March 21, 2001: Features

Winds of Change

Janet Dickerson hopes to make student life better for all students

by Maria LoBiondo

At midnight on a bitterly cold November night, a group of students organized by the USG is casing Princeton's campus, searching out dark and potentially dangerous corners. Huddled in with the pack of undergraduates, bundled up against the cold, is Janet Smith Dickerson, the university's first-ever vice president for campus life.

Students hope that this type of personal involvement will be representative of Dickerson's style. After all, the shape of campus life outside the classroom for Princeton's next generation of students is largely in Dickerson's hands. She arrives at a turning point, signaled by the opening of the new Frist Campus Center, the upcoming 500-student increase in undergraduates, the planning for a sixth residential college, and recent decisions to make Princeton more affordable to students of more diverse backgrounds - and she knows it.

"I think Princeton is in a most fortunate position," Dickerson says. "We have resources equal to those of the very best universities in the world. With them, we are able to assemble faculty and entering classes of the very best scholars, from every state and nation, from every cultural and socioeconomic background. A great challenge - and a great opportunity - comes as we determine what the quality of their experience will be."

It's a good thing Dickerson feels this way, because she has her work cut out for her. She succeeds former Dean of Student Life Janina Montero (who came under fire from students and alumni alike for a bureaucratic demeanor and for doing away with the Nude Olympics) and like Montero will oversee the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, athletics, health services, and religious life, and will collaborate with the Graduate School on student life issues. In addition, she will supervise Frist and a planned new Center for Community Service. In other words, it's a big job.

Not that Dickerson hasn't faced similar challenges and opportunities in her professional life before. She spent nine years as vice president for student affairs at Duke and, prior to that, 10 years as Swarthmore's dean of the college. (Dickerson earned her undergraduate degree from Western College for Women, which later merged with Miami University of Ohio, and her master's degree in educational guidance from Xavier University.) At Duke Dickerson played a pivotal role in several areas she will need to address at Princeton - alcohol policy, race relations, the interactions among different groups of students, and possible improvements to students' social options.

"Her decade at Swarthmore and her time at Duke were wonderful preparation for us, since we're an institution that seeks to combine the intimacy of community that Swarthmore has, and the vitality and energy of a great research university like Duke," says Thomas H. Wright '62, university vice president and secretary.

Ask Dickerson what she sees as problem areas and she quickly refers to a survey, called Visions of Princeton, conducted last year by the Undergraduate Student Government. The survey asked undergraduates four questions: What is right with Princeton? What is wrong with Princeton? Describe the ideal Princeton you would like to come back to for your 10th reunion. Does Princeton need to make changes for your vision to become reality?

About 650 students responded, and though some comments were contradictory, it became clear that five crucial areas need improvement and attention: diversity, health services, performance space, student-group funding, and athletics. Dickerson took those five issues to heart, as reflected in her five-year goals presented in October to the budget-setting Priorities Committee. Among her plans: bolstering health and athletic offerings; adding reserve shifts of employees to provide service for students around the clock; bringing the departments under her purview up to snuff technologically; and building a new, comprehensive healthcare facility.

To achieve these objectives, Dickerson and those who work under her have been hammering out a mission statement and strategic plan that will set forth core values and objectives - and a common vision. "I hope to encourage an atmosphere of openness and continuous learning in all our areas. While most of us don't 'teach' in the traditional sense, I aspire to have us all be recognized as educators. And I hope to bring a spirit of fun and collegiality to our work - despite the challenges we face," she says.

Here lies a hint of Dickerson's management technique. Princeton's first female African-American vice president describes herself as a facilitator, a person who, as she puts it, "makes things that seem hard, not so hard." Her South Carolina upbringing fostered a genteel manner; her daily schedule is packed, but she talks with a visitor as if only that appointment fills her agenda.

"She speaks with a quiet authority," Wright says. Adds Theodore Nemeroff '01, who served on the search committee for Dickerson's job, "She's sensitive to what people are thinking." Nemeroff remembers forging this impression at a U-Council meeting, when a discussion on health services began to heat up. "She raised her hand and answered so that what could have gotten contentious didn't. She seems good at making people look at things in a productive way."

She also is up-front without being abrasive. Case in point: She agrees to allow a reporter into a meeting on space for student organizations, then abruptly changes her mind when other meeting participants object. Dickerson doesn't hedge when giving her apologies, explaining that Princeton can be a sensitive place: "I'm fairly comfortable with administration, but the Princeton culture is unique. It's taken me a full semester to begin to understand how processes work."

One process she cut her teeth on was financial - making budget requests to the Priorities Committee soon after her July 1, 2000 arrival. Her assessment: "Princeton tends to be a frugal institution."

Even so, getting funding for concrete goals - such as the $64,000 for psychiatric and counseling services Dickerson convinced the Priorities Committee was an immediate need - may be easier to accomplish than the intangibles of campus life she also hopes to address, such as fostering connections between various groups on campus, and dealing with the sensitive issue of race. "I grew up in South Carolina and went to segregated schools and didn't ever talk to a white person who was my peer until I went to college," Dickerson told PAW in an October interview. "Jim Crow was painful, and I'm coming here from Duke, so I got to think for nine long years about what happened and how deeply did these policies impact people."

But, she added, "It's just exciting to realize that we're in an environment and in a time where we can change all those things - in a time where students, through their research, their understanding of the biological and anthropological implications of race, and through political science and history, can help us unlearn things that were passed along."

One proposal she thinks might help is Sustained Dialogue, a project suggested by former trustee Harold Saunders '52, in which small groups of 10 to 12 people from different backgrounds meet regularly to talk about race relations. Another is the effort of current USG President Joseph Kochan '02 to take the Visions survey a step further on issues of race and gender. Kochan is forming two committees to interview and document campus views. "People raise these issues, but it doesn't go beyond this," he says. Dickerson has pledged her support to the effort.

One effort the university has made to counter Princeton's fractionalized social life is Frist, a space to meet informally to eat, play pool, or watch the wall-size television, or for organized events, especially those providing a nonalcoholic alternative like the Thursday and Saturday late-night activities currently offered. Not everyone is convinced it works. "The center is just a bigger, better place for students to segregate themselves," says Bridget Wright '01, although she adds that Frist does serve a broader student base than was possible in Chancellor Green.

Dickerson is mindful that funding to keep activities going and to make Frist work is important. She has also proposed a venture fund for social activities suggested by groups that don't usually do things together.

"Our planning for a sixth residential college and for stronger educational programs must be complemented by our planning to provide a truly inclusive community, one that is hospitable and accessible to all," she says. "No person should feel diminished or marginalized because of his or her background."

Perhaps the strongest clue to how Dickerson will conduct her tenure at Princeton comes from the speech she gave at this year's university celebration on Martin Luther King Day. Reflecting on her father, a tailor who measured garments exactly, and her mother, whose cooking style ran in the opposite direction, Dickerson says she learned, "It's important to understand the basic rules very well, and then transcend them."

Maria LoBiondo is a freelance writer in Princeton and frequent contributor to PAW.