The Dartmouth community is currently grappling with the startling announcement from the Dean of Libraries of the permanent closure of Dartmouth’s subject libraries. The news of the closures of the Paddock Music Library and the Kresge Physical Science Library was broken on February 16, 2021.
The faculty, staff, and students who work within the Music, Theater, or Physical Sciences Departments were blindsided by this decision and the ensuing announcement, as they were never consulted or informed such actions were being deliberated.
Sue Mehrer, the Dean of Libraries, sent an email to the music department after the immediate reaction to the first announcement, stating “The public announcement was always intended to be the starting point for open discussions and decisions about ensuring that faculty and students will continue to have access to the subject expertise, critical collections and services that directly support your scholarly work.” (Mehrer, Sue. “Plans for Paddock Library.” Message to William Cheng. 2/18/21. E-mail.)
Numerous steps have, in fact, been taken in an attempt to allow the faculty, staff, and students to speak in reaction to the College’s decision. This includes a Google Doc which students, alumni, and faculty have been able to add personal statements to that is, at the time of writing this article, 65 pages long. Additionally, the Chair of the Music Department, William Cheng has written a letter which addresses the ongoing incident. He has welcomed students who received it to share it freely, as in his own words “I have nothing to hide. Unlike the people whom I critique in this letter, I am modeling transparency and evidence-based arguments.” I highly recommend you read this letter as it offers an honest and nuanced understanding of the situation which I do not have the capacity to properly convey myself. As such, I have copied this letter to the bottom of this article. Additionally, the Music Department has recently proposed a new vision for music and arts at Dartmouth College: The Dartmouth Library for the Performing Arts and Social Justice and is happy to receive support and ideas.
While I am not a music major, one of my best friends is, and she is one of the numerous students being directly impacted by this decision. In order to celebrate student advocacy, and in an attempt to speak truthfully on the situation, I reached out to Lila (name changed to protect interviewee’s privacy) for an interview to get a student’s perspective on the closing of the Paddock Music Library.
Zoe: How have you felt Dartmouth has treated the music department up until this point?
Lila: “While I don’t have a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the administration and the music department in terms of their previous interactions, I think this on-going situation has shown nothing but neglect, disinterest, misunderstanding, and disrespect from the side of the college’s administrators. To say the very least, it is shocking to all of the music-related people on campus that this decision came so suddenly and without due consultation with the department. Yes, budgetary concerns have existed before and especially after the pandemic, of which all of us are aware and respectful; however, this is not the proper or even polite way of dealing with the permanent closure of a subject library. The lack of communication shows the utmost disrespect towards not only the department, but anyone who has been or will be connected to music at Dartmouth and in the Upper Valley (same goes for Kresge). The disregard and lack of compassion for the disappointment and grief caused by this decision in later exchanges further demonstrates how little a liberal arts college cared for the members of the arts community at Dartmouth.”
Zoe: How did you utilize Paddock?
Lila: “As someone who is always in the HOP due to different classes or obligations, Paddock was my go-to spot for relaxation between classes, productive study sessions during exam seasons, and, last but not least, the place filled with resources and inspiration whenever I needed to work on a music project. This is not to say that Paddock is only for those who spend a large chunk of time in the HOP or for music students only, but it is indeed a sanctuary for those who may not be able to use Baker-Berry or other study spots due to time or obligation restraints. On the other hand, I have introduced numerous people from all areas of campus to the hidden gem that is Paddock; they have all enjoyed the space to various extents and started to utilize the space more.”
Zoe: How does this closure impact you?
Lila: “I am beyond disappointed and heartbroken to lose a space of comfort, productivity, and inspiration to me in such an unexpected way. I believe that not just for me, but for many others, Paddock served as this stop along the way on busy days to catch a breath and maybe accomplish a little something otherwise impossible with Dartmouth’s intense schedules.”
Zoe: How does this closure seem to impact the community as a whole?
Lila: “The music students, staff, and faculty at Dartmouth, myself included, will lose this precious and resource-filled space to pursue their interests and their studies. Paddock’s closure would also mean that, for the whole Upper Valley, there will no longer be a library dedicated to music where equipment, materials, CD’s, etc. could be lent out for necessities or for leisure. Lastly, to many of us, Paddock also served as a space where the community spirit is nurtured in an inclusive atmosphere. People from the Upper Valley community could interact with members of Dartmouth in various activities, such as the Sing-In’s, and any music-lover in the proximity could just come inside and explore the world of music as they wished.”
This interview is just one of an enormous number of personal narratives which reflect the importance of understanding the repercussions of the College’s decision to close their music and physical science libraries. It is essential that these voices be heard in order for Dartmouth’s community to continue to persevere through these challenging times.
Found below is the letter written by William Cheng. It has been unedited(and as such I would like to offer a language warning):
“The following is a letter I wrote on Monday, Feb. 22. I have informed various Dartmouth College committee chairs and members that they are welcome to circulate this letter freely. I have nothing to hide. Unlike the people whom I critique in this letter, I am modeling transparency and evidence-based arguments. I sincerely welcome Dean Mehrer, Provost Helble, and College leadership to rebut any of the statements herein – in the spirit of Dartmouth’s purported values of civil discourse and the respectful exchange of ideas.
Illiberal Tyranny at a Liberal Arts College
I am the Chair of the Music Department at Dartmouth College. On Wednesday, February 17, I awoke to text messages, missed call notifications, and dozens of emails from alarmed colleagues and students across campus. “The Paddock Music Library is closing!?” they exclaimed in disbelief.
Not having had my morning coffee, I was flummoxed. My department office is stationed directly across from Paddock, which has offered highly limited hours and restricted services during the pandemic. I hadn’t heard anything about further closure. Closing for what? I groggily wondered. Spring break? Repairs? Mass reshelving?
No. Closing . . . permanently.
“Why did you decide to close our library?” an aspiring music major asked me.
I didn’t.
“When did you find out? When were you going to tell us?” demanded several alumni. I found out when you found out: right now.
I looked up the story in the Dartmouth News. It began: “Driven by changes in the use of academic libraries, trends in lending, and financial challenges, Dartmouth is preparing to permanently
close Dartmouth Library’s Kresge Physical Sciences Library and Paddock Music Library at the end of the academic year, Sue Mehrer, dean of libraries, announced today.”
I emailed Dean Mehrer, whom I had never met, and who has never contacted me. I told her I was “field[ing] angry and confused emails from colleagues and students, and I’m sadly at a loss about how to respond” (10:25AM). She replied: “I am so sorry to hear that” (10:56AM), which – and this matters – isn’t, of course, an actual apology. We scheduled a Zoom chat for 2:30PM.
During this Zoom chat, I asked Dean Mehrer the first thing on my mind: “Did you ever consult a single Music faculty member, staff member, or students before deciding to close the Music Library?”
Dean Mehrer said no.
Next, I asked the logical follow-up question, trying to ensure my tone conveyed it was not a rhetorical question, even if its syntax of disbelief hinted otherwise: “How could you close our Music Library without even speaking with a single member of the Music Department, including me, the
Chair?” Dean Mehrer had no answer. Instead, she repeated that she was “sorry to hear” I was dealing with anger, accusations, and outbursts from my colleagues and students.
Finally, I asked Dean Mehrer if the vicious efficiency of her ambush strategy was intended to preemptively suppress what she had assumed would be heavy backlash and protest. Put another way: was her ambush banking on an insidious belief that, once the library closure was announced as a fait accompli, members of the Dartmouth community would not have the time, will, or energy to organize and respond with commensurate force and swiftness?
Dean Mehrer had no answer. She pledged to send an apology to the Music Department.
So much for free speech and academic freedom. So much for the liberal arts, which claim to champion civil discourse. Colleges such as Dartmouth seem to value civil discourse until it gets in the way of the leadership’s executive actions – at which point such discourse is rebuked and characterized as whining, misunderstanding, or some variation on you should just be grateful for what you (still) have . . . or else.
Dean Mehrer’s apology arrived in my inbox at 2:45PM on Feb. 18. Except it wasn’t an apology. Rather, it was a 550-word justification of her decision, mostly a rehash of the Dartmouth News article. I replied instantly: “You mentioned yesterday you were planning to send an apology for the hurt and anger caused. I don’t see an apology in this message. Can you please clarify?” Dean Mehrer replied: “I’ll resend with amendment.” Her amended version included just five extra words (italics mine), hooked to the end of a sentence: “ However, I understand that there is anger and disappointment at the lack of early communication about our proposed plans and that the affected faculty and students have not been involved in the process to date, and I apologize for that.”
I’m harping on this issue of (non-)apology because it reveals that Dean Mehrer lacked contrition as well as any adequate understanding of what she has done wrong. We all know, from friendships and relationships, what it’s like to receive a non-apology masquerading as apology, and we know that, far from mere semantic nitpicking, such instances can reveal the fault lines of mutual understanding and respect.
Additionally, one baffling line from Dean Mehrer’s apology read (italics mine): “The [Feb. 17] public announcement [about the planned closure of Paddock] was always intended to be the starting point for open discussions and decisions about ensuring that faculty and students will continue to have access to the subject expertise, critical collections and services that directly support your scholarly work.”
At 5:00PM on Feb. 19, I replied to Dean Mehrer and offered her a chance to clarify or elaborate on these words. In my view, her statement contained an admission of paradox indicative of oppressive, suppressive, and immoral governance: that an official public announcement of Paddock’s end would somehow be the start of a dialogue about Paddock.
There are several insidious and revelatory dimensions to this story. Here, I will just briefly describe two.
First, Dean Mehrer implied, during our Zoom call, that she has forbidden all Dartmouth library personnel – meaning, her employees – from speaking to the press. No one who works for or at any of Dartmouth’s libraries is permitted to have any contact with reporters, whether it’s the College’s student-run newspaper or The Chronicle of Higher Education. Because New Hampshire is an at-will state, employers here can terminate any employee without cause (barring discrimination).
Second, in her official announcement, Dean Mehrer presented disingenuous, incomplete, or outright falsified data to justify her decision. She cited a “decrease in lending” at Paddock over the past decade, by which she meant the auto-tallied circulation numbers pertaining to physical resources such as books, music scores, and CDs. This decrease is unsurprising: like most schools, we’ve gradually migrated to online formats. What Dean Mehrer has apparently failed to comprehend, however, is that music libraries at universities, more so than virtually any other kind of library (physical sciences, medicine, law), overwhelmingly prove their usage and usefulness in manners that aren’t captured by rote circulation numbers. (Consider the full-orchestral scores of symphonic works, which our conducting students regularly use without checking them out of the library. The scores are massive and unwieldy. There’s no way to fit them inside a backpack – and even if you somehow could, you probably shouldn’t.)
Indeed, when I created a communal Google Doc to collect the narratives and usage patterns of Paddock’s patrons – a step that, come to think of it, Dean Mehrer should have taken – individual students, alumni, faculty, and staff explained, in great detail, the countless times (over countless hours) they’ve pored over Paddock resources within the comfortable and friendly space of the library itself. Or – and any library patron can relate to this – the countless occasions when they have discovered a serendipitous book or score next to the one they had initially been looking for, and how such browserly serendipity launched them into a magical rabbit hole of potentially life-changing intellectual and artistic discovery.
Dean Mehrer wants to move Paddock’s most “high-use material” to Dartmouth’s main library, Baker-Berry, on the other side of the Green. And she wants to move the rest of Paddock’s resources – the presumably low-use material, such as the music scores and recordings of lesser-known composers (a euphemism for women composers, BIPOC composers, and historically underrepresented or persecuted composers) – to an unspecified “off-site shelving facility.” It’s nice that Beethoven will get to stay on site. Too bad the works of virtually all black and brown composers will be shuttled to obscurity, literally segregated, and insultingly ghettoized en masse off site.
I see two possibilities. One, that Dean Mehrer does not understand the particularities of how music libraries operate – in which case her very ability to perform her job must be called into question. Two, that Dean Mehrer does understand, and therefore has chosen to proceed with her decision in bad faith, anyway – in which case she has failed to evince the moral integrity we deserve in any dean or, for that matter, in any colleague.
I invite you to read the narratives in the ongoing Google Doc. Here are a few excerpts.
A faculty member (Richard Beaudoin, Music) recounted his meetings with students in recent days: “Both majors and non-majors alike were in tears describing the hurt that they feel personally about this decision. Graduating seniors feel that they have been undermined, and one of my best ’23s who was hoping to major in music now feels that the administration is tacitly telling him to “go focus on some other subject.”
From another faculty member (Hans Mueller, Physics and Astronomy): “Having accompanied my child on multiple tours of colleges with vibrant music programs, it stands out in my memory how proud each of these colleges were of their music library, of its near-completeness of instantly accessible scores and their variety of supporting books and media, and of the conducive atmosphere that the music library created – both for individual musician-patrons as well as groups, always assisted by very competent subject librarians. Without fail, the music library was a stop on admission tours, and a strong selling point.”
From an alumna (Jill Ludke Dixon ’92, P ’23): “My daughter now plays cello at Dartmouth and hopes to minor in music. I encouraged her to attend Dartmouth because I believed it to be a place where she could both be a musician and an academic. [ . . . ] I have been interviewing prospective students for nearly 30 years. But I’m starting to find it difficult to be an enthusiastic ‘ambassador.’ I am losing my ability to tell prospective students a positive story about the school.”
From a current student (Jess Zhang ’21): “Dartmouth, how could you proclaim to foster a love of a liberal arts education, how can you say you encourage students to explore and provide them with resources, how dare you call yourself an institution of higher learning, when you resort to shutting down libraries, the very symbol for the freedom of scholarship and learning?” (italics in original)
These are excerpts from four individuals. Four stories. The document contains hundreds more. Each story offers its own slice of insight, grief, shock, and indignation. And every voice in this document matters. But will these voices be heard by Dartmouth leadership? Or will the machinery of executive action, procedural opacity, preemptive suppression of protest, and the fiscal bottom line win the day, once again?
Before I conclude, a personal note – and here, I speak not as a department chair or even a faculty member, but as a human being who is entitled to experience feelings: the College’s decision to close Paddock via ambush made me feel like absolute shit. Like human garbage, disposable and worthless. Because surely, if Dean Mehrer and other decision makers had recognized me as a colleague (or simply as a human being) with value and insight, they would’ve approached me long ago. Surely, I had failed my lovely colleagues and students. Had I been a better leader, I would have been worthy of consultation by Dean Mehrer.
And this is what institutional gaslighting does: it makes you feel like it’s all your fault. Did Dean Mehrer and Provost Helble take one look at my faculty profile and assume I was clueless? Meek?
A pushover? A model minority who knows to keep his head down and work hard without causing disruption?
There are many things my husband and I have chatted about over the past few days. Whether I will continue my promotion case (don’t care much), whether we will leave (still don’t know), whether I am doing okay in terms of physical and mental wellbeing (can’t really tell).
For now, I leave you with one excerpt from one such conversation, paraphrased and recalled to the best of my ability.
Me: Something about this feels strangely familiar. Like in a fucking bone-chilling way. Chris: I wonder what you’re –
Me: I think I know. Remember three years ago, in June, we went kayaking at Ledyard Canoe Club, and we came across a white man, and he yelled a racist slur at me?
Chris: Of course. How could I forget?
Me: But remember how shocked we were? We just stood there for what seemed like minutes [it was probably only a few seconds], our mouths open but speechless, so stupid looking. It’s like that. Like when someone does or says something to you and your loved ones that’s so blatantly violating and dehumanizing that you can’t even believe it’s happening, even as you hear the words, and even though we rationally know racism and prejudice are real everyday occurrences, blah blah.
Chris: And in the end, we didn’t even say anything back, right? We walked away.
Me: We later said we would’ve been scared to say anything.
Anger, indignation, hurt – and fear – are what my colleagues and I are feeling. With this latest terrifying show of force (the surprise sabotage of a vastly underestimated and underresourced music library), the College has made us feel not only worthless, but also afraid. I have no shame about admitting I am afraid, just as I was afraid that June afternoon three years ago. I am afraid of implicit or explicit retaliation, of how the College will continue to flex and flaunt without repercussion, without any semblance of checks and balances. The thing is, however: we should all be afraid, if this is the kind of institution Dartmouth chooses to be in the twenty-first century.
Yours, in solidarity,
Will Cheng”