THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
VOL. CLXXV NO. 105
SNOWY HIGH 36 LOW 325
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Students travel around the The Dartmouth world during winter break appoints new
interim publisher
B y THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Vinay Reddy ’20 has been appointed as The D a r t m o u t h ’s i n t e r i m publisher. He previously served as the assistant director of communications and marketing. Reddy will be replacing editor-in-chief Zachary Benjamin ’19, who has been serving as acting publisher
OPINION
REGAN: ALL THE SMALL THINGS PAGE 6
ADELBERG: GRATEFUL NEW YEAR PAGE 6
LEUTZ: THE VICTIMS OF VENMO PAGE 7
ZAMAN: DARTMOUTH STANDS BY PAGE 7
ARTS
REVIEW: ‘CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD’ IS ANOTHER LETDOWN PAGE 8 FOLLOW US ON
TWITTER @thedartmouth COPYRIGHT © 2019 THE DARTMOUTH, INC.
ALEXA GREEN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Students on the public policy trip in Colombia explored a national park in their free time.
B y GRAYCE GIBBS The Dartmouth
As most Dartmouth students finished exams and began their winter break, three classes reconvened after Thanksgiving to travel abroad for the culminating experiences of their fall term courses. Economics 70, “Macroeconomics Policy in Latin America,” traveled to
Argentina and Chile, Public Policy 85, “Topics in Global Policy Leadership,” went to Colombia and Biology 70, “Biologic Lessons of the Eye,” visited India. Students were accepted into each course based on an application explaining why they wanted to be in the class and how it related to their course of study. Economics professors Douglas Irwin and Marjorie
Rose spent the fall term coteaching a 16-student course studying economics in Argentina and Chile. After Thanksgiving, the class spent two weeks traveling around the two countries and meeting with policymakers. “The travel component allows students to see economic challenges first-hand and do some intensive field work on SEE WINTERIM TRIPS PAGE 2
since November. On Nov. 3, The Dartmouth’s former publisher Hanting Guo ’19 resigned from his position. Reddy was born in Boston and raised in the Boston area and in Bangalore, India. He is an economics major and geography minor. A full-time publisher will be appointed at the end of the winter term when the newspaper announces its next directorate.
Community signs solidarity letter B y KYLE MULLINS The Dartmouth
In an organized show of support for the plaintiffs in the pending class action against Dartmouth, nearly 800 alumni, current undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff and other
members of the Dartmouth community have signed a letter condemning “an institutional culture that minimizes and disregards sexual violence and gender harassment.” The letter comes from a group calling itself the SEE LETTER PAGE 5
Wheelock Books ceases in-store and online retail operations following 26 years in Hanover B y ANDREW CULVER The Dartmouth
Students will now have to order all their textbooks online following another bookstore closure in Hanover. After 26 years in operation, Wheelock Books — the town’s only remaining bookstore for new books — has stopped its in-store and online retail operations. In an email statement sent to each academic department during fall term, Wheelock Books announced
that it would no longer serve the Dartmouth community as its broader business shifts toward a “fee-for-service” model it already uses on other college campuses. In this model, the store provides all course materials for the entire student body with the school paying for the books either through a tuition allocation or gifts from benefactors, according to the email statement. Wheelock Books founder and owner Whit Spaulding ’89 wrote
in an email that Wheelock Books is “price-competitive with most everything” including online, e-book and rental purchases. However, students are accessing free digital copies of textbooks online, a phenomenon that is happening in “higher and higher volume,” Spaulding wrote. Due to copyright rules that the business must follow, it is “impossible” for Wheelock Books to compete with free online sources, he added.
Spaulding also wrote that “many campuses” have switched to the company’s full service model, which delivers all needed textbooks to students on the first day of classes. The initial email announcing the store’s closing said that Dartmouth is not currently pursuing the full service option. However, Wheelock Books “stand[s] ready” to take up this model if Dartmouth chooses to do so, the initial email statement said. SEE WHEELOCK BOOKS PAGE 3
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
Lawsuit highlights College’s practices Students visit Argentina, concerning sexual assault survivors Chile, Colombia, India B y RACHEL PAKIANATHAN The Dartmouth Staff
For Emma Rodriguez ’20, a trained WISE advocate, Movement Against Violence facilitator and member of the Student and Presidential Committee and the Sexual Violence Prevention Project’s student advisory board, the allegations made in the pending sexual harassment class action lawsuit against the College were disturbing, but not surprising. In the suit, seven women allege that the College ignored years of sexual harassment — and in some cases, assault — against them by three former psychological and brain sciences professors. Dartmouth’s Title IX office failed to protect their privacy by disclosing confidential information and counseling records, and the College’s student health clinic turned away a plaintiff who sought mental health treatment, the women say. “I think my confidence in Dartmouth institutions was already pretty low,” Rodriguez said. “I know the protocol like the back of my hand and I’m a two-time survivor myself, so I’ve gone through it personally. It is not easy for a survivor to find justice at Dartmouth, and I knew that already.” For Madeline Omrod ’19, who is a sexual assault peer ally on campus, the lawsuit made it clearer that there is an institutional issue with helping sexual assault survivors at Dartmouth. Omrod said she has friends who have not felt respected by offices at the College. “I’ve had so many friends who … have had isolated incidents where their own wellbeing [was] not considered as much as [that of] the perpetrators,” she said. “I would say [I] probably went from a low level of trust [in Dartmouth institutions] to an even lower level of trust [after the lawsuit was filed].” Two Title IX coordinators have come and gone since the position was created in 2014. Inaugural coordinator Heather Lindkvist was replaced by Alison O’Connell in 2017. When O’Connell left Dartmouth earlier this year, the current coordinator, Kristi Clemens — formerly the assistant dean of student affairs and director of case management — took her place. SVPP first-year facilitator and
student advisory board member Breanna Sheehan ’20 said the allegations in the lawsuit did not surprise her, especially considering the changing faces in the Title IX office. “I’ve worked with Kristi Clemens and I think that she’s really fantastic at what she does,” Sheehan said. “But I don’t have experience with the Title IX officer who was there before her, and the experiences that I’ve heard about other people’s interactions with [previous Title IX coordinators were] not particularly positive.” Alex Conway ’20, another SVPP first-year facilitator who led discussions with first-year floors last fall, said that the lawsuit exposes potential obstacles in the College’s sexual assault reporting processes. “[The lawsuit] brings to light a real threat that even if you follow all the steps [in reporting sexual violence], you might still encounter barriers if the institution that is set up to help you is actually harming you,” Conway said. “My hope is that we can start to address [the question of] what do you do when the authority figure in the room isn’t doing their job? What sort of alternate routes do you have when one route isn’t working?” She noted that she was hopeful the lawsuit allegations stem from only a “few bad eggs” in the system — individuals who did not take their job seriously or failed to fulfill their duties. Conway added that while she is not distrustful of the College, she is now more wary, cautious and disappointed following the lawsuit. For Rodriguez, the pending lawsuit and the allegations against the College’s Title IX office may change her approach to explaining Dartmouth’s sexual violence resources to survivors but would not lead her to advise survivors in favor of or against reporting sexual violence to the Title IX office. “I would probably attempt to highlight the possible traumas related to reporting, but I would never discourage a survivor from reporting,” she said. “I also may take special care to make sure [survivors of sexual violence] know that what the plaintiffs are bringing up in court is not Dartmouth’s protocol. So if that happens to them, that is not normal, that is not okay and they can take action against it.” SAPAs at Dartmouth are also
trained to be “survivor-centered” in their interactions, with the goal of supporting survivors of sexual assault in making their own decisions about the resources that best fit their individual needs and goals, according to Dick’s House staff counselors and SAPA advisors Alexandra Lenzen and Liz Stahler. Lenzen and Stahler both said that in the wake of the lawsuit and the national #MeToo movement, future SAPA training will likely put a greater emphasis on abuses of power that occur beyond peerbased relationships, which are typically the focus of conversations about campus sexual violence. Conway anticipates the lawsuit opening up her conversations with first-years to a broader range of possibilities and situations concerning sexual violence. “When we talk about prevention and getting out of, trying to avoid or trying to defuse harmful situations, maybe the conversations we have with hypothetical scenarios will expand beyond just basement culture,” Conway said. “Maybe they’ll even reach into the academic realm of mentorship and power dynamics to address student and staff relationships, in addition to just student relationships.” The SPCSA has been working on a plan, initially focused on foreign study program professors but since expanded to have all Dartmouth faculty and staff trauma-trained for sexual violence, Rodriguez said. According to Rodriguez, most professors do not know about their responsibilities to report to Title IX and are not equipped to handle trauma. “I think, in light of the lawsuit, there’s going to be more force behind that initiative,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve been trying to work on it for a long time and now that there’s some publicity around the issue, I think it will be a little easier. People are paying attention now.” She added that the national attention created by the lawsuit puts the College in a difficult situation with public relations. “The administration knows that if they don’t do anything, it’s not good public relations for them,” Rodriguez said. “As disturbing as it is that that’s kind of a necessity, it’s helpful right now for us to get things that really need to change to change, now that the College is listening.”
CORRECTIONS We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.
FROM WINTERIM TRIPS PAGE 1
team research projects,” Rose said. In past years, students in the course have traveled to China, Peru and Poland, she added. According to Rose, the group spent the first week in Santiago and flew to Buenos Aires for the second week, making this course Dartmouth’s first off-campus program to compare and contrast two countries. Rose said that she and Irwin had both been intrigued by “the successful economic reforms and innovative macroeconomic policies” implemented in Chile over the past several decades. “We were curious about what were the elements that transformed Chile from a poor developing country to a stable and successful emerging market economy,” she said. According to Rose, traveling to Argentina allowed students to contrast their experiences in Chile with an alternative country that has had less economic success, despite historically being a richer country. “One important objective [of the trip] was to see firsthand the impact of the economic issues we studied in class,” Rose said. To achieve this, the group met with policy makers, business people and people on the street. For example, they met with Chile’s minister of finance Felipe Larraín. Each person the students spoke with emphasized many of the issues they had studied in class, but also gave a more in-depth and nuanced description of the challenges each of the countries’ economies faced, Rose said. According to Rose, the second goal of the trip focused on four team research projects that compared the Argentina and Chile on topics chosen by each group: income inequality, business entrepreneurship, female labor force participation and the pension system. “The students were responsible for setting up their own meetings via email with academics, policy makers and government officials, business people, as well as ‘everyday’ people in Santiago and Buenos Aires to explore their topics in greater depth,” Rose wrote in an email statement. Groups met with the CEO of Uber in Argentina, the head of the International Labor Organization for Latin America and Chile’s former Minister of Labor. “It was a great experience in developing real world communication and administrative skills for the students,” Rose said. Alison Greene ’20 found that being able to see the countries she spent 10 weeks learning about was “extraordinary.” “All the theory that I have been taught became much more tangible
and tactile,” Greene said. Public policy professor Charles Wheelan ’88 brought 13 students to Colombia following 10 weeks of indepth study of Colombian history and the Colombian peace process following the 2016 treaty that ended the country’s war with the FARC-EP, or known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, guerilla movement. In Colombia, the students met with policymakers, representatives from non-governmental organizations, participants in the conflict and FARC kidnapping victims to gain new insight into the topics they studied in the fall. “[The trip] puts a much finer point on all of the things that we studied,” Wheelan said. “It’s one thing to study something, [but] it’s quite another to speak to people who are working on the conflict [and] who were affected personally by it.” The students flew to Bogotá where they met with officials from the U.S. embassy, someone working with the United Nations, representatives from non-governmental organizations and others working on the peace process. In Medellín, they met with a former governor who was in power during the most violent Pablo Escobar years. They also spent two days in Valledupar at camps that helped integrate former FARC guerillas back into society. “One of my favorite parts of the trip was staying overnight in the two FARC reintegration camps,” Mark Daniels ’19 said. “For the entire fall term, we had been reading about the FARC and the conflict. Going to these camps allowed us to meet actual ex-guerillas and speak face-to-face. We could hear directly from the FARC about their motivations for fighting.” For their final project, all 13 students wrote a collective paper that provided recommendations for the U.S. as a third-party actor in the Colombian peace process. Wheelan said he chose Colombia as the focus of the course after having visited the country with his family in 2016. “We were there right before the referendum was held on the peace agreement,” he said. “I found it to be a fascinating place and topic.” Ashley DuPuis ’19 noted that the trip impacted her own career interests and how she envisions her career trajectory in the future. “The trip had a huge effect on me,” Daniels said. “Reading about a conflict is much different than actually meeting with those who were involved. I think we all gained a greater appreciation for experiential learning. Plus, our class got a lot of practice with teamwork in generating a final product of over 120 pages.” SEE WINTERIM TRIPS PAGE 3
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
PAGE 3
Classes explore foreign Town’s last store for new books closes policy around the globe FROM WHEELOCK BOOKS PAGE 1
FROM WINTERIM TRIPS PAGE 2
For the second time — the first being in 2016 — Biology 70, “Biologic Lessons of the Eye,” went to the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India. Biology professor and Geisel School of Medicine professor of surgery, microbiology and immunology Michael Zegans and biology professor Dawn Carey cotaught the class and traveled with the students. Since 1997, Zegans has been working with Aravind Eye Hospitals, a network of eye hospitals in India working to eradicate cataract-related blindness. After teaching the course for the first time in 2014, Zegans said he thought it would be “amazing” to bring Dartmouth undergraduate students to experience the hospital. According to Carey, in this capstone biology class, each student develops and writes an NIH-style written grant, presents the proposal to the class, receives feedback from the professors and then reworks the proposal. At the Aravind Eye Hospital, students got the chance to present their research to a panel of international experts at a joint education and research conference hosted by the Aravind Medical Research
Foundation. Having students present their ideas in front of an international audience heightened their level of preparation and seriousness, Zegans said. “The experiential component of the course in giving a research presentation in a different country also definitely strengthened my scientific communication skills and encouraged me to think about making my topic accessible to a large audience,” Arvind Suresh ’19 said. According to Carey, in addition to the presentations the Dartmouth students gave, they also attended oral and poster presentations by Aravind researchers. The trip also included a cultural connections program between the Dartmouth students and the master’s students working with the Aravind Medical Research Foundation. “As scientific research is truly a team effort, the trip highlighted to me the importance of teamwork and academic collaborations in generating medical advances,” Suresh said. “With Aravind’s efficiency and success in treating patients, we have at least as much to learn from the Aravind Eye Care System as we have to share our own scientific research findings and developments.”
The College has “a lot of options and opportunities [for textbook supply] to evaluate,” Spaulding wrote, noting that students are able to order almost all the books they need through other online sources. The initial email statement sent to faculty recommended that professors take steps to ensure their students will not expect to buy their books in the Wheelock Books store this term. While Spaulding said Wheelock Books’ email statement was sent to each academic department, earth sciences professor Erich Osterberg said he was completely unaware of the store’s closing until being contacted by The Dartmouth. The Wheelock Books website contains no notification of the closure. “Ten years ago everybody was getting their books from Wheelock [Books],” Osterberg said. “Now, with the explosion of online book sales, my impression is that fewer and fewer students are doing it.” Osterberg said he was unsure how the store’s closure would affect his textbook assignments, but that he would have to “take the pulse” of his students this term. “With the rise of electronic
textbooks … it’s unclear to me “Its not surprising that the what the impact will be,” he said, traditional bookstore models are adding that there may not be a foundering,” she said. large impact given the ease of Ordering books online through getting textbooks online. services like Amazon is more Wheelock Books’ closing follows convenient these days with two-day the recent closing shipping, according to o f H a n o v e r ’ s “To have a Raphael Huang ’21. Barnes and Noble Huang said college town in December. he purchased one “ N o w t h a t without a textbook from Wheelock Books is bookstore of Wheelock Books closed and Barnes because he needed and Noble is closed, any sort is it as soon as possible, what happens to baffling.” noting that he would [the] textbooks have otherwise [that] students bought the book from [need]?” Hanover -HANOVER TOWN Amazon as it was town manager Julia MANAGER JULIA cheaper. Griffin said. He noted that in While Left Bank GRIFFIN the future, he will have Books — a store that to be more careful to sells rare and used order books on time books in Hanover without Wheelock — remains open, Books as a last-minute Dartmouth is now left without a purchasing option. source of new books and textbooks However, Huang added that for students. overall, he does not think the store’s “To have a college town without closing will have a great effect on a bookstore of any sort is baffling,” the Dartmouth student experience. Griffin said. Osterberg noted that internet Echoing Osterberg, Griffin retail has affected downtown said “the whole world of books Hanover “really hard lately.” in changing and one part of that “It’s sad to me as a professor who change is what’s happening in likes books — physical books,” he textbook sales.” said.
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THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
DARTMOUTHEVENTS TODAY 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Community Connections Fair, sponsored by Dartmouth Center for Social Impact, Common Ground, Collis Center
TOMORROW
12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Lunchtime Mindfulness Meditation, Sponsored by Dick’s HouseStudent Health Services, Student Wellness Center, Robinson Hall 322
2:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Opportunity: Student Job Fair, Sponsored by Human Resources, Class of 1953 Commons, Paganucci Lounge
7:00 p.m. - 9:15 p.m.
Film: “A Star is Born” directed by Bradley Cooper,sSponsored by the Hopkins Center, Hopkins Center 123 Spaulding Auditorium
10:00 p.m. - 12:15 a.m.
Collis After Dark: “Mentalist Brian Imbus,” sponsored by Collis Center for Student Involvement, Common Ground, Collis Center
SATURDAY 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Film: Film: “Free Solo” directed by Jimmy Chin, sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hopkins Center 123 Spaulding Auditorium
10:00 p.m. - 12:15 a.m.
Collis After Dark: “Pub Trivia and Bingo,” Sponsored by Collis Center for Student Involvement, Common Ground, Collis Center
ADVERTISING For advertising information, 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 01999931
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
PAGE 5
Nearly 800 community members sign letter in support of lawsuit plaintiffs them and move on,” Whitney said. “That, to me, seems to really miss “Dartmouth Community Against the point. The question about the Gender Harassment and Sexual lawsuit is how [this was] allowed Violence” and urges that members to happen for 16 years.” Lorelei Yang ’15 said that the of the College’s leader ship “acknowledge their glaring breach presence of single-gender social of responsibility, issue a public groups at the College — such as apology, and begin a transparent Greek houses — is a contributing overhaul of regressive practices.” factor to sexual misconduct on Addressed to College President Phil campus. “The more gender-segregated Hanlon and the Board of Trustees, the letter was originally delivered and gender-separated that the with over 500 signatures on Dec. campus and its social spaces are, the more likely it is that sexual 6. Hanlon wrote an email response assault is going to be a problem,” to the organizers of the letter, Yang said. “That’s part of why, stating that the College has for example, fraternities and other undertaken “a comprehensive social spaces that are male-run review of [its] policies and practices have higher incidences of sexual and [is] committed to taking steps assault.” She added that she believes that will move [it] toward that women are not in enough places goal.” The letter is intended as an of authority, especially in positions “initial statement,” according responsible for responding to allegations of t o Je n n i f e r sexual misconduct. D i t a n o, o n e “If all of the of the letter’s “The president and people or most of c o - a u t h o r s the administration the people who and a current g r a d u a t e are trying to position have responsibility for responding s t u d e n t i n this like these are to gendered experimental three bad apples violence are men, and molecular and we just need to that inevitably is medicine. going to skew the “We wanted cull them and move responses,” Yang to be able to put said. “It’s going to forth an initial on. That, to me, make it that much statement while seems to really miss more difficult for there is focus on the point.” women to speak this issue, while up.” t h e s c h o o l ’s Charles Fenn a t t e n t i o n i s -DIANA WHITNEY ’95, ’22 said he signed drawn, so that the letter in order w e c a n s a y LETTER ORGANIZER to be a positive we’re here, influence on other we have these male students. voices, we have “Especially in sports or fraternity these concerns, and we expect that the College will acknowledge them culture, which are cultures I’ll and work with us to take action,” probably immerse myself in, I can be one to educate or at least Ditano said. S h e n o t e d t h a t t h e r e give an idea to guys of when to w a s c o l l a b o r a t i o n a m o n g stop, or what is correct and what undergraduate students, graduate is incorrect,” Fenn said. Visiting history professor Erika students and alumni who helped Monahan ’96, who also signed the write the letter together. “I found it a really energizing letter, said that “some really bad and empowering process to work tenure decisions were made” at the collaboratively, and this is a multi- College. “I went to my orientation and I generational group, which is great,” Diana Whitney ’95, one of the letter heard President Hanlon talk about how to get tenure at Dartmouth,” organizers, said. The letter condemns a “deeply Monahan said. “One needs to entrenched patriarchal culture” be both an excellent scholar and at the College and suggests that teacher. Excellence in just one of the actions of the psychology those categories doesn’t cut it. If professors — who are at the center Dartmouth really intends to own of the lawsuit’s complaints — were that, what has been going on [in the psychological and brain sciences not “isolated incidents.” “ T h e p r e s i d e n t a n d t h e department]?” Robbin Derry ’75 wrote in an administration are trying to position this like these are three email statement that at a university bad apples and we just need to cull where she used to teach, she FROM LETTER PAGE 1
reported “an ongoing situation of sexual harassment” of several graduate students that eventually led to her departure from the school because the administration was reluctant to dismiss the accused professor, who brought in grants and was friends with the chancellor. “I know what it is like to stand up and speak out, and to realize how few people are willing to visibly stand with you,” Derry wrote. Jennie Harlan ’20, a sexual assault survivor who has been through the Title IX process herself, expressed sympathy for the plaintiffs. “I know how incredibly frustrating it can be and how draining it can be,” Harlan said. Aileen Eagleton, a current chemistry graduate student at the College, said she wants the plaintiffs in the lawsuit to “get the justice they deserve.” “I think it’s appalling that they had to go through what they went through,” Eagleton said. “No one should go through that.” The letter states that a more detailed list of demands from the signees will be published in January. Harlan emphasized that she wants to see more accountability from the College. “I feel like … the go-to is just making a committee to try to solve something or at least have a conversation about it, but nothing concrete is actually being done,” she said. Archana Ramanujam ’14 said that in order for Dartmouth to achieve change, there needs to be “some tangible policy changes and tangible results in terms of making the campus a safer place for everyone.” Ramanujam said that in both prevention of and accountability for sexual misconduct, Dartmouth “falls down on all accounts.” “There’s a lot of work to be done,” she said. On Dec. 12, Hanlon sent a community-wide email stating that in January, Dartmouth will announce a “sweeping plan” to combat sexual assault on campus, citing steps already taken in the 2015 Moving Dartmouth Forward campaign and the 2016 Inclusive Excellence campaign. “We unequivocally share the goal of the women who brought the lawsuit that we must pursue ‘meaningful refor ms that will per mit women to engage in rigorous scientific study without fear of being sexually harassed and sexually assaulted,’” Hanlon wrote. Yang is a former opinion editor for The Dartmouth.
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STAFF COLUMNIST JOSEPH COIT REGAN ’19
STAFF COLUMNIST STEVEN ADELBERG ’21
All the Small Things
Grateful New Year
Care, and act.
Until July 20, 1969, a human being who gazed at the light of distant stars perforating the night sky had to do so on Earth. Neil Armstrong changed that forever. To him, our planet was a small blue dot mostly alone in a vast expanse of darkness. After Apollo 11 landed to unprecedented worldwide acclaim, the moon and everything else out there seemed like something we could do more than look at from Earth. Unfortunately, much like in any other place humans have landed, human apathy and thoughtlessness did not leave the Moon as it had been found. Litter is a problem that we should care enough about to prevent on an individual and systemic scale. Estimates put the amount of material left on the Moon by humankind at 413,000 lbs. Unmanned space vehicles and other necessities for arriving on the moon comprise a large portion of the estimate, but not all. Floating around our Moon, right now, are plastic bags filled with urine ejected from space craft, two golf balls and stages of the rockets that we took there and back. Compared to Earth, the garbage on the Moon is nothing. The only difference between the Moon and the Earth is that we have been able to mistreat the Earth for thousands of years because it was the only place our bad habits could reach. The Moon should be an opportunity for us to treat where we live differently, or at the very least see clearly how badly we tend to treat our homes. Many are accustomed to overlooking litter. Crumpled cans of Keystone aren’t unique to Dartmouth, but plastic bags and wrappers, bottles, cigarette butts, and used and unused condoms are common just about anywhere that humans live. 506 miles above Earth, two new satellites launched by the European Space Agency, Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B, track the estimated 250,000 metric tons of trash visible on the ocean surface. They estimate that there is a total of 4.5 million metric tons of trash in the ocean. The single pieces of litter you are accustomed to seeing add up, and the sum total spells environmental catastrophe. Litter destroys our environment. Fish have been found growing around plastic rings, and those that survive do so in an increasingly synthetic ocean. Coral reefs are dead and dying. Dogs and birds are increasingly being killed by plastic bags that read, “this bag is not a toy.” What such a label is supposed to accomplish is telling about how a global problem has so far been approached. The
thought with the plastic bags is likely that a child will be saved by the warning because children are well-known to be law-abiding and reasonable members of society. And then there is the fact that animals are unable to read. Litter is a simple, convenient choice indicative of apathy bordering on evil. To care is to act. We need to act to prevent carelessness from continuing to destroy the only known home of life in the universe. As a small child, I once took an oath at Audubon society camp to never leave a light on in a room I had left or a piece of trash in a place that I had departed from. Whether it takes a pledge, the statistics or the tragic stories of destruction and death written by litter, we are all responsible for our actions. Small acts can add up to great or terrible facts. Litter is a series of small acts that is continuously adding up to facts more terrible by the day. To indifferently discard something after one has no more use for it is not only bad for the planet, it also indicates a nihilistic point of view. One simply cannot do something so bad and unnecessary without having a viewpoint that is somewhat or totally apathetic to the consequences of their actions. My grandfather often tells of two men on a beach in New England during the fall run for striped bass. Schools of fish the bass hunt move southward along the Eastern Seaboard in huge and hungry groups, and striped bass pursue them in a feeding frenzy. The schools striped bass pursue will often hurl themselves enmass onto the beach in order to escape death. The story begins when one man comes upon another hurling fish, one by one, back into the ocean after the frenzy has passed them by. He asks him, “What does it matter with there being so many?” The other man does not pause as he saves fish one by one, but as he throws the next one back he says, “It mattered to that one,” and then as he throws another fish he says, “And that one.” The other man nods and continues on his way, and the man continues to throw fish back to their home. “Too late” is a point of view that is chosen. The man walking along the beach thought it was too late for the fish that had escaped one death for another, and the other man disagreed. Choose life, choose to care, choose to act deliberately according to your belief that life like yourself and across the planet is worth caring for. Then, act.
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ISSUE
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
LAYOUT:
SUBMISSIONS: We welcome letters and guest columns. All submissions must include the author’s name and affiliation with Dartmouth
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We should resolve to live with gratitude.
Congratulations! You made it another year, another leap through time and space around the sun into a momentous 2019. As we approach this new year of life and experience, some of us take a moment to make resolutions that — hopefully — will stand the test of time. These resolutions reflect us with a rare authenticity — they are our highest hopes, our deepest insecurities and our most honest appraisals of our own selves. In this modern America, a market-based society long devoted to the pursuit of profit, we usually resolve to cut negative practices and habits out of the present while seeking to gain positive things in the foreseeable future. We resolve to smoke less, diet more, drink less, read more, spend less, save more. This funny sort of profit-maximization as applied to our personal lives sometimes motivates us to live better lives but usually fails by Jan. 31. Although markets theoretically work best when people maximize profit in the marginal moment between the present and the future, life does not work this way. In real life, people exist in the present. Everyone acts, experiences, plans and remembers in the present. This perpetual now presents us with a wealth of experience; from shining sun to sparkling stars; from obstacles overcome to lessons learned; from found friendship to love lost. We find the meaning of our experience within this everlasting present. As we evaluate our world and weigh the good against the bad, we should find that gratitude is a much better guide for action and experience than greed ever can be. Gratitude is the recognition and appreciation of the good in one’s world. By contrast, greed is the recognition and appreciation of the good that is not in one’s world — greed is a bit too obsessed with others and the future to describe our own present realities. In a beautiful world supporting an abundance of cooperative life that is big enough for us all to explore and flourish within, gratitude is a simple and visceral reaction to a human experience we can appreciate. Gratitude is also a crucial component for our moral compass. The Oxford Dictionary defines gratitude as a “readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” Gratitude not only encourages us to act with kindness; it recognizes and rewards the ethical behavior of others. This virtuous cycle of kindness makes gratitude an almost universal pillar of world religions and an invaluable quality in the social world. As a form of happiness, gratitude is also intrinsically good. Greed, by contrast, is strongly denounced by the Parliament of World Religions and proven by game theory to frequently cause suboptimal social outcomes. Whether you are devoutly religious or somewhere on the secular ethical altruism/egotism spectrum, a bit more gratitude this year will make life happier and more virtuous for you and all those around you. Yet the greed-is-good capitalists of the right and the equally jealous Marxists of the left still attack gratitude as harmful. They say
that a grateful consumer base would be too satisfied to engage with a market premised on unsatisfied needs and that an oppressed but somehow grateful underclass would be too complacent to undertake glorious revolution. Hidden within these critiques is a dark assumption that reality is too negative to be summed up by gratitude, a worldview of pessimism that peddles sadness and fear over happiness and hope. They are flat-out wrong: the many magnificent and astronomically improbable miracles that combine in this very moment to make life’s basic existence possible stand as their own testament to the basic goodness of existence. It makes absolutely no sense to keep consumers unsatisfied to support the market or make the underclass feel oppressed to hasten egalitarian revolution when the entire purpose of markets and revolutions is to keep people happy and free. Their shared axiom that making people sad can make people happy is entirely irrational, an intellectual sleight of hand to poorly disguise the fact that sadness and fear only breed more sadness and fear. Look no further than the 20th century failures of communism and capitalism to make their societies more equal or satisfied. Doctrines predicated on pessimistic assumptions that neccesitate oppression or scarcity are doomed to fail because existence is fundamentally good. When existence is fundamentally good, gratitude is a much more reliable motivator of progressive action than greed can ever be. Gratitude prevents people from taking the good for granted, instilling an appreciation for the social fabric that makes our great ways of life possible. This appreciation encourages us to maintain and build upon this shared civilizational foundation, leading to stable social progress over time. This idea is one of the oldest in political philosophy, stretching from Enlightenment philosopher Edmund Burke to modern thinker Dr. Jordan B. Peterson in the West and from Buddha to today’s Dalai Lama in the East. By contrast, greed has been denounced since Aristotle as a motivator of regressive revolutions that tear up age-old constitutions in favor of untested social systems that end in disaster. Gratitude is the progressive value we need to maintain American values in the Trump era, not greed for untested systems of nationalism or socialism. Society faces a basic choice between gratitude and greed as we enter the personal and political worlds of 2019. We can recognize, appreciate and improve the worlds we live in or deny, depricate and destroy them. This year, I resolve to be grateful for the goodness in my life. I resolve to recognize the best in everyone I meet. I resolve to show my family how much they mean to me. I resolve to improve upon the existing American social fabric and reject radicalism this election cycle. I resolve to appreciate the opportunities here at Dartmouth and expand them for others lest the old traditions fail. And I hope you too find a place for gratitude in your own life.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST PETER LEUTZ ’22
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST RANIYAN ZAMAN ’22
The Victims of Venmo
Dartmouth Stands By
The rise of digital currency threatens financial awareness.
For all of its rhetoric about bystander intervention, the College is no model.
Over winterim, I was Christmas shopping on attachment to the paper money they spend. Michigan Avenue, nicknamed the magnificent On the contrary, there is a proven disassociation mile, in the heart of downtown Chicago. between the consumer and electronic forms of Nothing out of the ordinary, as I grew up a currency. Thus, they may spend more recklessly 20-minute train ride from the city. After making with digital currency, as if it were monopoly my final stop at stores requested by my mom money. and sister, I was approached by a homeless man A big chunk of my spending during the asking for a few extra bucks. I pulled out my fall term was from purchases on Amazon. For wallet, noticed it was empty, and then in one of college students, Amazon offers a discount rate the more ridiculous moments of my life I asked for a Prime membership. This is a wildly popular if he had Venmo. I asked if a homeless man had deal, allowing college students across America Venmo. I then realized I hadn’t used or seen to buy books, dorm décor and last-minute cash in weeks. I couldn’t imagine a situation Halloween costumes within a matter of days. when I would absolutely need it, unless I found Once one’s Prime account is set up, orders can myself in the unique predicament into which I be placed with one click. With just one click, I had just stumbled. can make almost anything on Amazon’s digital This absence of paper money in my life is marketplace appear at Hinman in two days. It far from unique to me. In fact, 92 percent of feels more like magic than shopping. global currency is digital. On the global scale, The second culprit in the murder of my bank this is a positive statistic. Digitized currency account fall term was Venmo, an app that links to modernizes our economy, breaking down any bank account allowing seamless transferring barriers of commerce in a new and highly of money between two parties. Whenever one of efficient way. We can now send and receive my friends bought something, and I needed to payments around the world in real time. Giving reimburse them, I used Venmo. I simply typed us access to sectors of the economy from which in their account name, which is linked to the we were previously detached. This allows for contacts on my phone, typed in the amount, left more transactions to happen, and the economy, a clever caption regarding the payment, and, as a whole, benefits. However, boom, transaction complete. on an individual level there are “An increasingly Venmo is so accessible it is consequences to consumers, digital economy may almost fun. The money I was who can now spend large sending didn’t feel real. It was sums of money not just with not directly create like any other game on the the swipe of a card, but with a more reckless app store. I could bleed out 30 the tap of a finger. bucks from my bank account consumer. However, Having experienced my consumers are being just as easily as I could turn first extended period away left in Temple Run. desensitized to the from home this past fall, I Spending money in the was astounded by how much value of money that digital era feels more like money I spent. I didn’t recall they are spending waving a magic wand, or spending much money on electronically.” playing a video game, than anything. This is likely because making monetary decisions. a very small percentage of my In this way, there is a growing expenditures were done with cash. In this way, feeling of numbness, or detachment, between it didn’t feel like I was spending any money, the consumer and digital currency. When people leading to my shock upon checking my bank can’t physically see money leaving their hands, account at the end of November. I don’t intend they are at a higher risk to spend recklessly. to assert that the spending habits of students Modern consumers are in danger of being at Dartmouth provide an accurate depiction desensitized to their own expenditures. This is of average global consumer. However, mobile a frightening reality as it could lead to an over payments are becoming more and more popular extension of wealth. Credit card debt plagues at an exponential rate. Sweden is leading the families across America and could claim more charge with only 15 percent of all transactions victims when all purchases can be made with involving cash. Economists predict that some “one click,” whether it’s with Apple Pay, Venmo developed countries like Sweden could be or “contactless” credit cards: merely hold your cashless by 2020. However, underdeveloped credit card up to the reader, and your payment is nations like Somaliland are not far behind. The made. The new invention bears an appropriate impending irrelevance of physical currency is name, given that the American consumer is not only hurting the homeless man I met on the just that: out of contact. Our digital economy street, because idiots like me no longer feel the is producing consumers who are out of contact need to carry cash and therefore are not lying with their own financial accounts. This reality when they say they “don’t have any.” However, should worry us. the problem extends far beyond donations to Violent video games don’t make kids more the homeless. violent, but they may desensitize them to the The phenomena of mobile payment options presence of violence in the real world. An inducing the consumer to spend more, as I increasingly digital economy may not directly experienced this fall, is rooted in concrete create a more reckless consumer. However, psychological studies. In fact, Ross Steinman, a consumers are being desensitized to the value professor of psychology at Widener University of money that they are spending electronically. expects mobile consumers to spend anywhere As a global community of consumers we have from 12 to 18 percent more. Consumers become more connected; however, on an are more likely to have a kind of personal individual basis, we are less self-aware.
Before I’d ever set foot on campus, I knew This is all in addition to the many limitations about Dartmouth’s emphasis on bystander of bystander intervention, an reality especially culture. I took the same sexual assault highlighted by the high number of sexual prevention courses that my peers did and assaults that occur behind closed doors. clicked through the same slides on bystander Several examples are detailed in the plaintiffs’ intervention as the other members of the Class complaint in a high-profile lawsuit filed of 2022. (Do something yourself ! Bring others against Dartmouth, which alleges that three in! Ingenious alternatives.) I sat through the prominent professors in the psychological and same New Student Orientation talks on the brain sciences department sexually abused College’s very rigorous, serious, vague efforts scores of Dartmouth women over nearly two to combat sexual assault. The pen I almost decades. The complaint alleges that when one exclusively used during my first quarter has plaintiff was a Dartmouth undergraduate, “a the letters “DBI,” or Dartmouth Bystander male student broke into her dorm room and Initiative, printed on it — if that’s not the raped her.” (The College allegedly never even ultimate sign of how ubiquitous DBI’s branding tried to identify the rapist.) DBI’s tips about is on campus then I don’t know what is. asking someone to Late Night Collis are DBI, in a nutshell, aims to teach and utterly useless in the face of such violence. encourage students to recognize “concerning Dartmouth should be advocating something behaviors” (supposedly, this is not just more substantial than a weak temporary limited to sexual and gender-based violence, solution that leaves students to handle attackers although that’s most often the context in on their own, but it isn’t. which DBI comes up) and intervene in some Even worse, for all of their empty rhetoric way, as a responsible bystander, to prevent about responsible bystander intervention, it. The College’s constant references to Dartmouth administrators almost certainly DBI are supposed to signal its ever-growing may no longer be called models to follow. commitment to bystander culture and the goal The complaint in the aforementioned lawsuit behind it of tackling campus sexual assault. But demonstrates that the lawsuit isn’t so much like many of the administration’s words and about perpetrators or victims as much as it is gestures when it comes to Dartmouth’s rape about bystanders, the people who knew and culture, this rings hollow. The very fact that the did nothing. The College has reached the College advocates for bystander intervention so zenith of hypocrisy when it comes to bystander strongly, with almost nothing else substantial to intervention. The most strikingly awful thing in supplement its efforts to counter sexual assault the plaintiffs’ complaint, apart from the sexual and support survivors, is damning evidence of abuse and trauma that potentially generations how little it actually cares. of Dartmouth women experienced over This is not a criticism of bystander culture decades at the hands of three professors, itself. It’s absolutely essential that students is the way Dartmouth administrators and look out for one another and do their offices allegedly ignored and minimized best to pull one another out of dangerous every allegation of abuse that came their situations, and commendable when they way. Prominent bystanders — ones who do. DBI should be studentdid nothing to address the led, pushed forward among “Upon further situation even when explicitly peers, passed down from examination, the told that students were upperclassmen to incoming being harassed and attacked students, and promoted in term ‘bystander’ — include, according to Greek houses — and in many suggests innocence the complaint, College ways, it already is. But when that Dartmouth personnel David Bucci, Jay the administration endorses cannot claim.” Hull and Thalia Wheatley. bystander culture as official Private investigator Jennifer College policy, it practically Davis, hired by the College translates to the administration handing off the to look into allegations, is also accused of burden of identifying and fending off potential acting irresponsibly by allegedly disclosing rapists to students. It ducks issues of justice confidential information to the public and and survivors’ needs entirely. The College is providing survivors with misinformation. absolved of any blame, guilt, or responsibility Upon further examination, the term as it turns a blind eye to Dartmouth’s hostile “bystander” suggests innocence that environments and relies on students to take Dartmouth cannot claim. When presented care of each other, shielded by the legitimacy with such overwhelming evidence of of the research behind bystander culture. inappropriate, predatory behavior and (And this research is flimsy anyway — while subsequently failing to act, then taking the studies do show bystander intervention reduces wrong steps upon finally acting, one moves sexual assault, there’s no clear consensus on from being a bystander to being an enabler. how much. As researcher Bianca Fileborn Failing to intervene that many times makes points out in The Conversation, “we know these enablers nearly as culpable as the surprisingly little about bystander intervention attackers. ‘in action,’” particularly regarding types and Being urged to interveneby an administration efficacy.) But while students are watching out that not only doesn’t practice what they preach, for one another, how is the school watching out but has instead abandoned respectable values for us? How is it supporting survivors, bringing entirely, is sickening and demoralizing. Before justice to perpetrators, and aiding responsible Dartmouth can “move forward,” it needs to bystanders? acknowledge how and why it regressed.
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THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
Review: ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’ is another disappointment B y sebastian wurzrainer The Dartmouth Staff
Two year s ago, I was in the minority when I declared “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” to be less than the sum of its parts. Eddie Redmayne was genuinely fantastic as the unassuming, socially awkward protagonist Newt Scamander, and he continues to shine in the sequel, “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” Moreover, when the first film embraces the whimsical tone inherent to Scamander’s story, it works. Just as often, though, it gets buried in what I described in an old The Dartmouth review as “dour subplots,” most of them revolving around the terrorist reign of dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, played by Johnny Depp. As the title of the sequel might suggest, the film goes full dark, ditching any possible whimsy as fast as possible. It also ditches compelling character motivation, flowing plot structure and just about everything else that once made the “Harry Potter” stories and their subsequent adaptations and spin-offs so beloved. The film is once again helmed by David Yates, the director behind the last four Potter films and the first “Fantastic Beasts” outing. As with the first entry, Potter creator J.K.Rowling returns to write the screenplay, once again proving that she’s a far better author than screenwriter. “The Crimes of Grindelwald” is a film essentially composed of sub-plots without a main plot. Conceptually, I think Scamander’s character arc is meant to drive the movie, as he learns that he must pick sides in the inevitable magical war to come against Grindelwald. Conceptually, this is an interesting enough angle, illuminating why opting for neutrality in an ethically-charged conflict can be an irresponsible option despite the best of intentions. Yet Scamander never really evolves from a neutral pacifist to an actively engaged combatant in the battle against Grindelwald; he simply begins the film as one and declares himself the other by the end without much connective tissue in between. Thus, a character arc feels instead like a character leap. Scamander’s arc — or lack thereof — illuminates another one
of the film’s crippling flaws: it lacks any real tension. His transformation into a committed opponent of Grindelwald is all setup for the aforementioned great wizarding war that we’re assured will come … at some point … maybe. The first film actually sets this up well, establishing Grindelwald as a clear threat without playing all its cards too early. “The Crimes of Grindelwald” thus has the perfect opportunity to be the “The Empire Strikes Back” of the franchise by taking the story to dark and psychologically complex places via the aforementioned wizarding war. Instead, the film just feels like filler. To make up for this lack of excitement, Rowling tries to cram in plot twists and shocking revelations galore. But because we never really get a chance to know the characters, none of these surprises really land. Moreover, basically all of these twists are revealed via fountains of exposition, further illustrating Rowling’s limitations as a screenwriter. One of my favorite chapters in all of the Harry Potter books is when the characters basically stand around and exposit to each other about the origins of the Marauders Map, the relationship between Harry’s father and his godfather and so on. On the written page, the staging of the scene doesn’t really matter. Cinematically, though, it comes across as deadly dull, and there’s good reason director Alfonso Cuarón largely cut that aforementioned chapter in his adaptation of “Prisoner of Azkaban.” Sadly, Yates feels far more beholden to Rowling’s storytelling style than he ought to. And this might be as good a time as any to acknowledge that Yates was always the wrong choice to helm the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise. For the most part, Yates’s grimmer and more politically charged sensibilities worked well when he was adapting the darker final books of the Potter saga. In the first “Fantastic Beasts,” that sensibility seemed deeply at odds with the eccentric aesthetic that theoretically should have been essential to the film’s identity. One would think that Yates might feel more at home with the darker storyline in “The Crimes of Grindelwald,” yet he now appears
to be beyond bored with this world and his approach to it. The filmmaking largely feels like it’s on autopilot, stranded somewhere between competent and lazy. The same cannot be said for the cast. As I mentioned earlier, Redmayne is still perfect as Newt, and newcomer Zoë Kravitz does her best with the underwritten role of Newt’s old flame, Leta Lestrange. Likewise, Jude Law as a young Albus Dumbledore is an inspired piece of casting, but he’s given a whole lot of nothing to do. Once again, it’s clear that the franchise is building up to a confrontation between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, so one assumes that Law will eventually be given some juicy material to work with. Just not here. Then there’s the matter of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald himself. “The Crimes of Grindelwald” was a film plagued with entirely avoidable controversy from the start. The decision to cast Claudia Kim — one of the very few people of color involved with the franchise — as Nagini, the woman who will eventually transform into the pet serpent of Lord Voldemort,
was a decidedly questionable seems invested in a performance. choice born out of a very specific But — and this is crucial — one sort of white ignorance. should absolutely not take the Nevertheless, no filmmaking domestic abuse allegations out of decision was the equation. quite so illThe quality conceived and [“Crimes of of De pp’s quite so avoidable Grindelwald”] is perfor mance a s t h e ch o i c e does not not devoid of all to retain Depp excuse his as Grindelwald things good. Rather, presence after his ex-wife everything good in it in this film. Amber Heard In fact, the a c c u s e d h i m is overshadowed by g reatest o f d o m e s t i c poor decision making indictment a bu s e. I n t h e of “The that appears to be aftermath of the Crimes of allegations, Depp motivated far more by Grindelwald” should have been the financial incentives is that the best fired and recast. thing about P e r i o d . N o of a franchise than any it is also the questions asked. semblance of artistic one thing that But he wasn’t. absolutely If one takes the integrity or creativity. should not be domestic abuse in it. The film allegations out of is not devoid the equation and of all things just focuses on the acting, Depp is good. Rather, everything good arguably one of the best things — in it is overshadowed by poor if not the best thing — in the film. decision making that appears to be His characterization is soft-spoken, motivated far more by the financial charismatic and sur prisingly incentives of a franchise than any nuanced. And for the first time in semblance of artistic integrity or practically a decade, Depp actually creativity.
THE HOPKINS CENTER IS BACK FOR THE WINTER
JOYCE LEE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
The Hopkins Center for the Arts will open its winter season with the film “A Star is Born” playing on Friday.