The Dartmouth 10/03/2019

VOL. CLXXVI NO. 73

RAINY HIGH 55 LOW 41

OPINION

SHI: A VULNERABLE CAMPUS PAGE 6

KNIGHT: REMEMBERING ROBERT HUNTER PAGE 6

ALLARD: GIVE TRUDEAU ANOTHER TRY

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

Gov department to offer PPE major B y Ioana andrada pantelimon The Dartmouth

Starting this fall, Dartmouth’s gover nment department will offer three new modified majors, collectively called politics, philosophy and economics.

In addition to the traditional government major, students will be able to major in “government modified with economics,” “government modified with philosophy” and “government modified.”

The first two offerings, “ g ove r n m e n t m o d i f i e d with economics” and “government modified with philosophy” are government major s with additional classes in economics and philosophy respectively, while “gover nment modified” includes classes in government as well as two classes in each philosophy and economics.

“The gover nment de partment notoriously

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Study abroad programs feature higher grades, per College report

SEE PPE PAGE 5

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West House offers snack bar currency at community events B y amber bhutta The Dartmouth

The West House executive board recently reintroduced “West Bucks,” a form of currency that West House residents may receive at select house community events that can be exchanged for food at the student-run “Snack Shack.” As a continuation of an initiative that began last spring, West Bucks has seen a number of improvements since its inception.

The concept of West B u c k s o r i g i n at e d f ro m the West House executive board’s ef forts to host regular evening and weekend activities in the u p p e rc l a s s m e n d o r m s ’ communal living spaces during the past spring term, according to West House professor Ryan Hickox.

The results of these efforts included the idea for a weekly game night to be SEE WEST PAGE 2

STAFF PHOTO

Foreign study programs offered by the College consistently feature higher GPAs than on-campus classes.

B y Pierce Wilson The Dartmouth

For the past decade, the average GPA in classes taken on language study abroad programs, language study abroad plus programs and foreign study programs has been significantly higher than the average GPA in classes taken on campus, according to an internal College obtained by The Dartmouth.

The report, the contents of which The Dartmouth first reported this past summer, presents academic trends at the College over the past five years, with the 2007-08 academic year as a 10-year reference point.

Although both on-campus GPAs and off-campus GPAs have steadily risen since the 2007-08 academic year, the GPA in classes taken off campus was, on average, 0.25 grade points higher than the GPA in classes taken on campus during that period.

In the 2017-18 school year, for example, the average GPA in LSA and LSA+ programs was 3.71, and the average GPA in FSP programs was 3.72, just above an A minus.

The average on-campus GPA that year was 3.49, between an A minus and a B plus.

In 2018, the College offered 18 LSA and LSA+ prog rams and 28 FSPs, with over 500 students participating.

While some of the GPA increase can be attributed to the selectiveness of the programs, the overall nature of studying abroad plays into the higher grades.

Italian professor and d i r e c t o r o f t h e Ro m e LSA and LSA+ programs Tania Convertini said that, although there are likely several factors at play in the GPA discrepancy, she believes there are fundamental differences between studying on-campus and studying abroad.

“Learning abroad happens in a different way than it does on campus, and we have to expel the idea that academic SEE LSA PAGE 3

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

“West Bucks” can be exchanged for food at West House snack bar students now reside in the River Cluster.

“Even though we did it last year, it held in the first-floor Fahey-McLane Hall lounge. Hickox added that the was on a smaller scale,” said student board first chose to “spruce up” activities coordinator Kiera Bernet the lounge for the game nights by ’23. “Since the freshmen mostly live purchasing numerous furniture in a concentrated place now, it was items — including a ping pong easier for us to expand Snack Shack table, a television and an Xbox — and West Bucks to the River, which to make the area more appealing is what we’re doing now.”

Instead of exclusively occurring to residents.

To accompany the game nights, in the upperclassmen residence students on the executive board halls, game nights and Snack Shack began serving food prepared in will occur on Wednesday evenings the lounge kitchen, which began in Judge Hall and on Saturday to be referred to as the “Snack evenings in the Fahey-McLane Shack,” Hickox said. To maintain lounge.

“It could be a good motivation consistency in the amount of food residents could obtain from the for attending events,” said West Snack Shack, the executive board House resident Makayla Dixon ’23.

“But I think right now they’re just introduced West Bucks. trying to give them “ We we re out because even keen to regulate “West Bucks can be at Snack Shack, the amount we received them. of things that expected to serve At that point, I’m p eo p l e were whatever purpose not sure what the getting at the purpose is, but I Snack Shack,” that the community is think they’ll stop said Hickox, looking for.” giving so many whose face is on out at every event the West Buck eventually.” equivalent of a -KIERA BERNET ’23, According one-dollar bill. WEST HOUSE STUDENT to Dixon, West “The idea was to introduce a ACTIVITIES COORDINATOR Bucks are still in t h e p ro c e s s o f fake currency being circulated, that would add meaning that students who attend a transaction element.”

According to Hickox, Snack the next few West House events can Shack items — which include expect to receive five to 10 West such items as ice cream sundaes, Bucks. Bernet added that although mozzarella sticks, milkshakes and West Bucks are currently distributed tater tots — cost between one to five freely, she said that she thinks they West Bucks. He added that more could eventually serve as a prize or snack items could be introduced in reward at future events.

Despite the potential for change the future.

With the assistance of newly- in how West Bucks are distributed, hired student activity coordinators, students will not be able to purchase West House brought back and anything aside from food with their expanded West Bucks and Snack West Bucks, although the executive Shack for the fall ter m. The board has discussed the possibilities, expansion was facilitated by the Bernet said.

“The key to remember is it’s not fact that most first-year West House FROM WEST PAGE 1

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NAINA BHALLA/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

“West Bucks” are offered in a variety of colors and denominations.

actual currency,” Hickox said. “If we start to have [West Bucks] being redeemed for other items of value, then we’d have to think carefully about how we distribute them.”

According to Hickox, he is not currently aware of any plans for other House communities to adopt

a system similar to West Bucks for their own residents.

Limitations aside, Bernet said that the purpose of West Bucks is to act as a reflection of student demand.

“Right now the demand is food, but if the demand shifts to food and

something else, then the board very good at being responsive to that,” Bernet said. “West Bucks can be expected to serve whatever purpose that the community is looking for, so I would encourage anyone who has ideas or has something that they’d like to see to reach out.”

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

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THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

Foreign study programs see academic rigor in variety of forms FROM LSA PAGE 1

rigor is in any way related to the grade,” Convertini said.

She elaborated on the notion that rigor and grades are not linked.

“The academic rigor is attached to different components,” Convertini said. “The quantity of reading might be different, because students are engaged in different ways. They’re speaking the language all day long, they might be interacting with people, they might be going to see a play.”

According to Convertini, faculty members who plan LSAs and FSPs understand this difference and are conscious of it when planning a study abroad program.

“The kind of intentionality of planning a study abroad program takes into account the need for learning by exploring and learning by reflecting,” Convertini said, which

she suggested might contribute to any of the classes he had previously higher GPAs abroad. “When t a k e n o n c a m p u s. H oweve r, students learn by experiencing, Calianos indicated that there were they have a higher possibility [of other factors that made up for the succeeding].” lack of homework.

J o s h “The kind of “This was offset Calianos ’22, by the fact that intentionality of who studied we were speaking a b r o a d i n planning a study Ger man all the B e r l i n t h i s abroad program takes time,” Calianos summer, said said, something that his GPA into account the he described as a b ro a d w a s need for learning and “taxing.” He added exactly the that this more same as his exploring and learning than compensated o n - c a m p u s by reflecting.” for the decrease GPA and did in workload, not affect his especially during overall grade -TANIA CONVERTINI, the first three point average. ITALIAN PROFESSOR weeks.

He noted “It’s very t h at fo r a l l possible for a class three of his classes in Germany, to be difficult and still have a high the professor for each class assigned median,” Calianos noted, adding significantly less homework than that by the end of his LSA, speaking

BREAKING BREAD

LAUREN TRAN/THE DARTMOUTH

Students gather for a community meal outdoors.

German around the clock had become less taxing.

Calianos also said that, in the case of the Berlin LSA, the discrepancy in GPA could be explained by the fact that college culture is different in Germany. He also said that a change in engagement with extracurriculars may have been a factor — aside from a cycling group, Collins said that he didn’t do many activities in Germany and that most of his time outside of class was spent experiencing Berlin and spending time with the other students on his LSA. Isabel Burgess ’20, who participated in the Peru LSA+, offered similar sentiments on her experience abroad.

“The point of an LSA+ isn’t necessarily to have a really intense class, but about the whole experience in general,” Burgess said.

She said that, of the three classes

she took during her LSA+, two of them had an A median and the other had an A minus median. Burgess said she believes this is a positive because it gave her more time to explore.

Burgess also argued that, in the case of an LSA+ where all of the classes are Spanish classes, it makes sense to have higher grades.

“If everyone participates in a discussion to the best of their ability in a different language, they should get an A,” Burgess said. “So, it’s a little bit harder to assign a value to how well someone participates in an LSA than it would be for something like engineering or math.”

Studying abroad “does not mean to just have a course on campus and transfer it to another country,” Convertini said. “We should be careful in thinking that students are even doing the same thing. They’re not.”

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DARTMOUTHEVENTS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS

IT’LL HAVE TO MAKE DO

CHARLIE PIKE ’22

said something ignorant, every institution with an offensive past and every public figure who has wielded their power recklessly is irredeemable and unforgivable, there will not be many morally acceptable people left.

No one should be judged on the basis of their worst mistake.

This week is part of the High Holidays in the Jewish faith. We spend the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur thinking about the mistakes we have made, and how we can do better in the coming year. As long as one commits to that introspection and to try to do better, they are forgiven. No one is too far gone, so everyone has an incentive to improve him or herself. The world would do well with a little bit more of that grace and compassion for everyone, all year long.

TODAY 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Seminar: “The Scrooge Distribution: Finding a Classical Interpretation of a Quantum Formula,” with with Williams College professsor William Wootters, sponsored by the Department of Physics, Wilder Room 202.

5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Lecture: “Exploring Recent Findings in Economics: American Indians & Indigenous People,” with UCLA professor Randall Akee ’94, sponsored by the Native American Program, Haldeman Room 41.

TOMORROW 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Colloquium: “Science Highlights from the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR): Bringing the High Energy Universe into Focus,” with Caltech professor Fiona Harrison, sponsored by the Department of Physics, Wilder Room 104.

5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Exhibition: “Hood After 5,” sponsored by the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art.

8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

Viewing: “Public Astronomical Observing,” sponsored by the Department of Physics, Shattuck Observatory.

FROM ALLARD PAGE 7

FROM SHI PAGE 6

Being truly empathetic means that you have to be vulnerable. Practicing this kind of empathy will leave you uncomfortable, and it forces you to take risks. You’ll know that vulnerable empathy is taking place when you view the peers around you as actual people, and not just the background characters of your own life. Exchange of lived experiences or honesty about introversion are some examples.

Of course, it is difficult to demand so much selfless energy from each student, to engage with each other not because it makes them good people, but because it is unquestionably the right thing to do. Putting yourself in a position of vulnerability is hard. I’ve been guilty, too, of putting my own problems and interests over those of others. But it’s important that we unlearn how we’ve been conditioned to prioritize our public self-images and try to restructure the way we empathize, for the sake of community.

The administration, meanwhile, suffers from a different kind of empathy gap, and it affects how college policies are implemented. The administration tends to roll out policies that are more about repairing its face rather than providing effective solutions to the problems that students deal with. Some recent examples include the change in card access to residential buildings and House centers; the formal implementation of the Sexual

Violence Prevention Project after being piloted for the past two years; and the change from Optional Practical Training to Curricular Practical Training work authorizations after government delays put international students’ internships at risk earlier this summer.

To an outsider, the administration appears to be doing a reasonably adequate job. In each case, however, the administration’s response has been reactive, not proactive. The new housing policy comes a year after the racial bias incidents the College cited as impetus for the policy change happened, and it’s still unclear how exactly the policy will deter future acts of racism. The SVPP is decades too late, and it feels like the College’s attempt to repair its face after settling the sexual misconduct lawsuit from last year. The switch from OPT to CPT didn’t occur until after students were at risk of losing their internships, even though many other schools already had CPT as an option at that time.

The administration’s delayed responses damage students’ faith that the College will prioritize their well-being.

Often, the administration insists that student feedback has been accounted for within their policies, but that clearly isn’t true if so much backlash occurs after their implementation. It’s imperative that the administration practices policyoriented empathy. This could manifest

as a greater level of transparency with the process of creating policies, having multiple meetings where students can voice feedback in person or having greater Student Assembly involvement with the administration.

As students, being vulnerably empathetic with each other will increase the intimacy of our community in an authentic way, and doing so will also strengthen our position with the administration when it comes to College policies. Meanwhile, the administration needs to incorporate empathy into their decisions, or else the policies that are implemented won’t address the needs of the students they’re meant to serve.

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

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THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

PPE program, started at Oxford, is offered at several other schools FROM PPE PAGE 1

hasn’t modified majors in many d e c a d e s , ” s a i d g ov e r n m e n t professor James Murphy, who initiated the PPE offerings.

Despite the difficulty in modifying the major in the past, Murphy noted that government students frequently take philosophy and economics classes to complement their main courses. He said he believes that the new PPE modified majors offer “official recognition on the transcript for the kind of interdisciplinary coursework these students have been doing anyway.”

Murphy also cited the Political Economy Project — a program that combines a variety of viewpoints regarding the intersections between economics, politics and ethics — as another reason for the modified offerings. “[T he Political Economy Project] has brought a lot of attention, funding, courses, new faculty to the college precisely to teach political economy, which is an essential component of PPE,” Murphy said.

Philosophy department chair Samuel Levey echoed this sentiment.

“The Political Economy Project is the place where the natural overlap of these areas already exists,” Levey said. “I think the time was right for there to be more integrated curricular programming.”

The Politics, Philosophy and Economics program was first established at Oxford University in England in the 1920s, and has famously graduated a significant proportion of Britain’s elite.

According to Murphy, there are PPE programs at more than 200 universities around the world.

“It’s quite an internationally successful program, and no wonder,” Murphy said. “Politics, philosophy and economics represent the most fundamental tools that students will need to address real-world problems.”

Murphy believes that the value of PPE originates from teaching students about the intersection of

these fields.

“Problems in the actual world don’t come separated into political problems, economic problems, or moral and philosophical problems, so you need a complete toolkit to address [them], and that’s what PPE offers,” Murphy said.

The three government modified majors will be available to every c u r r e n t c l a s s. A c c o r d i n g t o Murphy, some seniors may be eligible to change their declared majors towards PPE. Similarly, the government honors thesis program is open to the three modified majors, according to Murphy.

“Students could work with economics and philosophy faculty as part of their government thesis program,” Murphy said.

Opinions differ as to whether PPE could become a self-standing program or department in the future.

According to Murphy, provided there is great enough interest in PPE, faculty could potentially propose it as an independent program or department. Levey similarly stated that such an endeavor could work at the College if it hired faculty to teach all the classes in the right areas.

Economics department chair Nina Pavcnik said that there may not be the need for a new department because the liberal arts education offered at Dartmouth reduces the need for a pre-defined PPE department.

Whether these modified majors will alter the numbers of traditional majors in government, philosophy or economics remains to be seen. According to statistics provided by the College’s Office for Institutional Research, economics and government are the most popular majors at the College, each comprising 14 percent of the student body.

According to Murphy, many people opting for one of the modified majors would likely major in government anyway.

However, he said he believes the new interdisciplinary options could potentially attract new students to the government major, and Levey

OLYMPIA NAGEL-CALAND/THE DARTMOUTH

The government department is housed in Silsby Hall.

said there could be a strong surge of interest in the ethics and political philosophy classes related to the modified majors.

Pavcnik noted that it will be difficult to quantify its impact because “[PPE] is a very different major from the regular economics major.” She added that it was up to students to decide what they wanted to “get out” of the major.

Other universities in the United States have also adopted the PPE

model under a variety of forms, including Duke University, Emory University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Richmond and Yale University.

Duke offers a Philosophy, Politics, & Economics certificate program, which is an interdisciplinary minor consisting of six classes. The program has been offered since 2004, and was inspired by the PPE program at Oxford, according to Duke professor Michael Munger,

the director of PPE at Duke.

At Duke, PPE begins with a “gateway course” and ends with a “capstone course,” both of which are taught every year by several faculty members. The other four classes are a choice of electives from a pre-approved list of courses. According to Munger, while hundreds of students take the gateway course, only 28-35 people finish the certificate every year because of its demanding nature.

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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

STAFF COLUMNIST KATIE SHI ’21

GUEST COLUMNIST THOMAS KNIGHT ’22

A Vulnerable Campus

Remembering Robert Hunter

Students and the administration at Dartmouth need to have more empathy.

The beginning of the school year has seen myriad changes at Dartmouth, not all of them necessarily good. The disconnect between students and the administration seems to grow ever wider. Like many juniors, I’ll be taking two terms away from campus, so I can’t imagine what Dartmouth will be like next spring. Given how small campus is, there is a surprising lack of empathy at Dartmouth. The disconnect between students and administration, as well as many of the problems with our campus culture, could be resolved if both sides practiced different kinds of empathy.

In presenting their “politeness theory,” linguists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson define “face” as the public self-image that every person wants to claim for themselves. In particular, “positive face” is the consistently positive self-image that involves the desire for this self-image to be appreciated and approved of by others. Face can be lost, maintained, repaired or improved through different locutionary interactions.

To use Brown and Levinson’s terminology, Dartmouth students are experts at maintaining face.

There is a natural, pervasive expectation for students to turn themselves “on” and constantly display the best version of themselves. This conditioning begins with First-Year Trips and orientation week and continues through four years of socializing, from rush to recruitment to group projecs on the first floor of Berry library. It’s no coincidence that the term “facetimey” is a staple of Dartmouth lingo. In our efforts to maintain our face to our peers, however, we tend to lose the authenticity of our community.

The empathy gap is a common issue at many college campuses. Our problem, however, is not that Dartmouth students need to be more open and

DEBORA HYEMIN HAN, Editor-in-Chief

welcoming. When I talk to friends who attend other Ivy League institutions, their communities seem much more inhospitable and socially isolating in comparison. In fact, Dartmouth prides itself on the intimacy of its community. While defending the new housing policy in an interview with The Dartmouth, associate dean of residential life and director of residential education Michael Wooten (somewhat ironically) cited Dartmouth’s “culture of openness” as something that distinguishes it from other campuses.

Our problem is that we’re satisfied with our reputation of being a tight-knit community, and we take it for granted. In a way, this reputation partially replaces the authenticity of our student-to-student interactions. The empathy gap we have results from how, whether consciously or not, students primarily act in ways that maintain or improve face. Often, even the kindness we show our friends feels like a performative gesture; we’re being nice because we feel socially obligated to do so, because we expect to gain something from it, or because we’re simply going through the motions and we don’t have the energy to actually care. Our interactions with others are ultimately still self-centered.

We are empathetic enough as a student body, at least on a surface level. But in order to improve inter-student relationships and foster the tight-knit intimacy that Dartmouth is known for, a deeper kind of empathy is necessary. There is no checklist of things to do to achieve this empathy. Writing thank-you notes and holding open doors for others, while commendable, are hardly enough to close the empathy gap.

SEE SHI PAGE 4

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ISSUE LAYOUT JACOB STRIER 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.

Late songwriter Robert Hunter had great impact, often behind the scenes.

Robert Hunter, one of the psychedelic era’s enclosures where love was free and the acid was foremost songwriters, died last Monday, finishing cheap. And many of the Dead’s fellow travelers what was certainly a long, strange trip around did exactly that. But time and time again, Hunter pulled the band away from its comfort zone and and around the sun.

Hunter wrote for Bob Dylan and Elvis coaxed out inventive and virtuosic performances, Costello, among others, but he was best known taking them to places where similar bands had as the principal songwriter of the Grateful never dared to tread.

Hunter had an intimate familiarity with classic Dead, as a longtime member of the band who never played on a record and rarely stepped on works, and his fluency in scripture, Shakespeare stage. Hunter, the great-great-grandson of the and Romantic poetry was uncommon for most legendary Scottish poet Robert Burns, crafted songwriters in the Grateful Dead’s genre. But an undeniable poetic legacy of his own, often beyond traditional literary influences, Hunter’s deepest love was for the American folk song. aided by the influence of psychedelic drugs.

Born into a musical family in Southern Effortlessly pulling from the traditional ballads California, he briefly attended college, but of the Appalachian Mountains and the sorrow dropped out and returned to the West Coast, songs of the antebellum South, Hunter had an eye for the working man where he became a member an endless sympathy of the burgeoning bohemian “Hunter had an eye for and for the underdog. Instead of scene, writing songs, poems staying on the psychedelic and an unfinished novel. the working man and m oun tain top, w ritin g A year after returning an endless sympathy reductive political screeds to Califor nia, Hunter or fluff about kaleidoscopic volunteered for the infamous for the underdog.” clouds, he wrote songs MKULTRA program, a about miners, prostitutes, CIA-sponsored project that exposed test subjects to psychedelic drugs and gamblers, union men, the down and out intense psychological interrogations, formulated and the profoundly unlucky. As emblematic as a way to determine the scientific feasibility as the Grateful Dead have become as the of mind control. Instead of brainwashing band of spaced-out, trippy half-hour jams, in Hunter, the experiment imbued him with a retrospect, Hunter’s takes on the traditional singular creative vision. He described writing American folk formula have become some of under the influence of LSD as seeing visions the band’s strongest songs. Classics like “Brown“conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver Eyed Women” and “Friend of the Devil,” vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, accompanied by the incomparable guitar of joyously resounding bells.” Soon after, Hunter Jerry Garcia, haven’t aged like many records reunited with an old friend, Jerry Garcia, who was from the Sixties, despite their origins in songs impressed with his new poetry and lyrics, and the and formats older than the United States itself. two eventually became the vaunted songwriting Hunter reinvigorated old clichés and aged partners behind one of the counterculture’s most storylines, anointing them with touches of the psychedelic that seemed to rejuvenate the classics exciting bands.

But the 1960s were awash with dreamer and lend time-tested narratives to the cutting prophets, burnouts and burnouts who thought edge.

The Grateful Dead remain today among our they were dreamer prophets, and simply getting high and transcribing one’s mystical visions strongest links to that strange period in American has not proved to be enough to qualify one for history. Although it is now more than 50 years the canon of great American songwriters. The from when hundreds of thousands of hippies Vietnam War era in America was a time of gathered at Max Yazgur’s farm just outside fracturing of confidence between the young and of Woodstock, NY, the Dead still live. From the old, and the government and the governed, fraternity basements to the classroom, it’s never but it was also an era of a cultural divide between hard to find a shirt bearing the famous logo parochial perceptions of Muskogee and Haight- of the band or some of Hunter’s lyrics. The Ashbury — hard-working small town USA and enduring appreciation of Hunter’s work, even the strung-out pockets of counterculture forming in an anonymous piece like a t-shirt, is a tribute in cities, college campuses and rural communes. to a man that dodged both spotlights and easy It was easy for the long-haired tribe to stay, at characterization on the way to canonization in least psychologically, in technicolor bohemian the shrine of the all-time greats.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

PAGE 7

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

STAFF COLUMNIST SYDNEY ALLARD ’21

STAFF COLUMNIST RANIYAN ZAMAN ’22 AND GUEST COLUMNIST LEAH RYU ’22

Give Trudeau Another Try

All-American Education

Asking people to apologize is only effective if they can be forgiven.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is the latest public figure to fall from grace. A few weeks ago, a photo of him wearing brownface at a party in 2001 surfaced. He acknowledged that this was not the only time he had worn brownface or blackface. He apologized. The jury is still out on whether he will be forgiven.

Trudeau’s mistake, offensive though it may have been, is not unforgivable, and it is not a telltale sign that Trudeau is a racist. Rather, he was offensively ignorant; the distinction comes from his redeeming actions since 2001.

Forgiveness is not the same as pretending it didn’t happen; we should look out for signs that Trudeau doesn’t really show remorse, or that he continues to act in racist ways. But regardless of how it feels about his politics, the Canadian public should give him the benefit of the doubt before they write him off forever.

Modern social justice movements call for accountability. Black Lives Matter asks police to consider how implicit bias might affect their policies. The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement asks institutions to answer for the effects of their investments.The #MeToo movement empowers women to speak out about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment.

There is nothing wrong with asking people and institutions to think deeply about their actions and to come clean if they believe that they have erred. But that introspective exercise is only valuable if they can also be forgiven and afforded the chance to apply what they’ve learned as they move forward. If any skeletons uncovered in the process are considered evidence of permanent character flaws, who will ever want to engage on such introspection?

Trudeau, and other public figures on both sides of the aisle who have complicated and imperfect pasts, deserve an opportunity to do better in the future.

People are only incentivized to honestly and openly evaluate their pasts, and to take criticism, if they believe that they have a genuine opportunity to redeem themselves in the future.

If engaging in a racist practice or objectifying a woman is unforgivable no matter what, then people who have done those things will have little reason to apologize. Accepting apologies shows people who have made mistakes that they can do better. It’s possible they won’t change, but we can’t know if they don’t get the chance.

Justin Trudeau wore blackface as recently as 2001, when it certainly wasn’t socially acceptable to do so. By all accounts, including

his own, he seriously messed up: “What I did hurt people … This is something I deeply, deeply regret … Darkening your face … is always unacceptable because of the racist history surrounding blackface … I have always acknowledged that I come from a place of privilege, but I now need to acknowledge that that comes with a massive blind spot.”

He admitted that he wore brownface and blackface on multiple occasions, and that he was ignorant of the practices’ racist histories.

He made a mistake when he was younger, a big one, but he has since made championing diversity a cornerstone of his political career; his cabinet is the most diverse Canada’s history with an equal number of men and women, the first-ever Muslim minister, three Sikh and two native members of parliament. It seems that he has already been incorporating what he’s learned since the ignorant days of his youth.

It is wholly possible, maybe even likely, that Trudeau’s self-proclaimed commitment to diversity is nothing more than an act for the sake of publicity. The same is true of any public figure’s stated good intentions; it’s impossible to know their real motivations. But wearing blackface is not compelling evidence that Trudeau was, is, and always will be, a racist.

He engaged, two decades ago, in a practice with a racist history, and, if we take him at his word, he deeply regrets it. His track record of respect for people of all races suggests that this misstep is not emblematic of a permanent character trait.

One hopes that Trudeau will learn humility from this experience — that he will continue to acknowledge his own failings — and that he will offer the same forgiveness to others who err. Rather than judging his peers harshly for past transgressions, he should remember this incident and extend them the benefit of the doubt, too.

Critics may say that public officials have a greater responsibility than most to be morally upstanding, but it’s overly optimistic and naïve to think that anyone has a squeaky clean past.

Even the most celebrated figures have made grave errors — Gandhi has been accused of racism and Mother Teresa of forcing people to convert to Christianity. In fact, type the word “offensive” after the name of any modern or historical figure when you Google them and you will find that they, too, have transgressed.

If we decide that every person who has ever SEE ALLARD PAGE 4

Regulations on Duke-UNC’s MES Program infringe on academic freedom.

Earlier this September, the Department of Education ordered sweeping changes to a Middle Eastern studies program run jointly by Duke University and the University of North Carolina.

The MES program was rebuked for not complying with Title VI, which grants federal funding to international studies programs, and criticized for various reasons, including the placement of “considerable emphasis on ... the positive aspects of Islam” and an absence of “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity. Assistant secretary for postsecondary education Robert King, author of the official statement published by the DOE. regarding Duke-UNC’s consortium, also disparaged the program for its irrelevance to “the development of foreign language and international expertise for the benefit of U.S. national security and economic stability.”

This overstep by the DOE represents an alarming infringement by the federal government on academic freedom and university curricula. It challenges academic integrity by regulating the ideas, discussions, and topics that professors and leading experts can explore and teach. It also limits the debates and questions that can be raised among students and confines the dimensions through which students can examine issues. This is especially pertinent in political science and international studies, where in-class education may be a student’s first and only exposure to a new government, country, or culture and shape it for years.

Apart from shattering the premise of trust in academia to shape well-rounded and diverse curricula, the DOE’s proposed changes flatten and dull the Duke-UNC MES program. While discussions of religious minorities are always important, suggestions that the consortium’s portrayal of Islam was too positive at the expense of Judaism and Christianity reflect the blatantly Islamophobic rhetoric that has dogged the Trump administration time and time again. King specifically cited the irrelevance to the “statutory goals” of national security and economic stability of a class offering called “Love and Desire in Modern Iran” as well as a grant proposal entitled “Radical Love: Teachings from Islamic Mystical Tradition.”

What King and the rest of the DOE don’t seem to realize is that university classes aren’t offered solely to churn out people who will serve the United States’ political interests, but so they can produce citizens with a thorough and rich understanding of cultures and schemas outside their own borders. Classes on art, film and love humanize the people of the Middle East, who have too often been villainized

by American politicians and pundits and viewed as economic or security threats. In fact, some of

Dartmouth’s most beloved classes on the Middle East are about women, fiction and theater; like most other MES programs, ours seeks to fully realize a realm of ideas parallel to and as valuable as our own. The DOE’s demands for Duke-UNC’s MES program reflects the approach it takes toward the rest of the world — an approach which has no place on college campuses and grates against the mission of a liberal arts education.

The full scope of the DOE’s operations against nationwide curricula are currently unclear. In any case, Duke and UNC are wealthy schools that enjoy a healthy dose of prestige and money; their administrations can afford to do practically whatever they want with relative impunity. But what happens if the DOE moves against the curricula of smaller colleges and public universities who cannot afford to lose federal funding? The department could put forth a familiar “catch-22” for these institutions — a demand that ostensibly allows them the choice to preserve their curricular status quos but cripples them financially by removing federal grants. In other words, while not explicitly restricting freedoms, the department could foist its will on institutions which cannot afford not to comply.

However, if the DOE only plans to target high-profile schools like Duke and UNC, then it is obvious that rather than attempting to improve the overall quality of higher education as it sees fit, the DOE is pushing a political agenda under this guise.

Otherwise, why focus on this issue in the face of the many other issues indubitably rife in the U.S. higher education system? The DOE’s agenda could be described as Islamophobic and xenophobic, but the crux of the issue is that the DOE has failed in its mission of promoting “educational excellence” and failed to preserve the freedoms on which America is supposedly predicated.

Duke and UNC have responded by refusing to implement the DOE’s suggested changes. Being monetarily privileged and high-profile universities, Duke and UNC’s power to set a symbolic example to the Department and for other universities is immeasurable; its stand therefore has powerful implications for our own institution. As the so-called “College on the Hill” and a proponent of the liberal arts, Dartmouth College — and its students — should stand in solidarity with Duke and UNC and remain vigilant in regard to encroachments on academic freedom.

The Dartmouth welcomes guest columns. We request that guest columns be the original work of the submitter. Submissions may be sent to both opinion@thedartmouth.com and editor@ thedartmouth.com. Submissions will receive a resonse within three business days.

PAGE 8

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

‘The Politics of Pink’ explores notions of femininity, fragility

B y MIA RUSSO The Dartmouth

When someone mentions the word “pink,” what images come to mind? Maybe you picture a little baby girl in her light-pink nursery, pink-frosted gender-reveal cakes or the new millennial pink that covers dorm rooms and stores across the country. Whatever you think of, it is most likely related to girls and traditional femininity.

“The Politics of Pink,” an exhibition created by Charlotte Grüssing ’19, currently on display at the Hood Museum of Art, takes inspiration from the association the color pink has to femininity, fragility, womanhood and the body in the past century, according to Grüssing.The exhibition is part of the “Space for Dialogue” program at the Hood Museum, which allows students to create exhibitions out of the permanent collection housed at Dartmouth.

According to Hood Museum associate curator of academic p ro g r a m m i n g A m e l i a K a h l , Grüssing created experiences around art for Dartmouth’s campus during her work as a Conroy Intern throughout her senior year, which culminated in the curation and design of the “Politics of Pink” exhibition.

According to Grüssing, “The Politics of Pink” highlights the changing connotations of the color pink through the use of vibrant and colorful visuals.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a color is worth a million,” Grüssing said.

Paul Hager ’22, who visited the exhibit, said he thought that Grüssing’s use of bright pink walls in the exhibition space draws

viewers in and enraptures them with a combination of artwork and emotion that words cannot denote.

The exhibit features work that incorporates vibrant color and harsh, evocative imagery.

Among the featured artwork, “La Mesa del Carnicero (The Butcher Table)” by Fer nando Botero depicts a fleshy, severed pig’s head, while “Pink Gun” by Maya Schindler depicts an object with typically masculine associations in pink. Andy Warhol’s “Electric Chair” illustrates an electric chair, another violent object, in pink and yellow. The usage of these contrasting imagery lends the exhibit a strangely inviting ye t u n c o m f ro t a bl y g r u e s o m e character.

The dichotomy of the innocent nature of the color and the mature subject matter depicted in the artwork ref lects the contrast and tension sur rounding the color pink itself; it is inviting yet violent, innocent yet gruesome and beautiful yet powerful.

Why does the color pink evoke such strong connotations that other colors do not experience?

According to Grüssing, throughout art history, pink has been used to depict the beauty and innocence of children and women. However, the usage of pink in “The Politics of Pink” translates to vulgar images of flesh that deviate from the Renaissance norm.

According to Grüssing, although pink was used in this innocent way to depict people beginning from the Renaissance, the color did not hold implications of gender as they do currently. In fact, infants were dressed in white — pink was often worn by men, and women would adorn blue gowns, Grüssing said.

Grüssing also described the history of the color which influenced her curation of the exhibition; the switching of so-called “masculine” and “feminine” colors was actually the result of marketers in the mid19th century utilizing the blue and pink contrast to sell more gendered items and advertising soft pastel colors for women’s wear to contrast the neutral hues of men’s work uniforms. This simple marketing ploy had many unintentional har mful consequences as the initial connotation of innocence and purity rapidly changed into a symbol of oppression. The Nazis used pink to denote both homosexuals and rapists during the Holocaust, thus creating ties between this supposed innocent color and criminality, Grüssing said.

Despite the shift of pink’s association from innocence to

oppression, in today’s complex political climate, pink has resurfaced as a color of strength and backlash in the feminist movement as seen in the fuscia pink p—hats worn to show solidarity and support for women’s rights and political resistance, again countering the purity and child-like emotions initially attributed to the color, Grüssing said.

Despite its contradictory history, the color pink is going through a major shift right now; according to Grüssing, with “gender fluidity and the rise of gay and drag culture in the media, people are becoming more cognizant of the color.”

Not only has pink started to face a transition in meaning and acceptance, but people are beginning to notice the color and its appearance across media thus inciting discussion on the politics of pink. According to Grüssing,

millennial pink has taken over current modern style and art, and pink has started to become embraced as a symbol of strength and power among more than just women, but also on a global scale as people around the world are reclaiming and reimagining the connotations of the color pink.

How do you view the color pink?

This simple question that Grüssing asks in “The Politics of Pink” holds a wide variety of complex, interdependent answers that give insight into the tense nature of the stereotypes that relate to the history of the color.

Grüssing said she hopes that people will leave the exhibit more cognizant of color and questioning its role in activism, race and gender perceptions.

“The Politics of Pink” will be on display at the Hood Museum until Nov. 3.

ALISON PALIZZOLO/COURTESY OF THE HOOD MUSEUM OF ART

A Hood visitor looks at “The Politics of Pink” in the the Alvin P. Gutman Gallery.