Dear President Wright,

Just a few months ago, I was so proud to be a student at Dartmouth College. My love for this place was so strong, and I boldly would assert that this was the best college on Earth. It didn't bother me that people at home asked me why I had not applied to Harvard or Princeton...I knew that Dartmouth was the place for me.

Sadly, your administration's appalling budget cutbacks this term have put a serious damper on my admiration for this school. While I try to remind myself of how great the students and faculty of this college are, I can't help but feel anger and immense frustration with where the College is heading, and with how its priorities are being set.

Any Dartmouth student is intelligent enough to realize that the economy is in a bit of a downturn. Any Dartmouth student accepts the fact that budget decisions have to be made (although I'm still puzzled why our sizable endowment continues to be overlooked as a source of funds). However, I know not one Dartmouth student who believes that the decisions you have made this term have been made in any type of intelligent, conscientious, or rational manner. It is hard for me, and most other students, to understand why libraries and swim teams must be cut when we are, at the same time, hiring new deans of pluralism, spending more money on ill-supported SLI projects, or throwing cash to put a new roof on the just constructed East Wheelock Cluster.

Deans of Plurality and new roofs are not inherently bad things to have, but when spending must be limited, how can these types of expenses possibly be justified? I doubt that many students came to Dartmouth so they could have a Dean of Plurality, or that they could hang out in "Fuel" on Saturday nights. Students don't need deans to experience diversity, and college students certainly don't need "Fuel" to have fun on weekends

But there are certain things that students depend on Dartmouth for, things that these students expected of Dartmouth when they decided to enroll here.

*They expected small classes.

-Announcements have been made recently which call for cutting classes in most social science departments.

*They expected that by attending an Ivy League school they would have unparalleled resources.

-The closing of Sherman and Sanborn libraries is a disgrace in this regard.

*And, most of all, they expected that longstanding activities and organizations at an institution as rich in tradition as Dartmouth would endure for years to come.

-Cutting the swim teams is a blatant offense here.

The Dartmouth Admissions Office sells Dartmouth as being a place where you get the small classes and individual attention of a small college, yet the resources and opportunities of a university. Yet, in the past few months, your decisions have involved enlarging class sizes, thus taking away from our qualities as a "college," while decreasing or in some cases entirely eliminating invaluable resources and opportunities, taking away from our qualities as a "university." And all for what? All so we can increase the size of an administration that provides unclear benefits to students, fund this administration's narrow-minded agenda, and maintain lots of zeroes in our endowment figure so we can look good from the outside. While this agenda claims to have students' best interests at heart, what does it say when the creators of this agenda fail to even consider or respect widespread student disagreement with it? Clearly, Dartmouth right now is not the small "college" that it pretends to be. Students should be heard; students should be LISTENED TO.

I, along with virtually every other Dartmouth student right now, is particularly appalled in the latest of your string of decisions: that concerning the swim team. As a member of the cross country and track teams, I admit I am somewhat relieved that our program is not facing cutbacks. Josie Harper was given a tough task to reduce the budget, and she was forced to make a difficult decision between horizontal or vertical cuts. But, the real question here is not whether horizontal cuts should have been made instead, but why cuts to the athletic budget had to be made at all. In fact, the even larger question should be why any program, athletic or not, that is longstanding and has substantial student commitment and support should suffer for the sake of experimental deans and endowment figures. Nobody came to Dartmouth because of its Dean of Pluralism. However, 50+ students at Dartmouth each year are largely here because of the swim team. While it is easy to blame Josie Harper or Dean Larimore, ultimately the causes of these cutbacks come from the top...they come from your decisions.

As an athlete I can appreciate the efforts and devotion that these swimmers have to their sport. As a student-athlete at an Ivy League school, one molds their whole lifestyle, day in and day out, to be as productive and successful as they can in two different spheres: academics and athletics. While seemingly in opposition, they can be an amazing pair if combined and done properly. From the academic performance they have shown in the classroom and the character they have shown during this crisis, my view of the Dartmouth swim team is of exemplary student athletes who have successfully taken on the challenge of combining academics and athletics. The swimmers came to Dartmouth to take on this challenge, and they have accomplished it with great success. To tear out one whole half of this challenge is to destroy what their lives are about at Dartmouth. It is to destroy what they each came to this college for, and it is to destroy what they can contribute to the Dartmouth.

Of even more concern, this decision is destroying the unity and happiness that once was vibrant in the Dartmouth community. People often criticize today's students for being too focused on their own studies and lives in order to protest grievous wrongs. Particularly at Dartmouth, one hardly ever witnesses a sizable protest regarding any issue of any type. Certainly then, there must be something seriously wrong with your administration's decision if it was able to motivate 700+ students, during finals no less, to storm Parkhurst and yell and scream for an hour and a half. People are frustrated with this. People are furious. And people know you are wrong.

I am dreading my return home tomorrow for break. I will have to explain to people why the school that I once described as being so perfect is becoming so ugly, and why its administration shows such blatant disregard for its student's lives. And I am dreading seeing my younger brother, a senior in high school. Tomorrow he finds out whether or not he will be accepted through early decision to Dartmouth. While I once strongly encouraged his application, I honestly don't know now how I will react if he learns that he has been accepted. How could a student possibly encourage another to come to this school right now, a school that shows no concern for what its students think or for how its students feel? I am currently ashamed to be a Dartmouth student, as are countless others...please overturn the swim team decision and help us to change our minds.

Patrick Ward '05