Please don't give this sham the credibility of your vote.

Every free man in a democratic society should be outraged at such a ballot.

Don't get me wrong. I love Nate Fick and what he stands for. But unchallenged candidates (you can't even write in someone's name here) are not only insults to the intelligence and discerning nature of Dartmouth graduates, they actively undermine democratic values everywhere. The alumni sold their soul in trading a competing voice for purely-cosmetic media-friendly unity. Hasn't the Gospel of Public Relations been disproven enough? Or does anyone truly believe that nothing at Dartmouth is worth a true contest of vision?

How dare the AoA even consider wasting valuable Dartmouth money with a ballot more worthy of Hussein's Iraq or Al-Assad's Syria than an Ivy League college in the freest country on earth.

Dartmouth wins two Goldwater Scholarships

A very hearty congratulations to Andrew Zureick (left) and my dear friend Marissa Lynn (right) on being named 2012 Goldwater Scholars. The $7,500 scholarship, awarded this year to 282 students, is in recognition of their promise in the field of science -- chemistry and biology for them respectively.

Well done. Dartmouth and the world need more brilliant scientists like you!
(photos by the very talented Joseph Mehling ’69)

State Senate candidate lies about Dartmouth Degree?

Matthew Tso '00(?) wanted to make the campaign about his opponent's fraudulent nominating petitions. But now it’s about his fraudulent Dartmouth degree.

SANTA FE — Matthew Tso, a Democrat running for the New Mexico State Senate in District 3 (McKinley and San Juan counties), describes himself as a proud graduate of Dartmouth College. But the Ivy League school in Hanover, N.H., will not verify his claim, which has been challenged in New Mexico for months. A Dartmouth spokeswoman said in an interview last week that Tso has placed "a confidentiality hold" on his student records. She said his action prohibits the college from releasing any information about whether Tso has the degree he claims.

Last September, a Dartmouth spokesman told the Farmington Daily-Times that Tso attended Dartmouth but did not graduate.

Two things are clear. (1) Mr. Tso enrolled with the class of 2000 but (2) he not graduate with them. His profile on the Dartmouth Alumni Database, which he updated on April 4th—probably in response to all this increased interest in his collegiate bona fides—lists only a class year under “Dartmouth Degree.”
So when, if ever did he graduate?

Asked for the date he received his degree, Tso said he would have to check his records. But he never provided an answer.Later, when asked on two occasions if he would make public his academic records from Dartmouth, Tso did not answer…

"He swears that he has a degree. We tried to get him to show us proof," [elected board chairman] Chance said. "One night he held up a piece of paper, but we never got to look at it."

Anyone this evasive about a degree, quite obviously did not earn it. The fact that a college spokesperson said he didn’t earn it is proof positive enough. But Mr. Tso seems more content to twist in the wind than admit to his supporters that of the many accomplishments he claims to have, a Dartmouth graduate he is not. Mr. Tso might yet prove successful, if not for his… previous experience with public officials.

Records in San Juan County show that the Internal Revenue Service in 2007 filed a lien against Tso, saying he owed $6,452 in back taxes. Also in 2007, Tso and another man, Sam Brandon, were evicted from a house in Albuquerque, according to Metropolitan Court records. The owner sought more than $1,600 from Tso and Brandon for what he said were unpaid bills.

In addition to money problems, Tso has had a handful of encounters with police. They twice arrested him. Perhaps the most serious case occurred in December 2007, when he was accused in Farmington of two counts of misdemeanor battery against a household member and resisting or obstructing a police officer.

Aside from this lone, bat-shit insane comment from fellow likely-non-college-graduate Doug Lashley (below), does anyone have anything to say? Matt? Did any of you remember seeing Matt walk across the stage to shake President Wright’s hand?

Who else has an Ivy League grad school named for them?

Now that Dr. Seuss owns DMS, how many other guys had the swag to see their name on an Ivy League graduate school? The answer: Thirteen. But just who are they?

They include seven businessmen, one woman, and almost one billion dollars spent between them. Medical schools are the most frequently named (the Geisel School of Medicine is the fifth in the Ivy League), though their namesakes include no doctors, just business fearful of their own mortality. Aside from Presidents Kennedy and Wilson (when you're POTUS, you don't have to give crap for people to name things for you) Sylvanus Thayer got the best deal at Dartmouth, spending $70,000 (or about $1 mil in dollars today), while Sanford I. Weill at Cornell got the worst, spending $250 mil. I guess Weill was no better cutting deals at Cornell than he was at CitiBank! Zing!

Brown

• Warren Alpert Medical School, renamed in 2007 after entrepreneur Warren Alpert who donated $100 million. Mr. Alpert founded Warren Equities, which owns “oil, wholesale food and tobacco distributorships, real estate and XtraMart convenience stores at more than 250 East Coast gasoline stations.” Mr. Alpert also gave $20 million to the Harvard Medical School and $15 million to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He died two months after his donation to brown at the age of 83, saying (no joke) “I really don’t want my relatives to be rich.”

Columbia

• Columbia Mailman School of Public Health (not postal service), renamed in 1999 for Joseph Mailman in recognition of a $33 million gift from his Mailman Foundation. Mr. Mailman, who died 9 years before his foundation’s gift, founded Utica Knife and Razor Company. That’s what I call old money.

As if Dr. Seuss needed another reason to be loved at Dartmouth.

The name-shifting “Dartmouth Medical School” has changed its name to “the Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.” While you might think the "Dr. Seuss School of Medicine" makes as much PR-sense as the "The Sponge Bob Square Pants School of Business", consider this:

Geisel and his second wife, who survives him, donated more money to Dartmouth College than anyone else in the college’s history

Doesn’t sounds so stupid now, does it?

But how much money are we talking about? How good was old Ted living off the royalties from those children's books? In 2009, Dartmouth announced a $50 million gift that it described as the “largest commitment in its history”, from an anonymous source later revealed to be the family of Leon Black. Other big gifts include the $35 million anonymously given in 2010 to establish the Dartmouth Center on Health Care Delivery Science, and the $30 million the Berry Family gave in 1992 to build the library that bears their name. Over his lifetime and beyond, Geisel must have at least given more than than.

The good Doctor's wealth is due to the fact that he “continues to be the all-time best-selling children’s author”, coming in at #8 on a 2012 list of highest-earning dead celebrities. That or the Geisels had one hell of a financial planner. Either way, they are generous beyond comprehension and well deserving of the rare and distinct honor of having an Ivy League graduate school named for them.

Addendum: If you’re interested in reading up on the man who was Dr. Seuss, I have a book recommendation.

J.K. Trotter's Joe Asch IvyGate Meltdown!

IvyGate editor J.K. Trotter today unleashed a mouth-foaming, veins-bulging, pants-crapping diatribe more worthy of IvyGate heroines Sara Ackerman and Margherita Viggiano against DartBlogger Joe Asch. Trotter, whose IvyGate Blog makes its name (and money) by publicly embarrassing private students of the Ivy League, took issue's with Mr. Asch's nefarious attempt to "ruin a student journalist’s life"(!) by posting --get this-- a picture of her with --drum roll-- a cup of alcohol! In a frat basement? Oh S**T! That's, like, as damaging as being outed as a communist in the '50s... or having sex at BYU... or having nudie pics taken by your jilted ex-lover published on IvyGate!

Earlier today, at 4:15 AM, prolific Dartmouth blogger Joseph Asch (D ’79, YLS ’83) tried to ruin a student journalist’s life...

Asch attached a grainy picture of the student holding a small plastic cup at hip level, and standing in what Asch claimed to be the house of Sigma Alpha Epsilon...

A fifty-something Dartmouth alumnus taunted and intimidated a young college student and campus journalist by implying that the student had broken the law for underage drinking. Using a grainy picture of the student holding a clear plastic cup, with nothing in it, as proof.

Due only to said staff member’s age, Asch’s post—and its suggestion of underage drinking—placed the staff member “in very serious legal danger..." IvyGate, 30 March 2012

In his since-deleted post, Mr. Asch criticized The Dartmouth's lack of investigative journalism on recent very-public hazing allegations, when other Ivy League papers routinely devote such coverage to their scandals. It was patently wrong for Mr. Asch to insinuate that the paper's silence was due to its editors being in bed with the fraternities. And it was even worse for him to prove it by reprinting a private photograph that paper's editor uploaded of herself on the extremely public website Facebook, showing her holding alcohol, at a party, in the house against which all the nationally-covered hazing allegations are directed.

Jim Wright to be Acting College President?

Rumor has it that President Jim Kim's immediate predecessor in the Wheelock Succession -- Jim Wright -- will return to Dartmouth as Acting President while JYK goes around the world 'remaining president of Dartmouth' while pursuing more "global" ambitions.

I for one always had warm feelings for President Wright and, if this rumor proves true, welcome him back to campus. When I spoke to him upon his departure he said he was sticking around nearby, so he and the wonderful Susan Wright will have a pretty short commute back to Webster Ave. However, when he arrives he will find a campus in turmoil on the very issue he made the cornerstone of his early presidency -- the behavior of fraternities. Time will tell what he makes of this opportunity to revisit this old issue.

I doubt that any 'Acting President' would feel at liberty enough to make a substantial move-- just holding together what remains of his old administration and the Kim one built atop it will occupy most of his time. But then again, the temporary nature of his term is itself a tremendous opportunity to administer some bitter medicine. I hope he acts.

Nate Fick '99 for Trustee

The Little Green Blog would like to applaud the Dartmouth Alumni Council's decision to nominated Nathaniel Fick '99 as a candidate for Trustee. As a best-selling author, the leader of a DC policy institute, and a former military officer with combat experience, Mr. Fick's perspectives and experiences make him an excellent candidate. But more importantly, this nomination is a refreshing departure from the usual slate of candidates drawn from the financial world and chosen more to be work horses of fund-raising than inspiring leaders of note.

Mr. Fick rose to prominence as the commander of a Marine Corps platoon profiled in a series of prize-winning articles by journalist Evan Wright for Rolling Stone. The articles became the basis of Wright's 2004 book, Generation Kill and the 2008 TV Series on HBO of the same name. In 2005, Mr. Fick published One Bullet Away, a war memoir that was included on Marine Corps reading lists and became the basis for much of his military fame. His book (which I previously reviewed ) reads like a pencil-written journal splattered with blood from the earliest days of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It lives in the moment, offers a tremendous first-person perspective on war, and opens the eyes of the reader to the everyday life of the modern Marine.

Liberals and Conservatives Overlap on Libya

Democrats and Republicans have sharply divergent views about most political issues today. The proper role of government and how expansive a welfare state there should be are but two examples. Foreign policy though has turned out to be an exception to this rule in recent weeks...

To read this post, go here

Thoughts on the Ryan Plan

Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) is arguably the face of the Republican Party right now...

To read the rest of this post, go here

In Defense of Dartmouth-- The Merits of a Dartmouth Education

I finally put my rebuttal speech from the DPU's "Resolved: Don't Come to Dartmouth" debate on Youtube. Send it to every kid you know thinking of applying or on the fence about going.

The Making of a Shadow President

In recent posts, this space endorsed Will Hix '12 in his race for Student Assembly president. In addition to his bona fides as a campus leader and considerable gravitas, we believed that Mr. Hix's candidacy constituted a valuable cause for the student body. An egregious decision by the S.A. election board ruled that any student who had run afoul of Parkhurst was barred from holding office. Mr. Hix, who was once arrested for consuming alcohol underage, was thus ruled ineligible.

Mr. Hix launched a write-in campaign and performed quite well, securing 37 percent of total votes cast, compared with 39 percent for Max Yoeli and 24 percent for Aaron Limonthas. Given his contentious battle with the election board, this is an impressive feat.

In a sense, however, we at LGB understood our endorsement to be in vain. Even had Mr. Hix won in vote totals, he would not have been permitted to take office. So why endorse Mr. Hix at all?

A Likely Counterfactual

First, it is likely that Mr. Hix would have won this race had the election board not barred him from the ballot. The margin separating him from the winner, Mr. Yoeli, was quite thin (48 votes). As a general rule, write-in campaigns are particularly difficult since, among other things, casting a write-in ballot is more arduous than simply selecting a name already displayed. Write-in ballots are also more likely to be incorrectly apportioned due to spelling mistakes or voter misunderstanding.

Hix '12, Dartmouth Student Body, both shafted in student election

Election outcomes:

Student Body President:
Max Yoeli '12 -- 691 votes (16.5% of the undergrad student body)
Will Hix '12 -- 643 votes (15.3%, disqualified by EPAC/ ran as a write-in candidate)
Aaron Limonthas '12 -- 427 votes (10.2%, write-in candidate)

Student Body Vice President:
Amrita Sankar '12 -- 906 votes (21.6%)
Brian Holekamp '12 -- 510 votes (12.2%)

Notes:

* If Hix were on the ballot, he would have won this election. Not since the if-you-don't-vote-for-me-you-support-rape campaign of Tim Andreadis '07 have I seen such an effective write-in campaign, and never with as much adversity. The Elections Planning Advisory Committee's (EPAC) decision to bar Hix had no basis in history or reason and singularly denied Dartmouth what might have been a galvanizing and effective Student Body Presidency. Hix's 48-vote margin of defeat must be especially difficult for him given that he lost the Vice Presidency last year by a mere 7 votes.

* 4 out of 5 dentists recommend crest, but less than one of them voted for Yoeli. One benefit of approval voting is that it enables voters to 'approve' of candidates independently ('yes' to Obama, 'yes' to Hillary, 'no' to Palin) instead of selecting one over another. The candidate with the highest approval rating wins. This usually means that multiple individuals will achieve more than 50% approval, but in this election only 16.5% of the student body 'approved' the victor. How is Yoeli suppose to talk to the Board of Trustees without the mandate of the students? Oh, that's right, he got a higher vote share in his contested election than they did in their uncontested one! (zing!)

Will Hix for SA President

Today, Dartmouth students will vote for new representation on the Student Assembly. We at Little Green Blog urge students to write-in Will Hix for SA President.

The staff at LGB has endorsed Mr. Hix previously, and we stand by our reasoning. Mr. Hix, more than any other candidate in the race, has advanced substantive, pragmatic steps to focus the Student Assembly on those tasks to which it is best designed.

Further, Mr. Hix has become the symbol of protest to a recent decision by S.A.'s election committee to bar the candidacy of any student who has previously run afoul of Parkhurst. Mr. Hix was once cited for disorderly conduct and possession of alcohol by a minor -- a crime of which many Dartmouth students have been convicted -- and was thus ruled ineligible to run for SA President. This standard is both ridiculous and insulting, as it insinuates that Dartmouth students need an electoral committee to weigh ethics and rationality in their stead.

The role of S.A. president can be a powerful platform. And at a time when Parkhurst seems intent on degrading the value of a Dartmouth education, while charging students ever-higher prices for it, the students need a powerful spokesman.

Mr. Hix would be that president. Voting is ongoing and ends tonight at 8:00 PM EST.

Bachmann Exploring a Run

Michele Bachmann (R-MN) of Tea Party fame is toying with a run on the White House. This would make for an outstanding debate. Amongst her many memorable comments include encouraging Minnesotans to engage in an armed revolution and leading her own witch hunts against "anti-American" members of Congress.

She would, of course, lose the primaries. But it would be endlessly amusing to watch Republican presidential candidates balance the need to win over the Tea Partiers who support her with the desire to not torpedo their general election bid. Best of luck to them on that.

President Kim's Great Misstep

To date, President Kim has maintained an extended honeymooner's popularity at Dartmouth. Even as Mr. Kim has faced increasing scrutiny from students, he has appeared as strong as ever amongst alumni. That may be about to change.

Though it has received little attention in Dartmouth's mainstream press, Mr. Kim plans on opening a new office in the financial district of Boston, Mass. Mr. Kim claims that the new space -- which will likely cost more than $300,000 per annum -- is a necessary step toward better management of the endowment.

Critics are crying foul. Joe Asch, erstwhile petition candidate for trustee, writes over on Dartblog:

Setting up premises in Boston is hardly necessary for the good management of Dartmouth’s money. The College’s leading investment maven, billionaire Chairman of the Board of Trustees Steve Mandel, does an excellent job running Lone Pine Capital from Greenwich. [...] Technology has brought us a long way from open outcry trading in a crowded stock exchange pit.

Dartmouth's (latest) meaningless election

The Dartmouth Association of Alumni must really be trying to reach me. They sent me an email, they mailed me a letter, and they sent me another email all to get me to cast my ballot in the 2011 Trustee and AoA Executive Committee election! And the deadline is only a month away!! With all that effort, this election must be pretty important, so I signed in using the codes they sent to view this ballot:

That's right, one vote for every one candidate. No write ins. No democracy. They even made a handy little button you can press to automatically vote for all of the preselected, election-guaranteed 'candidates'.

#13: Seven Samurai (1954) conquers the West of the Far East

(Part of my series on watching every movie in the IMDB's top 250)

What do The Dirty Dozen, X-Men, The Sandlot, The Oceans 11(+ n) Series, and pretty much every heist movie have in common? They all owe their plot lineage to Seven Samurai.

Seven Samurai follows the plight of a farming village in Japan just after the Ashikaga shogunate of the 1500s, and their quest to enlist the support of Seven ronin samurai to help defend themselves against gangs of raiding marauders. What follows is a simple three-act set-up -- the conflict and recruiting, the development and cohesion, and the mission and farewell-- that has come to define such movies made subsequently. As in the modern movies mentioned above, each character is brought into the group because of the unique contributions that he can bring to the mission. The themes of honorable 'hired guns' coming to rescue innocents (especially helpless, undeveloped sexy female characters) from violent lawlessness are all common to American Westerns and therefore will be familiar to modern audiences. However, given the timeframe that the movie was made, it is clear that these themes are meant to send a political message against the samurai-inspired militarist ideals exhibited by Japan in WWII.

Social Space: The Long Goodbye

It's long been a cause célèbre for Parkhurst to wrest social spaces from the monopolizing Greek community. When the prime option for students to socialize is a fraternity basement, the argument goes, we would expect higher incidents of drinking and related transgressions.

Curious, then, that the College is announcing the renovation of Thayer Dining Hall into a pay-per-meal venue, where students will have to cough up eight dollars just to enter. Reflecting back on my time in Hanover -- not so long ago! -- I recall many nights spent regaling with friends at Food Court while sipping a coffee and nothing more. Food Court was a safe, comfortable social space for those who wanted to temporarily escape the stress of final exams and term papers. Food Court was, in short, a reliable social space for students to join, relax and engage.

No more. By placing a steep price on entry, few students will care to join a group of friends on a whim. Ate an early dinner? Too bad. You're not likely to pay eight dollars to join your friends' later dinner just to spend time with them.

And what message does this send students, anyway? The all-you-can-eat style surely incentivizes overindulgence and waste. Not to mention the additional cost -- on top of what were already exorbitant DDS prices.

What a curious move, indeed. Why write the rules so that your $30 million investment hinders your stated efforts in other areas of College life?

One has to wonder how students will react to this. Or perhaps if the administration cares at all.

Review: Snuff- Where the reader gets screwed.

Reading Chuck Palahniuk's novels have convinced me of one simple fact: that ever since Fight Club, ol' Chuck is coasting.

Snuff tells the story of a come-back-seeking porno actress trying to break the world group-sex record, as told by the 600 men waiting off-camera to screw her. Now Fight Club was and remains one of the most brilliant books I've ever read, but the disjointed narrative style, repetition, disaffected characters, and aggressive violence that served that book so well have frankly flopped in his other work. Instead we are left with a gross and simple little story. Gross in the childish way where the point is to shock the reader but too immature to be effective or engaging. Group sex is naughty. Peeing on a floor where people walk on bare feet is gross. Guzzling ranch dip, scooping it up with the same chip every time, is something mommy would never let us do.