THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
VOL. CLXXVI NO. 63
SUNNY HIGH 72 LOW 44
OPINION
HILL-WELD: PRETENDING TO CARE PAGE 6
JONES: END THE HOUSE SYSTEM PAGE 7
ADELBERG: DIVEST IS NOT GREEN PAGE 7
ARTS
TELLURIDE AT DARTMOUTH BRINGS HIGHLY ANTICIPATED FILMS TO CAMPUS PAGE 8
FOLLOW US ON
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COPYRIGHT © 2019 THE DARTMOUTH, INC.
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
College endowment grows to $5.7 billion
Students allowed to select names, pronouns and identities online
Dartmouth’s endowment grew by 7.5 percent over the last fiscal year, bringing its total value to a new high of $5.7 billion, the College announced on Tuesday. The return rate for the fiscal year ending in June 2019 is a slight decrease from the one-year return rates over the previous two years, which came in at 14.6 percent in FY 2017 and 12.2 percent in FY 2018. However, over the last 10 years, the endowment has seen an overall return rate of 10.7 percent. In the past fiscal year, the College spent over $250 million
Students will be able to choose their preferred name and pronouns on the Darthub information site.
B y THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
from the endowment for its annual operating budget — a roughly five-percent distribution rate. In a College press release, Board of Trustee member and investment committee chair Rick Kimball ’78 said the endowment’s growth will help Dartmouth maintain its long-term educational goals. “This strong performance will help keep Dartmouth on a solid footing for future generations,” Kimball said in the release. Another story with more information will be published in the near future.
Title IX office adds two new coordinators B y REILLY OLINGER The Dartmouth
The Title IX office doubled in size in July with the hiring of two new coordinators: Sophia Brelvi as deputy Title IX coordinator for training and Gary Sund as Title IX deputy coordinator for response. Brelvi and Sund will join Title IX coordinator Kristi Clemens and administrative assistant Ruth Kett. Clemens, who has served as Dartmouth's Title IX coordinator since last
year, said the decision to hire new staff will help create a greater capacity to assist the community. With the addition of Brelvi and Sund, the office has tripled its capacity for intake, according to Clemens. “Establishing one deputy T i t l e I X c o o r d i n a t o r specifically for response and one specifically to do all the training helps to break up the work of the office, and frees me up to do more higher level SEE TITLE IX PAGE 5
MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
B y ARIELLE BEAK The Dartmouth Staff
S t a r t i n g t h i s t e r m , Dartmouth students will now have the option to use their preferred name, pronouns and gender identity on DartHub, the College’s student information website. Under Dartmouth’s new Chosen Name and Identity initiative, a student’s chosen names, pronouns and gender identity will then be used across campus resources, except in situations where the College is required to use students’ legal names. According to registrar Meredith Braz, the College’s senior administration began d i s c u s s i n g t h e n e e d t o
give students autonomy in their identity on campus starting in 2006, but the College lacked the online infrastructure to support the changes. Dartmouth did allow transgender and gender non-binary students to request that their IDs and directory listings include their preferred name starting in 2007. When DartHub replaced the online system Banner last year, the College formed a policy group to discuss the details and to move forward with the initiative, according to Braz. Under the new policy, any student, not just trans and non-binary students, can change their names a n d p ro n o u n s, s u ch a s
international students who go by Anglicized names, as well as individuals who may go by nicknames or middle names. “It’s super exciting as someone who goes by my middle name to not have to explain that I don’t actually go by my name to every p ro f e s s o r a n d d i f f e re n t clubs,” said Thomas Clark ’22. “It’s so empowering and makes my life so much easier.” The number of students utilizing this new online feature has been steady thus far, with at least one person a day changing their name through the system, SEE DARTHUB PAGE 3
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
DDS implements changes to Courtyard and Novack Cafés B y BLAKE MCGILL
The Dartmouth Staff
As students and faculty members embark on a new school year at the College, Dartmouth Dining Services is rolling out reforms at the Courtyard Café and Novack Café. While the Courtyard Café in the Hopkins Center is well-known across campus for its made-to-order meals, students have complained for years about its long lines. In an effort to shorten wait times, DDS has created and implemented an online ordering system that allows students to preorder meals from the Courtyard Café. DDS director Jon Plodzik said that administrators have been working on the project for over a year, implementing suggestions from an online survey filled out by students and a dining committee composed of students that meets at least once per term. Plodzik said DDS has always discussed potential solutions to long lines. DDS took note from Tuck Business School, which utilizes the GET app for food ordering. “I loved the idea of us using technology to improve the experience” Plodzik said. In using the app, interested customers first select a date and time to pick up their meal. Students can then place their desired order. DDS wanted students ordering online to still have the option to adjust their orders based on their dietary wants and needs, according to Plodzik. Consequently, all orders from the Courtyard Café’s grill are customizable, except for items purchased from the Gathering Greens salad bar. Plodzik explained that the “Build Your Own” salads sold at the Café are priced based on weight. Because
students pay for the salads through the app before the salad is made, DDS has opted to only allow salads itemized on the menu to be preordered, but added that this policy is subject to change over time. Courtyard Café employee Martha Dow said she hopes that the changes lead to the Courtyard Café receiving more orders, especially at lunchtime when students typically do not have enough time to wait in the café’s long lines. The cost of the meal must be paid in Dining Dollars and is automatically taken from a student’s account upon placing an order through the Dartmouth app, Plodzik said. Students are not able to use meal swipes toward online orders at this time, he added. Courtyard Café manager Steven Edes explained that the minimum of 20 minutes between placing the order and picking it up allows a buffer for the Café’s workers. This method allows employees to focus on the line of students in front of them and make the online orders when it makes the most sense. All pre-ordered meals are packaged in Green2Go containers and can be picked up from a heated box located to the right of the Gathering Greens salad bar. When students return the container after use to the Courtyard Café, the Class of ’53 Commons or Novack, they receive a carabiner that must be presented at the register the next time a student picks up pre-ordered food or purchases food to-go after waiting in the Courtyard Café’s line. “The problem is that students do not return the Green2Go containers,” Dow said. “We are fishing them out of the trash [cans].” Plodzik said they retrieved 700 Green2Go containers from
CORRECTIONS Correction appended (Sept. 18, 2019): In the print version of the Sept. 17 article, "Sexual misconduct details filed, Dartmouth denies fault," the article stated that the filing was made in federal court yesterday, when it was in fact made a week prior. We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.
LORRAINE LIU/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
The Courtyard Café will now take orders through the GET app in an effort to reduce wait times.
dormitories and other locations after students left campus in June, adding that there are still approximately 3,000 containers unaccounted for. According to Plodzik, DDS hopes to utilize GET for more transactions if the app works better for students. Novack Café, located in BakerBerry Library, has also undergone renovations since the spring term. While previously Novack sold coffee from a local supplier and the tea was from Teatulia, the coffee and tea now sold is supplied by Starbucks. The bakery case is now also stocked with a number of new pastry items not solely sourced from DDS. While the sandwiches sold are still sourced from DDS, workers are now required to toast them behind the counter if a customer asks. Plodzik said Novack now has Turbo Chef ovens for toasting sandwiches, which he compared to high-powered microwaves. According to a number of managers at Novack, including Aimee Pacheco ’20, workers have to
pay close attention to the sandwiches while they toast, as a number of workers have reported burns in the first week of operations. The refrigerators storing graband-go food items and beverages have been moved against the walls. Pacheco said they have replaced shelves that used to allow workers to stock and re-stock food and beverage items with ease. Now, workers must make more frequent trips to a back closet to re-stock the refrigerators and baskets, which has been difficult with the heavy and constant flow of customers, according to Pacheco. According to Plodzik, this rearrangement was meant to improve to “feel” of the Café’s space and to give it a “contemporary, clean look.” DDS will be changing the lighting in the space this week with the intention of expanding on that same goal, he added. The workers at Novack will continue to undergo training to learn how to make all of the Café’s drink offerings. All 60 workers
will gather this Sunday to receive in-person training. Plodzik said Starbucks is sending a trainer to Novack this Sunday and a company representative to a grand opening event on Monday. Through Starbucks, the Novack workers have already completed an extensive online training, for which they received monetary compensation, Plodzik said. Pacheco said she and her colleagues have struggled to make the drinks in their first week. She said the managers did not feel adequately prepared and have relied on the recipe cards provided by DDS. Another challenge Novack workers are facing comes at checkout, according to Pacheco. Plodzik said DDS adjusted the block meal plans to allow students to use two meal swipes per period. Pacheco explained that if a purchase goes beyond the allotment of the meal swipe, the register requires a second swipe instead of automatically charging Dining Dollars.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
College reserves right to deny requests FROM DARTHUB PAGE 1
according to Braz. To prevent the possibility that students might not take the policy seriously — considering that the process lacks an approval process — the College reserves the right for deans to deny any request. Braz noted, however, that fellow institutions that have implemented similar policies encounter this situation rarely. Braz added that students are responsible for understanding the specifics of the new policy. The process of enacting this campus-wide initiative included cooperation with offices across campus. The Infor mation, Technology & Consulting team was originally involved in order to support the initiative’s online infrastructure, and the DALI Lab began helping with the project over a year ago. Director of student and academic systems Samuel Cavallaro noted that the DALI Lab’s help was
a good fit, since the goal of the project was to implement a “system for students designed by students.” The DALI Lab’s group of around a dozen students communicated with the ITC team throughout the process, and the ITC team served as a liaison to different departments on campus, according to Cavallaro. Additionally, within the ITC, a team of people across several departments assembled for a “Chosen Name Roadshow” from January to April 2019, according to Cavallaro. Team members individually met with and presented the new system to over 100 different groups across campus. By meeting with the various actors on campus that would be affected by the change, the team was able to iterate through the different versions of the interface and eventually come to a solution that was “clear and intuitive,” academic applications developer William Cowen said. The process of working directly with ITC allowed students to feel
more “heard and catered to,” said Mira Ram ’20, who was a developer on the Chosen Name and Identity DALI project team. With this new policy, Dartmouth joins over 180 universities across the country that allow students to use a preferred name and 20 universities that allow students to select their chosen pronouns. T h e r e g i s t r a r ’s o f f i c e a t Dartmouth hopes to create the same opportunity for other populations on campus that do not yet have the option, such as faculty and staff, according to Braz. “ I t ’ l l t a k e s o m e t i m e fo r Dartmouth to fully understand what it means to various populations to be able to use their chosen name, but pretty soon I’d like to see it where this is considered something that nobody talks about anymore, because this is the way things are,” Braz said. Mira Ram is a member of The Dartmouth staff.
DEPARTMENT OF CYCLE-OGY
DIVYA KOPALLE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Students leave their bikes in a disorderly fashion en route to eating at '53 Commons.
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DARTMOUTHEVENTS
THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS
AN APPLE A DAY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
RACHEL LINCOLN ’20
TODAY 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Lunch: Community Lunch on the Green, rain location: Class of 1953 Commons.
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Lecture: “Adam Smith on Living a Better Life,” by Boston College political science professor Ryan Hanley, sponsored by the Political Economy Project, Rockefeller Ceter for Public Policy Room 001.
5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Exhibition: “Hop Season Campus Kickoff,” Top of the Hop.
TOMORROW 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Fair: Internship, Job and Law School Fair, sponsored by the Center for Professional Development, Hopkins Center, Alumni Hall.
8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Exhibition: Public Astronomical Observing, sponsored by the physics and astronomy department, Shattuck Observatory.
ADVERTISING For advertising infor mation, please call (603) 646-2600 or email info@ thedartmouth.com. The advertising deadline is noon, two days before publication. We reserve the right to refuse any advertisement. Opinions expressed in advertisements do not necessarily reflect those of The Dartmouth, Inc. or its officers, employees and agents. The Dartmouth, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation chartered in the state of New Hampshire. USPS 148-540 ISSN 0199-9931
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
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THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
Hirings occur amid College's implementation of C3I policies FROM TITLE IX PAGE 1
policy things,” Clemens said. “If we are going to provide continuity, and high quality and quick response, we are going to need more people.” Clemens noted that “response” does not always mean an investigation. Many students reach out to the office for help in the form of internal accommodations and academic and housing adjustments, she said. All of these things can take a great amount of time, and having more staff members means that these tasks can be done more efficiently, according to Clemens. The hirings come as the College continues to implement the Campus Climate and Culture Initiative, which promised the expansion of the Title IX office. The initiative, dubbed C3I, was announced in January 2019 after the filing of a sexual misconduct lawsuit against Dartmouth in November 2018. The lawsuit, settled in August, prompted critiques of the College’s policies surrounding sexual misconduct. The plaintiffs in the suit alleged that the Title IX office failed to protect their privacy by disclosing their confidential information and counseling records. Dartmouth denied the accusation in its own legal filings, but acknowledged that “administrative errors can and do sometimes happen in virtually all offices.” The structure and size of Title IX offices at peer institutions vary. Harvard University has two Title IX officers and five administrative staff, and their website claims “50+
coordinators” across the university. Brown University has one officer and five coordinators, one of which serves the undergraduate student population. The University of Pennsylvania has two officers in their Title IX office, while Princeton University has just one. Prior to working at Dartmouth, Brelvi was the legal compliance coordinator for Morehouse College. Her work as a coordinator will focus on training and outreach to students, staff and faculty. Because of the increased staff members in the office, Brelvi said she plans to meet with student groups and faculty more regularly in an attempt to foster trust and ensure that the campus community understands their rights. “What we’re planning on doing is having brown bag lunches, just to have informal advising and dialogue — also reaching out to student groups to make sure that we’re engaging with everybody,” Brelvi said. “I want to make sure all the students are understanding what their rights are and how to navigate through situations.” Fatema Begum ’22, a facilitator for the recently-dissolved Movement Against Violence, said that faceto-face interaction is an important step in shifting Dartmouth’s culture surrounding sexual assault and misconduct. She also noted that much of the anxiety that students feel regarding the Title IX office can be attributed to misinformation and discontent with the results of investigations.
ADRIAN RUSSIAN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
The College hired two new coordinators for the Title IX office in July.
“There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding Title IX,” Begum said. “It’s this big scary thing, and they don’t know the intricacies of it, and the different ways they can help survivors. I feel like there are more misconceptions than distrust, but there is distrust from people who disclose to Title IX and nothing happens — they feel like nothing happens.”
Sund, who worked as a social worker in the state of Maine for 18 years before coming to Dartmouth, said he hopes to foster a closer personal connection with students. Sund said that the office will be able to provide more ongoing assistance to students that reach out for support, and he hopes that this will help alleviate some of the anxiety that people have regarding the office.
“Being able to offer follow-up and ongoing support and assistance will be different than before,” Sund said. “Kristi Clemens has always done a fantastic job with the Title IX office, but one person can only do so much. My hope is what I bring as a social worker is compassion and the ability to stay with them a little longer — just having more time to sit and talk to somebody.”
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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
STAFF COLUMNIST TEDDY HILL-WELD ‘20
Pretending to Care
All students at Dartmouth are impacted by wealth inequality in education.
DEBORA HYEMIN HAN, Editor-in-Chief
AIDAN SHEINBERG, Publisher
ALEX FREDMAN, Executive Editor PETER CHARALAMBOUS, Managing Editor
ANTHONY ROBLES, Managing Editor
PRODUCTION EDITORS CAROLINE COOK & EOWYN PAK, Opinion Editors
BUSINESS DIRECTORS JONNY FRIED & RAIDEN MEYER, Advertising & Finance Directors
KYLEE SIBILIA, Mirror Editor LILI STERN & BAILY DEETER, Sports Editors LEX KANG & LAUREN SEGAL, Arts Editors DIVYA KOPALLE, Photo Editor SAMANTHA BURACK & BELLA JACOBY, Design Editors
HIMADRI NARASIMHAMURTHY & KAI SHERWIN, Business Development Directors ALBERT CHEN & ELEANOR NIEDERMAYER, Strategy Directors VINAY REDDY & ERIC ZHANG, Marketing, Analytics and Technology Directors
HATTIE NEWTON, Templating Editor JESS CAMPANILE, Multimedia Editor ELIZA JANE SCHAEFFER, Engagement Editor
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.
Last Friday, actress Felicity Huffman was according to a study done at Duke University sentenced for her role in the college admissions in 2013, 45 percent of American billionaires scandal uncovered by Operation Varsity Blues. attended a school where the average freshman Huffman confessed to paying $15,000 for an placed in the top one percent of standardized SAT proctor to change her daughter’s incorrect test scores. While we might like to think that answers before her test was submitted a pretty it takes nothing more than a combination of obvious case of education fraud. motivation, hard work and careful preparation Prosecutors in Huffman’s case argued in to get to college, that assessment forgets the favor of jail time for the parents implicated socioeconomic circumstances that allow an in Varsity Blues, pointing to the 2009 case of individual to even consider an elite institution Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Ohio woman who as a possibility, let alone to be a competitive was sentenced for registering her children in applicant. a suburban school district to avoid the Akron The Upshot, a New York Times blog, school they would have published an interactive otherwise attended. The “Patterns of university website displaying the actions that Huffman and findings of the NBER attendance don’t Williams-Bolar took are study that gives us more quite different, but they create structural context to understand how shed light on the same inequality on their Dartmouth reflects the problem: discrete portions broader national trends. of our education system own, but they mirror it First, we see the Dartmouth monopolize the resources perfectly.” numbers in 2017: 21 that emerge from economic percent of students came competition and distort the from the top one percent of distribution of the benefits. And it all happens household incomes, 69 percent came from the without breaking a single law. top 20 percent, and just 2.6 percent of students To me, Dartmouth’s admissions statistics came from families in the bottom 20 percent of basically make the argument on their own. household incomes. But five of the other Ivies For students offered admission to the Class of also had 15 percent or more of their students 2023, 48 percent were eligible for scholarships coming from the top one percent, and all eight from the school. That means that just over half schools had a student body where more than 60 of freshmen are paying the full $76,000 sticker percent of families fell in the top 20 percent of price this year. While students whose families American households. Beyond just the Ivies, 38 earn less than $100,000 per year in income are colleges in the United States had more students provided free tuition, students from the upper from the top one percent than from the entire class, which the Office of Admissions defines bottom 60 percent. as a household with greater than $200,000 The problem is that the NBER study shows in annual income, makes up a whopping 60 that the elite colleges that most prep schools percent of the admitted Class of 2023. Dean are geared towards are far better at moving of admissions and financial aid Lee Coffin told students from the bottom income brackets to The Dartmouth that these numbers reflect the the top than they are at increasing a wealthy admissions office “deliberately focusing” on student’s earning potential. So, while those socioeconomic diversity. No offense to the ’23s, students may be just as eager to learn and but that claim may not be true. challenge themselves, having an elite education But Dartmouth is far from an outlier. In 2017, dominated by upper-class students is redundant, the National Bureau of Economic Research because those individuals already have access published a paper on the role that college to the resources that would enable that kind of attendance plays in intergenerational income intellectual engagement. mobility. The study concludes with a framing All of this might not be that surprising to similar to my own opinion on the matter: anyone, and none of these numbers are intended Patterns of university attendance don’t create to shame any of us for being born into lives that structural inequality on their own, but they enabled us to get here. The point is not that mirror it perfectly. A child whose parents are we shouldn’t have had access to the high-level in the top one percent are were more than 75 educations that got us into Dartmouth, but that times more likely to attend an Ivy than one whose it is dangerous to believe any of us are uniquely parents are in the bottom income quintile. And deserving of the educations we enjoy today.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST TANNER JONES ‘22
STAFF COLUMNIST STEVEN ADELBERG ‘21
End the House System
Divest Is Not Green
It is time for Dartmouth to abandon its failed social engineering project. After a night out last spring, as I walked from Webster Ave. to Fayerweather Hall, I encountered a strange monument on the sidewalk between the Dickey Center and Baker-Berry Library. There, sprawled across the ground, torn and dilapidated, lay the official West House flag. More than likely stolen from the House professor’s residence and then dumped on the sidewalk by drunk students, the flag, to me, represented more than mild vandalism. Like the flag, the House system stands at the crossroads of the student body and administration — celebrated by Dartmouth’s administration but evidently resented by its student body. In the wake of Dartmouth’s most recent restrictions on building access, it is clearly time for the College to abandon its unpopular housing regime. In official materials, the House system glows. Dartmouth’s website boasts a plan to “build community” and “enhance social ties.”In the administration’s vision, students proudly wear their House scarves around campus, root for their community to win the House Cup and religiously gather in their House’s social spaces for lectures and events. Officially, the House system’s mission is to keep students’ housing stable amidst the inevitable chaos of the D-Plan. Unofficially, the College hopes the House system will ultimately supplant Greek life. Now three years old, the House system has far from realized the vision of the administration. I know few students who attend House events, and professors (each assigned to a House community) tell me privately that their House lectures are sparsely attended and that they feel no connection to their Houses. Last year, I only heard about the House Cup when it was being mocked. The House system has not diminished Greek affiliation, either. For the past five years, the percentage of non-freshmen students involved in Greek life has remained consistent, hovering at around 67 percent. In my estimation, few students appreciate the House system, some are ambivalent about it and many are frustrated with it. There is certainly reason to be frustrated. Since its inception, the House system has created a major restriction for on-campus housing — namely, you can only live with other students in your House. Since House affiliations are static and established freshman fall, students cannot room with classmates or friends of their choice who happen to be assigned to another House. For many of my sophomore friends, this means living with a random roommate for the second straight year. Moreover, most House events are exclusive to House members; House events are only advertised to House members and often only accessible to them as well. As a result, many opportunities funded by the College are not accessible to all students.
Despite these failures, it is clear that Dartmouth intends to push the House system with or without student cooperation. Starting this week, students’ Dartmouth IDs will only unlock dorms and buildings within their own House. Students still cannot live with their friends in different houses and now cannot visit their dorms either. For ’23s, whose freshmen predecessors frequented dorm parties during the frat ban, Dartmouth’s night life will be especially bleak. Finally, two popular dining and gathering spaces — the Cube and the Onion — will only be accessible to students of their respective houses. With only around 4,000 undergraduates to begin with, Dartmouth will start to feel even smaller. Dartmouth’s official reasons for its newest housing policy are questionable. First, dean of residential life Mike Wooten told The Dartmouth that building restrictions were requested by the Student Assembly. The Student Assembly president and vice-president retorted in a campus-wide email: “Student Assembly did not request and does not support the permanent restrictions to dorm access announced by the College.” Next, the College signaled that the policy change is an attempt to fight racism. Wooten explained that the move comes in response to incidents of racist vandalism in dorms last October. If the College’s true goal is to prevent hateful vandalism, restricting dorm access seems a particularly bizarre and ineffective strategy. Indeed, if Dartmouth is being honest, it is deluded by the idea that anonymous racists are incapable of vandalizing their own House community’s spaces. To me, it is more likely that the College is simply using these incidents as an excuse to entrench the currently underutilized House system. It was inappropriate for Dartmouth to mischaracterize SA’s position; it was shameful for Dartmouth to weaponize racist acts to justify its policy change. The College’s latest policy confirms what many have long suspected: the House system is a project in social engineering. Having failed to eliminate Greek life like some of its Ivy League peers, Dartmouth conjured up the current housing regime. In doing so, the administration greatly expanded its power over student life by controlling, in various capacities, the people with whom students live, eat and spend their time. Dartmouth should primarily be in the business of educating students, not engineering student life. The College’s latest move — which effectively forces students to embrace the arbitrary lines separating assigned Houses — is clearly unreasonable. It is time for the College to abandon its failed House system, allowing the adults who constitute Dartmouth’s student body to organize their lives like adults.
The Class of 2023 should support climate science, not divestment. Members of the Class of 2023 fresh out of return more the better they are diversified. The First-Year Trips gave Divest Dartmouth a lot of energy sector is an important and sizeable sector attention during last week’s activity fair. Divest of the American economy — energy stocks Dartmouth is a well-known brand at Dartmouth — appear in both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones they have almost 1,500 followers on Facebook and Industrial Average. Saying goodbye to energy their stickers give MacBooks and Nalgenes around stocks means saying goodbye to the diversification campus more personality. Divest Dartmouth also benefits they bring. This financial windfall to the has a mission: “That Dartmouth College ceases endowment helps fund everything at Dartmouth to invest in coal, tar sands and the Climate Action — from our generous financial aid programs to List of the most harmful oil and gas companies groundbreaking climate research and Dartmouth’s identified by the Fossil Free Index and Union of historic shift away from dirty No. 6 fuel oil to Concerned Scientists.” renewable energies. D i ve s t D a r t m o u t h But the good news for Divest presumably sees this mission Dartmouth is that their as a step towards a more “’23s can reclaim proposals have no hope of sustainable world. However, their environmentalist ever being implemented nature-loving ’23s should on a meaningful scale. If not be so easily convinced. movement.” Divest Dartmouth dreams Divestment is a misguided of making a social statement and futile effort that can only against the propaganda and harm Dartmouth’s ability to reduce its own carbon of fossil fuel corporations as they say, the truth of footprint and offer aid to historically disadvantaged the matter is that few investors would hear such a communities. Rather than supporting a lost cause, statement, and fewer still would care. About half environmentally-conscious ’23s should push Divest of the stock market is owned by passive funds that Dartmouth to drop divestment from their mission only buy and hold stocks in indexes like the S&P 500 in favor of increased climate science education. and the Dow Jones Industrial Average that include One secret Divest Dartmouth won’t tell you is energy stocks. Of the roughly $113 trillion in assets that divestment in fossil fuels at any scale would that American households owned in 2018, only not lead to energy sustainability. For all of Divest $12 trillion was managed by sustainable investing Dartmouth’s anger at Big Oil titans like Exxon funds. But even if Divest Dartmouth could inspire Mobil for their climate disinformation campaigns, incremental divestment until fuel companies Exxon Mobil is also one of the world’s leading struggle to fundraise, algorithmic traders would researchers into renewable energies. Fossil fuel quickly notice the newly undervalued fossil fuel companies could account for as much as a fifth securities and keep buying them until their liquidity of all investment into renewable energies. While and asset prices returned to normal levels. Divest activists criticized Big Oil in 2018 for allocating Dartmouth cannot defy market logic because only one percent of their capital expenditure to American households simply do not care about renewable energies, this is a praise-worthy sum in the asset allocations of Ivy League endowments. the billions of dollars that amounts to roughly a But some Dartmouth students do. Such third of their research and development budgets. environmentally-conscious students should be However, these efforts would probably be the first applauded, but they should not be allowed to make to go if these companies were choked off from investing decisions. Dartmouth’s endowment of capital markets. Divestment would force Big Oil nearly $6 billion can find better management. to double down on its core business and turn an Ivy League environmentalists should put their invaluable climate ally into a formidable foe. This passion to use by directly fighting the legacy of would set back the world’s shift to renewables by fake climate science. ’23s can better promote the many years and hinder the climate agenda that environmentalist cause by putting old myths to Divest Dartmouth members are so passionate rest and combatting climate skepticism, pushing about. environmental issues to the forefront of policy Another secret Divest Dartmouth won’t tell you debate and driving concrete action. This requires is that divestment in fossil fuels could potentially the manpower and organizational bandwidth reduce the returns of the Dartmouth endowment that Divest Dartmouth is wasting on its crusade that supports financial aid, climate research and for divestment. Nature-loving ’23s can reclaim Dartmouth’s own sustainability initiatives on its their environmentalist movement and push Divest campus. There is an axiomatic fact of modern Dartmouth to join the movement against climate portfolio theory that in the long run, portfolios disinformation.
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
Telluride at Dartmouth brings highly anticipated films to campus
B y ELIZABETH GARRISON AND MACY TOPPAN The Dartmouth
Starting this Friday, the Hopkins Center will be showing advanced screenings of six films from the acclaimed Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, beginning with “Ford v Ferrari” and ending with “The Climb” on Sept. 26. Every year, Telluride at Dartmouth presents an opportunity to see much-anticipated films months before they come to theaters. Telluride at Dartmouth has a 34-year history of bringing exclusive first looks of films to Dartmouth students since Bill Pence, former Hop director of film and co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival, began the event. According to Hopkins Center film programming and operations manager Johanna Evans, the cohort of approximately 30 Dartmouth alumni who have been employed by Telluride in the past have continued to carry the festival’s legacy in its close relationship to the College by reuniting every year at the festival. Director of Hopkins Center Film Sydney Stowe said she believes that this event will provide modern viewers with a more authentic movie-going experience because many of the films have not been reviewed yet, allowing viewers to enjoy them without any preconceptions or spoilers. “Before we had the Internet, you would walk into these movies and have no idea what you are going to see,” Stowe said. “We believe in this event so much because it is a chance for students to see these films before you hear on Rotten Tomatoes how they are. I feel like there are not a lot of pure experiences like that anymore in this new-media age.” Publicity director of the Hopkins Center Rebecca Bailey said she also finds Telluride a unique cinematic experience.
“One of the things that I love about it is — it was true [34 years ago] and it’s still true now — that it creates an effect out of film watching,” Bailey said. “Telluride, to me, reminds you of how fun it is to see great films with a big group of people on a big screen, to get that experience.” The first screening of the festival is “Ford v Ferrari,” taking place this coming Friday. The film, directed by James Mangold, is about designer Carroll Shelby (played by Matt Damon) and driver Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale), who are recruited by Henry Ford II to build a new racecar to compete with Ferrari’s Formula One. Evans said that “Ford v Ferrari” is the glossiest Hollywood film out of the festival lineup, as it already had big studio backing before it was shown at the festival. According to Evans, there is a lot of student interest in the film. “We’re expecting both showings of the film to sell out,” Evans said. “So, I would recommend students to get their tickets early.” “Motherless Brooklyn” screens on Sept. 21. Actor and director Edward Norton takes on both roles in this film adapted from the novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem. Set in the classic film noir period, the story follows a private detective through a murder case in New York City in 1957. Of all the movies in this year’s Telluride lineup, Bailey said she is particularly excited to see Norton’s work. “[‘Motherless Brooklyn’] is a complicated film — I don’t know how many [Norton has] directed, but certainly nothing on this level,” Bailey said. “Plus, it covers an era in New York and corruption that fascinates me,” she said. On Sept. 22, “Marriage Story,” starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, will grace the screen. It tells the story of a married couple who begin
to drift apart as they realize they both want different things in life. Since the film is going straight to Netflix, this will be one of the only chances to see the film on the big screen. Evans said she thinks that students would be able to relate to “Marriage Story” and its complex depiction of navigating life and relationships. “Even for people who aren’t going through a divorce and are just dating in college, they can see themselves in this story,” Evans said. “They might be thinking about going to graduate school abroad or in another state and have to negotiate whether or not they should keep a relationship going when their dreams and careers and pulling them in different directions.” “Beanpole” is the only international film in the Telluride at Dartmouth lineup and will be playing on Sept. 24. It tells the story of two women struggling to rebuild their lives in the war-torn ruins of
Leningrad in the mid 1940s. Evans said she is excited for “Beanpole” because the female perspective in World War II has not yet been explored in depth through film. “The Assistant,” playing on Sept. 25, depicts a fictional story based on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse allegations and focuses on the life and observations of an assistant employed by a predatory film executive. Katie Orenstein ’22, who is one of the four student leaders of the Dartmouth Film Society and also works at the Hop, said she expects this movie’s dark subject matter to be the most intense of this year’s film series and is particularly relevant in light of the recent #MeToo movement. “It’s the first feature film to really address what Hollywood is grappling with right now, and I’m really curious about the tone of the film,” Orenstein said. “I’m curious about who [the film]
puts blame on.” The festival closes with a screening of “The Climb” on Sept. 26. “The Climb” is a dark comedy about two high school best friends whose relationship is put to the test by the ups and downs of life over the course of 10 years. Nicholas Gutierrez ’20, a director of the Dartmouth Film Society and projector at the Telluride festival who has attended the festival since he was a freshman, said he believes that this opportunity to experience the best in cinema is one that students should not miss. “I think the festival is honestly my favorite part of the year because it is really cool to get to see a sneak peak of all these great films,” Gutierrez said. “Even though the beginning of the year is always really busy, it is definitely worth making the time to come together and see these films.”
COURTESY OF SYDNEY STOWE
Dartmouth alumni reunite annually for the Telluride Film Festival.