Winter is over, and the Green is green once again. The Olympians are back in their homes, and the tapping season has come to an end. Our pallid complexions are reverting to their tanner states, and our windows are left open so that our musty, dusty rooms can finally breathe in the aromas of Hanover. We at the DFP, with a new Editorial board and a cleansed critical palette, are excited for and committed to another term of keeping our eyes, ears, and noses open, following leads, and voicing our opinions. Whether or not you agree with us, we hope you, too, will share your voice with us and remain open to change.
Yes, it’s the season of renewal: by the time you read this issue, new members of the Board of Trustees will have been elected and the Student Assembly elections will be underway (the latter will be covered in a special DFP “SA Elections” issue).
Some of the new changes are a little hard to grasp. For the first time in decades, we may no longer be sending “blitzes”. Instead, as Parker Phinney explains in his article on email server change, we are most likely going to be sending, well, emails. Though for many of us, the idea wrenches the heart at its very mention—we will all miss that iconic dog-attacking-the-pixilated-mailman—we can rest assured that the change is all for good reason. It will make communication more efficient and reliable, and hopefully our Darmouth Experience will be purer: the more memory we can store in our email server, the more we space we can clear in our minds.
As Liz Klinger notes in her article, this summer Thayer Dining Hall will be closed for demolition and renovation. But before you storm the steps of Parkhurst, look on the bright side—at least Collis will be open. What’s more, if things go according to plan, the construction of “The Class of 1953 Commons” will provide a whole array of new-age common spaces to complement those already in nearby Robo and Collis. Who knows, it might even have a catchy nickname.
Meanwhile, in national news, magic mushrooms can cure depression, The Census is going gay (hopefully) and the healthcare Bill was passed over spring break. Zach De covers the census in his article, and some of the Health Care Bill’s more exact dimensions are clearly enumerated for our readers in Sora Ryu’s article on Health Care Reform.
Universal Health Care is one of those ideological shifts that for many seems overly technical, like the email server change, and so is reduced and boiled down until it is no longer a debate of Health Care Reform vs. no Health Care Reform but instead Socialism vs. Capitalism, or even charity vs. responsibility. This is simply not case—the two paradigms simply are not that different. There is no inherent reason why health care cannot share properties of both, and meet the needs of all parties.
Turning this idea on its head, as Sora Ryu writes in her article on Dambisa Moyo, helping the less fortunate is not—indeed, should not—be a matter of charity. It is hard for us, sitting around our coffee tables, eating our delicious Novak food, talking on our cell phones, to ever take the stance that helping starving children is not the right decision. We can’t see where our money is going or how it is being used; all we know is that we can’t stand for doing nothing. The problem with this mindset is that we are at the center, and once we drop our money through the slot or send our check in the mail, we have already achieved that feeling of moral satisfaction, whether or not it has benefitted anyone. Exploring this principle on the ground in Ghana, James Wang explains that the correct way to approach poverty in Africa is with investment and microfinance. If we can trust the people of Africa with the ability to repay small loans, new monetary freedom will stimulate the economy.
While the new Editorial Board at the DFP is looking forward to investigating these topics in the coming term, it is important to remember that even at a time like this (looking outside), not everything is like bunnies and sunshine.
The SEIU and staff cuts seem to have faded into the background, and the six-figure success of our Haiti relief effort is certainly a cause for celebration. Ethan Wang ’13, in a recent opinion article in “The Dartmouth,” chirped a familiar tune, writing “These two causes [Haiti and the staff] have generated a lot of attention on campus — but perhaps a little too much”. These “buzzwords”, as Wang writes, have become obsolete fashion statements, and the programs the college has enacted to address these issues “do little more than unnecessarily drain resources.”
Ethan Wang argues that we should not have taken in two Haitian immigrants for term at Dartmouth, because such an experience “will give them a fleeting taste of our privileged academic environment before returning to their impoverished country”. Wang concludes that they are not “Making the most of their experience.” But how can Wang make claims like this without having spoken to the students himself? I am sure you would find they are far from disappointed or bitter with their experiences here. As leaders in the Haiti relief effort, it is also the College’s obligation to uphold its, and our, image in the academic sphere by showing that we are willing to do more than publish photographs of our experts getting off of planes with fancy equipment. We are embracing the problem here as our own.
Labeling words like “Haiti” and “Staff” as buzzwords so that we can feel more comfortable about dismissing them does not show any well-formulated opinion. When there are no better alternatives, sometimes the most meaningful thing to do is to offer “a kind gesture” rather than embrace a colder, more financially “efficient,” logic.
One of the themes of this issue is that we have to know when charity is productive and when it becomes “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” In both cases, of course, the intentions are good, but the difference (or, perhaps, the devil) is in the details. Whose hands touch the money before it reaches its destination? When we choose to help one group of people, what more needy groups are we ignoring? Are we really making a difference?
As we prepare for a new term and the discussions to come, we have to make sure we keep in mind the consequences of our decisions in the future. We do not make decisions just to win or lose in the moment of disagreement, just as we cannot forget the struggle that got us here on issues like Haiti and the Staff. In the same way, we must consider how we look back on things like Blitzmail and Thayer Dining Hall as different people. If we remain open to change now, we will thank ourselves later.
