October 28th, 2013 The Dartmouth Review Page 1

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Volume 33, Issue 8Oct 28, 2013

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The Dartmouth Review

This Is An Arms Race

Page 2 The Dartmouth Review October 28th, 2013

By J.P. Harrington Back during the storms of yesteryear, the InterFraternity Council decided to take the extreme step of banning fresh-men from the fraternities for the first few weeks of the fall. It was hoped that this would allow freshmen to fully transition to college before being thrust into the admittedly somewhat hostile and strange world of the Greek system. The hope was that it would reduce not only Good Samaritan calls and alcohol abuse during the time period of the ban, but also thereafter. At the same time, it would protect the fraternities from the typical onslaught of inexperienced freshmen with a burgeon-ing desire to prove themselves in a new and unfamiliar social scene. It remains unclear if the policy significantly reduced dangerous behavior before Homecoming. So far, it appears to have had little to no effect based on the limited information that the administration has released. If anything, there was no impact. Yet, it still remains to be seen if the freshmen will experience a sudden rash of Good Sams now that fraternities are finally open. Perhaps, perhaps not. One of the major impacts of the policy, however, has been an entirely unintended one. Upperclassmen and fresh-men have built few to no bonds over the past few weeks. In fact, many clubs have reported a swift decline in interest among the Class of 2017. Perhaps they were unable to serve as conduits for freshmen to fraternity basements and upper-classmen connections? Note of course that those connections were so vital in the past in order to get on table and actually participate in the Dartmouth social scene. Yet, without the frats, the freshmen merely stayed in their

dorms and socialized among themselves. Hardly the outcome that the fraternity leadership and the administration wanted or intended. And yet, that is where we are. Despite the best efforts of the administration, the events calculated to build bonds between freshmen and upperclassmen (especially Greek upperclassmen) outside of fraternity basements failed miser-ably. In one event, the administration presented “Fall Fest” with dozens of pumpkins to be carved, other art projects, and gallons of apples and cider. Fall Fest was to be hosted on a fraternity’s lawn in order to ensure commingling of the classes (especially those currently in Greek houses and those interested in possibly rushing). That fraternity was told to expect somewhere around 400 attendees. Unfortunately, the numbers were probably around fifty. And almost none of those were freshmen. Even free food and the offer of upperclassmen frat bros to chat with couldn’t lure the freshmen out of their dorms on a bright sunny fall afternoon. Instead, the apples were left to rot with a “free” sign on them. One might be forgiven for trying to draw a parallel between those apples and the state of Dartmouth’s community. Just one or two weeks later, the Interfraternity Council tried its hand at forging inter-class relationships by hosting a barbeque with free food on Beta Alpha Omega’s lawn (as well as Phi Delta Alpha’s lawn) for the freshmen to meet (once again!) affiliated members of the Dartmouth community. And yet once again, attendance was tiny. Those who did attend were mostly new members from each of the fraternities who had perhaps been required to attend as part of their pledge term. And again, freshmen could not be tempted by the promise of free food. Especially without any

beer. So, if both the IFC and the administration have failed, where have friendships been springing up between freshmen and upperclassmen? As far as an upperclassman whose major interactions with freshmen is through The Dartmouth Review can tell, only athletic teams have managed to continue building rela-tionships as in the past. Of course, this makes sense given the required nature of their interactions. But it provides a stark warning for the opponents of the Greek system that claim that a non-Greek campus would be suddenly converted into a wonderful land of non-exclusive social interactions and beautiful prayer circles singing Kumbaya. Just like Williams College, our campus could easily fracture into one land of NARPs and another of athletes. After all, who really prefers a universe where all parties are off-campus and only those with invites can attend? Who can pretend that wouldn’t increase exclusivity and male-dominated power dynamics? So far there’s evidence that the freshman ban had little to no impact on reducing dangerous drinking behavior. It is yet to be seen whether the ban increased or decreased sexual assault. But we do know that it greatly increased division on campus and may have led to future strife between the classes. All you have to do is observe the lackluster participation in the bonfire by the incoming class to see that the freshmen class is divided not only from the upperclassmen but the traditions. I hope that the administration will take the data-driven approach to analyzing the policy and recommend that the Greek system modify it accordingly. Because the current system has proven only that freshmen are incredibly creative when it comes to procuring alcohol as well as increasingly isolated from the upperclassmen. Is that worth no reduction in Good Samaritan calls? n

Mr. Harrington is a freshmen at the College and a member of The Dartmouth Review.

Freshman Greek Life Alternatives Failed

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October 28th, 2013 The Dartmouth Review Page 3

This past Homecoming, I was lucky enough to stand around the Homecoming bonfire with my father and little brother. It was their first time attending and my first time as an upperclassman. I’d been on-campus the last two falls, but unfortunately too ill to even make it out of bed, much less to the bonfire. As such, I attempted to explain what they were seeing and what to anticipate. Unfortunately, I was unable to. The ring around the bonfire was much larger than I could remember and there were far fewer freshmen. After about two laps, there were more upperclassmen running than freshmen. Instead, they were laugh-ing, walking and perhaps tweeting. Now, perhaps they en-joyed it more than the rau-cous crowds of inebriated upperclassmen who threw beer cans and epithets at my fellow freshmen and I. After a few years of distance, I’m fairly sure I would have pre-ferred something a little less aggressive and…well, let’s be honest, it was hazing. But now, it’s just wavering on the border of existence. The fire was shorter, it was colder (the actual logs barely caught on fire), and the distance from the fire was tiny. After the fire ended, I turned to my family and said “This won’t be around in five years.” And maybe it shouldn’t be if the freshmen and the college would just be participat-ing in a parody of the past. We’ve cut out all the bad parts and lost the good. So, rather than just sanitizing it to the point of collapse, why don’t we just come up with a new tradition? Some traditions are un-fixable. Having fresh-men run the gauntlet of seniors armed with belts was simply painful and useless. But maintaining the welcoming of fresh-men into the Dartmouth community is absolutely worthwhile so long as it can be done in a productive and valuable manner. I would argue for instating the following policy: have every class do their own procession and set of laps. Instead of each class running their own number of years (which is often more unwieldy than it seems), freshmen should always run four laps. Seniors would only run once. This would, quite obviously, correspond to the number of years remaining for each class at Dartmouth. It would also be short enough that every Dartmouth student would participate – or at least could easily be publicly shamed for not participating out of sloth. Clearly there is a demand by upperclassmen to par-

ticipate in the celebrations of Homecoming as so many upperclassmen ran around the bonfire in flair. Why not bring them in? This would also welcome the freshmen into the Dartmouth community in a much more symbolic manner as they would get to see each class run before them and then join into the general mill of students after com-pleting their four rounds. You might even allow the class officers to lead the procession and running in flair so that they could count the laps correctly. This would allow all

students to participate and cheer on the students while also maintaining the sense of community and value in the tradition. But this is merely the tip of the iceberg of Dart-mouth’s cultural collapse. Everything that used to be unique, everything that was advertised to my class, every bit of the product that was Dartmouth has been shifted or changed in some way. Bit by bit, we are being trans-formed into a cookie cutter school that just happens to also be fairly depraved and with a strong Greek system. I doubt that that is the im-age that we wish to sell or trumpet across the United

States. The tradition of the Homecoming bonfire is merely a single instance in this trend. Our snow sculptures have shrunk and grown boring. Few even participate in building them anymore. Our email system is a clunkier and worse version of blitz with none of the charm or efficiency of the old system. Phones have replaced blitzes and Friendsy has replaced the lost art of flitzing. The entire Dartmouth

vocabulary is boring nowa-days. Foco is swiftly becom-ing 53 Commons and after all, who cares? It’s just full of freshmen complaining about the unappetizing food anyway. We can’t even have schmobs anymore thanks to the fraternity ban.

The end result of each of these traditions disappearing is increasing isolation. These traditions reached across campus to create greater bonds between an often fragmented student body. Now, were they the most efficient? Or the most effective? Or even the most humane methods? No, but that does not excuse cheering for their disap-pearance. It is not enough to negatively attack traditions, but we must instead propose positive new traditions. I hope that we here at The Dartmouth Review have begun this process by proposing reforms to DDS as well as to the bonfire, but this is going to require a concerted effort on the part of every member of the Dartmouth community, so that no member is left alone in their isolated bubble. n

EditorialThe Bonfire Will Never Be the Same, But It Isn’t Fixed

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Freshman Greek Life Alternatives Failed Page 2The Week in Review Pages 4 & 5How to Write An Article About Dartmouth Pages 6 & 7Trotsky & The Orozco Murals Page 8Early Decision Dilemmas Page 9Liberal Groups Suffer Internal Purges Page 9Rauner ‘79 Will Not Win in Illinois...And He Shouldn’t Pages 10 & 11Letters to the Editor Page 11Last Word & Mixology Page 12

Inside This Issue

Thomas J.P. Harrington

The fire was shorter, it was colder (the actual logs barely caught on fire), and the distance

from the fire was tiny. After the fire ended, I turned to my family and said “This won’t be around in five years.” We’ve cut out all the bad parts and lost the good.

Will R.F. DuncanWeb Editor

Taylor D. CathcartDirector of Marketing

Page 4 The Dartmouth Review October 28th, 2013

Stinson’s: Your Pong HQCups, Balls, Paddles, Accessories

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in Dartmouth culture and unity, an experience that bonds new freshmen with both upperclassmen and alumni. For a starry-eyed freshman still finding his place at Dartmouth, it is an awe-inspiring sight. Around the bonfire circled the ‘17s, the future of Dartmouth; around them stood upperclassmen and alumni, the College’s present and past. It was the very manifestation of the continuity of Dartmouth from its tradi-tions and lore to its community, a continuity linking the iPhone wielding Generation Y to the generations of Dartmouth men who were still British subjects. Naturally, bonfire night is an exciting time for freshmen. This year, in lieu of going to the then closed off fraternities, sweaty ‘17s returned to their dorms to continue the joy of the festivities. And, being college students, this naturally involved alcohol. Amidst the usual and much larger Russell Sage dorm parties, many ‘17s simply congregated in a floor mate’s room to discuss the preceding afternoon’s events. Either way, a Keystone was bound to find its way into the hands of an exhausted ‘17. All in all, it was a solidifying night for the Class of 2017. Later in the night, however, UGAs went floor to floor cracking down on illicit freshman activities – a Dartmouth adaptation of a police thriller. Given the administration and media’s obsession with, as The New York Times recently pointed out, “questions of alcohol abuse,” the UGAs were naturally on the hunt for, you guessed it, alcohol. Rooms with loud music, chatter, and activity were subject to the dreadful UGA knock. If UGAs found evidence of alcohol – which they very often did – freshmen were asked to drain it and turn in their names for further disciplinary action or “recommended” help, such as enrollment in an ever so enlightening BASICS course. Most non-substance free floors had reports of such raids. But more interestingly, UGAs were sent to ‘raid’ clusters and floors on which they are not based. For instance, UGAs from the Russell Sage cluster would be sent to the Choates, while the Choates’ UGAs would be sent to McClane-Fahey. With no UGA-freshman floor paternal bond for these foreign

freshman floors, writing strangers up suddenly became that much easier. And future consequences of said write-ups no longer existed. No one argues with the fact that rules ought to be followed, and that most rules are simply for everyone’s betterment. The question is to what extremity ought such inevitably broken rules be enforced. If UGAs went scouring through freshman residential clusters to crack down on loud parties and write intoxicated freshmen up on a Monday night, no one would have much to complain about (especially other freshmen on the same floor with morning drill or 10As). But cracking down on freshmen having a good time on one of the biggest nights not only of the year, but also of their tenure as Dartmouth undergraduates? It remains unclear as to who exactly put together these seem-ingly well coordinated and organized raids, but whoever did ought to understand that such crackdowns serve only to vilify protocol and enrage college students. Alumni old and young drive up each year to see the bellowing smoke and glowing red embers of the burning pine as they are evoked of College memories of friendship, enlightenment, and debauchery. The proud Class of 2017 can add to the list the vivid memories of a BASICS course.

Novack Continues Re-forms, But DDS Will

Flounder Students were surprised this past week to discover that the previously reviled Novack Cafe in the library had begun to carry burrito’s from fast food chain Moe’s Southwest Grill. For years Novack had languished as yet one more place on campus to get subpar coffee late at night with mediocre ser-vice from often exhausted students. Yet, that has all begun to

The Week in ReviewThe NYT Keeps Beat-

ing a Dead Horse The New York Times last week continued its shameless exploitation of “scandals” in the world of higher education, by publishing an article titled “Dartmouth in the Glare of Scrutiny on Drinking” about our dear old College on the Hill. As if unsatisfied by their recent sensationalism in the area (see their much-maligned July “exposé” on campus hookup culture, or their equally myopic piece on Harvard Business School from last month), the Times rounded up every nega-tive piece of history, alleged wrongdoing, and hearsay they could find from the last five years on campus and managed to fit it all into a mere 1200 words. Andrew Lohse rears his ugly head (despite the Times’s prior publication of seven articles about him) along with the Dimensions protests, the current Clery Act investigation, and a few other developments with which Dartmouth students will unfortunately be well-acquainted. The author makes only ham-fisted attempts at objectivity: “There is drinking at all colleges and disagreement about the extent of problems at Dartmouth,” a sentence begins, only to continue, “but what no one disputes is that fraternities dominate the social scene here.” The author does admit that “there is little evidence about how racism, sexual assault or drinking at Dartmouth really compare with its peers,” but goes on to intone that Dartmouth has about seven percent more students from pri-vate high schools than the University of Chicago, with the clear implication that this statistic should settle the debate for anyone reading the article. Because clearly students from private schools are more likely to be alcoholics and rapists, right? This most recent affront can be summed up simply: We can’t really tell you whether Dartmouth has a problem, says the Times, but we totally believe that Dartmouth has a problem and you totally should too. And all this is made doubly absurd by the fact that nothing much had really happened on campus since the last time the national media started frothing at the mouth about us – remember this was written before Beta’s absurd Bromega circus. We can hope that one day the media will get bored of our small school and move on to more important things, like the government shutdown or foreign affairs or, y’know, anything else that actually matters in any way. Based on recent history, though, it doesn’t seem that day is coming any time soon. Next best thing, I guess, is just to pray for a new PR department.

Administration Cracks Down on Legalities Over Homecoming

Generations of Dartmouth students and alumni can look back to their freshman Homecoming weekend as one of the most definitive moments in their Dartmouth experience. The freshmen bonfire, in particular, is a tradition steeped

“Personally, I preferred when RealTalk was making trouble, at least then we had something to talk about besides corporate recruiting.” -Col. Donovan ‘39

October 28th, 2013 The Dartmouth Review Page 5

The Week in Review

change as DDS began to face its first competition in years: King Arthur Flour (or KAF as it is popularly known). KAF opened a small cafe just off the main corridor in Baker just over two years ago. This soon put pressure not only on Novack to improve their coffee selection, but also forced the entire establishment of DDS to consider how they were serving the student body. KAF regularly ran out of their overpriced sandwiches and soon found themselves putting more and more pressure on every DDS establishment on campus. Novack soon expanded their selection massively to include specialty sandwiches and food that did not taste like cardboard, but that was not enough. DDS essentially ordered KAF to modify their hours and their offerings to reduce competition. Luckily, Novack has continued to up their game and add new food and offerings (including late night pizza and Moe’s burritos). Yet, one has to wonder if this will continue or even remain after KAF’s forced pseudo-closure. The correct answer to fixing DDS is not to reduce competition, but to increase it. To introduce more outside options into the DBA monopoly. Whether it be Dirt Cowboy Cafe or Yama or EBA’s, students should be free to spend their money anywhere. Not in order to benefit downtown businesses or to force students to seek out more expensive options, but to instead compel DDS to reform in order to attract student dollars. The new Foco is unbelievably unac-ceptable and expensive, but it has forced the other options to also increase prices and decrease quality. The only solution is more competition rather than less.

Dartmouth Needs To Release Course Evalu-

ations ASAP On July 12, The Dartmouth Review published an article concluding almost presciently that “a formal discourse among students, teachers and faculty about student accessibility to Dartmouth’s official course evaluations is long overdue.” A mere three months later, Dartmouth’s Student Assembly has adopted this issue as one of its key initiatives and appears to be swiftly approaching success. Or at least as swift as the bureaucracy of Dartmouth will permit. In a letter to Dean of Faculty Michael Mastanduno sub-mitted on October 16, the Academic Affairs Committee of Student Assembly outlined why “the publication of course reviews would serve as a wonderful addition to the resources already available at Dartmouth in aiding students to make the most of their education.” Moreover, the committee cited the student body’s over-whelming support, as demonstrated by a Student Assembly survey that, within 48 hours of being blitzed out on October 7, collected over 900 student responses with 95% in favor of the publication of course evaluations. According to com-mittee chair Lulu Chang, that number has since climbed to 1,048 responses with similar results. The publication of course evaluations would allow all students at the College to make more informed decisions during course selection and, as stated in Student Assembly’s letter, would be particularly beneficial to freshmen, athletes and international students. Despite the overwhelming sup-

port of the student body and part of the faculty, there remains significant resistance from a portion of the faculty that fears that the publication of the course evaluations will make the faculty vulnerable to anonymous attacks. However, the official course evaluations are released at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, UPenn and Cornell while Brown also benefits from compre-hensive, student-run course reviews. As such, Dartmouth lags behind its peer institutions and the continued withholding of the official course evaluations smacks of blatant mistrust. If we truly are the number one institution for undergradu-ate education, then we should allow students to see their own course evaluations and thereby design the best possible path to acheive a worthwhile education at Dartmouth.

Radical “Innovates Language” to Combat

Oppression On Thursday, October 17, The Dartmouth Radical, which we all know to be one of the great bastions of critical analysis and intellectual thought on campus, hosted a “Resistance Workshop” led by Professor Russell Rickford. The event drew at least 60 attendees, which was rather impressive. I wonder, however, how many of those people, such as myself, attended solely for the entertainment value. One gem came from the infamous Jennifer McGrew, who asserted that “being a woman, person of color, or LGBTQ” at Dartmouth is in and of itself a form of resistance against oppression. I was absolutely shocked to learn all about the manifold sources of oppression plaguing campus. Apparently “linguistic hegemony,” “fascist beauty standards,” “time aka being busy,” “the D-Plan,” and “The Dartmouth Review” are all grave sources of inequality and oppression facing the Dartmouth community. Most notably, Professor Rickford stated that we must “innovate new language” to fight the overwhelming amount of oppression present at Dartmouth. If adding “-ism” to random words counts as innovation, color me disappointed. “DDSism” is apparently a form of inequality and oppression on campus, as are “carerism” and “colonism”. Whatever those are, they sound painful. I guess basic spelling and a command of the English language are fascist and oppressive, too. Maybe the evil white man came and developed a system of spelling so he could differentiate between “good” and “bad” spelling- the educated and the uneducated, the elite and the poor. Perhaps by intentionally mispelling wurds thee Radeekul cannae taek backe thee sisteme. Next thing you know, the Radical will come out with a scathing op-ed attacking the weather as an instrument of the Man for keeping us down, especially in the winter, when we are suppressed from above. And despite a lack of actual Kool-Aid, attendees seemed to be drinking copious amounts of the proverbial kind. At-tendees engaged in cultish rituals such as snapping to demon-strate approval, while “brainstorming sessions” demonstrated groupthink in action. Rational logic and discussions grounded in reality were few and far between. There was no debate about the merits of capitalism, just a blind recognition of its

wickedness. To be fair, the Radical is very honest. The group’s name alone suggests that it seeks to alienate itself from the rest of campus through a far left wing agenda. So until the next Dimensions show comes around, it appears that the group will continue to practice activism by making up words.

Christian Union Shows Astonishing Growth on

Dartmouth Campus Christian Union at Dartmouth (CU) is a student led, leadership development group that emphasizes personal development, spiritual growth, and lasting relationships. Cur-rently, about 120 members are enrolled in Bible Courses, 45 of whom are ‘17s, and an average of 50 to 60 students attend CU’s weekly lecture series, “The Vine.” CU welcomes all students, regardless of religious back-grounds or beliefs, resulting in a diverse student body. Students are primarily drawn to CU because of the strong sense of community and the amount of leadership opportunities CU offers. Considering that the group has only been at Dartmouth for two full years and is not an officially recognized student group, CU’s growth has been staggering. Overall, CU has deeply impacted students and added to the intellectual and social vibrancy of Dartmouth campus life. The two core components of CU are Bible Courses and “The Vine.” Designed to be intellectually rigorous, Bible Courses meet for 90 minutes weekly and resemble a Dartmouth seminar class in structure. Each Bible Course member receives a course manual to guide their study and provide the foundation for fruitful discussions, with topics ranging from “Sex and Spirituality” to “Philippians.” Bible Courses foster deep relationships and are at the very heart of CU’s tight knit community. It’s not uncommon to hear stories of students having met their current roommate because of a CU Bible Course. The second core component of CU is its Weekly Lec-ture Series, “The Vine,” on Friday evenings at 6:30 pm. The program features worship, fellowship, and world class speakers. Last year, speakers included Michael Ramsden and Nick Nowalk. Like Bible Courses, “The Vine” has a strong intellectual component, challenging students to think deeply about Scripture and spirituality while growing in community. Three CU faculty members also provide students with one-on-one mentorship. Students have the option of meeting regularly with CU faculty to discuss issues of leadership, spirituality, and personal development. Students often form close bonds with their mentors and glean invaluable guidance. CU also hosts a variety of other programs, including daily prayer from 3:00-4:00PM in Rollins Chapel, interfel-lowship worship at 10PM every Thursday night in Rollins, a “leadership development day,” a winter conference, and a Thanksgiving banquet, among other things. Every fall term, CU makes a concerted effort to welcome the freshmen by organizing events that allow upperclassmen to connect with new students. This year CU events included a bonfire at the River Cluster, a grill-out at the Choates, a late night glow-in-the-dark Frisbee game on the Green, and an ice cream social on Gold Coast Lawn. Upperclassmen in CU are encouraged to develop close relationships with the incoming freshmen and help them adjust to life at Dartmouth regardless of their faith backgrounds. CU is simply adding to the significant work of many other ministries and churches working on campus including Navigators, Cru, Aquinas House, Agape, FCA, Riverbank Church, Christ Redeemer Church, and Wellspring Worship Center. Christian Union readily acknowledges the work of these churches and ministries as critical in the development of faith communities on campus, a community which Christian Union is grateful to have entered. At the same time, it truly is astonishing the rate at which Christian Union has grown. Clearly, students at Dartmouth are seeking out spiritual opportunities for growth. Or perhaps they merely wish to have a foundation for understanding the world and other academic works. Either way, it is heartening to see so many Dartmouth students voluntarily taking on extra work and study that does not involve arcane hazing practices or beer-fueled basement raging. Perhaps it is time to hearken back to an earlier Dartmouth tradition than the alcoholic benders of the middle to late twentieth century, to the time of Mainline Protestantism and teetotallers. Or if that past is merely a rose-colored dream, then perhaps we should forge our own future. n

“Remember when we met at the dry mixer at SAE?” “No...is that the Alzheimer’s?” -Col. Donovan ‘39

Page 6 The Dartmouth Review October 28th, 2013

How to Write an Article about Dartmouth

Mr. Crane is a Professor Emeritus at the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.

By Ichabod Crane

Have an inflated view of social justice? Want to write about the peccadillos of others to feel better about yourself? Have an itching to assert moral superiority over people smarter than you? Have a lack of concern for quality writing and investigative reporting? Or do you just have a deadline to meet and need an easy subject to write about without actually trying? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, pay at-tention to the following step-by-step guide. There is a small Ivy League school in the woods of New Hampshire called “Dartmouth College,” and you can lambast it all you want and make a name for yourself!

STEP 1

Find something that a fraternity did that can be made to appear as racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, chauvinist, ableist or the most wicked of them all, capitalist.

STEP 2 If this act concerns Alpha Delta, make a reference to Animal House. Don’t worry that the writer of that film at-tended the school over fifty years ago. Neglect mentioning how Alpha Delta broke off from their national organization because the national policy included discriminatory member-ship clauses. Be sure to make reference to how the school’s new president, Phil Hanlon, was a member. Be sure to show controversy, internal struggle, and irony there. A sentence about Dartmouth “trying to shed its Animal House image” also never fails. Bring up the fraternity’s “Bloods and Crips Party.” Instead of actually trying to investigate the event, blindly accept the words of the Dartmouth NAACP president Jordan Terry, who has proclaimed it his mission to destroy the Greek system. He said that “over 200 people attended the event.” While this figure is suspicious to begin with, given that the event was held during sophomore summer, when only 1000 students are on campus, don’t let those suspicions stop you. That 20% of the student body attended a single party should not trouble you. Keep your story in mind, not facts!

STEP 3

If an incident concerns SAE, mention how the house is full of savages who love to haze their new members through base methods. Be sure to reference the Rolling Stone article and how Andrew Lohse has been somehow shunned by the community. Do not at any point mention that he is a felon and drug addict who describes himself as a 9/11 truther. That would discredit him as a source! Such inhumanity that Dartmouth students would harbor ill will towards him! That part can show how the Greek system brainwashes its members into ostracizing anyone who lies speaks out about it. Derrick Jackson, writing in The Boston Globe, echoed

this problem pointedly. He said that students did not speak on record to the Globe because they feared backlash from their peers. “That makes the Dartmouth administration derelict in its duties,” astutely notes Jackson, “allowing fraternities and sororities to create an atmosphere of fear that harms equal opportunity.” Jackson brings up an important issue which you should seek to demonstrate in your article. The Greek system is not just an institution for social bonding and interac-tion; it is also an oppressive force over the entire Dartmouth community. Be sure to show how fraternities and sororities intimidate the entire student body into submission. Kind of like how Andrew Lohse intimidated that witness. But not really, because he was a victim. Remember? While on the subject of hazing, highlight Beta’s recent struggles and expose them for their privileged fratboy het-eromasculinity. Can you believe the nerve of the brothers to think that they could just ask pledges about their porn preferences? Leave that smut for the ladies during vagina week. A brilliant journalist writing for Gawker described the close-knit relationship between Beta and a man charged with rape. J.K. Trotter employed the “less is more” approach to gaining knowledge about Dartmouth in order to write a scathing article about a house of relatively tame men. Mrs. Trotter, whose other articles on Gawker include titles like “Yale in Uproar Over Missing Campus Squirrels” and “Important Advice for Miley Cyrus,” sets the standard for uninformed writing from the moral high ground. She is a better person than those awful “frat bros,” and you should show how you’re better than them too. Note: Under no circumstances should you mention Alpha Phi Alpha’s hazing scandal. It weakens your argument about the racist nature of fraternities because APA is a traditionally black fraternity.

STEP 4: If the issue does not concern AD, SAE, or Beta, mention them both anyway. Who cares if the fraternity is different, that doesn’t matter. Also, be sure to search into the past for any infraction any Dartmouth fraternity has ever committed. Consider mentioning the murder in Theta Delta Chi in 1920. This event shows how Dartmouth fraternity members are not just bigoted, but also homicidal. Chronological concerns are not important - these anecdotes will make your story stronger! Has nothing really happened, but you wish to complain about something anyway? Don’t fear! Blame the Greek sys-tem at large! It can be culpable for nearly anything. Don’t worry about providing actual evidence or making a sound argument. Everyone knows the Greek system is inherently an evil institution and the root of all ills affecting everyone at Dartmouth. Yoo Jung Kim, a writer for The Daily Dartmouth, em-ployed this tactic flawlessly in his column about how the Greek system prevents students from realizing their full po-tential because “if you spend a significant amount of time in a basement, how are you going to write that book manuscript that’s been sitting inside your head, plan and run all of those time consuming experiments, build a proof-of-concept for your product or create an irresistible pitch to those potential

investors and still have enough time to ace your courses?” Mr. Kim specifically pointed to the three Thiel Fellow-ships awarded to members of the Class of 2015. He brilliantly disregarded the fact that one of the recipients was in fact an active member of Psi Upsilon. Wayward writers, take note to Mr. Kim’s “innovative” strategy. By not allowing the facts to get in the way of a good argument, Mr. Kim was able to make his story much stronger and deride the Greek system which he abhors. Take this time to cast doubts upon the Greek system and call for its abolition. In an article in The Boston Globe, Yvonne Abraham concisely stated that her solution to solv-ing Dartmouth’s “sensitivity achievement gap” would be “to do away with idiot frats. Simple.” While she fails to proffer any evidence for why eliminating organized social groups from campus would suddenly enlighten Dartmouth students to unfortunate racial disparities in America, she recognizes that Dartmouth alumnus and Boston mayoral candidate John Barros ’96 actually understands the school and that “Barros looks deeper, at the much tougher issue that goes way beyond the adolescent animal house.” Mrs. Abraham then accepts her ignorance and incompetence with ease: “one more reason why I’m not mayoral material, but he surely is.” Like Mrs. Abraham, you need not concern yourself with actual evidence and can maintain sanctimony, but unlike her, do not question your own intelligence. You are smart, writer, and your intel-lectual capabilities are far superior to that of the Dartmouth “fratboy.” Worried that the subject you want to talk about takes place at every other college, but you still want to talk about Dartmouth? By this point you should get the idea: it doesn’t matter - blame the Dartmouth Greek system. Remember, Dartmouth’s culture is an especially despicable one. Noth-ing good has ever come from the Greek system and the only reason it still exists is because of the crazy alumni, who for some reason love it, and because of that radical paper The Dartmouth Review. Here, you can even interject an out-of-context story about something the Review did in the ‘80s. Maybe write about how the paper published lines from “Mein Kampf” on the front page of an issue. Just don’t include the part about how a disgruntled staffer hijacked the layout just before it was sent to the printer or how the editor-in-chief was Jewish or how the staff condemned the act and collected and destroyed all copies they could find. Again, don’t include any perspective that could weaken your argument. How else can you get that Pulitzer? You’re trying to make a name for yourself! Bloggers don’t publish boring material! Need a catchy hook to immediately engage readers? A common one implemented at Dartmouth is to state your name, and then tell the readers that you were hazed. Jennifer McGrew ‘13 brilliantly stole borrowed Yesuto Shaw’s line about actual hazing in order to blame others for her problems. Like Mrs. McGrew, you too can employ this line. Maybe something like how just reading about hazing at Dartmouth made you feel that you had been hazed. Your article can be your expose to the world. Except rely almost entirely on secondary sources. And don’t bother learning about hazing practices at any other school, Ivy League or otherwise. If it isn’t in a newspaper (or your blog), it’s not important.

A compilation of the worst offenders of the ethics of journalism when it comes to reporting on our small College.

October 28th, 2013 The Dartmouth Review Page 7

For All Aspiring Muckrakers At this point, you might begin to feel guilty for so obvi-ously concealing facts in your attempt to only tell one lie side of the story. Please do not be concerned. If you look at the great American bastions of intellectual thought such as Rolling Stone, The Huffington Post, and Gawker, you will see that writing such an article puts you amongst the company of the greatest reporters of our time! Try to imagine a world in which a publication named Gawker publishes sensation-alist, non-factual pieces in order to stir up controversy and increase its number of pageviews. See? You literally could not imagine such a universe! That means you must be doing the right and honorable thing! It is also best to refrain from comparing the Dartmouth Greek system to similar systems at any of its peer institutions. For example, do not under any circumstances mention that Harvard finals clubs are incredibly elitist and classist and that their new members are often decided based upon their parent’s net worth. Also do your best not to mention the Yale “No means yes, yes means anal,” chant, the Cornell alcohol deaths, or the UPenn fraternity emails that were recently released. It is also of the utmost importance that you never, ever make any reference to the fact that Dartmouth has one of the most culturally inclusive Greek systems in the country. The fact that 70% of upperclassmen are affiliated and that every single Dartmouth fraternity party is open to every single Dartmouth student is irrelevant. Obviously, at other universities most fraternities only allow attractive women into their parties and often force men to pay to at-tend at all. This is not something you want to emphasize or even mention because it, for some ridiculous reason, makes Dartmouth’s Greek system seem like an altruistic, institutional part of the community. Mentioning any of these things will weaken your argument about the inherent evil of Dartmouth and thus weaken your ability to blame Dartmouth for your own problems! Avoid talking about the philanthropic efforts of Dartmouth Greek houses. Showing that Psi Upsilon and Alpha Delta were

two of the top ten teams that raised money for the CHaD Half Marathon fundraiser for cancer would weaken your story. Definitely don’t mention that fraternities and sororities raised over $40,000 for this event alone. Such strong participation shows altruism, but you need to show that these people don’t care about anyone else. Obviously, using such misleading journalistic tactics might draw criticism from members of the community who have actual experience with the Dartmouth Greek system.

Luckily, the intellectually bloated left-wing academics of the world have come up with an entirely new set of vocabulary words for just such an occasion. When someone challenges you, your ideas, or your one-sided and deceptive interpretation of the Greek system, simply call that person any or all of the following negative things: (Disclaimer: Most of these words end in “ist” and some of them are made up words and some of them don’t actually mean anything.) Racist, sexist, classist, elitist, homophobic, casteist, chauvinist, militarist, ableist (ableist is great because even most educated people have absolutely no idea what it means until they Google it), capitalist, misogynist, colonialist, careerist, heronormativist, ethnocentrist, or white.

It’s kind of like a mad-libs except instead of a silly inof-fensive game (actually scratch that, your readers probably find mad-libs to be offensive. Boxing words into certain categories such as “noun” or “verb” is offensive to the other words who don’t fall into those “traditional” categories.), you get to practice intellectual terrorism and win arguments without ever actually having to use evidence or a reasonable defense of your ideas! If all goes according to plan, you should be able to paint

an image of Dartmouth’s Greek system as a single, evil cultural entity that is responsible for everything from campus sexual assaults to the American government’s treatment of Native Americans over the past 250 years. (Seriously, I promise if you do a good enough job of this you can actually make it about the Native Americans.) No one will ever know that the Dartmouth Greek system is actually composed of a broad set of cultures and ideals that, when taken together, create an incredibly varied and diverse spectrum. Instead, they will believe your stereotyped version lie and, hopefully, will assume any member of the Dartmouth Greek system is a rich, white, straight, elitist, racist, homophobe. This will cement your place in history as one of the greatest journal-ists and thinkers of this generation because we all know history loves the people who create

and actively advance stereotypes! Actually, when you think about it, you’re like a member of the 21st century liberal’s version of the KKK! Except you’re totally one of the good guys, not a dangerously radical stereotyping jerk! In closing, The Dartmouth Review would like to counsel any members of the national media who are reading this article that this is in fact satire and should not be followed to the letter. To those who may be offended, the same advice applies. Reality is always a game of shades of grey, not black and white. Fraternities and sororities may not be perfect, but then again, what institution full of college-aged people is? Certainly those who report on us are not infallible. n

—The most recent victim of the national media: the self-titled Beta Alpha Bromega—

The Dartmouth ReviewInvites Freshmen and Any Interested Parties

to attend a Meeting with RefreshmentsUnderneath 32 South Main Street

Any Given Monday 6:30 PM

Next to Lou’s Downstairs

Page 8 The Dartmouth Review October 28th, 2013

Trotsky and the Orozco Murals

Dr. Jeffrey Hart is a Professor Emeritus at the College and an advisor to The Dartmouth Review.

In this article, The Dartmouth Review is proud to present Professor Hart’s latest thoughts on the Orozco Murals. We believe that this article should appeal to alumni subscribers who remember the Orozco Murals and remember wondering why they are there. At the same time, today’s undergraduates should understand (as they will after reading this article) the narrative that the murals recount. They will now know who Leon Trotsky was and what happened to him.

Many alumni were furious when the Orozco Murals were painted in the reserve books room on the ground floor of Baker library. This anger was for both aesthetic and intel-lectual reasons, but it can now be converted into educating the student body of the greatest conflict in history.

I

The violent primary colors certainly clash with the beautiful Georgian architecture of Baker Library. The art is stridently different than the art adorning any other part of Dartmouth’s campus or even most of the North East. The alumni would have been even more angry had they known that the intellectual influence on Orozco was Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary who was living in Mexico City. Trotsky found there other mural artists in addition to Orozco: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The Orozco murals depict the inevitable triumph of Com-munism and its inevitable failure. The former is presented in a central motif that embraces Marx’s view of history while the latter is unintentionally included. Trotsky himself was a true believer in Marxist ideology, but his life and death portrayed the slow collapse of Communist idealism into the reality of corruption.

II

Leon Trotsky was indispensable for the Russian Revolu-tion. He organized and led the Red Army that defeated the army of the Czar. When Lenin was sick and probably knew he was going to die, he sent a letter to the leaders of the new Bolshevik state, in effect the new Politburo. Lenin warned them that Stalin was ignorant, brutal and untrustworthy. The Politboro selected Stalin as leader anyway, rejecting the flamboyant Trotsky. Trotsky thought, no doubt correctly, that Stalin would kill him. So he travelled across western Europe and sailed to Mexico, beyond Stalin’s reach, or so he thought. You see, Stalin did reach Trotsky in Mexico City, but that is another story.

III

The narrative of the Orozco murals begins on the west end of the reserve books room. It depicts the Aztec sacrifice of a living man by cutting his heart out. The narrative proceeds through successive historical periods: militarism, decadent capitalism, obviously incom-petent doctors, and so on. An interesting view of history that is clearly informed by the concept of dialectical materialism. Then comes the Revolution, represented by a revolution-ary Jesus painted in angry red and yellow colors. How very appropriate that religious overtones should herald Marx’s proposed end of history and conflict, the one required article of faith in the Communist religion. Directly after comes the goal of history: The Worker. This is opposite the reserve books desk. In the background a large building is being constructed. In the foreground we see The Worker, the final accomplishment of history in the Marxist world-view, who is reading a thick book. After the revolution of the working class, according to Marx, history would cease to develop and instead reach an ideal communistic end-state. Who could believe this? Who could see Jesus and the faceless figure of the working multitudes on the same level? Leon Trotsky could. In Literature and Revolution he wrote:

The shell in which the cultural construction of Com-munist man will be enclosed will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest points. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler, his body will become harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, a Marx...

Remember that Neitzsche said that convictions are more dangerous than lies. Fanatics are always more interested in preserving their version of reality than in truly grasping reality. This thread of Trotskyite fanaticism, of believing that history has only one goal and possible end, winds through the Orozco Murals and their depiction of the past, present and future. They are a stellar example of that religious fervor that enveloped half the world and its coloring of worldviews. The intellectuals of the world were the most thoroughly infected as the existence of the Orozco Murals proves. It is almost impossible for undergraduates of today to imagine the bifurcation of the intellectual world during the Cold War, but the Orozco Murals provide a glimpse into that ever more distant past. The Orozco Murals in Baker Library could be useful for a basis of discussion with students. A great deal of 20th century history is connected with them including the life and eventual death of Trotsky.

IV

Trotsky did not rest idle in Mexico City. He built up his own international organization. His newspaper was written in Mexico City and printed in cities throughout the world. It seemed to offer a more humane form of Bolshevism than the one under Stalin in the USSR. On 21 August 1940 a Stalinist agent named Ramon Mer-cader assassinated Trotsky, using an ice pick as his weapon. The agent was arrested and executed, but Stalin still awarded him posthumously the Lenin Prize. But his international organization lived. During the 1930’s Great Depression many people continued to follow Trotsky, including James Burnham, later an expert on Communism for the CIA, then a senior editor of National Review, which declined in influence after his death in 1987. Burnham burned his correspondence with the Old Man, as he called Trotsky. Along with Trotsky himself, the Communist dreams disappeared from the intellectual landscape. The Soviet Union frittered away and collapsed leaving a briefly unipolar world. Trotsky and the USSR both in the end succumbed to the wave of power-hungry corruption that Stalin so distinctly embodied. Their influence upon the world, history and intellectual life is so difficult to explain to the young undergraduates of today. Yet, the murals remain as a continuing testament to the historical influence of both Trotsky and Marx and would greatly improve the tenor of discussions in many different classes at the College. n

By

Jeffrey Hart

October 28th, 2013 The Dartmouth Review Page 9

By Carolingian Folter

The Dartmouth Review would now like to discuss the current situation with regard to left-wing groups on cam-pus. There has been a remarkable string of organizations that have come and gone in the past few years, most of which have only been notable for their brief lifespans. Our much-esteemed colleagues over at The Dartmouth Radical, an organization that claims to be a newspaper of some sort (or perhaps they prefer the term “rag”), have seemingly decided that the most effective way of communicating their liberal agenda is by not com-municating anything at all. Their website features only one article that has been posted since spring term, and it is a poorly written rant in the classic RealTalk fashion where the author resorts to blaming literally everyone and everything on campus for her own problems and/or insecurities. Additionally, it has been many moons since The Radical has published a print issue. In the same vein of The Dartmouth Radical’s failures, little to nothing has been heard lately from the legendary “Dartmouth RealTalk” group whose inane and militant protests held the entire campus hostage last spring. RealTalk’s accomplishments can be summarized thusly: after meeting secretly for a number of weeks, the dozen or so disgruntled members of this group illegally forced their way into the Dimensions show, assaulted a college employee in the pro-cess, and proceeded to spend ten minutes trying to convince prospective 17’s that they would be raped and harassed if they elected to come to Dartmouth. This protest resulted in classes being canceled for a day due to the fallout and possibly threatening response both online and in person to the protests, much to the ire of most students who felt that they pay enough for each class session without

having to miss some of them due to ridiculous protests. The only other “accomplishment” of RealTalk was an incident in which two of their members attempted to protest at a protest event in NYC hosted by Gloria Allred, noted legal

counsel of all causes far left. After showing up, disrupting the proceedings and refusing to leave peacefully, the intrepid RealTalkers were escorted out of the building by the police. As if The Radical and RealTalk were not enough, a series of posters have recently appeared around campus heralding the rise of The F.I.S.T., a new liberal powerhouse risen from the ashes of RealTalk’s crusade. Or so we presume it is called given the massive symbol that dominates the otherwise name or symbol-less poster. Note that such poster can be seen on the cover of this particular issue. The F.I.S.T. recently held an open meeting, which friends of the Review were lucky enough to attend. It seems a large portion of the meeting must have been spent establishing what exactly the group intends to fight. Judging by the lists they created (displayed here as a pair of images), it seems that the issues plaguing Dartmouth are

quite simply every word in the English language with “ism” tagged onto the end. While one might be charitable enough to grant “classism” or “militarism” to the radical group, it strains our believability that “being busy” at Dartmouth is a

form of oppression, much less “carerrism” [sic]. There are real problems at Dartmouth, but the radical groups seem to always get distracted by the least important or most frivolous or at times simply most insane. If you ever care to tread on the fringe of far-left thought, we strongly suggest you check out the articles in the To add to their credibility, The F.I.S.T. had as their inaugural speaker none other than Assistant Professor Russell Rickford, who recently announced that he is leaving Dartmouth for Cornell because Hanover is not a racially diverse enough community for his children to grow up in. Although someone probably should have pointed out to Professor Rickford that Ithaca isn’t particularly different racially, that is beside the point; as everyone knows that Rickford is leaving because he was told he would not be getting tenure. And the reason for his lack of tenure? Most likely the dreaded “being a terrible

teacher and never publishing anything-ism”. To learn from recent history, it seems a matter of weeks if not days until The F.I.S.T. disappears into memory. Until Dartmouth’s liberal activism groups start finding credible messages to promote, following the law, and seeking credible support among faculty and administrators, it seems that they will continue their current trend of showing up, making some noise, and disappearing as quickly as they arrived. One wonders if this bears any similarity to the typical story of left-wing groups that gain power and then slowly whittle their power away through internal purges and mass murders. After all, The Dartmouth Review is still standing and succeeding...or at least we like to think so. We hope that one of our supposed rivals will eventually manage to build a long-term presence and join with us in fostering a thoughtful dialogue on campus. n

By Jacob I. Rascoff For the third time in as many years, the College has elected to extend the deadline for early decision applications. This postponement comes in the wake of widespread technical glitches in the fourth version of the Common Application, a web-based application used by all of the Ivies and over 500 other universities. Frozen screens and multiple billings for single applica-tions are among the bugs aggravating students as they at-tempt to submit applications to selective colleges across the country. In light of these frustrations, the Admissions Office has postponed its deadline for early decision applications by one week, from November 1 to November 8. The last two extensions of the early decision deadline were occasioned by natural disaster; last year the Admissions Office granted extensions to students affected by Hurricane Sandy, and a massive snowstorm and power outage prompted the College to postpone the deadline the year before. This year, software glitches in the Common App have led Dartmouth and one other Ivy League institution, Columbia, to push back their deadlines. The other six Ivies have not formally extended their deadlines.

However, Dartmouth and Columbia are joined by several other elite institutions in their decisions to postpone. The Uni-versity of Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Tufts, and Barnard College are some of the other schools that have extended their deadlines to November 8. Some schools, like Princeton, have started accepting competitors to the Common Application, like the Universal College Application, to alleviate the stress posed by technical malfunctions in the Common App. Other Ivies, like Brown, have pledged to consider individual requests for extra time “on a case-by-case basis,” according to the Brown Daily Herald. Still, the fact remains that Dartmouth is somewhat of an outlier among the Ivies in its decision to formally extend the early decision deadline. Dartmouth’s weeklong postponement of its early deci-sion deadline, albeit for worthy reasons, seems to be turning into an annual habit. The most recent extension comes on the heels of last year’s 12.5 percent decrease in early decision applications, a marked decline that some would attribute to a recent rash of bad press for the College. After Andrew Lohse’s exposé of fraternity hazing hit the newsstands in Spring 2012, news outlets have rushed to capitalize on sensationalist coverage of Dartmouth’s drink-ing culture, with gossip rags like The Huffington Post and reputable newspapers like The Boston Globe joining the fray.

It would seem the widely publicized exploits of Dartmouth’s fraternities, combined with the efforts of the ornery agitators in Hashtag RealTalk, have finally rendered Dartmouth obsolete in the competition for applications. This apocalyptic vision is overstated. When last year’s regular decision applications were accounted for, the overall pool decreased by only 3 percent from the previous year. Early decision itself accounts for a small percentage of the overall volume of applications received by the college each year, and the 12.5 percent decline last year corresponds with only about 200 fewer applications. The College’s decision to extend its deadline for the third straight year may reflect an attempt to attract more applicants for the early decision pool, but it is not indicative of a desperation to attract more applicants overall. Negative publicity has undoubtedly af-fected potential applicants’ impressions of the College to some extent, but fleeting press coverage is unlikely to make a lasting impact on the academic prestige of an elite college like Dartmouth. Perhaps the choice to extend this year’s early decision deadline is merely an understanding gesture by the folks in the Admissions Office, who sympathize with the frustrated victims of Common App glitches. We shouldn’t expect the same level of empathy from those heartless elitists at Harvard and Yale. n

Mr. Folter is an alumnus of the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.

Mr. Rascoff is a Junior at the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.

Liberal Groups Suffer Internal Purges

Early Decision Dilemmas

Page 10 The Dartmouth Review October 28th, 2013

Rauner Will Not Clinch GOP Nomination

Mr. Jing is a senior at the College and Managing Editor of The Dartmouth Review.

By Kirk Jing

Since Pat Quinn won his election in the deep-blue state by less than 1% of the vote against a conservative Republican State Legislator from the rural downstate, Illinois has seen 13 credit-rating downgrades as a result of their unfunded pension liabilities spiraling well over $100 billion, the worst in the nation. Quinn’s already poor approval ratings have tumbled further as he struggled to find a pen-sion solution that the state’s powerful public-sector unions could accept (obviously with no success since no such solution actually exists). Illinois’s pension problems and the increasing infeasibility of log-rolling ‘everyone wins’ rent dis-tribution have put two of the most powerful wings of the modern Democratic Party at vicious odds: the rapacious public-sector union rent-seekers who dominate most state governments and the financial sector interest rent-seekers who control most of the federal apparatus. At first, Quinn faced a brutal fratricidal primary against former J.P. Morgan ex-ecutive and Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley, who naturally enjoyed support from a variety of diverse industries and regions, such as Michael Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan, until Quinn caught an immeasurably lucky break with Daley’s surprise exit from the race. As a result, finance can turn to the looming Republican primary for its last, great hope. Illinois Republicans smell blood, considering Quinn’s status as the least popular American gov-ernor running for re-election in 2014. Unsurpris-ingly, the sharks have come out. Considering the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary in Illinois, which saw six different candidates duke it out until one finally won with 20.26% of the vote (roughly 200 more votes than the second-place finisher), and a Republican Party of Illinois that declined to reform their primary system into something that could actually make any sense, one could quite reasonably conclude “hey, I can win this nomina-tion even if not many people really want me to.” Lo and behold, Dartmouth grad Bruce Rauner ‘78, namesake of that Rauner Library that someone somewhere probably uses, has thrown his hat in the ring as a BOLD OUTSIDER™. Like most Dartmouth grads who make a name for themselves, Rauner predictably spent his career in the world of finance. Rauner served as chairman of

GTCR, a glitzy Chicago private equity that primarily handles several state pension funds (although not the hilariously broken Illinois pension fund) and other institutional investors. Although Rauner doesn’t particularly tout his experience in private equity, preferring to just re-fer to himself as an “outsider businessman,” those preferences haven’t stopped the slow surfacing of embarrassing information. Crain’s Chicago Business reported of the close relations between Rauner’s GCTR and Pennsylvania Democratic Governor, Ed Rendell. After a generous $300,000 donation to Rendell’s election campaign courtesy of Bruce Rauner and Rendell’s unsurprising victory, one of Rendell’s first moves as Governor was to give Rauner and GCTR control over $126 million in its state pension fund, a move that netted GCTR a pretty fee of over $4 million and inaugurated the beginning of Pennsylvania’s slide into fiscal insolvency. In all fairness, Pennsylvania’s unfunded liabili-ties are only half that of Illinois’s (Pennslyvania’s horribly brutal approaching austerity finance re-forms are still preferable to Illinois’s abandon all hope ye who live here finances) and much more an outcome of Democrat misgovernance than private equity malpractice, it’s not a great record to have when every candidate and their mother is railing against pay-for-play politics. Plus, shouldn’t it be a small grade when considering the bonanza that pension reform could bring? Erm, for Illinois I mean, not GCTR. Then again, even if the topic of pension insol-vency proves not particularly a winner for Rauner, he can always tout his education credentials and close relations with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who may not really be an education reformer, but at least garnered the hatred of Chicago’s teachers unions. These unions happen to be led by another ILLUSTRIOUS Dartmouth alum Karen Lewis ‘74, perhaps also known for making gay bullying jokes about (not actually gay) former head of Chicago Schools and current Obama Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Emmanuel and Rauner’s partnership traces itself all the way back to 2001, when the FCC attempted to veto GCTR’s leveraged buy-out of Security-Link, a home security company. The Washington Examiner reported how Emmanuel pressured the FCC to totally reverse its stance, paving the way for GCTR to buy the company for a steal ($479 million), before “restructuring” (read: mass layoffs,

asset stripping, vulture capitalism) the company, and selling it almost immediately after for the much more reasonable price of $1 billion. Besides his close relationship with Emmanuel, other allegations have emerged about a more hands-on approach to education. The Chicago Sun Times reported that Rauner “pulled strings” to get his daughter enrolled into a top-tier Chicago magnet school, Walter Payton High School, that normally has twenty, thirty, or even fifty more applicants than open seats. Rauner vigorously denied the allegations in a somewhat embarrassing interview before sheepishly admit-ting that the allegations included “partial truths”. Of course, we shouldn’t rush to judge him even if those accusations of educational corruption against the Rauners are “partially true.” As students here at Dartmouth College, we should already know that wealthy and powerful alumni would never ever pull strings and harness their influence to secure for their offspring posi-tions in normally selective educational institutions, because we certainly don’t live in a plutocratic society dominated by elite gatekeeper institutions or anything. In unrelated news, we here at The Dartmouth Review categorically deny the rumors that we have a betting pool on which Dartmouth sorority she will eventually rush. Then again, some primary voters might tolerate a degree of plutocratic politics if that’s the price of getting a conservative in the governor’s mansion. It’s certainly not as if Illinois’s last Republican (and Democratic) governors are in jail for federal corruption charges. After all, Rauner has been a dedicated Republican for years. According to the FEC, the Rauners ponied up tens of thousands of dollars for the Republican National Committee, John McCain, Mark Kirk, Mitt Romney, Dick Durbin, Ed Markey, Emily’s List, Barack Obama, and the Democratic National Committee. Backing off from the party stalwart line, at the very least, Rauner is an even opportunity purchaser of influence. Which in all fairness is better than most influence peddlers in America’s predomi-nantly liberal financial sector. While Rauner isn’t the most dedicated Republican, he’s certainly not a Democrat. Then again, it’s a value judgment on what kind of membership is more worrying: that of the opposition or that of the type of group that tries to buy influence with the elites of both parties. Besides questions of actual fitness and desir-ability, one cannot evade question of electability

We are far from the first to point out Rauner’s many contradictions and evasions as a candidate, which he attempted to counter with his recent pick of a little-known and unconnected running mate.

October 28th, 2013 The Dartmouth Review Page 11

...And He Shouldn’t

in party primaries. William F. Buckley argued that conservatives should be cautious to vote for the “most conservative electable candidate”. Consid-ering the tendency of conservative Republicans to repeatedly ignore that rule at their own peril in Senatorial elections (see: Colorado, Nevada, Indi-ana, Missouri, Delaware, etc.), it would probably be advisable for primary voters to heed the importance of electability. On that, Rauner’s strongest point has been his fundraising. Studies have found a strong relationship between campaign fund-raising and electoral performance, at least at the local level. As mentioned earlier, with Bill Daley out of the race, the financial sector has a new cause celebre to boost. As a result, Rauner has already fund-raised over $3.3 million this year, more than all of his major Republican competitors (Kirk Dillard, Bill Brady, and Dan Rutherford) combined, with generous donations from Jeffrey Immelt (the Dartmouth ‘78, Obama associate, and corporate CEO who praised China’s “superior state-run communism” and nota-bly paid no taxes in 2010 because it’s certainly not that the U.S. tax code is unfair), Kirkland & Ellis (the almost incomprehensibly wealthy and Democrat-aligned biglaw firm where hordes of liberals who go to Law School claiming to serve the people end up working), and various investment banks. One caveat naturally looms, as the Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette reported, Rauner has collected a huge proportion of his campaign contributions from financial centers outside of Illinois, in contrast to his Republican competitors, who have almost entirely collected money from inside Illinois itself. Even those funds that come from Illinois overwhelm-ingly come from international firms centered in Chicago’s North Side. Bizarrely for a state-wide campaign, Rauner’s fundraising looks more like a national fundraising campaign. Perhaps this is the vaunted “Dartmouth

alumni network” that I have never seen and probably never will see. Yet it is promising to discover that it actually exists, instead of being yet another of many many lies peddled to me by the Admissions Office. On top of the generous financial support Rauner has enjoyed across the nation (in contrast to from Illinois itself), he also possesses an incredible abil-ity to self-fund. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Rauner’s $1.3 million in accumulated cam-paign funds, his prodigious ability to self-fund, and ties to groups launching negative ads against Aaron Schock, helped convince the fairly popular Republican rising star to run for re-election for his Congressional seat instead of wading into the bloody gubernatorial free-for-all. However, a brief study in 2010 by fivethir-tyeight’s Nate Silver found, wealthy self-funding politicians have a strong tendency to just roundly suck at politics. Looking at the list of self-funders who competed in open-seat congressional seats, Silver found that when even adjusted for partisan lean, they lost 80% of the time. For state-level positions (such as Governor of Illinois), that rose to 89%. Campaign fundraising is often indicative of election results because it represents voter and volunteer excitement, not because one can simply “buy” an election. The caveat of the Rauner campaign’s impressive fundraising is that it is primarily dependent on low-numbers of extremely high net-worth individuals, many of whom are out-of-state. Such a support network seems great at collecting money, perhaps not as great at collecting votes. In addition, buying expensive slick consultants and huge amounts of ad time is little substitute for the slow, painstaking process of building political coalitions and grassroots appeal. In my native Cali-fornia, Meg Whitman thought expensive political

consultants, (legitimately appealing) television ads, good speeches, an undeniably impressive resume, and a record for moderate, bridge-building politics would send her to Sacramento. Instead, she spiraled into one of the worst Re-publican defeats in state history during the best year for Republicans since 1946 against a politician best known for once advocating a government-funded transportation beam to the moon while campaign-ing on a motto of “protect the earth and explore the universe”. Besides a clumsy approach to politics that adopts “throw money at it” to most public relation problems, some self-funders come with baggage. Another classic example of the self-funded candidate covered in warts was Rick Scott, whose “business issues” caused him to barely edge over the line in Florida in 2010. Largely as a result, despite having a largely popular and successful agenda, Scott will probably be defeated in 2014 by the slimiest man to ever run for Governor of Florida, the unabashedly principle-less Charlie Crist. In the words of pollster-god Silver, “sometimes money can’t buy you votes”, but the way you acquire that money can certainly cost you some. If you don’t agree with me, I have but two words: Mitt Rom-ney. Especially if you’re a vulture crony capitalist Dartmouth alumni who legitimately thinks he can give a few good speeches and buy a Republican nomination, despite being a terrible ideological fit and being devastatingly vulnerable to opposition research. Then again, elites dramatically misread-ing Republican electorates to their own peril isn’t a particularly new phenomenon. Although the presence of four major contenders means that one could waltz across the primary fin-ish line with only 25% of the vote, one could quite reasonably deem it unlikely for a fourth of Illinois Republicans to pick Rauner to carry their party’s banner forward. n

These are images of the major candidates for the Democratic and Republican nomination.They are from left to right: State Senator and former Gubernatorial Candidate Bill Brady (GOP), State Senator Kirk Dillard (GOP), businessman Bruce Rauner (GOP), and State Treasurer Dan Rutherford (GOP), former White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley (Dem - dropped out), and incumbent Governor Pat Quinn (Dem). While Daley has dropped out of the race, he was a formidable and powerful opponent for Quinn and has deconstructed the Democratic machine’s support for Quinn.

Letters to The Editor of TDRDear Sir,

I was repelled and disgusted by the contrasting pictures on your front page, “Dartmouth at War...Then & Now.” Those fine young men in Navy garb were prepared to die for their country. Those ugly, spoiled brats with the rapist and racism placards wanted us to drop dead for their convenience. But the latter ignored two important facts: A) Rape is a crime. If they know ofa rape it is their duty to report it, not by placards on the Green, but to the police of New Hampshire. Failure to report a crime to the legal authorities is itself a crime. The College has nothing to do with prosecuting crime. B) The complaint of racism is indeed bizarre when the ethnic students themselves have been selected for admis-sion to Dartmouth by the most rigorous competition against whites. Thousands of whites have been denied admission to make room for the ethnic complainers, whose very presence on campus disproves the infantile charge of racism. It also shows that the Admissions Committee must be nearly blind, since the ethnic complainers are among the ugliest students I have ever seen anywhere. John Barchilon ‘60, MD.

The Dartmouth Review:

Dear Dr. Barchilon,

First of all, your reaction to our cover was largely the response that we were attempting to engender. We were attempting to

contrast the two situations and to depict how swiftly Dartmouth has changed in just the past few decades. We do believe that the U.S. Navy certainly had greater cause in World War II than the RealTalk protesters, but to be fair, they also didn’t go to quite the same extremes. First of all, rape is a crime and we agree with your senti-ments there, but also would like to point out that much of the protest centered around statistics of varying degrees of truth and not always of specific cases. And we are aware that at least one of the protesters has written articles calling for stronger reporting standards for Sexual Assault Peer Advisors at the College (see Daniel Valdez’s article in The Dartmouth Radical). Secondly, we believe that the charge of racism was lev-elled not at the administration, but at the student body itself. Now, we here at The Dartmouth Review are not going to defend every single Dartmouth student at every single point in time and claim that no racist incidents have ever occurred on campus. I’m certain that at least one drunk gentleman or lady has said a prejudiced remark in the past decade. Yet, I would argue that the claim of a deeply racist atmosphere is not only false, but ignores the deep class divides that exist parallel with the racial divides on campus. As for your com-ments regarding the admissions process, I would again say that I do not believe the protesters were attacking the admis-sions process or the administration itself with the charge of racism. Regarding your remarks on the appearance of the protesters, I must say that I disagree with your conclusions. It is also worth noting that the protesters did include (to the best of my knowledge) white individuals as well.

Finally, while I understand your anger at the means of the protest (and the often tangled and inaccurate logic and facts touted by the protesters themselves), I would urge you to approach the discussion thoroughly and calmly in the future (or with the lightest of touches of acidic wit) given that the protesters display an incredible talent at taking the words of their opponents and turning their delivery or style into the main topic of conversation. With all best wishes.

Dear Sir,

As an initial and continued subscriber to The Dartmouth Review, I have a modest suggestion to reinstitute a Letter to the Editor section which has been lacking in your pages for several years. It provided lively commentary from alumni con-tributors and others regarding current articles in the Review. Perhaps there was a good reason, business or otherwise, but I would like your thoughts on the matter. Donald W. Smith ‘51, MD

The Dartmouth Review:

Dear Dr. Smith,

We have restored a Letter to the Editor section on a case-by-case basis as different letters have arrived at our offices. Any of our alumni or student readers should feel free to contribute their thoughts on any matter and we shall be glad to respond. With all best wishes.

Page 12 The Dartmouth Review October 28th, 2013

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Barrett’s MixologyBy Whippledy Wombledon III

See there I was sitting on the couch at my dear old Father and Grand-father’s fraternity Beta Theta Pi (or was it Beta Alpha Omega? Things do have this nasty habit of changing their names around here.). Anyway, I was spending a good week visiting a friend from boarding school at Dartmouth. Unfortunately, I had not yet had the pleasure of receiving my acceptance letter from Dartmouth as Daddy was in the process of making a merger with another large conglomerate or something or other and had forgotten to make the donation for yet another Wombledon Building of the Sciences or some such rotten acadmeic subject. Yet, I was assured that next year the check would be in the mail and would soon be answered by a letter of enrollment. Ah, how I could hardly wait to join the ranks of such hallowed men as Pop and Big Poppa. They were always so jovial and manly when they spoke of this place. Dingy as it may seem now, I have it on good authority that it was quite the kicking place back a few decades. Now, it seems that our family’s pre-ferred fraternity goes in for men of a different kind of breeding. I suppose one might call it “right,” if one cared only for athletic prowess and nothing of the mind or y’know, refined blood. Anyways, there I was on the couch watching the inevitable Romney triumph (or so at least my bookie had assured me that it was a sure thing) when a young and rather roguish young man came around and pressed a drink into my hand. It was a somewhat effeminate drink so I asked him in a liltingly stentorian voice just what I had been the lucky receiver of. A young blonde lady in the background appreciated the dry tone and my witty deliv-ery and giggled appropriately. I would have doffed my top hat had not my companion so insistently prevented me from wearing it inside. The young man looked at me and explained it was a Fifty-Fifty in honor of the night’s contest. I looked at him shocked and said, “But of course, we can’t lose.”

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The Muslim world and its subset, the countries of the Middle East, have been left behind in the mara-thon of political, economic and human develop-ment. For that, there is a tendency to blame others as the primary cause. -Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The UPA Government is non-serious, it has taken the people for granted & it is not bothered about the youth. Their approach shows lack of faith in democracy. Our goal is to win the trust of the people & give dignity to them!

-Narendra Modi

Everything I did, all my actions, all of the problems I had I dedicated to God and to Chile, because I kept Chile from becoming Communist.

-Augusto Pinochet

I had watched for many years and seen how a few rich families held much of Argentina’s wealth and power in their hands. So Peron and the government brought in an eight hour working day, sickness pay and fair wages to give poor workers a fair go.

-Evita Peron

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.-Winston Churchill

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

-Mark Twain

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

-Margaret Thatcher

That men do not very learn very much from the les-sons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

-Aldous Huxley

What is history but a fable agreed upon?-Napoleon Bonaparte

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system and let the past slip away...

-William James

Frankly, all this immigration [to New Zealand] wholesale as it is and unparalleled anywhere in the world, has not closed the skills gap, has not increased our export base, has not increased our wealth...We place our country at risk by bringing in thousands of people whose views are formed by alien cultures and rigid religious practices. If immigrants are allowed to settle here, regardless of their ability or willingness to live in harmony with us, we will create a breeding ground for conflict.

-Winston Peters

If you see a snake, just kill it - don’t appoint a com-mittee on snakes.

-Ross Perot

I’m not a dictator. It’s just that I have a grumpy face.-Augusto Pinochet

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled.

-Ross Perot

Mr. Peres, you are older than me. And your voice is very loud. I know that it is because you feel guilty. You better know that I will not sound that loud. And when killing is the case, you know how to kill very well. I know how you killed the children on the beaches, I know how you shot them. Two ex-prime ministers of your country once told me important things. You have had such prime ministers who said: “When I enter Palestine on a tank, I feel [in a different way] happy.” And you give me those numbers...I also condemn those who acclaim this cruelty, because I think itis a crime against humanity as well.

-Recep Erdogan In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

-Richard M. Nixon

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

-Will Durant

Governments, if they endure, always tend increas-ingly towards aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires or entrenched bureaucracy.

-Frank Herbert