New England is cold. But even so, saying ice was one of the region’s largest industries in the early twentieth century sounds more like a joke than reality. Truth is often stranger than fiction, however, and in truth, ice production in New England was not only a huge industry—it was a cross-country and sometimes international one as well. This amusing factoid is one of many presented by Dartmouth professor of Geography, Susanne Freidberg, in her new book, Fresh, In it, Freidberg investigates the history of perishables in the American economic and physical landscape. Fresh explores the curious history of food preservation and transportation, covering how improvements in technology changed the American diet and what people could afford to eat.

Fresh is an informational book in several respects. Freidberg explores ways in which attitudes towards food preservation have changed over time. Some seem jarringly different from what we’re familiar with now—for example, with most foods, it is now unthinkable to not have them neatly preserved in cold environments. Previous generations had a vastly different view, however, and there was a longstanding hostility in American society towards refrigerated food. Part of this hostility can be explained by bad press and marketing; since “fresh” foods went for higher prices, merchants only refrigerated soon-to-spoil (or spoiled) food in a bid to keep them for longer. Thus, anything that came out of a refrigerator was usually already long past its prime.

Another part of the stigma against refrigerated food was suspicion as to what it would mean for the consumer welfare. Eggs, for instance, easily keep in refrigerators, but this wasn’t seen as a virtue for old-time American consumers. They instead saw it was dangerous—after all, how could one figure out if an egg is truly “fresh” if refrigerated eggs keep and are indistinguishable from others that didn’t undergo the “tainting” influence of a refrigerator? Refrigeration also had unintended economic effects as well. Since it allowed certain foods to be available during more times of year than before, consumers just saw this as meaning that merchants didn’t have to sell low during gluts.

Despite all of these misunderstandings, Fresh is effective in showing how similar the fears of consumers back then are to those expressed by American consumers now. Americans didn’t see freshness as simply lack of spoilage or low bacteria counts—they saw freshness as something more, a fantasy where one could imagine, by drinking milk or biting into an apple, the farm next door that grew and produced it. Never mind that the actual business of farming is a messy and difficult one—the image is what the eaters were after.
In the past, freshness meant local. And without the science, that was the only way they could be assured that their food was wholesome. As such, consumers wanted, supported, and took a long time to be convinced that a California fruit was just as good, if not better, than a Vermont one.

Today, locality matters, but for different reasons. We have the science, so instead of vague notions of healthy “stuff” we assert lack of pesticides, genetic-modification, a small carbon footprint, or a host of other qualities that the term “local” appears to imply, whether or not this is actually the case. These aren’t arguments that the early American consumer would have recognized, but the result is one that is all very much the same.

Fresh is an important book because it is a comprehensive history of freshness in a digestible, reader-friendly form. Beyond the factoids, it paints a story that shows us why we are here today—not in the manner of angry diatribes or by invoking exposé-style disgust in readers, as books like Fast Food Nation or other recent investigations about food and the American diet are prone to do. It instead shows us what our food is, and presents the deeper complexities in the messy world of growing our food. From this, we can decide what we truly want to change—and what is merely a fantasy of a time of pure food that never was.

Science is not democratic. Science is not emotional. Gravity doesn’t care if everyone votes against it. Power won’t make itself perpetual for a while if Congress passes a stimulus. Poison ivy won’t stop that itch if you ask it nicely. The virus killing that child won’t stop no matter how hard and how tearfully his mother begs.

Truth is a difficult notion because no matter how “certain” the word sounds, our conception of it is supremely relative. Putting aside any “emotional” or “spiritual” truth, however, empirical truth—what science measures—cannot be swayed by human feeling or belief.

The world turns. Reality is. All science does is measure it. This seems obvious. But if it is, why does everyone try to change or ignore the science, believing that it will impact empirical truth?

Our society’s scientific plight seems to be a recent phenomenon. Many Americans laugh in the face of decades of climate change research. Nuclear skeptics still buy into some updated notion of the China Syndrome, according to which nuclear waste from a meltdown might burn a hole all the way to China. Evolution is widely thought to have “missing pieces,” despite the debate concluding nearly a century ago. And the media likes to shine on popular psychology, often to the detriment of clinical psychiatry.

We have virtually tossed out the careful, systematic study of the world that helped lead humankind away from superstition and into the modern era. It seems like just one generation ago that our scientists and engineers were the ones we looked up to—when they were the subject of a speech by President Kennedy and were our greatest bulwark against Communism. Now, Americans look up to Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

But if we look deeper, we might find a startling and terrifying truth. It may have only been during the fight against Communism that Americans put real stock in their experts. In the late nineteenth century, it didn’t matter what anthropologists said or documented—America ignored its poor until Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives. The public was largely ignorant of the meat packing industry’s disgusting conditions before Sinclair’s novel The Jungle. More recently, in the 1960s, we ignored DDT as a potential threat until Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. What these cases all have in common was that they triggered a massive public reaction, one fueled by emotional resonance. The power of these statements was not in their meticulous documentation—it was in their appeal to primal gut reaction over logical data analysis.

Today, we have a vast apparatus of universities, research institutes, and public intellectuals. But no matter how much we invest in them, we can effectively relegate them to being a vestige of the Cold War era considering how they factor into the American consciousness.

Non-experts happily invent data or challenge scientific studies by merely claiming that it doesn’t “feel right” to them. Even in the public health sphere, we see phenomena like Jenny McCarthy—former Playboy Playmate and B-film actor—now being regarded as more trustworthy on a “cure” for autism than researchers and doctors who have studied the condition for most of their professional lives. When McCarthy calls for parents to avoid vaccinating their children because the standard package of vaccinations “causes autism,” thousands of parents listen—making her responsible for single-handedly reviving long-dead diseases like measles and mumps. When challenged with over twenty studies that disprove a link between autism and vaccination, she once claimed that her son is her science.

To the American public, it seems wrong and “undemocratic” to deny someone that argument. Cold numbers can’t replace warm, nice-sounding words, and the “tyranny of facts” almost seems to be something from an authoritarian nightmare. And so, we listen to those who spout on about science, about public policy, and about everything else that they have no knowledge of—and trust them more than those who we pay to be experts.

Maybe it isn’t so surprising that we only trusted our scientists in an era when we accepted many other authoritarian measures in order to battle totalitarianism.
This underlying culture is not something that Alexis de Toqueville, observer of 18th century America and now darling of the health care debate, wrote about. It isn’t something that we rhapsodize about when exalting American freedom.

But it is real, and part of the reason why we so fervently deny the reality that is climate change. It is part of the reason why we still don’t have nuclear plants while the rest of the world goes on. And it is a large part of why more and more of our brightest minds now go to Silicon Valley start-ups, mega-corporations, and Wall-Street instead of dreaming to be NASA scientists, civil engineers, or medical researchers.

Intellectual firepower only matters when you can use it to reach your goal—now money—without giving a damn about what others might think about your idea.
It is a dangerous trend for a country that arose largely because its spiritual originators in Europe were able to shake off irrationalism and religion, forces that acted as intellectual shackles on the people. A tyranny of facts overcame a tyranny of men.

As we watch our society wrestle with bigger and bigger problems, ignoring what the scientific process tells us, one has to wonder whether we will again fall under the spell of irrationalism, tightly controlled and disseminated by a self-interested elite holding onto power.

The more I watch Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and a host of other anti-rational, anti-fact public figures gain prominence, I cringe.

The more I see others who should know better emulate them in order to get results, like the Democratic Party has begun to do, the more I despair for this country.

As far as most Dartmouth students know, the only thing that African and Asian music have in common is that they are foreign and “not Western.”
There is little understanding of the polyrhythm beats of African music or the multi-tonal cacophony of traditional Asian music. Given how little of this type of music we hear around New England, this state of unawareness is unsurprising.

On February 19th, the World Music Percussion Ensemble sought to remedy that. That night Spaulding Auditorium was filled with the drumming of djembe and pipa—along with a variety of other drums and keyboard. The program of the night included Iya Ni Wura, Dounobah, as well as offerings such as Written on the Wind and Blue Pipa.

The entire ensemble performed well, but the stars of the night were the featured guests on the pipa, Min Xiao-Fen and Si Jie Loo ‘12 who has studied the drums for years. Min Xiao-Fen was amazingly dexterous on the pipa, filling the entire room with multiple lines of melodies that sounded more like an entire Asian symphony of zithers.

Amusingly, she cried out some unintelligible word over and over for “My Friend” which she later explained was her dog.

One of the odder performances of the night was a solo by Ms. Min where her performance was backed by a “kinetic painting” by Norman Perryman. Although the music was interesting, the kinetic painting itself seemed like a child playing on an old overhead projector, leaving the audience confused about the purpose of the song and the significance of the painting.

Less abstractly, Si Jie Loo was incredibly energetic, moving between different drums and acting as the driving force behind many of the night’s pieces. Matsuri and Mukala-Mukala were especially impressive. Matsuri, a Japanese “Shinto temple song” was introduced by Hafiz Shabazz (the ensemble director) as a piece that Si Jie personally brought to the group. Both pieces were filled with energy and made the audience move to the powerful beat of African drums.

Overall, it is difficult to say how much appreciation the performance brought to African and Asian music.

The audience was certainly entertained, but the turnout was somewhat disappointing, with only about half of Spaulding filled.

However, one cannot fault the performers given their energy and expertise. The music was enjoyable, and the Upper Valley experienced the strings and drums of Asia and Africa in one evening—a rare occurrence indeed.

Dartmouth still has a long way to go to become accessible to students with disabilities.

Dartmouth has been good to me. Sure, I have my gripes about dining plans going up by $200 almost every year—and the likely introduction of the Super-Size Mega Ultimate Green Plan. I have my gripes about the gummed up Blitz terminal keyboards in FoCo. It also annoys me how the registrar here requires that underclassmen stand in line in the chilly early morning to sign up for the classes of their choice. But, overall, these are minor qualms in the grand scheme of things.

As said, Dartmouth has been good to me. But then again, I don’t have to get around in a wheelchair.

I transferred here from the University of California, Berkeley, which, for all its faults, took the cause of accessibility to what I thought at the time was an overhyped extreme. It probably had something to do with the strict California regulations stacked on top of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the number of students with physical and learning disabilities on campus.

It was common for me to see people going around in wheelchairs—there were even a few students with a form of dwarfism that were permanently confined to a mechanized wheelchair-bed. Although they were unable to manipulate any objects with their small hands other than the joystick for their wheelchair, they were still able to get around just fine with keycards that automatically opened doors, and the copious numbers of ADA-compliant ramps stretching every which way from every University-affiliated building.

And Berkeley didn’t just accommodate physical disabilities. It was a relatively common sight to see students in the front of class with computers that transcribed the lecture into written words almost in real time. I though of it as a technological marvel until I found out it was actually a service the University paid for where typists in India real-time transcribed the lecture.

I suppose it wasn’t as difficult considering how many of the lectures were done through a speaker-system to thousand-student auditoriums, and subsequently piped to iTunes University to be posted online with full video. They didn’t need any new equipment to send off that audio stream across the world. Oh, and we also had a note-taking service that charged nominal amounts for full class notes of each lecture. By now, Dartmouth readers are probably in awe of the rich class skipping opportunities offered at Berkeley.

To be honest, for most of my career at Berkeley, I felt the same way. It was a great tool for slackers that didn’t want to walk through the clear California weather to get to class. It was probably expensive, only enriching the lives of lazy people. God, what a useless and inefficient system. And while I understood the physical accessibility accommodations better, did these students really need TWO ramps going to every high-rise in the new dorm complexes? Bah, Berkeley bureaucracy.

It’s perhaps one of the great ironies of my academic career that I never really had that much sympathy for students with disabilities while at Berkeley, one of the most accessibility conscious and “liberal” (though it isn’t really) schools in the United States. Or, maybe it isn’t. While at Berkeley, it seemed that students with physical or mental disabilities could go about their lives—not as easily as the rest of us, but acceptably nonetheless.

Dartmouth is different. I couldn’t quite place what felt so odd about the physical landscape here, compared to Berkeley. Unlike many, I didn’t have any drop-dead, “This is gorgeous,” reaction. Maybe it was the fact that the grass was somewhat yellowed, and the school felt too SMALL for the 32,000 students I was used to. But nonetheless, images of strident, athletic people bounding up the stairs and running around campus came into my mind. I figured it was mainly because I knew about Dartmouth’s sports prowess compared to most of the Ivies (it still didn’t prepare me for the vast disappointment of going from Cal to Dartmouth football).

That was probably part of it as well, but now, I feel it was also because of something else. Berkeley often felt chaotically styled and garish with its many ramps, blinking keycard sensors, and automated doors scattered everywhere. Dartmouth felt older, with an elevated sensibility. A flight of stairs in front of every building and no ramps or elevators in sight. It was an immediate feeling of difference in who would—or could—come here. I can’t imagine the girl with dwarfism that I said hi to every day coming and going from class in this landscape.

The physical inaccessibility of the campus is reflected into the “invisible” space, with its unfriendliness towards learning disabilities. I’m sure most of us have had classes where professors noted in their syllabi that students with “invisible” disabilities could speak with the professor. But in many cases, even if a student does go to a professor with such concerns, he or she risks being laughed at or looked at with skeptical eyes. The mandated accommodation is also sometimes lost in the fragmented faculty and administration relationship.

To be fair, it isn’t malice that drives this behavior. I spoke with an alum this past Winter Carnival whose feelings about learning disabilities encapsulated perfectly what many professors think—rich, privileged kids at Dartmouth just pay to be tested and diagnosed with these disabilities to get extra time on tests. It lets students be lazy—a view very similar to one that I used to hold.

One that I used to hold, at least, before someone very close to me found out that she likely had dyslexia. I watched her struggle through the administrative offices looking for accommodation, from Ward Newmeyer (the head of Student Accessibility Services), to her dean, to the SAS secretary, to Dick’s House, back to Ward… and so on and so forth. I was privy to the “deal with it yourself” attitude the College had towards testing and treatment. She struggled to figuring out insurance costs and had to find a way to avoid paying thousands of dollars since she didn’t have Dartmouth insurance. Yes, thousands of dollars. And the entire administrative framework, the one that we pay so much to support, gave her little more than a wave towards a general direction.

Since then, I’ve met a surprisingly large number of other students with similar issues. And many others that have “symptoms”—though they don’t see it that way—of at least mild cases of such disorders. I don’t think that people should be coddled in the same way that they are at Berkeley. That is going too far, and it does not prepare students to face the real world. But at the same time, each and every reading assignment shouldn’t be a personal trek to hell for these students.

Nor should moving about the campus, getting food, or just making it into classes.
At Dartmouth, the lack of sympathy for students with disabilities is only topped by the lack of understanding. I should know. I never understood, even when disadvantaged students surrounded me. I have two perfectly good legs, am relatively athletic, and probably read faster than average. It isn’t to brag about it,
it’s to give perspective. My position is similar to those of many students. And probably of most professors as well. We can’t understand what it is like to try to just pick up food from FoCo, which is not exactly designed for wheelchair-bound students in mind. Nor can we understand a routine reading assignment being a multi-night marathon of painful and largely unremembered text. Because we don’t understand, we can’t sympathize. Because we don’t see, we never care to know.

It’s why groups such as the newly founded ABLE are so important. But it’s only a first step. Action must follow awareness—but right now, we aren’t even aware yet. It’ll be a long time before I can see that girl I knew at Berkeley ever even wanting, or ever able, to be here.

Patronizing. Dismissive. Amused. These are attitudes that we generally take towards fringe commentators who spout nonsense and take untenable positions. Usually, we feel justified in judging them harshly. Yesterday, during a closed-door meeting in Parkhurst, the administration took this attitude towards students who met with its representatives to discuss staff layoffs. The administrators chuckled. I’m sure they felt they were justified too.

Let’s be clear. The efforts of the students and the local SEIU chapter, who collaborate in part but mostly plan their events independent of one another, have been disorganized, haphazard, and “unprofessional.” No one is going to praise their elegant prose, deft political maneuvers, or clever strategic planning. This process has been messy, slapped-together, and oftentimes impromptu—which is exactly what one would expect from a grassroots movement dealing with what is, to its members, an unfamiliar and novel problem. One can hardly fault it for not moving like a well-greased political machine. It isn’t one. The local union began this process scared and immediately dropped all of its cards on the table, including its willingness to absorb pay cuts in order to preserve jobs. Likewise, the student response has been organized largely through blitz, and lately run through a newly registered gmail account. One could hardly scream “novice” any louder.

This effort, so far, has consisted of concerned staff and students feeling their way through a difficult and frightening situation.

But what this movement lacks in sophistication, well-polished rhetoric, and on-message discipline it makes up for in earnest dedication and raw emotion. While national union organizers and speakers have appeared on campus every now and then to breathe fire and attempt to impose some sort of discipline on the chaos, they have ultimately been peripheral to the action. A majority of what you see happening on Dartmouth’s campus is a result of an outpouring of student and staff sentiment. It’s unscripted, disorganized, and chaotic. In other words, it’s real.

The administration’s shared amusement, eye-rolling, and patronizing dismissal of the students yesterday was understandable on a political and tactical level. The students, in their idealistic fervor, planned to storm the President’s Office and present a letter that highlighted their concern—but they told the administration about their plans and even sent the letter ahead of time. As a result, the administration instead invited twelve students to discuss the letter. The students accepted.

So, unprepared, idealistic, and having given up any semblance of an advantage they might have had, these students were confronted with President Kim and a phalanx of top administrators, each armed with prepared remarks and talking points. Faced with a group that included media savvy professionals and a President they all admired, the students present were barraged with legal technicalities and prepared rebuttals. Honest but unhedged words were savagely and efficiently ripped apart. President Kim demanded to know what this ragtag group was accusing him of. He freely interrupted and silenced students—and, understandably, the students were largely unwilling to “talk back” to a figure who had assumed the seemingly well-deserved status of campus idol. Kim’s team then briskly lectured the students on how “uninformed” they were of the situation’s technicalities.

Although the students did know the essentials of what was happening to staff and the questionable tactics being directed towards them (which, if not illegal, are at least unethical), students were contradicted and chided on their ignorance of specific detail. The students recognized their ignorance, of course. That ignorance was the product of the administration’s opacity in regards to budget cuts.

However, even outspoken Dartmouth students are reluctant to push back against top College officials. Thus, yesterday, four administrators, with decades of combined professional experience, effectively “schooled” twelve genuinely concerned undergraduates for an hour.

But to focus on the legal soundness of their remarks, or the effectiveness of their execution, or their rhetorical skill is to miss the point entirely. One would have hoped that the takeaway for these top College officials would not have been that their opponents are unseasoned politically, but instead that students have genuine concerns about the process—concerns serious enough to compel them to draft a letter, albeit an unprofessional one. Thursday’s meeting wasn’t supposed to be a brawl over public opinion or snappy technical points. Instead, it was supposed to be an airing of concerns, uncensored and utterly vulnerable. It wasn’t supposed to be a confrontation.

Did the administration think that the students it dealt with got their “talking points” from the union? Did they believe that they had been “subverted” and made into pawns? Anyone who has met Earl Sweet, the president of SEIU local, would know that he has all of the malice and scheming of a bowl of porridge. If any of the points students took from the staff were incorrect, that should be a sign to the administration that the College staff is irrationally scared or misinformed. It should have been an opportunity to open a campus dialogue that assuages fearful murmurings. It should not have been an opportunity to soundly thrash a group of concerned students—students looking out not for themselves but instead for Dartmouth’s employees.

Without a doubt, there are varying degrees of firmness in student opinion regarding potential layoffs. A few are staunchly against any layoffs. Some believe that layoffs should only be a last resort. Many more are in favor of a careful, open, and considered approach to budget cuts and staff layoffs. However, general student sentiment seems to hold that the administration should talk openly with the staff. It’s a simple notion—but even now I can see the obvious administration counter. Legally, formal negotiations—at least for unionized workers—are more complicated than that. Of course it is. But that’s not the point. The point is that perhaps a letter from the union requesting more administrative transparency should not be answered by just a press statement about the administration’s refusal to talk to the union—published in the Valley News. Which is exactly what the administration did. Technical dismissal of student and staff concerns do nothing to address underlying community sentiment.

And that is ultimately what is at stake in this debate—community. Why is this process new to the union, and why is the union’s response so unpolished? It’s simple. It’s because it has never faced anything like this before. The context in which union negotiations had previously existed at Dartmouth was relaxed, casual, and—truth-be-told—most likely lax in the legal niceties. Negotiations never needed to be airtight or rigorously professional because they were a friendly exchange between partners.

Many parties are pointing fingers, and assigning blame for our predicament, to this or that. Maybe the College overexpanded in a time of plenty and made investments that, in hindsight, were poorly considered. All this would mean is that the College’s endowment staff and administrators made roughly the same mistakes that seem to befall most human decision-makers from time to time. On the other hand, maybe it is the case, as is suggested in some quarters, that the union is used to being given too much too easily, and that College staff is, overall, inefficiently allocated. Even if these claims are true, this doesn’t mean that the people themselves should be dealt with as an enemy—or that they should be treated as mere “assets” to be shed.

Students and staff don’t have the specifics about this budget process down pat. That’s not what they came here to learn, nor is it what they’re paid to do. But they don’t require this mastery of detail in order to have a sense of the process, and they deserve to have more openness than has been given so far. President Kim has declared that he wants to see Dartmouth students become leaders in various fields all over the world. That process begins with treating his student partners as parties worthy of respect and consideration. It also begins with not dismissing or cynically disregarding the idealism of those who are concerned. President Kim has also publicly declared that Dartmouth has a unique community that he wants, or wanted, to preserve. If that’s so, perhaps he should start doing a bit more to understand it better rather than simply declaring, in College-produced publications, that he “intuitively” understands it.

This isn’t a matter of policy, or action, or layoffs. In the end, it’s a matter of tone and discourse. Even if layoffs—even significant ones—come to pass, what ultimately matters here is the humaneness of the process. With real economic hardship hanging over its head, the staff deserves advance notice and a general sense of where the College’s budget discussion is headed. Maybe this would result in a more disorganized, slower process. It would probably make things messier.

But that’s necessary. There may be few things that are black and white, but it is unacceptable to treat layoffs as something that should be decided with a swift, sudden blow. This way of conducting business may make things faster and more efficient, but it also makes them colder, more mechanical, and more exclusive. The Dartmouth community appreciates the professional efficiency of this new administration. But efficiency should not be bought with community, community built up through hundreds of years and dozens of generations—of students and staff alike. Among all of Dartmouth’s most cherished traditions, this is the most fundamental, and the one we must not let fail. If it does, regardless of what synergies, efficiencies, and precision we gain in the end, we will still have lost the Dartmouth we love. This is what is at stake. Not just this or that program. Not just this or that class size. And not even just jobs. It is the soul of Dartmouth itself.

“Will we fight?” cries out the AFL-CIO New Hampshire President, as he throws his arm towards the audience. The crowd composed of DDS, ORL, FO&M, S&S, and other familiar campus faces cheers in assent. “Let’s hear it again!” yells the organizer, raising his arms.

“Yeah!” Although this meeting on the 13th was in 105 Dartmouth Hall, it was an unfamiliar scene. According to Earl Sweet, President of the local branch of the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU), this is the worst “situation” that he has seen in the over twenty years he has been at Dartmouth.

The reason behind this “situation” is partly fiscal circumstance. But the other part is the new administration. “I could just pick up the phone and call Jim Wright,” Earl said, “If the lawyers were being too aggressive, Jim would tell them that they can’t do that.” With Jim Kim, it’s all changed. President Kim has said that “Everything is on the table.” From the perspective of the union, this means jobs are at risk—lots and lots of jobs. And given what has been happening, it seems President Kim’s table is nearly full.

A few days earlier, President Kim spoke before the local Chamber of Commerce, apologizing for what he was about to do to the Upper Valley economy. Significant cuts at Dartmouth would resonate throughout the entire community as we are the largest employer in the local area. What President Kim has not done, which rails many SEIU members, is speak to them.

According to SEIU, this has been a general trend throughout the entire budgetary process. Although there will be a formal bargaining process, especially since the contract covering the workers is expiring this June, the current decision-making process excludes SEIU. They will get their say, but not before most of the details have already been ironed out internally within the administration and before the trustees.

Whereas faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, and obviously administrators have representatives on the task forces and committees submitting recommendations and proposing budgetary changes, SEIU asserts that they have no one. As for the time of publication, we could not get a response from College officials, or find out what other framework is in place to solicit staff opinions, but various student sources close to the process have confirmed that this is the case.

For these members of the “Dartmouth family,” this is unfamiliar territory. For their meeting on the 13th, the local chapter brought in AFL-CIO NH’s president Mark McKinsey, along with Wayne Langley, Higher Education Director for SEIU. Each brought fiery rhetoric and rage stoked by years of battle with administrations. Wayne Langley, after first acknowledging President Kim’s other accomplishments, was quick to equate the “new Dartmouth” with a heartless “corporate model,” and unambiguously called out the College President’s promise to “cut to the bone.” Why, various speakers asked, did the College still need to cut all of these jobs after the recent campaign had just raised $1.3 billion? Mark McKinsey drew parallels of the workers’ fight with that of Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday was coming up soon. Both national representatives compared the situation with what happened on Wall Street.

While this turmoil was no doubt expected and standard for various other locales that these national speakers visited, this was not a part of SEIU Local 560’s experience. At the beginning of these passionate and angry speeches, there was visible hesitation from much of the crowd. Much of the crowd withheld their applause about the virtues of “fighting” and looked uncomfortable with such strong assertions. As the meeting went on and more stories about what was happening to their fellow workers came out, the room started coming around.

Due to the seniority system, the younger workers—those who can least afford it—were the ones laid off. Hostesses in the Hanover Inn were informed about an unpaid “hiatus” through an impersonal letter. The uses of “furloughs” or “hiatuses” to essentially lay off staff without triggering an inconvenient clause within the work contract that specifies that in the event of a layoff, the College is not allowed to bring in subcontractors to take over the jobs of the laid-off staff—basically outsourcing the labor force beyond Hanover town lines.

Without a doubt, the staff is scared. It’s their jobs and their livelihoods. And as a fair number of speakers from the crowd pointed out, it’s about how they support their families. But, especially if the tension between the union and administration builds, we students should remember who the people are within SEIU. They are DDS workers that we see every day. They are the ORL custodians that clean up our messes. They are the people who help make our “Dartmouth Experience” as we know it possible. But they are far from unreasonable or uncompromising.

Even in the midst of their concern about their own jobs and family, the staffers showed a remarkable amount of concern about us, the students. One of the loudest cheers from the crowd during the entire meeting came from Earl Sweet’s passionate declaration that he saw it as his job to serve the students, not the administration.

During last Friday’s picketing outside of President Kim’s budget forum in the Hop, workers mentioned their concern about what would happen with the students. “If you bring in these other people, these subcontractors, the buildings deteriorate, and the students suffer. Students came here for this prestigious experience, and Dartmouth has lost touch with what that is,” said Paul Labarre, one of the picketers.

The union has tried to mirror the administration’s position with everything on the table, and has also put a strike on the table, but with visible reluctance. When the topic was brought up during the SEIU meeting, there were audible murmurs about what would happen to students. Let’s be honest—if a similar circumstance was put before us, how many of us would think so deeply about the welfare of the staff, confronted with such grave circumstances for us?

Susan Russell, treasurer for the local SEIU accounted for me the situation for the Hanover Inn, where four people were put on indefinite “hiatuses” with no pay and no benefits. In another case, the hours of the hostess previously cited, now the only one left out of four, were suddenly reduced from 37.5 hours a week to 25 hours.

The reality is that Dartmouth, like many other institutions, was hit hard by the financial crisis. Cuts will be difficult and, ultimately, painful—no matter how much the administration tries to mitigate the damage. At the same time, these people have served Dartmouth loyally, oftentimes for many, many years. There is a line between professionalism and basic decency in treating the staff that work, mostly unacknowledged, unappreciated, and invisibly, to make our Dartmouth experiences what they are. Given their own feelings towards us, many staff members understandably expected during the meeting that the students would be there for them too. They’re starting to realize, as I heard from last Friday’s picket line, that this is not the case—at least, not without more awareness of what they do, and what is really going on hidden from student eyes.

The union has emphasized their willingness to negotiate and work with whatever terms they need to keep as many jobs as they can. Even so, perhaps in the end, many staff members will be left without a job.

However, no matter what, after all that they have given to the College they deserve at least less uncertainty of their standing and more honest treatment.

It isn’t illegal to suddenly drop the number of hours a hostess has to work. It isn’t illegal to send people off on extended “unpaid vacations.” In fact, it probably isn’t even illegal to send staff on “hiatus” while bringing in cheaper subcontractors, if that is indeed what the College intends to do. It is, however, deeply disrespectful and skirts the edge of ethical treatment of the staff.

Dartmouth has been a “family” of students, faculty, and staff for a long time. And to be honest, it was easy mainly because times were good. The true test of Dartmouth’s character comes now when times are no longer so good.

Even if the administration can’t preserve every job, it can at least treat those they are letting go with as much decency and kindness as they have given to the College through their time here.

The Ray Comfort edition of The Origin of Species. Photograph provided by Living Waters Ministry.

On Wednesday, November 18th the DFP blitzed out a news alert about The Origin of Species paperbacks being passed out on campus, and since then we’ve received many varying responses. Almost all thanked us for getting the information out to campus about the disingenuous campaign to subvert the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.

For those who missed the creationists passing out their “Special 150th Anniversary Edition” of The Origin of Species undercover, here is a description of the event by Campus Progress:

“Ray Comfort, famous for partnering with Kirk Cameron and arguing that bananas are proof of God’s intelligent design, claims he’s going to distribute 170,000 copies of an adulterated Origin, including an egregiously inaccurate introduction by Comfort. The introduction lists the usual litany of nonsense: claiming Darwin was responsible for the Holocaust, that evolution is a doomed science, and that it encourages atheism. Then he spends a while deriding Islam, Buddhism, and the theological value of ‘good works.’ He plans to distribute these books on 100 college campuses in the US, and 20 in Canada.”

Dartmouth was one of the campuses specifically targeted by Comfort, and on Wednesday morning, November 18th, followers of Comfort descended on Hanover, taking up positions that are usually occupied by individuals passing out New Testaments. But instead of the New Testament, they were passing out these special copies of The Origin of Species, holding up signs scrawled in red marker sloppily celebrating something about the 150th anniversary of the book.

Now, to answer some of the qustions we received after our alert:

Who is responsible for this?

Living Waters Publications (livingwaters.com), which is part of The Way of the Master (thewayofthemaster.com), a Christian Evangelical ministry based in California. The organization believes in direct outreach “in the way of the master,” by which they mean the way of Jesus Christ. In fact, WDJD (What Did Jesus Do?) is literally part of their logo. The people that passed out the books near Collis, on the Green, at Baker, and a variety of other points on campus are a part of the thousands of volunteers organized by The Way of the Master to pass out these books.

Is the actual text of The Origin of Species changed?

No. They added an introduction, which is typeset in a significantly larger font than the actual text and adorned with various comics deriding Charles Darwin. If you wanted to read The Origin of Species, you can. It’s manageable, but the text is not only smaller, but more squished together than you would normally see in a published book. As such, it’s not the most pleasant reading experience in the world, but for some strange coincidence, the introduction doesn’t seem to suffer from this problem.

But either way, the text doesn’t have to be changed for Comfort to achieve his purpose. Darwin’s work—while revolutionary for his time and surprisingly insightful given his context—is now 150 years outdated. Since then, entirely new fields of evolutionary science have emerged. They are all in some way based on the original theory, but Darwin’s Origins is far from state of the art.

Comfort not only frames the argument with his introduction, but he also avoids debating living scientists by simply attacking the original inspiration of evolutionary theory. It’s far easier to “debate” someone who had none of the tools of modern science and was just starting to feel out the basics of his theory. To add to all of this, Comfort disingenuously disguises his (flawed) criticism in the context of an “impartial” introduction.

How can I respond to these people?

They quickly moved out after 10s, so students didn’t have much chance to talk to them even if they wanted to. Some were told to “talk about this book in your science class,” but other than that, we haven’t heard of any instances of sustained conversation between any of the distributors and Dartmouth students (if you did have a conversation, we’d love to hear about it).

Many students across the country have already flooded livingwaters.com with angry comments and responses to the ministry, and as a result, the ministry has now refused to comment further than this initial response:

“An angry backlash from atheists has prompted best-selling author Ray Comfort to stop answering questions about a special edition of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species he plans to give away on university campuses this fall.

‘From now on I will refuse to answer questions about the book or its contents,’ Comfort said, ‘because there is such a deep-rooted anger in the atheist world about this publication.’”

Bill and Hillary Clinton just might cry, though not publicly. The long-awaited health care bill has passed in the House with one lonely Republican supporting vote (technically making it bipartisan). Unfortunately, there are still a slew of issues left to overcome before health care reform finally becomes a reality, not the least of which is having the bill also pass in the Senate.

Ever since it’s been clear that this bill will not simply be a stillborn dream child of Obama’s administration, lobbyists and interest groups have scrambled in a free-for-all to stuff the bill with as many special-interest goodies as possible.

One company, Genentech, went as far as to draft up prewritten statements for congressmen and congresswomen on both sides of the aisle, made apparent by the sudden deluge of strikingly similar entries into the Congressional Record. But despite the symbolic significance of those statements, those were just words, not legislation.

More tangible stocking stuffers include promotion of in-country medical research, continued absence of a tax on costly “Cadillac” health insurance plans that provide preferential treatment, and most infamously, the Stupak Amendment—dubbed the “anti-abortion amendment” because it would limit private health insurance companies’ coverage of abortions.

And given the rhetoric thus far, it seems unlikely that these will be snipped out of the Senate’s version or the eventual final bill.

The issues surrounding the Stupak Amendment are illustrative of the high stakes in this entire health care debate. Although it is more significant than the other stocking stuffers, the Stupak Amendment still only has a limited scope.

Even if it is enacted into law, the Stupak Amendment doesn’t ban abortion, nor does it put any additional legal fetters on the procedure. Other than the symbolic significance, the only practices it does affect are the new proposals being put into place on top of our current system.

Yet this new system will also fundamentally change the overall health care environment—which was the primary purpose of the reform. With the Stupak Amendment, private insurers can still offer abortion in their health care plans, but without the aid of federal subsidies. Given the significance of these subsidies in conjunction with insurance mandates, there will be few private insurers who want to cater to this new customer base that can afford to have abortion as a covered procedure.

Even those who currently cover abortion will likely scrap it in order to compete with the public option and strive for those subsidies. With the Stupak Amendment, federal dollars will work as a contagion to force abortion out of much of the private insurance market.

This doesn’t mean that abortion will be uncovered for everyone. Private insurers will still offer coverage for abortion in corporate group plans. Wealthy individuals may opt to purchase premium plans without the federally imposed restrictions—and even if they don’t, they can always pay for the uncovered procedures themselves.

This is a luxury, however, that few can afford. With these systemic effects, the Stupak Amendment might actually do more social harm than simply impose extra restrictions on abortions—it not only makes abortions more difficult to obtain, but creates a class divide in access and affordability to the procedure.

The government’s involvement in the health insurance market will affect the private industry deeply with even the smallest actions—which ironically is the oft-touted Republican fear of “distruptive government intervention.”

America’s health care system is in desperate need of reform. But as the example of the Stupak Amendment demonstrates, legislators are now playing with fire. If the public isn’t vigilant in paying attention to what is being added to the health care soup, Americans may end up with a whole new generation of problems and shortcomings in their medical system.

Although almost any reform legislation is a step in the right direction, Democratic leadership—eager to simply pass something and nearly anything—should take special note to ensure that the final bill isn’t a Pyrrhic victory for both Democrats and Americans as a whole.

You know it’s bad when even a crime novelist has been sickened by the amount of violence against women in books. Jessica Mann, a well-known British novelist and a prominent book reviewer, has declared that she will no longer review books that feature “sadistic misogyny,” according to The Observer.

But before you jump to the conclusion about that all those disgusting things are “men’s” concoctions, think again—most of the authors who pen these novels are female. Apparently, women need to prove to publishers that they’re “up to snuff,” literally—a serious consideration for authorship in these publishing houses, since sex, or at least violent rape against women, sells.

Society’s obsession with violence against women is hardly a new development. One website, Women in Refrigerators (http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/index.html), catalogues all of the female characters in comic books that “have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator.” As a society, we’ve been enjoying the humiliation, rape, and slaughter of women for decades. Staid Victorian novels, for all their sexual repression and sanitization, seemed to have no problems with depicting violent murder of women, for instance the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist.

As popular media has become more liberalized, the amount of violence depicted against women has kept pace with other previously taboo topics. In fact, it has probably surpassed those other topics (such as “generic” sex and violence), which is not surprising considering that it started out with a much firmer base in canonical literature and culture.

What crime mini-series is complete without beaten, raped, or otherwise brutalized or killed women in at least a few episodes per season? (Good trivia question to ask: “What’s the one thing all of the many variants of CSI have in common?”)

In fact, few popular TV shows or movies eschew adding “suspense” in the form of threatened (and usually somehow actualized) violence against one or more women. There is a wide range, but it has been an increasing trend. After all, even Battlestar Galactica, a show that I rather like and respect, includes two fairly graphic cases of rape and abuse of women. Admittedly, these women are “cylons,” but when they look like women, act like women, and scream like women, it makes little functional difference in the portrayal.

Perhaps violence against women is an appeal towards the primal male’s “protective instinct.” But how can we label it “protective instinct” and not male “sadistic tendencies” which form the thriving market for torture porn?

But perhaps “protective instinct” makes a bit more sense than the idea of crime novels being “female wish-fulfillment,” which one publishing director stated in the same Observer article. Her statement isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. It is referring to the enjoyment from being frightened and fulfilling that “wish,” but it’s a rather questionable assertion to say that women enjoy reading about other women being dismembered and disposed of. Visceral fright is one thing. Graphic depiction of violence against women is most likely going above and beyond to achieve that goal, if it does at all.

Violence against women is an age-old concept by this point. This variant of violence against women in media is only slightly more recent. Attempting to eradicate it will undoubtedly take colossal effort and require far-reaching societal changes. With those considerations comes the inevitable question of whether we should do something about violence against women in media at all. After all, in previous social crusades, liberals and conservatives have been one nation united under pornography, protecting it under the auspices of either the First Amendment or private enterprise. Obviously, there is some worth that society puts on seeing chainsawed women. As a publisher once told Mann: “Dead brutalized women sell books, dead men don’t. Nor do dead children or geriatrics.”

But perhaps there is something wrong with putting worth, either social or economic, on the depiction of dismembered and disposed women or the process of putting them in that state. Maybe there is something deeper in our society that is wrong when it becomes a key, indispensable ingredient in best-selling novels and top-grossing shows and movies—a key feature that forces producers and publishers to continue to push the boundaries as their audience becomes increasingly desensitized to the bloody messages.

Voltaire’s assertion that, “I will disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it,” is fine when you aren’t in the group that is being socialized as the victim. When the line has been crossed from political and social discourse to an escalating fetishization of the brutalization, rape, and death of women, it may be time to consider putting aside some of our free speech concerns and take a hard look at the society being built on the tortured flesh, blood, and bones of murdered women in modern media.

Published October 9, 2009.

THE MASTHEAD
Editor-in-Chief: James H. Wang
Publisher: Isabel S. Murray
Executive Editor: Amanda R. McNally
Managing Editor: Soo Jeong Kim

Read this issue’s articles!