Could Bigger Be Better?

Could Bigger Be Better?

CAMPUS

notes from around the green

FUTURE PLANNING

Ever since Daniel Webster, class of 1801, invoked Dartmouth’s small size in his argument to protect the College from a New Hampshire state takeover in 1819, the College’s “smallest in the Ivy League” status has been a point of pride.

Now, a task force appointed by President Phil Hanlon ’77 with co-chairs Dean of the College Rebecca Biron and Dean of the Faculty Elizabeth Smith is gathering data to help Hanlon with the trustees decide if the College should expand its almost 4,400 undergraduate student body by 10 to 25 percent in a yetto-be-determined time period. Reasons presented by Hanlon to consider a larger student body are to “amplify our impact on the world” and to allow more diversity in the composition of classes. The committee will file a report in March.

The key question facing the task force, says Smith, is: “How would we implement a plan to grow in a way that preserves what is fundamental about the Dartmouth experience, both from the student and the faculty perspective?”

Students interviewed by DAM are overwhelmingly opposed to expansion for two predictable reasons: trouble getting into classes they want and the current housing crunch. Faculty contacted by DAM did not want to comment on the record, but computer science professor Tom Cormen told Inside Higher Ed that he would not support adding more students without adding more faculty, something Smith says is already being addressed in that department.

An expanded student body would require more faculty in several departments to maintain the current student-faculty ratio. “There’s always going to be an initial, upfront cost that’s not balanced by revenue, but we need to ask what that looks like over time,” says Smith. “A dorm would eventually be paid for, but students would continue to be housed there for years after that.”

Smith says new dorms need to be built regardless of expansion plans, even if only as “swing space” to allow for the repair of existing dorms. “Whether or not more students would change the Dartmouth experience is a more difficult question to answer,” she says, noting that the group will seek community input and create a website where alums can weigh in. “People will likely raise issues that the task force didn’t think about and will help guide our inquiry into the most important aspects of a potential expansion that we should be looking at.”

VISITING VOICES

“I believe today that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War.”

-WILLIAM PERRY, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE UNDER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

THROWING SOME SHADE

RANKINGS

89

Dartmouth’s place in the Times Higher Education’s 2018 world university rankings. The Times ranks the College 39th among U.S. colleges and universities.

MILESTONES

70

Years that Lou’s Restaurant has been serving breakfast and other delights to students, alums and Hanover residents. Lou Bressett opened the joint on April 11,1947.