BOOBY PRIZES

Dartmouth College has once again come up almost empty when prestigeous international scholarships are handed out to outstanding seniors. (Well, we can still console ourselves with the fact that we have a crackerjack football team.) Perhaps the recent vote by the alumni regarding the proposed new constitution may be reflective of this situation. See the below links for the bad news:

Rhodes Scholars (not):
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-11-19-rhodes-scholars_x.htm#list

Fulbright Scholars (not):
http://www.fulbright.co.uk/awards/announcement.htm
To be absolutely accurate, eight Fulbright awards were awarded to Dartmouth students to study outside the United Kingdom. See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2006/05/18.html

Marshall Scholars (not):
http://www.marshallscholarship.org/winners.html

Luce Scholars (not):
http://www.hluce.org/4datefm.html

To repeat myself, I once asked President Wright at a luncheon in Hanover why Dartmouth didn’t have more Rhodes, Fulbright, and other senior honors scholars. His response was stupefying … he said he didn’t want students, who tried for such honors and failed, to have this failure define their Dartmouth experience. (We must have a lot of self-satisfied students.)