Unsatisfactory Picture

Those two clever Dartmouth students who have been financing their education by writing guide books to the leading eastern men's and women's colleges are on a new track. They are studying the Dartmouth student himself.

Now this is very interesting to Holyoke, the home of many a Dartmouth student, and we believe, of the most ardently loyal group of Dartmouth alumni in the land. And we will go along with Bill Jones and Dick O'Riley when they say that they find the Dartmouth student to be on the whole "a pretty sound fellow." We'll go even farther and say that he stays that way most of his life.

But we had no idea that Dartmouth undergraduates were as romantic as their portrayers describe them. It seems that in between all that skiing, group singing, beer-drinking, and rocketing along the icy highways of the Connecticut Valley, practically every Dartmouth man finds time for "one terrific love affair" during his college life.

The anti-climax comes swiftly, though. This great romance is but a perfumed moment in the life of a man whose mind is really set on being a sound fellow. He doesn't marry the Carnival Queen (let's see the figures on that, gentlemen). For a wife, he wants somebody who isn't too pretty, too exciting-or too smart. He wants a lady who won't com- pete with him, who will think everything he does and wants is O.K. In return he will work hard, be a good provider, and accept placidly such things as hair curlers or a middle aged spread. The Dartmouth student, it seems, is a practical sort and not at all dreamy once he has gotten past his one orchidaceous college fling.

To which we will say "Nuts" to Mr. Jones and Mr. O'Riley. The trouble with them is they've listened too much to what the undergraduate thinks he is going to do. We suggest that their next project be to study the Dartmouth alumnus. And Holyoke is the obvious place to do it.

Take, for instance, the Dartmouth wife. If the Holyoke contingent appeared only ordinarily attractive, pleasantly dull, and not too bright, when the Dartmouth men proposed marriage, they have certainly improved a lot since then and must have given their menfolks quite a jolt. It is only fair to the ladies in view of the Jones-O'Riley damning with faint praise to say that in Holyoke at least the Dartmouth wives are among our prettiest, gayest and smartest.

As for the statement that Dartmouth men have little time for day-dreaming—horsefeathers. Find us a Dartmouth graduate who doesn't way down deep, cherish the dream that he is still the sunny side of thirty. Drop into Holyoke, boys, sometime, say, in November, and find out for yourselves.

December 17, 1948

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