The Undergraduate Chair
THIS is the time of year when Dartmouth undergraduates learn a fond reverence for the Great White God of the Snow, a deity who plays a fickle game with the campus by the Connecticut most Januaries. We recall a scene just two years ago this season: bewildered young gentlemen, stepping from a three-hour show at the Old Nugget, found their campus miraculously coated with a beautiful white, and with ecstasy kissed the hallowed ground whereon the first snow in two months was wondrously falling.
We haven't seen anybody kiss the ground yet this year, and, as far as we know, there are more matinals in Rollins Chapel than burnt offerings from the summit of Oak Hill; but it is no quieting sight to watch the pensive looks and knit brows of the pundits in the front of Robinson Hall. One could almost suspect Mark Twain of being a D.O.C. officer. "If you don't like New England weather, wait a minute," he said. That, in a word, is Hanover at Carnival time.
We say "Carnival time," because the boundaries of that phrase in the time dimension are at the very best a little on the short side of tenuous. For some undergraduates (the younger ones), Winter Carnival is three days of relaxation, bounded at one end by Thursday night, and sharply curtailed at the other by the College Administration and its unfortunate decision to sponsor a second term of studies. For other undergraduates, (who are no longer young, literal, and foolish), Winter Carnival is a week of what we may daintily call festivity and celebration, conceived in a well-meaning but misguided conception that cramming for exams most nearly serves the purpose of the wellrounded man when it is carried out with the aid of the most beautiful girl at Smith College and extended into the time continuum and the second semester as far as the imagination will carry. But for the Outing Club, Winter Carnival begins when the first ski comes out of its rack for a lick and a polish; the master switch has been thrown, and thunderous gears grind out Carnival Poster designs, snow statues, and reports from the Lebanon Weather Station.
None of those reports foresaw the storm of the first post-Christmas weekend. Westchester and East Orange lost a hundred thousand lights, but Hanover lost half of a 16-inch coating of thick white snow. Alternate blizzard, sleet and rain storms drenched the Plain. Plans for sculpture work scheduled for the following week were somewhat dampened, but other preCarnival preparations continued full speed ahead.
One of those preparations was the unfortunate but inevitable evacuation of Russell Sage Hall, ordered by the Interdormitory Council to generously volunteer its hospitality to some two hundred girls. Topliff Hall denizens, whose rooms were drafted into this unwelcome service during the 1951 Carnival, offered condolences to "stunned Sage residents," according to The Dartmouth. Students in the unlucky dorm prepared to remove "everything that's light enough for a woman to pick up: furniture, ashtrays, and door-knobs."
"But," said the school newspaper, "the happiest men on campus right now are those lucky few who live in the corner of Butterfield which faces Russell Sage. As one celebrant put it, 'We'll see to it that all the shades in Russell Sage are removed the night before Carnival starts.' "
Meanwhile, all student governmental agencies buckled down to insure that newly-passed Carnival-limiting regulations would do their work. More than one unlucky undergraduate found himself forced to wire friends at other Eastern schools with information that tickets, rooms, and reservations were almost non-existent. Guest cards were grudgingly passed out, and Hanover's merchants prepared to board up windows and jack up prices for the biggest big weekend of the year.
Old and New Business: The IDC planned to install long-needed glass bulletin boards in all the dorms. Green Key planned to poll the campus to help in its selection of a dance band for the big spring weekend. Congressman Velde (R-111.) wrote The Dartmouth and assured the editors that "Dartmouth College will not be investigated unless direct testimony of Communist activity at the College is received." Both the UGC and the Administration, perhaps prodded by a vigorous Dartmouth campaign, began to give serious thought to plans for a new course: "The Individual and the College," long planned to replace Freshman Hygiene. Putnam's Drug Store yielded to student pleas, and decided not to close up its refreshment counter. And this school newspaper supported a Daily Princetonian resolution that every Ivy League football team play at least five league games a season. Most other Ivy League papers agreed, but the Harvard Crimson, remembering recent defeats at the hands of Penn, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and Brown, dissented. "Teams fielded by such colleges as Colgate and Davidson are much better suited to Harvard's schedule," it said.
The unsolved mystery of the young new year occurred early in the first week after Christmas recess. Miss Rhys Caparn, local sculptress, complained publicly that response to her public sculpting classes had been "disappointing." Undaunted, and still game, the ambitious instructress announced a new series of classes designed especially for young student artists. Rates were reduced for College students, and an addition to the curriculum was announced: a standing female nude model.
Interest ran high for a day, and elaborate preparations were made for the opening class session. But it was not to be, for Hanover and the campus were stunned just 24 hours before the scheduled lecture by the headlines
Art Class' Female ModelLeaves Town Suddenly.
No explanation was given, and the class director announced that a male model had been engaged to substitute for the recalcitrant female. Final comment was a "fond hope" from Miss Caparn that the switch would not decrease the number of students interested in the course.
WDBS was amazed upon its return from vacation to find a totally unexpected, unexplained, and undesired item in its mailbox: a bill of lading for 14,300 pounds of filing cabinets, supposedly shipped from the "Hood River Aluminum Company," located "somewhere in the West." Dun and Bradstreet turned up no such company, and die radio station directorate scratched its head and waited. While Program Director Herbert F. Solow '53 insisted that the cabinets would make good Valentine presents, reports o£ their progress through the intricacies of the American Railway System came daily to the broadcasters. Station personnel indicated the whole business was probably a hoax. They hoped so, too for notice was served that the station would be charged daily storage if they weren't careful.
Undergraduates were startled to read on the morning of January 10 that Hockey Coach Eddie Jeremiah had authorized the following quote in re. that night's game with Harvard:
"In our present condition at this stage of the game and due to the difference in material, we haven't got a chance against Harvard tonight."
The demoralizing quotation was quickly explained by grapevine. Jeremiah had decided to use "psychology" on the highlyrated Cantabs. "The only way we can beat them," he was reported privately to have said, "is to give them swelled heads." So out came the public quote, and into the Harvard team's hotel quarters went ten copies of the surprising newspaper. That, thought most armchair psychologists, ought to do the trick.
But the only trick of the day was a hat trick pulled by left-wing Dick Clasby of Cantab gridiron fame. Final .score: Harvard 5, Dartmouth o.
100% for Harvard, o for the psycholo- gists.
SKIGO, Pogo's jolly brother, designed by Charles W. Dingman '54 of Palmer, Mass., will fill Ihe cen- ter-of-campus spot for Winter Carnival.
