GREEN WITH ENVY

I know that I may be veering off message here but excellence has been a tradition at Dartmouth and certainly should be in our newly-published mission statement. (It unfortunately isn’t … the recent Wright-written mission statement is the sickly pabulum “Dartmouth educates the most promising students of this generation to be leaders of the next generation with a faculty of scholars dedicated to teaching and the creation of new knowledge.”) I have published before (see “Booby Prize” at Fletchers Castoria) how poorly Dartmouth seems to perform when it comes to national scholarship awards. (For the sake of full disclosure, I too did not win any national scholarship award when I was in Hanover … not even close.)

Now, there is another award announcement wherein Dartmouth is sucking wind – the 2007 Goldwater scholarship awards for excellence in science. Yes, we did have one winner Laura Myers '08 (and my congratulations to her!) and two honorable mentions (Meghan Feely '08 and Kristen Lurie '08), but Harvard had four top winners (maximum number allowed), Cornell, four winners, MIT, three winners, and Yale, three winners. Even Mass Bay Community College had two winners for heaven’s sake. Next class reunion, I think I’ll wear a paper bag over my head.