LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Happy Days
Dear Sir: It is my opinion that the DARTMOUTHALUMNI MAGAZINE in its next issue, not only should commend the Athletic Council for the manner in which they have handled the football situation, but that also the MAGAZINE ought to comment on the fact that the Council has handled the matter to the utmost satisfaction of the alumni.
1456 Main St.,Springfield, Mass.,January 18, 1934.
Pooriana
Dear Sir In your last issue of the MAGAZINE you asked for anecdotes indicating the quick wit of our lamented Professor Poor. Here is one:
Meeting him on the campus one day, the writer remarked on the absurdity of the proposal (then seriously made) to reach the moon by a vehicle like a rocket, propelled by compressed gases and stated that by mechanical laws any vehicle must leave the earth with a velocity of six and a half miles a second in order not to be pulled back by gravitation; also that since six and a half miles is nearly 3500 feet, the first foot, at the start, must be traversed in the thirtyfive thousandth part of a second, a jolt which would reduce the man's body to mere pulp.
Quick as a flash, Professor Poor said: "Yes, his bowels would be in his boots."
January 6,1934,Hanover, N. H.
"Laycock Lake"?
Dear Sir: I read with a great deal of interest the description in the last issue of the ALUMNIMAGAZINE of the plans for the artificial pond on the Lyme Road. I was slightly amazed, however, at your comments as to the names which had been suggested. I certainly hope the pond will not be named Edgewater or Hop-In.
Every real estate development from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco that is within six miles of a mud hole is named Edgewater and likewise about every fourth summer cottage. There are also literally dozens of road houses, barbeque stands and tourist's camps on every highway called Duck-In, Motor-In, Drive-In, Stumble-In, Hop-In and so forth. Personally I think it should be called Craven Pond or Craven Lake in honor of the Dean.
Union Guardian Bldg.,Detroit, Mich.,January 11,1934.
Right Yon Are!
Dear Sir: In your November issue you present the names of sixty-four sons of alumni in the present freshman class; and you state the classes of 'O6 and 'lO lead with seven sons each.
I believe you will find that J. S. Dunham, credited to 'O6, is an 'OB man and that therefore the class of 'OB should be credited with six sons and the class of 'O6 credited with only five sons in the freshman class. This would place 'OB in second position; and I hope you may make the correction in your next issue.
Lewis-Shepard Co.,Watertown, Mass.,January 9, 1934.
Name for Fresco
Dear Sir Although I have not had the privilege of viewing the Orozco murals in Baker Library, I have examined with interest the illustrations that have appeared in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE and other publications, and have read the various interpretations given to them; but with utter inability to form an interpretation of my own, or to understand the interpretations of others.
Fortunately this latest mural, illustrated in the January ALUMNI MAGAZINE, tells its story so simply that even a child may interpret it, and I can comply with your request and that of the artist whose work so obviously depicts Dartmouth College.
In the central group the recumbent skeleton is Dartmouth College, Alma Mater, which has just been delivered of another class of graduates by its President. The gowned and capped faculty and trustees stand as witnesses. The fetuses are non-graduates, present to receive degrees "as with" their respective classes. The books or tomes, not a single one of which is open to impart wisdom, presumably represent the opinion of the artist as to the intellectual value of the contents of Baker Library or the sort of use made of it by students and faculty, or both. The morons in regalia at the extreme left are certainly reuning alumni in the Commencent audience. The cannon and the dagger are wooden paraphernalia of the ten-year reuning class who are depicted in military regalia. Close examination will, I am confident, show the marks of the whittler's knife. The flames do not symbolize the world on fire, but are, I think, emblematic of the appropriate fate of a noble building desecrated by what may well be entitled DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—DEAD.
50 Oliver Street,Boston, Mass.,January 9, 1934.
Thoughts on Fraternities
Dear Sir: Your editorial discussion of the relationship between Dartmouth chapters and national fraternities is a timely one but of relatively little importance in comparison with a discussion of the relationship of Dartmouth fraternities and the college administration. X think I am stating the case correctly when I say that fraternity alumni are, like financiers in regard to the gold policy, in doubt as to just where the administration will ultimately stabilize the power of the chapters on the Dartmouth campus.
This is discouraging to alumni groups that may have plans for building and is not good for the moral of the undergraduates who, feeling that fraternities are going to hell anyway, decide there is no use striving to keep up the vitality of their groups. Consequently it would be a useful thing if you invited a full discussion of the problem on the part of Dartmouth alumni and if the trustees would see fit to study the situation and in a few months announce what will be the policy for the next five or ten years.
The National Affiliation
At the outset, I'd like to say that while I have been an active worker for my own house because it gave me a group of very fine friends and because it is a pleasant rallying point on visits to Hanover, I have never been able to make up my mind whether fraternities are of any great value or not. And at times have felt them to be definitely detrimental. However, it certainly is true that if we didn't have them, we'd have some other form of social grouping, perhaps still less desirable. Personally I believe the cost of national affiliation fully worth while as a means of giving the local group direction, even if the ritual is slightly silly, and giving contact with chapters on other college campuses.
Fraternities originally were organized as literary or debating societies but they have long since lost that purpose and one of the most frequent of criticisms levelled at them is that they serve no cultural purpose. It might be argued that they do in that they provide social contact, discipline and cooperation within a group, but in the more artistic sense they provide nothing. After all, though, their members are only boys following the same path tread by recent preceding classes and they need direction from the Interfraternity Council or from the college administration itself. The latter supervises their studies, their athletics, their health, their morals; it would not be a radical move for it to experiment with giving the fraternities a cultural trend.
I have sometimes wished that I had the time or money to see what could be done in the way of arousing enthusiasm in my own chapter house for more civilized tastes. I might experiment with a series of Sunday afternoon musicales with faculty ladies presiding at the tea table and a different group of townspeople invited each time (some of them have exaggerated ideas concerning what the insides of houses are like). With discussion forums led by faculty experts, with a series of supper smokers for neighboring fraternity houses (there is too much interfraternity fear) with hobby groups in sketching, writing, etc., with occasional afternoon tea dances. One of the serious drawbacks of Hanover is that the population is so small that the families of faculty members or of other local families cannot extend hospitality and social life to very many of the college students who as developing youths would benefit by it. In larger group affairs at fraternity houses, they might find time for it. Fraternity life tends to settle into a routine and sodden atmosphere of cigarette smoke, corduroy trousers and bridge playing in the back room.
Perhaps some of these suggestions would prove unworkable but I know that occasional talks by faculty members followed by a social evening were almost pathetically welcomed by some members of the houses. Before the administration decides that the fraternities will never serve a cultural purpose, it might see if they can be led into greener pastures. I know that some men would respond.
Second Year Rushing
All the members of any one fraternity chapter are not alike, a majority even are not. One of the silly arguments for second year rushing is that it gives the man time to pick the group in which he will be completely congenial. If he finds six or ten men out of the forty or so with whom he will establish a lasting friendship, he is lucky. The rest of his brothers he will like, will tolerate, or even hate though continuing to co-operate with for the sake of the house.
It seems to be almost lese majesty to criticize the second year rushing policy but it seems to me the administration makes exaggerated claims for it. I have heard members of the administration give it the credit for improving scholarship and later in the same speech give the credit for the same improvement to the selective process.
What's Wrong?
But whether or not second year rushing has improved scholarship, it is bringing about one definite result which, I think, can best be described by reporting a conversation I recently heard between some Dartmouth men:
"The college seems to wonder why there is always a considerable body of its graduates who are never touched by its appeal for funds. I for one don't contribute any more," said one man. "There is a distinct atmosphere at Dartmouth now of having arrived, of having gotten millions in new buildings in a few years and so of almost an arrogant assumption of being right in all policies."
"I think that's a foolish reason," said another man."I suppose there is a big group of men who can never be reached by any appeal.
"Yes, there are those, but there is a considerable group that graduates each year from Dartmouth with a distinct inferiority complex and although most of them come to see that it was foolish, they never feel very enthusiastic about their college. And the second year rushing policy is greatly accentuating that condition. It is a subsidy to snobbery. The older houses have been handed a gilt edged guarantee that they'll always be much more powerful, for naturally the campus leaders in sophomore year take the bids from those houses not because they'll find any more congenial men but because of the social prestige.
"Now with freshman rushing, the newer fraternities got many men not outstanding at the time but who later in their college careers became leaders and there was more of a tendency for all fraternities at Dartmouth to be of somewhat equal quality"
"Well, that's fairer to the individual pledgee, isn't it?"
"Not necessarily. He can find as many congenial friends and loyalties in one group of 40 as another provided the houses are about equal in prestige, and it may not be good for a man to think he is set aside among the elect. And is that feeling going to grow among the alumni group until the President of the College, the Trustees, etc., will always come from the same more snooty houses? Such powerful clubs have been a great detriment to some colleges and universities, dictating policies from behind the scenes."
After quoting such an argument for the lesser houses, the reader will at once put me down as a member of such. And I do not deny it. I was "grabbed" early in freshman year but I do not recall that I ever regretted it. I made enough friends and perhaps found more stimulation in building a new house, etc., than I would have found in being a member of a highly established chapter. But I can vouch for the feeling of the group that they did not "rate." That feeling must be increased today to a feeling of hopelessness with the second year rushing preventing their ever pledging the more talented men.
Surely the Administration should seek a way of overcoming this inequality. By restoring freshmen rushing? By arbitrarily allotting 15 sophomores to each house!! That would be a real new deal.
December nth, 1933,The Independent Press,Bloomfield, N. J.
