest vote getter is the winner, there is an incentive for voters to group together into unwieldy coalitions to support otherwise undesireable candidates. It’s why libertarian businessmen and evangelical Christians both back the Republican candidate while centrist liberals and trade unionists do the same for a Democrat.

And if there are more than two parties, disproportionality ensues. This is measured by the Gallagher index, which documents the discrepancy between votes cast and seats won.

One infamous example is the United Kingdom’s 1983 general election. The Social Democratic Party-Liberal Party Alliance won 25.4 percent of the vote and 3.5 percent of seats in Parliament while the Labour Party took 27.6 percent of the vote and 32.2 percent of parliamentary seats.

The Gallagher index score was 20.62; a score of five or less is generally considered acceptably proportional. And while the 1983 United Kingdom election was extreme, it remains hardly alone in being highly disproportionate. The 2015 Canadian federal election saw a Gallagher score of 12.02; the 2012 Queensland state election boasted a mammoth score of 31.16; and even the 2010 United Kingdom general election — the last in that country that has truly been a multi-party affair — saw a score of 15.57.

And it isn’t just national races. The recent United Kingdom local elections saw the same trend; for instance, the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames boasted a Gallagher disproportionality score of over 23 — the Liberal Democrats won 72.2 percent of the seats from 46.69 percent of the vote. In the United States, the problem looks a bit different; with only two major parties, immediate disproportionately is rarely the issue (the last U.S. House election in 2016 had a score of 7.16). The issue is less disproportionalily — though gerrymandering creates a substantial problem in this regard — than lack of choice.

Because first-past-the-post shepherds voters into only two camps, voters lose options.

Some would argue that the primary system ameliorates these problems. Never mind that many states restrict primary voting to members of certain parties or that the entire process costs the taxpayer massive sums. Or that primaries tend to undermine the interests of the average voter when candidates cater to the extreme wings of their own parties. Then there is the uniquely American problem of parties nominating, via primaries, candidates that they do not officially support or otherwise fail to advance their ideals in the best way possible. Missouri’s Todd Akin and Alabama’s Roy Moore are notable recent examples.

But there are also obvious problems with purely proportional systems. Israel and the Netherlands use the most extremely proportional systems of any functioning democracy. Both treat their entire

countries as single parliamentary constituencies.

Parties put forward a list of candidates, voters pick a party — and can sometimes rank candidates within a party’s list — and the proportion of seats won almost exactly matches the proportion of votes cast for the party. At the 2017 Dutch election, the ardently Calvinist Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij won 2.1 percent of votes and thus received two percent of seats. But voters would vote for the party, not the candidates within that party.

In Anglosopheric politics, which tend to be highly personalized, the inability to denote preferred candidates is a drawback.

Lack of regional representation is also an issue in those countries that lack geographic constituencies. Some, like the Nordic countries, use party list voting but have individual constituencies, with some seats left over to “level” the parties to the national vote share. Thus, if a party received 10 percent of the vote nationally but only eight percent of the seats in parliament through constituencies, it would receive additional seats to get its representation into line with its vote share. Other countries, like Ireland, forsake some element of proportionately in favor of individuality. Irish voters rank candidates in constituencies of three to five members, each one voting for a first preference, second preference, third preference and so on. If a voter’s first preference choice receives the fewest votes, she is eliminated and the vote moves to the second preference candidate. This is done until five candidates meet a quota and are elected.

The problem with the Irish system — which was substantively simplified above — is that it is absurdly complex and quite mathematically challenging. Candidates can often win with vote shares that end in fractions of a vote when surplus votes are redistributed. It gains both individuality and a degree of proportionality — the Gallagher index remained an unacceptably high 8.50 — while sacrificing voter understandability and also tending to give rise to candidates with local popularity at the expense of national programs.

So perhaps the best system is that used in the devolved Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and the similar mixed-member proportional scheme used in New Zealand. Both use first-past-the-post — to an extent. Voters in each country get two votes: the first for a person, the second for a party. Say, for instance, a Scottish voter lived in St. Andrews, a town in the first-pastthe-post constituency of North East Fife. North East Fife is one of nine seats that together comprise the larger electoral region of Mid Scotland and Fife, which elects an additional seven party list members of Parliament. This voter might support, say, a Liberal Democrat candidate for his home seat but want the Green Party to emerge the largest overall, and would thus vote for the latter party for the regional list.

In this system, the seats that a party “should” win based on its vote share in the region are calculated and the seats actually won in first-pastthe-post seats are subtracted. Thus, although the Scottish National Party won eight of the nine first-past-the-post seats, it received no additional member seats. The additional seats thus go to those parties that deserved them based on their party list results but did not in fact win seats in the SEE RICHARDS PAGE 4

PAGE 8

THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

‘Citrus,’ a compelling choreopoem, celebrates black women certain standard. “[Different ethnic groups] definitely The Dartmouth Staff didn’t use the same fabric,” she said.

This past weekend, the Hopkins “They may have had different closures Center for the Arts featured “Citrus,” or that kind of thing … There are so an original choreopoem by studio art many niches within that for different major Celeste Jennings ’18. “Citrus” ethnic groups, which is fascinating to details the struggles of black women me.” in America from the mid-nineteenth “Citrus” was also unique for century to the present day. its all-female production team, a Jennings is a Senior Fellow, choice Jennings made purposefully. which means she Ashley Dotson spent her senior ’18, the lighting year working on “[The poem ‘Hands’] designer for a project that goes is really special to me, “Citrus,” had beyond traditional already worked just because I’m tryclassroom with Jennings learning. “Citrus” ing to give life to these on several is a culmination women, the women in p ro d u c t i o n s o f Je n n i n g s ’s b e f o r e long-term work my family who were “Citrus.” They in the theater slaves. I feel like I did first discussed department as a t h e p ro j e c t justice to it.” costume designer las t s pring, and in Soul and Dotson Scribes as a poet. -CELESTE JENNINGS ’18 found herself Jennings started fascinated as the writing process she watched for “Citrus” by Jennings’ revisiting all of her old poems and concept become a reality throughout compiling them. the year.

“The first version of the play was “It was really neat to see what she’d literally me getting all of my Soul produced, knowing the brainchild that Scribes poems and putting them it was when I talked to her about it together in a word document,” last spring,” Dotson said. “To hear Jennings said. “It was very different her voice come through in the play from what ‘Citrus’ is now, but they was a really great thing.” were a great starting point for me.”

Dotson was also excited to be a The result was 20 spoken poems part of a project shedding light on and voice-overs inspired by historical the experiences and individuality of events and personal stories, many of black women. which were autobiographical. The “It was really important for poemswereperformedbyninewomen, [Jennings] to include different people’s all of them embodying different roles stories,” she said. “[‘Citrus’] does a or characters throughout the piece. good job of trying to not construct a Jennings’ goal was to celebrate black singular narrative.” women and validate their narratives.

One of Jennings’s favorite poems in “I was really just trying to create “Citrus” is “Hands,” which featured a homage for black women of the Sam West ’20 as a pre-emancipation past, present and future, because this slave picking cotton. While writing the life doesn’t always care or love us,” piece, Jennings did extensive research she said. “I wanted to create a space into the time period to better represent where people who do or don’t identify the emotions and complexities that as that can come and for a moment defined enslaved black women. feel safe.”

“It’s really special to me, just Jennings also designed the costumes because I’m trying to give life to these for “Citrus,” a process in which she women, the women in my family who has gained expertise through her were slaves,” she said. “I feel like I did experiences working at the costume justice to it.” shop. Her design process included Jennings also loved “Fifteen,” a extensive research of the intersection voiceoverpoemabouttheshortcomings of fashion and history, particularly in of the Fifteenth Amendment. Many regards to women of color. Jennings women were unsatisfied with the found it interesting that the sources she passing of the Fifteenth Amendment used to research the styles of the period because it didn’t give them any rights, portrayed fashion as conforming to a Jennings said.

By SAVANNAH MILLER

Lexi Warden ’21 was one of the nine women cast in the show and recorded “Fifteen” for Jennings. She was drawn to the show partly because of the production’s direction, since a show with a completely female production team is so rare. For Warden, another major appeal of participating in the project was the play’s content.

“We’re in a time right now where people are realizing that we’re telling the same stories,” she said. “I think that [Jennings’] piece brings a new voice to the table.”

After the shows this weekend, Jennings was taken aback by how well audience-goers received her play.

COURTESY OF ROB STRONG “I wasn’t prepared for the positive Shown in the above photo are Jennings (front) and the members of the cast. feedback I got from the play or for the audience to respond in the emotional way that they did,” Jennings said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Warden is hopeful that the audience’s positive response to the piece will keep them going to the theater to support stories like the ones contained within “Citrus.”

“In order to make our art a more diverse space and have more voices be heard, it needs to be supported,” Warden said. “I hope [people] see things like this and realize how incredible it is. It needs to keep happening.”

Dotson said she was just happy that black women were finally given a place to speak and be celebrated.

“It’s a narrative that is definitely underrepresented at Dartmouth,” Dotson said. These experiences and COURTESY OF ROB STRONG these people are still valid, and they still In “Hands,” Sam West ’20 portrayed a pre-emancipation slave picking cotton. deserve to be heard. We are here. We are equals. We all have our different stories, and they should all be shared.”

Other responses to “Citrus” that Jennings was not expecting was the way her poems affected cast members and the sense of community the show created.

“This piece was mine for a really long time,” she said. “All of a sudden, when we started rehearsing, I felt like it was no longer mine, but all of these beautiful women’s. I think the audience got a taste of that.”

Overall, Jennings hopes that her piece resonated with all audience members, especially black women who have identified with the experiences contained within “Citrus.”

“I hope they can be in that safe space, and at least for the 90 minutes of the show, feel like they are absolutely important and do anything they want, COURTESY OF ROB STRONG because they can,” Jennings said.

Nashe Mutenda ’20 (right) dramatized the experience of the Little Rock Nine.