Concluding Comments

Although our evaluation was directed towards a special set of topics, a number of issues of continuing importance to the Dartmouth community were brought to our attention. These included the Student Life Initiative, the Intellectual Environment, and Diversity.

The latter two topics were given special consideration in the 1988 evaluation, and much has been accomplished since that time. Indeed, we were impressed by how durable the course that was then charted proved to be. For example, the 1988 report on intellectual environment strongly suggested that increasing the research component of the College would translate naturally into an enhanced intellectual climate. Eleven years later, research opportunities have improved and are being improved, and this trend continues to have a positive impact on the intellectual climate of campus. Likewise, Dartmouth has made serious efforts to address questions of diversity. In 1988, the report on diversity stated that:

"Dartmouth's difficulties have their own particular texture and reflect the College's history: two centuries without a discernible component of minorities, international students or women. To solve these problems will take action and time. Dartmouth College must replace the concept of the Dartmouth family with the concept of the Dartmouth community. It is clearly insufficient simply to bring women and minorities to campus and provide support systems; a transformation in attitude and the complete integration of all individuals is essential. The continuation of conditions, practices and organizations that actually foster unacceptable attitudes should not be sanctioned."

While Dartmouth has done much good work to bring women, minorities, and international students into the community fabric, the College is not — and should not — be content with those successes. The challenge of the 1988 report rings as true today as it did over ten years ago. In order to address these issues, members of the Dartmouth community will need to continue their efforts to make Dartmouth more welcoming to those who have not traditionally been a part of its community.

Finally, we know that the Student Life Initiative has touched upon these issues, as well as other issues of student life, at great length in its report. In regard to the Student Life Initiative, the committee wishes to make two observations. The first is that the discussions surrounding the initiative — and the very issues that prompted the initiative in the first place — can and ought to be seen in a national context. The need to curb alcohol abuse among students and the desire to create community within an increasingly diverse and pluralistic student body — these are issues that all colleges face today, in one way or another. Dartmouth is to be commended for facing these problems head on, through community-wide discussion and debate.

The second observation is that this community-wide discussion — and the whole initiative itself — needs to be situated within the context of the intellectual life of the Dartmouth community. The Committee on the Student Life Initiative should continue to make explicit the connections between its recommendations and the academic lives of Dartmouth's undergraduates. Failure to do so will only reinforce the sense of separation that students perceive between their intellectual and social lives. Transforming the Dartmouth family into the Dartmouth community, combining the best features of a liberal arts college with those of a research university, and creating an enhanced intellectual climate — all of these require that Dartmouth continually remind itself that learning and discovery are at the center of its teaching and research mission.