Dartmouth College

One reason why my grades dipped is because I did not have great course advising. In 2017, Dartmouth admins assigned a dean and course advisor to all freshmen. My course advisor was a linguistics professor who was friendly, but knew nothing about courses outside the linguistics department and therefore could not help me choose courses. My freshman dean was also friendly, but didn't help me much with course advising or career-planning - the 2 matters on which I most wanted guidance. For reasons I still don't understand, Dartmouth admins had some deans that would only work with freshmen and other deans that would only work with upperclassmen. I had a good relationship with my freshman dean and was upset when I had to switch to a new dean.

During my 5th trimester, I took on a courseload that was too heavy. I had 1 senior seminar-level, another higher-level course, and a lower-level course for which I had to complete 90 pages of writing (including research essays) and well over 1000 pages of often very dense reading. I met my new dean for the first time at the end of the 5th trimester because I was at risk of failing the 2 higher-level classes. My deans intervened whenever I was in academic crisis, but they never did much else for me.

Choosing courses continued to be a struggle for me for the rest of my time at Dartmouth. It's partly because I was generally not interested in courses the college had to offer. (More on that below). But it's also partly because I didn't have a mentor who could help me develop reasonable courseloads that actually piqued my interest. Over the course of 5 years at Dartmouth, I had 5 deans. My time at the college would have been much more enjoyable and useful for my professional development if I had one dean throughout all my terms to help me to create balanced courseloads relevant to my professional interests/aspirations.

I also had the experience during several terms of realizing in the first week of classes that I wanted to change courses. But add/drop during the trimester effectively lasts for 3-5 days. After that, it's extremely difficult to change courses. Particularly when completed course syllabi aren't available to you until the 1st or 2nd week of class, the short add/drop period can be frustrating and can potentially impact your grades.

Courses & Mentorship
I was a Government major and mostly took courses in the humanities and social sciences. I got the sense during my time at Dartmouth that students with progressive, centrist, or fiscally conservative politics could easily find like-minded professors and mentors in the social sciences departments, and especially in the Government department. I also got the sense that white students could more easily find like-minded professors and mentors in those departments than non-white students.

I'm a queer Black woman and was a socialist all throughout my time in college. As of August 2023, 67% of Dartmouth's Government department faculty members are white men, 27% are white women, and 6% are Asian men. None of them, to my knowledge, are socialists, communists, Marxists, anarchists, or other types of radicals. Many of the professors in the Government department were kind to me, but I didn't develop great relationships with anyone in the department. I don't think any of the professors related to my experiences or intellectual interests/goals, so the 1on1 conversations I had with them were often not very productive. Professors in that department didn't teach a lot of classes on subjects that interested me and when they did, they didn't teach in the ways I would have liked. I was interested in learning about carceral systems, in closely analyzing leftist policies, and in understanding the opinions and experiences of large numbers of people. Dartmouth's Government department tends to center the experiences and perspectives of politicians, upper class/upper middle class people, dead European theorists (Locke, Hobbes, etc.), and people who choose to identify as ?classical liberals.? I was deeply uncomfortable with some of the ideas we discussed in class, but often felt that I didn't have enough time or familiarity with course subject matter to push back against the ideas as effectively as I would have liked. My grades suffered as a result. In my experience and the experience of at least one other Black Government major, taking classes in the department often felt isolating.

The Sociology, Womens and Gender Studies, and various ethnic studies departments offered some of the classes I was looking for. In hindsight, I probably should not have chosen a Government major. At the time I was choosing majors though, I thought the Gov department would allow me to explore the subjects that interested me and allow me to get a decent job upon graduation.

Professional Development
It seems to me as though Dartmouth is a good place for people who would like to become academics, consultants or finance industry professionals. For people who are interested in doing nonprofit work, I would argue that Dartmouth is far from the best college. As far as I can tell, Dartmouth's faculty is mostly made up of people who have worked in academia all their lives and don't have much knowledge about what working in other industries is like. I didn't engage extensively with the career center partly because I didn't find the career center to be helpful. No one at Dartmouth told me that I might want to enter an MSW program, for example. I regret that now, as I?m considering entering an MSW program, I didn't make different choices about courses, majors and even what college to attend.

Some of my friends from Dartmouth were still struggling to figure out what they wanted to do professionally at the end of their senior year. At least one friend didn't know what she wanted to do over a year after graduating from the college.

Maybe there were great opportunities I could have taken when I was there and I missed them. Nevertheless, I feel it's worth noting that Dartmouth did not help me to secure the internship and job opportunities that I did secure. Family friends and non-profit organizations in my hometown reached out to me to help me secure internships. I got my first full-time job by doing unpaid community organizing and making connections with people in my hometown during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was difficult to balance community organizing with coursework, largely because most of my professors and administrators were not willing to give me credit for the community work I was doing. A few professors outside the Government department allowed me to get course credit for the studying, lobbying, and policy presentations I did while organizing. Government professors and admins, incidentally, refused to give me credit for that work.

Admins & Experiences of Marginalized Students
I did not find Dartmouth to be a hospitable place for queer students of color. Most of my friends in college were queer, non-white, and/or from working class backgrounds. Almost all of us resented the college for one reason or another. Many of us were placed on academic suspension or coerced into taking medical leave, which involved being cut off from friends, mentors, jobs, mental health services, intellectual/professional development opportunities, and other important forms of support. I came out as queer in college, and became closeted again after an academic suspension forced me to return to my parents? home.

My friends and I dealt with a lot of mental health struggles that stemmed in whole or in part from the college's policies. After a few months of allowing online classes during the pandemic, college admins forced all undergraduates to return to campus for classes. When I returned to campus, I had no friends, no social support, and an extremely heavy courseload because I needed to quickly gain 4 more course credits when the normal number of credits per term is 3. COVID infection rates were at or above 10% for the first several weeks I was on campus. It was winter in NH, so the sun set at 4pm everyday. I was so anxious and sad during the term that I lost at least 10 lbs because I wasn't eating. I had multiple panic attacks. I often thought about how if I hurt or killed myself in my single-person room, it would take days for someone to find out.

Certain campus organizations sent explicitly racist and queerphobic emails to the entire campus for the express purpose of provoking marginalized students and their allies. The college's administration did not publicly discourage those provocations. Administrators did, however, advertise the college as a hospitable place for people of color. I joined the college gospel choir during my freshman year because it was the closest thing to a Black church that I could find in New Hampshire. Just a few months into my freshman year, the college flew me out to Chicago public schools so I could be one of just a handful of Black voices in a predominantly white choir singing African-American spiritual songs to Black and Brown kids. College staff and admins wanted to sell Dartmouth to the kids, and they used my Black face and voice as a prop just as I was starting to realize how much I disliked being at the college myself. My first few weeks at Dartmouth, I met 2 Black upperclassmen who hated the college and were dying to get out. It didn't take me long to realize why they hated the college so much.