One of the fun and gratifying parts of the Dartmouth experience has been to find out all the Dartmouth bloggers who are out there. As many are aware, Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, and others have been following the story.
But equally delightful has been reading the dialogue and discussion among current students and recent alumni who are blogging. There is some especially interesting stuff at the brand-new Voices in the Wilderness, Dartlog, the Dartmouth Observer, and Joe Malchow’s Dartblog.
Regardless of how it all comes out, it is just wonderful to see this sort of democracy and deliberation in action by Dartmouth students and recent alumni. Some really original and good stuff here too, such as this post by Voices in the Wilderness on alumni giving rates and the implications for Dartmouth, this interesting historical piece on a Yale Trustee election a few years ago, this clever and interesting post by Chien Wen Kung on the Dartmouth Observer, and this breaking news on the apparent removal of the documents covering Dartmouth’s speech code, and some questions raised about what this may or may not mean for free speech at Dartmouth (i.e., what are the rules now if the speech code has disappeared–is it still in effect?).
At Dartmouth at least, the blogosphere seems to be supplementing the traditional student lounge “bull session” as the place for exchanging ideas, even about things like the trustee election.
Regardless of how this all comes out, as a blogger, I can’t help but admire the sophisticated conversations going on in these student and recent-student blogs. Assuming similar things are going on at other schools, the implications of the blog revolution for alumni who want to keep track of the full story of what is really happening at their various institutions is really quite profound.
Update:
Apparently I missed a few Dartmouth blogs, as I was reminded by The Dartmouth Observer (which listed about 5 that I had missed), The Little Green Blog , and Outvox.
I apologize to those I missed the first time and I certainly intended no slight, ideological or otherwise (other than Dartlog, the overall ideological composition of the others I listed wasn’t obvious to me). The ones I mentioned are just the ones I stumbled across more recently and regularly in tracking the student blog commentary on the Dartmouth Trustee election.
Is the blog environment this lively and serious at other colleges and universities? Or is it just those long, cold New Hampshire winters that keep the students inside in front of their computers for months on end?
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