The Undergraduate Chair
REPERCUSSIONS FROM THE ChicagoTribune's anti-Dartmouth broadside echoed around campus for several weeks after that paper's so-called expose of "New Dealism" at Dartmouth.
Shortly after the Tribune's Eugene Griffin headed back to his Ottawa post, his paper assailed Dartmouth for seven consecutive days and, as one student commented, "accused the College of everything but income tax evasion."
John Stearns, editor of The Dartmouth, peppered back at the mid-western leviathan in a series of editorials that called the attack humorous but"as dangerous as the man in the brown shirt." Although the Chicago Tribune labeled Dartmouth "internationalist," the campus daily felt that, if anything, "smug complacence and isolationism" gripped the College.
Some students grinned when they read the Tribune clippings scotch-taped inside the bookstore window. One fellow who evidently knew something about the recent upheavals in many state universities said, "I'm sure glad that we don't have to play politics up here."
One of a host of local humorists pasted up a headline alongside the display that shouted in big capitals, "Dickey To Coach Yankees," referring to Bill Dickey's new baseball job.
Great Issues students said that the course's mature survey of world affairs differed greatly from the "New Deal indoctrination" which the Tribune claimed to find in it.
Colonel McCormick could give thanks that Indian football fans, termed "visigoths" in his paper, would not invade Chicago this fall for a home game with one of the Windy City teams.
The College woke up Wednesday morning, November 3, as perplexed as George Gallup over the election upset. Not many students registered in Hanover or sent home for absentee ballots, since most were certain of Tom Dewey's succession to the White House.
The Dartmouth added to that certainty when Tom Dewey polled 77 percent of the votes cast in a preview election managed by the paper. President Truman rated only 12.9 percent of the 913 student votes and Henry Wallace won 62 votes from the liberal group on campus.
Southerners who couldn't see eye to eye with the President's Civil Rights Bill and spoke openly for States Rights gave Thurmond 2.4 percent.
The mock election also failed to jibe with charges that the Big Green is mottled with a plague of New Dealism.
This is a great year for victory-hungry football fans. This fall you hear undergrads whistling strains from the Football Medley on the sidewalks and in dorm corridors. Diners at Lou's or the Bowl rehash the Holy Cross, Colgate, Harvard, Yale and Columbia victories with gusto.
Students and alumni who came up the hard way with Coach Tuss McLaughry through the bleak seasons of '46 and '47 now crowd the Sideline Coaches lunches at the Inn and hear backfield Coach Milt Piepul comment on movies of the games.
Al Laney of the Herald Tribune sized up the Indian eleven pretty well in his Yale game write-up, describing them as "full of fire and dash" and showing "T formation feinting and faking matched by no other team in the Ivy League."
Big student migrations accompanied the team to other stadiums. At Harvard revelry was subdued. No men tried to make the revolving Merry-Go-Round bar turn in the opposite direction as in past years. One foraying Indian pilfered a pink store-mannikin's leg from a Harvard man's room. Those whirling dervish editors of Jacko inserted their own magazine into a cover that read Harvard Lampooned and sold 200 copies to unsuspecting Simmons College girls. Harvard Lampoon editors are still sulking over that one.
Dartmouth men packed their section of the Yale Bowl so solidly that none of the 200 hopefuls waiting outside for last-minute seats could fit into the stands.
About this year's Indian team fans could vouch for one thing. Win or lose, the Indians treated spectators to 60 bang-up minutes of college football.
The Dartmouth Quarterly rolls up its literary sleeves this fall and plans to hit textbook reading students right between the eyes with creative writing. Although in shaky financial shape last spring, the magazine has floated a $700 loan within its new directorate and plans to pay contributing authors $10 per short story.
David H. Bergamini '49, of Rowayton, Conn., is chairman of the Board. Lloyd H. Gaston '5l1, of New York City, holds the editorship, and Miles M. Mills '50, of Des Moines, lowa, is business manager.
Unlike many quarterlies that revel in esoteric poetry or flights of ethereal prose, this magazine stresses hearty, humorous and readable undergraduate stories as well as pages of poetry.
The Quarterly, while not endorsing long-hairs, may prove to undergraduate writers as well as the general public that Dartmouth is more than a literary nevernever land of economics majors and Jacko fans.
Two hundred '52's overwhelmed D.O.C. Freshman Trip planners in October, all clamoring for a chance to explore Moosilauke before college began.
Freshman enthusiasm had the sophomores baffled. While 's2's obligingly wore their caps, only one would turn his clothes inside out in response to Vigilante demands. For anyone but sophomores the '52's were veritable work horses, beating rugs, lugging desks and splitting cord wood.
About midnight in mid-October most of the shouting sophomores raided freshman rooms. Some broke in through windows, others disguised their voices and politely asked to be let in. But once in, the raiders dragged the freshmen into cold showers or spirited them off into the New Hampshire woods for a lonely walk home.
Nevertheless a banner flew from the flagpole next morning proclaiming "To Hell With '51," and sophomores bided their time until the Rush.
The college green resembled the Battle of Hastings when the two classes charged for five footballs at midfield. Black-faced and whooping, the freshmen yelled for blood when two sophomore plants dashed in prematurely from the sidelines and heaved the footballs toward the '52 goal.
Wisened and wiser upperclassmen watched the melee, remembering their own combat days and marveling that men weren't maimed in the pileups.
The freshmen lost, after leading 2-1 and having a third ball called back because it was passed rather than pushed over the goal line.
Losing worried them for a week or two but when asked if they weren't fed up with being underdogs, a knot of '52's in front of Commons answered, "Hell, no. It makes us feel like we belong."
Bob Allcott '50, who takes over the postof Undergraduate Editor with this issue,comes from Rutland, Vt. An English major, he is a member of the DartmouthPress Club, contributing editor of Ski News magazine, and a member of DeltaTau Delta fraternity. During his freshmanyear he won his numerals in skiing.
