We are the Champions

With a solid, though weather delayed, 3-0 victory last night, Dartmouth won the ECAC(HL) regular season title for the first time in school history, earning a share of the Cleary Cup with Colgate and the top seed for the conference playoffs.

It gives the men's hockey team its first title of any kind since head coach Bob Gaudet was in net back in 1980, when the team won the Ivy League title and advanced to the NCAA Frozen Four.

Thompson Arena will host the quarterfinal series in two weeks, as Dartmouth will face the lowest remaining seed after next weekend's opening round. If all the seeds hold, Clarkson would return to town for the best-of-three series.

More men's hockey notes

Not only would a win tomorrow over the Saints give Dartmouth the top-seed for the conference playoffs, but it would also give the school its first Cleary Cup ever as ECAC(HL) regular season champions. A fitting tribute to cap off the 100 years of hockey celebration if they can pull it off.

Big game tomorrow. Huge even.

Hopefully the crowd's a little more packed tomorrow - 3900 and change tonight is pitiful considering how big this weekend is. It'd be great to see a full house tomorrow for a game that's far and away the biggest of the year.

Even more amazing is that this team started 0-4 on the year, all conference games. Since then they've gone 13-2-2 in ECACHL play, losing only at St. Lawrence and at Cornell in that span. Overall, the team is 9-1-0 in conference play at home (only loss being to Colgate as part of that 0-4 start).

Huge win for men's hockey

By defeating Clarkson 5-2 this evening, the Dartmouth men's hockey team has clinched a first-round bye in the ECACHL playoffs. Further, with Cornell's 2-0 loss at RPI, Dartmouth and Colgate are tied for first place, though Dartmouth holds the tiebreaker. A win tomorrow night could clinch the #1 seed in the playoffs. A tie, coupled with losses or ties by Cornell and Colgate, or a loss coupled with losses by the western New York duo could similarly clinch the top slot.

Conservative Affirmative Action Nixed in SD

The South Dakota state Senate killed a bill yesterday that would have required the state's universities to publish an annual report detailing how they are promoting intellectual diversity.

The bill was similar, but slightly less specific than the Academic Bill of Rights that "ideological diversity" impresario David Horowitz (see TDR 9/20/2004) has been promoting in a number of states. Inside Higher Ed has a more detailed analysis of the now-defeated legislation.

FREE Rice and Beans!

Commentary from erstwhile Review editor Stefan Beck '04:

"I don't know why somebody hadn't thought of it before: the
solution to starvation is free rice and beans! Leave it to
college kids."

---Forwarded Message---
Date: 23 Feb 2006 14:42:03 EST
From: Dartmouth Ends Hunger
Reply-To: DEH
Subject: FREE Rice and Beans!
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
-----------------------
(in conjunction with the More Than Medicine lecture series)
-----------------
Dartmouth Ends Hunger
6pm
The Hyphen Lounge (Butterfield/Russell Sage)
-----------------
We'll be talking about hunger in Rwanda with a DMS student who
lived there during the genocide. And as always, free and tasty
rice and beans for all!

UPDATE: Sorry, correction -- the above commentary was by J. Stethers White '07, not Stefan Beck. Apologies for the confusion.

Cartoon Rancor Follow-Up

Today's "Quick Takes" from Inside Higher Ed notes that both the Review and the Dartmouth Free Press have published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed to little campus outrage (thus far).

Not so the case at Harvard, where the Harvard Salient published the cartoons under the heading "A Pox (err, jihad) on Free Expression) and was swiftly condemned by the Harvard Islamic Society for their "inflammatory and offensive" actions.

There's no word yet, though, on whether or not the Harvard Islamic Society has found any Salient (or for that matter, Review or Free Press) flags to burn in Cambridge.

Summers, Part III

Today's Journal runs a brief opinion piece on the event, calling the faculty ouster indicative of a shifiting paradigm in higher education. Summers is just the latest victim.

Mr. Summers's fate has unfortunately become all too typical at elite schools in recent decades. The Dartmouth faculty looked down on David McLaughlin as an "anti-intellectual" (he had an M.B.A. instead of a Ph.D.); he was run out of Hanover in 1987 over bitter quarrels over ROTC and disinvestment from South Africa. Benno Schmidt left Yale in 2001, saying his six-year tenure had been marked "by more argument . . . than I would have wished." Donald Kagan, the dean of Yale College who had handed in his resignation a few weeks earlier, was franker, noting the threat from an "imperial faculty."

N.B. An online subscription may be required to view the article.

Summers Update

Summers has indeed resigned as Harvard's president. Former president Derek Bok, whose new book, Our Underachieving Colleges, will be reviewed in the next issue of TDR, will take over as interim president until Summers's successor is named.

Summers to resign at Harvard

So the Crimson reports.

Frat-Free Friday?

I give this about a zero percent chance of working.

--- Forwarded message from Christina F. Jimenez ---

Tomorrow we have the chance to make a powerful statement about how we influence the fraternity scene on campus.

BY NOT GOING TO THEM.

Hey ladies,

I urge you to inspire your members not to go to fraternities tomorrow night for Frat-Free Friday. Use whatever means necessary -- threats, references to women's lib, bribes, peer pressure -- whatever it takes.

I know it's hard for some to fathom not participating in frat life -- but emphasize that it's just ONE NIGHT and that it this is a quick and easy way for the men on this campus to realize that WE are an integral part of their social scenes and that we don't have to take part when we have each other!!

Solidarity is key.
We represent organizations full of unique, diverse, INCREDIBLE Dartmouth women. Let's show off just how UNITED we are.

Let's really do this.
Together.
100%.

Please blitz your members, do what works for you and spread the inspiration!!!!!

Sincerely,

Christina
*and the NAD House is totally allowed!!!
**Sig Delt is gunna rock!!!!!

Gazzaniga in NYT

Soon-to-depart Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences Michael Gazzaniga takes to the pages of the New York Times to argue that "all clones are not the same"--that the Bush administration should reconsider its effective ban on biomedical cloning.

Henrie '87 to Speak Next Mon.

Mark Henrie '87, now a senior editor at ISI Books and the editor of the Intercollegiate Review and Modern Age, will be speaking on campus at 8pm on Monday, February 20, in Silsby 28. His lecture, "American Conservatism: Before and After Neo-Conservatism," will be sponsored by both the Review and the Evelyn Waugh Society.

Mark was the valedictorian of the class of 1987 and holds graduate degrees from both Harvard and Cambridge. From what I've heard, he's also a fantastic speaker, so anyone with even the slightest interest in political philosophy should come and listen.

Pathetic

I rarely post here, but I thought that this story merited mention, especially from a college newspaper perspective. The top editors of the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois have been suspended and will likely be fired for publishing the Danish cartoons.

The editor in chief of a student-led newspaper serving the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been suspended after printing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that, when published in Europe, enraged Muslims and led to violent protests in the Middle East and Asia.

Editor Acton Gorton and his opinions editor, Chuck Prochaska, were relieved of their duties at The Daily Illini on Tuesday while a task force investigates "the internal decision-making and communication" that led to the publishing of the cartoons, according to a statement by the newspaper's publisher and general manager, Mary Cory...

Gorton's decision, however, caused an uproar in the local Muslim community and rankled other Illini staff members after the paper was deluged with negative letters and e-mails...

Gorton himself said he received 300 e-mails. Two-thirds of the e-mails were supportive and a third were hateful, he said...

U. of I. Chancellor Richard Herman also wrote a letter to the newspaper saying he was saddened by Gorton's decision.

What "saddens" me is that the chancellor of one of this country's top public universities is so unwilling to stand up for the free speech rights of his students in the face of some negative emails and letters (does anyone really think that there were going to riots in Champaign?). I'm not at all surprised by this, but "saddened" nonetheless.

The paper already apologized on Monday (for what, printing actual news?) for publishing the cartoons. Great moment in journalism, guys. Way to stand on principle.

Comp. Sci. adjunct named to NAE

Adjunct Professor of Computer Science M. Douglas McIlroy was named today to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

Liquor Inspector Busts Local Restaurants Too

This past Friday, February 10th, agents from the state Liquor Commission and the Hanover Police made compliance checks at 22 of Hanover's restaurants licensed to sell alcohol. Of the 22, the 7 following establishments were caught serving alcohol to persons under the age of 21:

Canoe Club of Hanover
Orient Restaurant
Jesse's Restaurant
Mai Thai
Etna General Store
The Co-Op Food Store
Food Stop

According to a February 13th press release, each of the businesses may be subject to administrative fines and/or suspension of liquor license.

Amendment Passes

The amendment to the Alumni Association constitution that bundled all-media voting with lowering the threshold for new amendment approvals from 3/4 to 2/3 passed by a 198 to 32 margin today.

The executive committee of the Alumni Politburo was very pleased by the outcome.

New Issue

The Winter Carnival issue of The Dartmouth Review is now online.

Luxon to Leave East Wheelock

The East Wheelock Cluster is getting a new face -- Susan Brison of the philosophy department will be moving into the "faculty associate" position at the end of this academic year. English Profs. Luxon and Schweitzer will be moving back to their home in Norwich, VT. Brison will live in the "White House" in East Wheelock with her husband, a professor of French at Princeton, and their son.

Luxon had long been a member of the Review's worst professor list, but I removed him this past year after taking one of his classes. He's mellowed since his radical days, and he now keeps his Milton and his politics seperate. He and Prof. Schweitzer will surely be missed from East Wheelock.

Trustees Respond

College Trustees T. J. Rodgers '70, Peter Robinson '79, and Todd Zywicki '88 write to The Daily D to denounce the actions of the Association of Alumni pertaining to this weekend's meeting in Hanover.

Alumni: Vote this weekend

Noah Riner '06 explains what's at stake in this weekend's special Alumni Association election:

The proposed amendment would change this requirement, allowing all-media voting so that alumni can vote regardless of their geography. This is a very sensible change that should have been enacted years ago.
...
However, the catch is that this no-brainer change has been bundled with a highly contentious one: reducing the majority required to amend the constitution from three-fourths to two-thirds. The most immediate consequence of the two-thirds amendment is that it will make the passage of a new constitution -- and the concomitant merger of the Alumni Council and Alumni Association -- easier.

So the Association leadership, unable to pass its revised constitution under the existing rules, has simply decided to change the rules, and in a devious manner to boot.

They're doing all this in order to ram through a new constitution that replaces the existing bad institutions with new and worse institutions. A series of amendments, voted on individually, would do a better job and accomplish real reforms.

It's up to the alumni in Hanover this weekend to do the right thing.

Torch Lighting?

Given that this year's snow sculpture isn't starting Carnival in very great shape (for those off-campus, a quick look at one of the webcams makes this patently clear), might a "torch lighting" ceremony this evening cause the rest of it to melt?

Unless, of course, they plan to use one of those new-fangled "electric" torches.

Winter Carnival on CNN-Sports Illustrated

Teaser with photo on main page, links to SI On Campus main page and this feature.

Misrepresenting the football fight

The Daily Dartmouth outdoes itself today by misrepresenting student and alumni grievances about the state of the athletic system.

Although many Dartmouth community members and alumni severely criticized Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg last year for his private comments that Dartmouth's football recruitment hindered the academic quality and diversity of incoming classes, almost four in five Americans echo that sentiment in prioritizing academics over athletics.

The fight was not about the priority given to the football program, which is an important debate. Instead, the fight was about the very existence of the football program.

Dean Furstenberg says it quite explicitly in his 2000 letter to Swarthmore College President Alfred Bloom:

I am writing to commend you on the decision to eliminate football from your athletic offerings. Other institutions would do well to follow your lead. I know you’ve heard a lot of criticism about this decision, but I, for one, support this change.

You are exactly right in asserting that football programs represent a sacrifice to the academic quality and diversity of entering first-year classes. This is particularly true at highly selective institutions that aspire to academic excellence. My experience at both Wesleyan and Dartmouth is consistent with what you have observed at Swarthmore. I wish this were not true but sadly football, and the culture that surrounds it, is antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours.

That’s not giving academics greater priority than football or requiring football to meet higher standards, as the Daily D suggests. That’s eliminating football altogether.

No Dartmouth student or alumnus would argue that football recruitment should come at the expense of academics. Surely the College should not eliminate the football program entirely—a change which could have a detrimental effect on education.

Government professor Allan Stam explained how athletics complement academics in a letter to the editor of the Valley News:

The question is which way of spending time in college better prepares our students for their future roles in our community? Through the shared sacrifice and exultation found in organized sports and competition, or in the pedantic and nitpicking conversations of collegiate sophists?

I’ll take the mediocre athletes over the mediocre poets and navel-gazers any day. I often wonder if the loathsome dismissiveness with which America’s intellectuals view athletes, soldiers, business people and politicians lies in their own insecurities rather than any better sense of judgment they might have than the rest of us.

Perhaps the Daily D’s editors should be more cautious before they allow a freshman author to so easily dismiss a serious campus debate—based on a national poll, no less.

Sabinson in the Valley News

Today's Valley News has a good round-up of the Sabinson case by the always-classy Harvard grad Jessica T. Lee.

Stempniak Rolling in NHL

Since being recalled from Peoria by the Blues on Monday, Lee Stempniak '05 has scored four goals in three games and notched two gamewinners in shootouts. Included in that are the two goals and the shootout gamewinner tonight against the Blackhawks (which doesn't count as a hat trick, by the way). For the season, the rookie has 11 points (7g, 4a) in 27 games with the Blues and 13 points (8g, 5a) in 20 games with the Rivermen in the AHL.

Elsewhere, Hugh Jessiman '06 is back with Hartford in the AHL after spending some time in the ECHL, and Trevor Byrne '03 has been solid with Peoria this year after bouncing between the ECHL and AHL the last couple years.

Dr. Seuss '25 Stumps Lebron

Courtesy of ESPN.com

James could've at least "attempted" the word. Isn't that what learning to read is all about?? He made light of a weakness by laughing it off. Poor example.