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.

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