It’s Time to Invest More in the FirstGeneration Community

The First Generaton Ofce should be moved to the Ofce of Community Life and Inclusivity and given the resources and means to thrive.

Until recently, the First-Year Student Enrichment Program pre-orientation served as the primary resource for incoming firstgeneration students. It is the precursor to the First Generation Office, which opened its doors in Sept. 2021 under the supervision of Academic Support Services. With the re-opening of the FGO — now located in Sudikoff Hall — and the launch of Toward Equity, the College’s latest diversity, equity and inclusion initiative, now is the perfect time to review the resources that the College provides for first-generation students.

While many first-generation students, a group that includes myself, might be in need of additional academic support, this is not an issue exclusive to our community. Instead, having an office specifically for first-gen students is essential because so many of us lack financial support from our families, as well as practical advice. Many of us have left everyone we knew thousands of miles away, venturing into the unknown. Firstgen students are in need of personal guidance in this complicated social landscape, and the FGO would be most effective by tackling this broader need for mentorship and community.

Thus, I suggest that the First Generation Office be repositioned as a subdivision of the Office of Community Life and Inclusivity, rather than Academic Support Services.

The FGO’s programs have a wide reach, with 89 students in the Class of 2026 having participated in FYSEP alone — approximately eight percent of all 1,126 incoming undergraduates. More than $13 million in support from alumni donors and continued collaboration between several stakeholders across campus have demonstrated the goodwill of Dartmouth’s greater community.

I am grateful for the expanding resources for the first-gen community, but only recently did I come to feel that there was any support from the College administration.

The excitement I felt when the FGO was established was initially clouded by unease. As an “Exvangelical” — a former Evangelical Chrisitan — I was hurt when we were assigned a suite in the back of a local church. I know that other students and staff members felt similarly. I was happy that first-gen students were not stuffed in a closet, but the back of a church didn’t feel much better.

However, many students of color and myself were excited to see when several women of color joined the staff, in the fall 2021 and in the summer 2022. New hires led to initiatives like the Prepare to Launch Program — a collaboration with Center for Professional Development to aid first-gen students with their transition into the labor market. These staffing changes reflect the majority of the first-generation students, all while working to ensure that the FGO provides support during a student’s full four years. In addition to this exciting growth, I was excited to eventually learn that we would be moving to a new space in Sudikoff Hall. More than just being more comfortable for students like me, this recognizable and secular space adds an aura of professionalism to our office.

Many campus leaders have been happy to boast such expansion of first-generation programs in the past. In conversation with The Dartmouth in May 2021, when asked about what the College was doing in regard to racial justice, College President Phil Hanlon described FYSEP and the E.E. Just Program — a two-year fellowship for underrepresented minorities in STEM — as mere “philanthropic commitments” and not a necessary means of supporting marginalized and deserving students. At least we can agree that there is a connection between class and race in this country.

While I find it appropriate to boast about a job well done, I urge Dartmouth’s leadership to reconceptualize their approach to providing resources for first-generation students and students of color. It is disheartening to hear that supporting these communities is conceived as just some sort of philanthropic venture. This approach leads a great number of first-gen students — especially those who are further marginalized — to feel like a mere diversity token. We should receive support because we deserve it, not because it bolsters the College’s image as a charitable or generous institution.

Still, I feel myself gaining hope as the FGO matures and as we continue to see first-gen representation in several key roles around campus, including Dean of the College Scott Brown and Vice Provost for Enrollment Lee Coffin. An advocate for first-gen students, Coffin has argued that we are not academically underprepared compared to our peers and that FYSEP has been particularly valuable as a cultural transition to Dartmouth. This insight, paired with my own experiences and those of my peers, leads me to assert that first-gen students deserve to be recognized as a community and really be given equal opportunity to thrive.

It is not realistic to expect the FGO to support students by duplicating resources that other departments at Dartmouth already work hard to provide. Why compete with colleagues at the Academic Skills Center or Student Wellness Center, who provide essential, campus-wide resources? Instead, we should expect the FGO to guide first-gen students, both as individuals and as a community, to opportunities that will help them curate their own success. The FGO can and will strive to foster an inclusive campus for first-generation students.

To make this all possible, the College must properly situate the office within the greater organizational structure. Ensuring that we have a proper space in Sudikoff Hall is the first step, but properly repositioning the FGO within the College will better promote cross-campus collaboration and community-building. The College must then provide the resources and personnel required to efficiently collaborate with potential partners and current stake-holders across campus. Our diverse community of Dartmouth first-generation students deserves to be treated with dignity — like the smart, independent and capable people that we are — not thought of as charity cases.

Verbum Ultimum: As Cold As Ice

Dartmouth must do more to ensure students have adequate heatng in their residences.

This weekend, temperatures in the Upper Valley are predicted to drop to treacherously low levels, with some news outlets predicting wind chills between -20 and -30 degrees Fahrenheit. The College has taken many precautions to warn students about the risks of such low temperatures. Residential Operations sent an email explaining ways for students to keep their rooms warmer and Student Government emailed to inform students about a bus system that will pick them up and drop them of at their dorm clusters. And with a campus-wide email warning about the health risks of such cold temperatures — particularly when drinking —the College has taken important steps to ensure students are aware of the risks this weekend.

Although we sincerely appreciate the proactive steps the College has taken to educate students during this cold snap, this knowledge does not address the most pressing concern as the temperatures begin to plummet: Student residences lack adequate heating.

Both on and of campus, many residences do not have adequate heating systems. While part of this issue for on-campus residences is due to old, poorly sealed windows — an admission Residential Operations even made in its campus-wide email — a much larger part of this problem stems from outdated and poorly maintained heating systems.

Stories about radiators that don’t adequately heat up dorm rooms, or central heating that heats rooms to radically diferent temperatures depending on the day, are all too common. In fact, members of this Editorial Board have experienced one if not both of these occurrences during their time at Dartmouth. In other cases, windows may seal so poorly that the heating systems simply can’t account for the cold air fowing into rooms.

In its email to students, Residential Operations ofers questionable solutions to some of these problems. If students suspect their room is cold due to poorly sealed windows, Residential Operationsinstructs them to “roll a towel up and use it to block the draft” and ensure that their beds are not positioned directly next to exterior windows. What’s more, they instruct all students to wear many layers even in their dorms. Although these seem like adequate solutions in the short-term, they reveal an unsettling truth that the College is clearly aware of: Studentsare likely struggling to keep warm due to infrastructure defciencies in dorms that are out of our control.

Some may argue that even if students’ radiators don’t work as well as they should or if a window isn’t fully sealed, it’s not that big of a deal — they won’t freeze. While we agree that in the vast majority of cases this is true, it is frustrating that a well-resourced college is advising students to rearrange their entire bedroom and dress with multiple layers while in their rooms, while failing to acknowledge their systemic shortcomings. And this is not a one-of experience — the College has sent these emails in years past, and yet they continue to let time go by without working on fxing the issue.

Graduate students living on campus deal with these same problems, and those who live of-campus may encounter even worse situations. In the case of some graduate students in of-campus housing, freezing from the cold while in their rooms is a real fear. Some students haved reported living in residences so poorly insulated that they have icicles in their microwave — even when temperatures outside are well above zero. Others have electricity that is so inefcient they can’t keep up with the rate that their apartment burns through lightbulbs — faced with the cold of this weekend, we can only imagine how high their heating bill will be and whether they can aford to keep warm. Given how expensive and poorly maintained of-campus housing is and the current lack of graduate student on-campus housing and in short, it’s a lose-lose situation.

Dartmouth prides itself on its location and access to all four seasons — and yet, when the inevitable freezing temperatures of winter hit, as they do every year, Dartmouth is unable to keep its students warm. Besides being irresponsible, this is also a wholly avoidable problem. While it may be hard to do maintenance on heating systems and windows during the normal academic year, the summer provides ample opportunity to fx these problems during periods when student enrollment is low. Although we are aware that Dartmouth often uses dorms during the summer for camps and other purposes, we argue that it would not be difcult to work out a system to preemptively work on the heating.

Additionally, forcing graduate students into bad, even unsafe living conditions due to a failure to provide enough housing for the current student body is unacceptable. No Dartmouth student — no matter their age — should have to worry about how they will manage the cold winter months. At the very least, it is vital that the College provides graduate students with ample resources to stay warm, whether that be providing space heaters or increasing stipends during the winter months — any solution is better than the current lack of acknowledgement that a problem exists.

In short, if Dartmouth wants to fully embrace its sense of place in the Northwoods, it is imperative that the College provides students with the resources and housing to safely and comfortably endure it. The editorial board consists of opinion staf columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-in-chief.