Where Winter Is Welcome

The following interesting editorial from the Providence Journal of February 7 makes us realize anew the beauties of Hanover at other times of the year as well as in the month of June celebrated in song:

Fifteen years ago Dartmouth College inaugurated a winter carnival. Today this is an institution. The students have declared they would rather part with Junior Prom than dispense with the annual frolic that capitalizes the snow and ice of a long winter in the upper reaches of the Connecticut river valley. A winter carnival needs a proper setting. A background of hills and mountains clothed with spruce and pine forests; a campus lake; crosscountry trails; cold north winds that conserve the snow and ice; a tang in the air through long winter months that inspires the spending of idle hours on snow shoes and skis rather than sitting listlessly in a dormitory room.

All of these assets Dartmouth possesses. So the experiment begun a decade and a half ago is now practically a tradition of the college. Hundreds of young women annually wend their way to Hanover at this season of the year on invitation of the Dartmouth students. They have entered fully into the spirit of the occasion. Following instructions they come garbed comfortably and warmly. They ride on the toboggan slide; they tramp over snow-encrusted fields; they sail down the Hanover hills on skis with remarkable expertness; they skate on Occom pond; they attend fraternity tea dances; and in the grand finale of the carnival ball they dance in a college gymnasium that has been transformed by artists into a midwinter forest.

Is it any wonder that Dartmouth men welcome winter ? They regard the location of their alma mater as superb. They would not exchange its climate, nor the ruggedness of its scenery, nor the isolation from all that suggests urban living, nor any of the other assets that make a winter carnival possible for any consideration.