JUST A MATTER OF FRAILTY
The argument's over now and I don't think my friend's such a sentimental dope and it isn't so much a matter of facade to me since the argument's over. It's just a matter of human frailty, keeping those doors there to keep the shape of the building on the outside after it lost its internal shape when its insides were remodelled. All along I've thought that Dartmouth Hall should never be made to look different from the outside; it takes four years of living with it, I guess, for it to become important that the insides don't fit that outside beauty.
It's highly unimportant, I'm sure, so far as people getting to and from classes are concerned (once they're used to it), but it strikes me as being symptomatic of the way that Dartmouth, like all institutions, builds frailties into its walls and into the hearts and affections of its members when it tries to preserve a beauty whose utility it has discarded.
That kind of human frailty isn't so hard to live with in sympathy as is the more personal kind deep in all of us this year. The more personal kind comes out into the open in the lack of purpose and logic in action, in the pure escape from disturbing situations that makes the town empty on Fridays and Saturdays and makes this a common remark: "I have an hour exam tomorrow; let's go to the Nugget." It's in all the frenzied horseplay and all the easy laughter and fun about things that just aren't so funny as the laughs they get.
And none of it is localized. It's all in symptoms, symptoms like the football team and the football crowds and the big week-ends and the crowded Nugget (even when Don Ameche is starring) and the noise on Main Street on Saturday nights. It's in the Fall Houseparties, when the most striking thing was the dissimilarity between the pervasive good time of last Green Key and the sporadic and sometimes hysterical fun of that week-end.
If you happened to mention Houseparties at dinner three days later the remarks about it depended upon which fraternity your companion came fromthree or four brotherhoods claimed the best houseparty within memory, while others said it was the worst week-end they'd ever known.
Of course it rained. It wouldn't be a Houseparty without rain, everyone says now, and early letters asking for Carnival dates tell the girls to "Be sure to bring knee boots and a rain-coat; we'll all go swimming or boating on the campus if the weather is right. The DOC is thinking of signing up the Aquabelles."
Out on the streets that Saturday night were lone students in raincoats looking for a party to get in on so they wouldn't have to go back to their rooms and go to bed. Some of them gave up early, and a good percentage of student rooms contained people who were studying or reading.
On the cold, rainy, muddy Memorial Field that Saturday afternoon the football team had lost, 3-0, to William and Mary, showing a lack of team energy and drive that put it in a class with the bottom half of Ivy League football teams. Then, to prove that Dartmouth belonged with Yale and Princeton in its football play, it went to Princeton the next Saturday and played exciting, sloppy football. It was something of a circus, and very thrillingit was impossible to tell what would happen next, and some surprising things did happen. The team, for example, got together beautifully on about half their plays and opened up holes for Frost and Wierman and Arico, and then on the other half let the same backs get tackled ten yards behind the line.
Princeton, too, surprised itself by discovering that it could complete forward passes, so the second half of the game was as exciting for its aerial gymnastics as the first half had been for its ground fumbles and blocked kicks. Down at the Nassau Tavern after the game Dartmouth and Princeton students talked together about how sloppy their teams had been and how much fun it always is to watch a Dartmouth-Princeton game.
DBS HAS LOVELY START Nancy Carroll, stage and screen star, cameto Hanover during the week preceding FallHouseparties to play the feminine lead inthe Players' production of "Mr. and Mrs.North" and was in time to help inauguratethe new Dartmouth Broadcasting System.William J. Mitchel Jr. '42, student directorof DBS, found it necessary to drop his ex-ecutive role and interview Miss Carrollhimself, as shown above. During her Han-over stay Miss Carroll gave two sparklingperformances as Mrs. North, added con-siderably to her list of fans, and pleasedone and all by saying many nice thingsabout Dartmouth and Hanover.
