Not the real thing
The new president of Southern Methodist University, A. Kenneth Pye, is not a Dartmouth grad, but he recently said that he considered the College to be SMU's role model for the future. He cited Dartmouth's strong commitment to its undergraduate program and to liberal arts. SMU is but one member of the scandal-ridden Southwest Conference. The NCAA put SMU on probation in 1985 for recruiting violations and then suspended the football program for the 1987 season when violations continued.
An article in The Dallas Morning News found a "parallel of sorts" to SMU's football scandal in the controversy surrounding the attempt to fire coach Joe Yukica in 1985. "However," said the article, "there has never been a hint at Dartmouth of the kind of problems that soiled SMU football, such as payoffs from alumni to players."
"I think SMU has an opportunity to improve substantially," says Walt Snickenberger '46, who recently retired as vice president of student affairs at SMU. "But it's going to take a long time for any school to develop like that ... it took Dartmouth a couple of hundred years or more."
