Dartmouth Prez James Wright, Oldest Dude in the Ivy League, Steps Down
After a tempestuous reign as 16th King of Dartmouth, James Wright announces his retirement with a "profound sense of humility." This is probably because he's main claim to fame is being the fuddy dud who tried to expel the frats -- and failed.
Daniel Belkin '08 explains all.
Amid intense anticipation within alumni circles and enough student apathy to match, President Jim Wright gave the Dartmouth Board of Trustees his two week - er, 16 month - notice. After 11 years as the College's Main Man, President Wright has decided that he is no longer Mr. Right to steer the Big Green into the next decade. "As much as I enjoy serving Dartmouth in my current role, I believe that every institution can benefit from periodic new leadership and fresh ideas," he commented on Monday.
His tenure in Hanover has been peppered with Clinton-level controversies (only with much less sexual innuendo). In 1999, taking a page out of Dean Wormer's playbook, the Administration unveiled the "Student Life Initiative" - a.k.a. the War on Fun - that aimed to close down Frat Row. Obviously, this threw the College into a tizzy. The joint retaliating forces of undergrad boozehounds and alumni with deep pockets carried the day in the end. Recently, Wright became the human punching bag-of-choice for shadowy cabals of alarmist alumni hollering that their beloved "College on the Hill" had devolved into a cold and heartless Harvard-on-the-Connecticut-River. And the brouhaha following the Board's September decision to expand itself by eight-seats (and dilute the power of alumni-elected trustees) spilled onto the broadsheets of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
As Wright exits stage left, students will enjoy the silly speculation and spreading unfounded rumors like wildfire about the horserace for the coveted spot of el presidente. In the curious minds of the undergrads, the super duper top-secret presidential selection process will boil down into a nail biting real life version of the Milton Bradley classic "Guess Who?" Does this person wear glasses? Does this person have a beard? Does this person have a PhD in psychology? ("Oh, it has got to be the Dean of the Faculty!")
Perhaps the Board will even heed the teachings of the diversity lovefest showcase put on each freshman Orientation. Both Harvard and Brown have tapped Wonder Women to break the centuries-old tyranny of X and Y chromosomes at their executive mansions. For its 17th president, will Dartmouth follow suit and embrace the pantsuit? And for the past 239 years, without fail, the occupant of the presidential pad at Dartmouth has had one clear trait in common with the other 1.3 million residents of New Hampshire: They have all been white folks. Will the Board opt for a minority? Once you go black…
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February 5th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I mean there are like almost no black faculty (because if you’re a young black academic why the fuck would you move to hanover), so its highly unlikely that the next president will be black.
a woman, however, is slightly more likely.
crossing fingers.
February 5th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
A woman is guaranteed. Bet on it. Dartmouth was late coeducating and doesn’t want to be the last Ivy with a woman president.
February 5th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
what a man
February 5th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
The sleeper…..Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson…..she’s a black woman, a physicist, and the President of Rennsylaer Polytechnic Institute….we’ve given her an honorary degree in recent years….and her son was an ‘03—Alan Washington
February 5th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
God, I hope it’s a woman. That would seriously improve my next three years here…
February 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
is the probably the one school in the ivies that could really use a woman president.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Why does it matter if our next pres is a woman or not? If there’s woman candidate who’s the best for the job that’d be great but if not then we shouldn’t go for a woman or minority just b/c they’re trendy right now!
February 5th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
D’11, I really do not see how having a woman as president of Dartmouth “would seriously improve [your] next three years.” If you haven’t figured it out already, it’s the deep pocketed alumni who make things happen at our school, not the administration. SLI? Yeah, that worked real well. Beta? Not-so-permanently de-recognized. Having a woman as president of Dartmouth would wonderful, but I sincerely doubt it would have any impact, positive or negative, on your remaining academic career.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Regarding Mr. Belkin’s writing style: when did it become stylistically acceptable for a so-called journalist to be considered a good writer simply for his ability to use a thesaurus or to come up with clever synonyms for common words? College president becomes “Main Man”; right person becomes “Mr. Wright”; hackneyed phrases are played with (”two-week notice” becomes the cute “sixteen-month notice”); etc. Am I the only one who finds this Cosmo/E!-style writing slightly grating?
February 5th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
@D’10–a woman president would be much more likely to be incensed about gender issues on campus. Sure, alums get things done here, but I think that if you get a president determined enough, she will fight hard. And given the general attitude I’ve witnessed on campus, I think that–providing the reforms are reasonable–students would show support.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Kindly shut the hell up about “gender issues.” fucking retarded. Nobody wants a woman president simply because you “think” they’ll be “incensed.” Presidents are chosen based on accomplishments, statistically speaking, there are more men on the shortlist for the job. The last thing Dartmouth needs is some more politically-correct gay-friendly douche bags fucking up the school.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
“The last thing Dartmouth needs is some more politically-correct gay-friendly douche bags fucking up the school.”
Quite.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Aside from ruffling the feathers of white boys with persecution complexes, I wonder when “politically-correct gay-friendly douche bags” have ever actually had the power to fuck up anything. On my admittedly imbalanced ethical scales, occasional senseless spending or administrative bloat figures much lower than outright sexism and racism. Just a thought.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
@ d ‘11 as well. Personally I think it’d be great to have a president who would focus more on gender issues b/c Dartmouth is clearly far behind many comparable institutions in this area, but a woman president does not necessarily guarantee a focus on gender issues. sometimes women in leadership positions @ traditional “old boys clubs” like Dartmouth feel pressured to focus less on gender issues than men can because they are afraid others will think their own gender biases their policy decisions… This is not likely to be the case but it is a possibility, and there is certainly no guarantee that a woman president would be a crusader for women’s rights on campus.
Again, I personally would like to see more of a focus on gender issues @ Dartmouth but this is not the most important issue facing the campus today and should not be the main one the board considers when they are selecting the next president. If the board finds a stellar female candidate and taps her for the job that would be awesome! But if she’s only mediocre and there are better candidates being passed over just because they are white males, I think the board would be doing a disservice to the school.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Let’s think, when have gay-friendly douche bags fucked things up in the past? Oh yea, TIM ANDREADIS!! Ignoring the disappointingly large number of idiots at this school gullible enough to vote for him, the ONE thing he did was “push” for gender-neutral housing–a issue only the slime of Tabard cares about. PC leadership wastes time and pisses-off us those of us straight-thinkers who care more about the *important* issues.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
@Hmm.. : the Student Assembly president has power? That’s news to me. Tabard cares about gender-neutral housing? But they already have gender-neutral housing. It’s called Tabard. Can you point to anything substantive? Or do you prefer to froth and whine in your straight-thinking manner?
February 5th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I enjoy people who pontificate about gender equality in one sentence and then rallying for how much *better* a female president would be in the next. Women either are or are not different/biased in their administration— you can’t have it both ways.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
wow… simply wow. i had no idea dmouth was such a bastion of ultra conservative ideals it is presented to be here. sure conservative, but not nauseously so. does it really matter if a potential candidate is a woman, man, gay or straight? i hope not. rather, the focus must be on merit, poise and best fit. i do agree, though, that far too often presidents tend meddle in issues they have no business (greek, society, sport etc.). but to the dmouth undergraduate body, relax. if a) a waspy male candidate is chosen, then dmouth maintains the status quo (what most of you would like?). if b) a gay/woman/richard simmons candidate is chosen then society will smile on hanover and possibly next year dmouth will join columbia and penn in the ranks of the middle ivy league. the result will be positive either way…
February 5th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
If it takes deliberately taking a woman/minority president and passing over a better candidate to boost Dartmouth’s ranking, then I question the whole methodology of these rankings. Gender or race or sexual orientation shouldn’t even enter into the equation when picking the next Dartmouth president. Picking a president based on those factors only perpetuates the idea that people are divided into groups, which is what I thought most people wanted to move away from. And if you think that Dartmouth is conservative, then I question whether you have even spent any time here. I could see Dartmouth as being more conservative than the other Ivies, but when it comes down to it all the Ivies are pretty liberal.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
@ @dmouth: Your point would be better taken, if it had any merit, and if were not in fact a smug and uncreative attempt at snotty self-aggrandizement. Insecure, are we? Dartmouth is far from being ultra-conservative; it’s as ethnically diverse as any other Ivy League school, and is more, in some cases much more, economically diverse than many. It doesn’t have the brand-name recognition of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, but it’s a far better college than the first two, and comparable to the third. Your generalization, based upon such little evidence, along with your ignorance and institutional chauvinism, suggests that you don’t belong at any such school.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:04 am
@ d’11, wow, please tell me you aren’t actually dim enough to believe that having a woman president will solve all your problems. please think before you put anything else down, or better yet, do yourself some good and go read a book.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:44 am
@ the spirit of dartmouth
It’s just bull to say that Dartmouth is better than Harvard and Yale. Yes
our classes are taught by profs not TAs, and therefore you could make the argument that our undergrad education is “better” blah blah blah. You might even be right in that specific area… if you went into great detail and comparison etc. people *might* even believe you. but seriously in the end this trash talking of Harvard and Yale just makes us look bad.
They are more selective schools, with better grad programs, more prestigious faculty members, bigger endowments, and better reputations, period. That’s how it is. There’s a reason they have their reputations, and that reason is not mass conspiracy.
We are a good school too, esp our undergraduate program. But you can’t just make the blanket statement “Dartmouth is better than Harvard and Yale” you look like a bitter elitist who got rejected from both of them. Be happy with what you have and stop making the rest of us look bad. That is all.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Hopefully the trustees learn from the Freedman and Wright disasters
February 6th, 2008 at 9:47 am
@D ‘08: I said that it’s a far better college than Harvard and Yale, and that’s absolutely correct. Harvard College is awful, and Yale College, although better, still isn’t as good as Dartmouth College. Obviously, Princeton has each beat by a mile. That’s not trash-talking. It’s something that everybody “in the know” knows. You have done nothing more than re-list US&WR criteria. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Dartmouth, and it prepared me immensely for graduate school. That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize the utter obnoxiousness of some of the stupid, overachieving undergraduates, who know much more about jumping through hoops and meeting arbitrary standards than they do about Chaucer and Frege, at other schools–and at Dartmouth, too, for that matter.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I’m so tired of the white male bashing that so many love to do. Yes, White men fucking owned the world for a long time, and we did it through coercion and bigotry. Get the fuck over it. It’s remarkable that identity politics is such a strong force in the Ivy league (that includes dartmouth). For all our supposed excellence, we remain fixated on superficial differences betweeen us as division points, instead of celebrating them as interesting.
All of this gender equality bullshit is an enormous waste of time. Yes, there should be more sororities and they should be able to have parties. This doesn’t make the fraternities at Dartmouth evil, and it certainly doesn’t make the men who constitute them chauvinists. Allow those of us who choose to participate in them our freedom to do so, and don’t come fucking drink our beer (like tim andreadis was so fond of doing).
If the board picks another president (black or white, male, female, hispanic, gay, straight or whatever) who is fixated on making the school into something it isn’t (harvard or Yale) then they’re in for another long, and fruitless fight. We need someone who’s going to love the school for what it is and help it be that better.
February 6th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
@annoyed: Here’s some news for you. Even if you are correct to suggest–and you are not–that white men know longer “own the world,” they did do so only a couple of decades ago.
February 6th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
*no longer. Damn homonyms.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
What, really is the huge “gender issues” on campus? I have been gone for a while, but it can’t just be that Beta is coming back–to a house they own after giving their tenants reasonable notice? Or is it the sorority inability to have parties–which is predicated on the policies of their nationals?
Any curret students…a little help here….
February 6th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Aren’t most of the “gender” issues faced a result of a deeper social issue and not simply how many sororities can have parties, etc.? And before I get slammed, no that wasn’t an insult at Dartmouth, it’s true pretty much in all of the US.
Now I don’t go to Dartmouth, but I’d imagine that, like at every other school, the University President has absolutely nothing to do with the undergraduate social atmosphere. Hell, here at the diploma factor that is Columbia (nearly 25,000 total students…), the University President couldn’t care less about the undergraduate schools.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:50 am
@ D Alum
as far as I can tell, the beta-azd issue is not really the main one it just got people talking about gender issues. Along w/ the zete re-recognition as a sort of side issue…
I think, the “gender issues” people are talking about revolve mostly around the Dartmouth social scene which is controlled almost entirely by frats. This is due to the fact that other social options are pretty meager… there are few sororities, only some of which are locals and can throw parties. and there are only a few co-eds, most of which are not particularly social. the non greek social options are pretty non existent primarily b/c the college is so strict about policing all non-greek spaces for alcohol use… can you imagine throwing a party in say, the hitchcock common room??? it would last for about 2 seconds. anything in collis is boring and alcohol free, and off campus parties are few and far between… (I’m sure you know all this). Anyway, this state of affairs gives the frats control over the social scene @ Dartmouth, which makes it hard for women, non-greeks, and freshmen to interact on an equal footing w/ brothers. This is not the result of some evil plot by the frats to take over the Dartmouth social scene. This is just a result of our school’s history etc. but there are some things we can do about it like trying to start more sororities and co-eds and figuring out ways to make some less lame non-greek social options available (the new dean Thomas Crady looks like he might actually be useful in this area…)
personally I like frats, I just wish there were some additional social options on campus and in hanover.
there are far too many women in each sorority @ Dartmouth so the system certainly has the capacity to expand… although there might not be good real-estate @ the moment.
other issues include sexual assault etc. and the general attitude towards gender politics. but I think the greek life/ social life issue is the main one upsetting people right now…
But today it’s Carnival!!!! so everyone is happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;P
February 7th, 2008 at 1:10 am
oh, umm
different D ‘08 than previous posts, btw… lots of us.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:31 am
I have to respectfully disagree with you that President Wright doesn’t care about the undergraduate social scene. Dartmouth’s big thing is that the focus is on the undergrads, and I’m sure that he’s just as concerned about it as is the Dean of the College. Honestly, it seems like that undergrad stuff is all that President Wright ever talks about anyway — seriously, as an undergrad, you’d never even know that we actually even have a business school and med school here in Hanover. We only have 5,700 students in total at Dartmouth, 4,100 of which are undergrads — by sheer numbers, he has to give us the bulk of his attention. In fact, in his letter about his retirement, one of the things he mentions is his desire to continue to work on improving social spaces for students.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:32 am
I have to respectfully disagree with you that President Wright doesn’t care about the undergraduate social scene. Dartmouth’s big thing is that the focus is on the undergrads, and I’m sure that he’s just as concerned about it as is the Dean of the College. Honestly, it seems like that undergrad stuff is all that President Wright ever talks about anyway — seriously, as an undergrad, you’d never even know that we actually even have a business school and med school here in Hanover. We only have 5,700 students in total at Dartmouth, 4,100 of which are undergrads — by sheer numbers, he has to give us the bulk of his attention. In fact, in his letter about his retirement, one of the things he mentions is his desire to continue to work on improving social spaces for students.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Dearest IvyGate: Penn was the first Ivy to appoint a broad as female president with St. Judith Rodin in 1994. Technically even before that with the interim appointment of Claire Fagin (hehe) in 1993. And then we were the first Ivy to replace a broad president with another broad.
February 8th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
well goodie for you
February 11th, 2008 at 2:38 am
If it is a woman, I am transferring out. I did not come here to have some bitch for President