The Day the Music Died

Dartlog received a copy of the email music prof Jon Appleton sent out to the faculty, explaining why he felt impelled to resign from the faculty and seek employment elsewhere.

Appleton's departure is itself grim, but the reasons for his resignation are grimmer still:

Somehow it escaped me that the average grade at Dartmouth last year was a B+. Thus when I taught Music and Technology in the Fall term of 2004, I gave 30 As, 25 Bs, 15 Cs and 4 Ds (eleven students dropped the course for various reasons during the term). The students who earned less than an A were very upset. They wrote me angry notes such as "you nuked my GPA" and "how could I get a B in a music course?" and "my mother loved my composition."

The students complained to the chair of my department and to the Dean of Faculty Carol Folt. Their parents called to express outrage. I never saw these complaints but I got a message from the Dean of Faculty who asked what "metric" I used to grade these compositions? [...] I offered to show the papers and compositions to the Dean but she never wanted to see them. I thought if something had gone terribly wrong with my teaching that perhaps an outside committee of composers might tender a second opinion. Alas, no administrator ever attended the class nor reviewed any of the student work.

A week later the Dean of Faculty informed the students that anyone unhappy with their grade could have it erased and be given a "credit" for the course.

Wow. Well, we know who has the pull at Dartmouth. And it's not the profs. The pursestrings of the university are always the weakest link, but this is insanity.

This kind of behavior on the part of the Dean of Faculty shows rather definitively that it is not negligence or incompetence, but a serious disordering of priorities that is present in the Dean of Faculty's office.

It is entirely possible that Appleton was actually targeted by Folt, as he published an op-ed in the D questioning Folt's qualifications as far back as November 10, 2004 (and again on March 9, 2005). In that op-ed, Appleton criticized the "small-minded" professors who drove Professor Gazzaniga out of the Dean of Faculty's position. Appleton also partly led an effort to block Gazzaniga's removal. Not pulling any punches, he said, "People who are active and professionally involved in their own work don't have time to sit and bitch about the dean."

Appleton had earlier raised similar questions about the competency of new deans all the way back in late March, 1998, i.e. the turnover from Freedman's administration. Appleton was in fact a critic of Freedman, but was less than sanguine about the huge influx of brand new deans with little Dartmouth experience at that time.

The sum then? It seems Appleton has long been a man who holds his own opinions, and apparently, that doesn't sit well with Carol Folt.