The Undergraduate Chair
An Argumentative Chapter Dealing with Winter Carnival, Visiting Firemen, Publicity, Strikes and Meat Shortage
THERE is a feeling oF suspense in the air around Hanover these days; Dartmouth's first postwar Carnival is in the offing and everyone is holding his breath hoping it will come off well. It was decided at the start not to call the affair Winter Carnival, but to start off with a smaller more unimpressive title, "Winter Sports Weekend," and let the real Carnival return with a bang next year. Plans must have gotten out of hand because from all appearances this "Weekend" is going to have all of the highlights of a full-size Carnival.
The week end starts out Friday, February 8, with the ski team playing host to a number of visiting colleges, and continues with a dance, a play, a glee club concert, snow sculpture, and many of the pre-war events. The theme of the snow sculpture will be "The Return of the Native" which will be portrayed by the main sculpture of an Indian riding in a jeep, so now we can expect jeeps, peeps, command cars, and all the other various Army vehicles in front of the dorms, or rather the students' impressions of what they look like.
There is a feeling prevalent among many of the members of the Dartmouth Outing Club at the present time that maybe the pre-war edition of Carnival had gotten out of hand. This feeling has grown so strong that it has opened up full-sized debates on the subject in some of the Public Speaking classes and naturally has spread to the rest of the campus. A real Carnival is not within the memory of the majority of the men in college at the present time, since even the Carnival of '41 was modified by the oncoming war. Yet the stories have come down to us about the movie stars and the huge crowds filling the town, and the strangers kicking you out of your own bed in the fraternity house, and the special cars that ran up from New York and Boston. From those who were around it seems that Carnival was no longer Dartmouth's but belonged to .anyone that had the price of a Boston and Maine ticket and wanted to have a good time at the expense of the students of Dartmouth College. One or two of the old-timers even say that around '39 it reached the point where a lot of Dartmouth students were leaving town that week end because they couldn't enjoy themselves among the visiting firemen.
The stories may have been built up considerably with the passage of time, and such a state of affairs may never really have existed; but in order to have such stories crop up, the truth must be that things did get a bit crowded. The whole argument boils down to one thing: "Is Carnival to be reserved for Dartmouth students or are we going to invite everyone that wants to come?"
Those who favor inviting one and all have a picture in their minds of the publicity the former carnivals gave to Dartmouth. Those favoring this type of publicity argue that it is good for the College to be known far and wide, that it is a source of pride to have the name of your college known from one end of the globe to the other. They take particular delight in hearing someone exclaim "Oh, the Winter Carnival College." They continue their argument by pointing out that as the publicity increases so the distinction of the College increases and incidentally the number of students who apply.
We cannot go along with this argument. We do not believe that the type of publicity that comes to a college because it sponsors a huge extravaganza is the type of publicity that a college of Dartmouth's standing needs. And along the same line, we do not believe that the type of student that would come to Dartmouth merely because it is the home of Winter Carnival is the type of student that Dartmouth wants.
We are not arguing that Carnival should be just for those who are in college at the present time, nor do we object to the news that appears in the newspapers about Carnival, but we do say that straight out-and-out publicity is not needed, nor do we enjoy having persons with absolutely no association with the College running up and down the corridors Of our dorms and fraternity houses. We side with certain members of the Outing Club who are hoping that the Carnival of the future will be strictly a Dartmouth affair.
Every issue of the Dartmouth Log brings one more announcement that the College is on its way back to the old days. Last week we had the word that the Interdormitory Council is working on plans in regard to forming dormitory policies about the liquor and week-end situations. It is hoped by the majority in college that the rules will be relaxed by Carnival time. The early adoption of this suggestion would necessitate quick formation of some system whereby the uncontrollable element would be kept in hand. The system favored is the installation of a bond system, whereby a student who commits some obvious disorder will be forced to post a bond. A second offense will result in forfeiture of the bond. The administration's idea is to protect the student's rights instead of checking them, and at the same time leave the governing of student conduct in the hands of the students themselves as much as possible.
Politics have flared up on the Hanover scene within the last few days. At this writing the meat packers are considering a strike, the automobile workers are out, the telephone workers are out, and just about everyone else. The average student took the automobile strike in his stride; after all, he wasn't in the market for a Buick for at least four or five months or more. The electrical strike didn't cause much of a furore, although discussion did pick up a bit. Then came the crucial blow, the straw that broke the whole thing wide open: the meat packers were going out. That was too much. It seems that you can take away almost anything and the chubber will merely go skiing and shrug it off while the nonchubber will go to the "flicks" and forget it, but take away their meat and you have hit a sore spot.
The Dartmouth camp seems to be pretty well divided into two groups. There are those whose fathers are Republicans, therefore they are Republicans; and there are those whose fathers are Democrats and therefore they are Democrats. Of course, there are some who are on the fence, and a few who claim to be Socialistic, Communistic, or slightly Pink.
It is really interesting to sit in on a dormitory bull-session and listen to some of the suggestions on the present situation. Within two hours the other night we decided to (1) Force Truman to resign because he was doing a poor job, (2) Send a telegram to Truman commending him on the fine job he was doing, (3) Blame the Russians for the whole international mess, and (4) Agree that if it weren't for the Russians the whole business would have collapsed. The best part of the whole session is the fact that when one starts out at eight o'clock and enters the argument he is completely and wholeheartedly for one side or the other, whereupon your roommate or whoever is there is completely of the other point of view. By ten o'clock you usually find that you have argued so convincingly that your roommate has completely swung around to your point of view, but the trouble is that you find that he has completely swung you around and you are both at odds again.
The whole process of argument may lead you nowhere, and it has little appreciable effect on national affairs, or on the meat packers' strike, but we do think that it at least opens the undergraduate mind to many sides of a question. In some respects it is by far the most important part of a Dartmouth education.
DARTMOUTH FRATERNITY LEADERS photographed at the Hanover conference of January 12 are (I.to.r.) Robert D. Brown '43, president of the Interfraternity Council; George M. Morris '11 of Washington, president of the Dartmouth Fraternity Alumni Advisory Board; and Charles F. Camp '42, newly appointed College Officer in Charge of Fraternities.
