"This exemplifies the extraordinary opportunities that undergraduates at Dartmouth have to become integral parts of research groups piss away countless years on meaningless research at taxpayer expense."
Fixed.
I'm skeptical of undergraduate research myself. At least at elite, private schools such as Dartmouth, you might find undergraduates of sufficient talent to make a genuine contribution in a research project. Faculty at lesser schools are being prodded to include undergraduates in their research (it's a fad in higher ed these days). So a typical job ad for a university faculty position will ask for someone willing to do research with undergraduates. My attitude is, if your research is accessible to undergraduates, what's the point of all that graduate training you've acquired? Research should be
hard, pedal to the metal hard.
My personal belief is that the best way to get undergraduates to learn how to do research (and to write research) is to have them write a senior thesis. No expectation of original work, just the expectation that they will learn a substantial amount about an interesting topic, and write it up well.