The Undergraduate Chair
Campus Settles Down to Second Semester after Ordeal of Final Exams and Excitement of Winter Carnival
THE SNOW HAS heaped up deeply on the campus and a strong wind has been whipping it into drifts. This is the season of the unexpected snows which would have been more appreciated had they arrived a week earlier in time for Dartmouth men to show to ski-suited Carnival guests who arrived for a week-end only to find the ground bare in many places and to see America's most ski-conscious college dripping with water and its campus covered with a rug of slush.
This is the season when Dartmouth returns to normalcy until the snow has gone, the mud has become green grass and the trees in the college park have sent out their buds. This is the season when weekend ski trips leave for the nearby mountains from in front of every dormitory and when students, lifting their knees high to pull their feet from the snow, will pause on their way to classes, take pencils from their pockets and push them into the snow to test its depth—today it took two partly used pencils.
Dartmouth has settled back from its Carnival when it played host to 1200 girls from every section of the country—each one a queen, if the judges had only known —and is ready to take a look at the new courses of the second semester. Unlike years past, there has been a week's vacation between the end of exams and the beginning of the second half of the year. The recess seems to have met with success. Most of the fears which it had aroused when first proposed have proven to be groundless. It was thought that it would take undergraduates away from Hanover and would not bring them back until after Carnival. If this had been true it would have had a two-fold effect on the Carnival program. In the first place, the Outing Club would not be able to present its Outdoor Evening program to an almost empty house. To pay for the figure skating talent and to cover the other costs which are incumbent in the Dartmouth version of a Billy Rose extravaganza there has to be a paying audience. Secondly, it was doubted whether there would be workers to take care of all the jobs which must be done in order to put on a Carnival.
But Winter Carnival has an attraction of its own which will compete with all the advantages of Northampton, or New York, or Boston. Carnival was a success. Many thought the Outdoor Evening performance was one of the best that has been offered. Carnival was a success in other parts of Hanover as well. A Main Street which normally finds it difficult to swallow up 2400 students choked and strained with a lump of 5000 people in its throat. Restaurants were jammed and the people at the counters stood four and five deep. But there seemed to be few complaints of over-crowding; if anyone resented an elbow in his ribs, a foot kicking him in the shins, and someone else's hamburger swinging before his face, he kept it to himself. Carnivalia was in the air and tolerated few complainers.
To anyone who has seen a Winter Carnival grow from notes jotted on paper to a pageantry of ice and snow, to a parade of the best competitors in winter sports that the nation has to offer, to dances and gaiety, to a queen enthroned on a pedestal of ice, it seems unfortunate that so few know of the work that is poured into giving Dartmouth and its guests two days of entertainment. The Outdoor Evening program took a little more than an hour to present. The set, which represented a tremendous birthday cake with each layer representing a decade in the thirty years of carnival's existence, took more than a week to build. The pond upon which the skaters pirouetted required 30,000 gallons of water to make, and utilized the efforts of over fifty freshmen who worked in 24 hour shifts freezing it. To carry out the one hour program, fully fifty students were required, some as electricians, some to dispatch skiers from the top of the hill at the given cues, others in charge of the fireworks, still more to police the grounds, collect tickets, and supervise all workers.
SKI TEAM WHICH RETAINED CARNIVAL TITLE Left to right, Coach Walter Prager, Ed Little '41, Bob Skinner '40 Charlie McLane '41,Joe Dunford '40, Robb Alexander '41, Captain Percy Rideout '40, Chap Wentivorth'40, Roger Simpter '42, and Manager Ray Hotaling '40.
