The Undergraduate Chair
UNDERGRADUATES returned to Hanover this fall to find the summer had brought one really significant change. Formerly students parked thencars wherever it was convenient; now the College has assigned each student carowner a space in a designated area. Coupled with this measure, registration fees were raised. The sophomores pay $15, the juniors $10, and the seniors only $5. This move was calculated to cut down the number of student cars as well as to pay for the construction of new parking lots.
As I stood in line to get my tag at registration, the grumbles and groans assured me of the new move's popularity. In some cases areas assigned are fairly remote. One occupies the space just back of Massachusetts Row, another the center of Wigwam Circle. A field north of the WoodwardRipley-Smith group has been cleared and made into a lot. Another area lies between New Hampshire Hall and the College heating plant.
In spite of the grumbles, the over-all effect has been a good one. At least professors can find a place for their cars near classroom buildings. The general appearance of the campus, especially Dartmouth Row, is tidier and not so cluttered. The previous practice of driving between classes is out. We all get up a few minutes earlier and exercise a little more before those dreary eight o'clock classes.
During the past month we have all weathered the ordeal of fraternity rushing. This year rushing started on the evening of September 26 and ran every evening thereafter until pledging or "sink" night on the 30th.
There was the usual deluge of new faces and names. "What kind-of-a summer did'ya have?" - "You don't say?" - "Boy, that's an easy name to remember" - "You aren't related to Fred Quimby of Oakmont are you?" The same old questions with the same answers until your voice grows very pale, and the cider seems to be revolting from within. "Say Larry, Larry come on over here! Have you met Ted Eagerby from Altoona? Ted, this is Larry Ralston. 01' Larry kicked the extra point against Holy Cross last week." - "Well, we don't like to blow our own horn, but, well, as you can see it is a rather well-rounded group we have here."
The tension during rushing week mounts to the climax of "sink" night when the actual pledging is done. The prospectives are nervous and undecided. The brothers are just plain tired. They've been up all night at hour meetings to hash over the possible catch. Often as not the meetings are tense with tempers flaring here and there. The midnight harangues run on and on. The hot debate continues. Some of us are cheating, asleep in a corner or dozing from a comfortable chair. Exhausted tenseness remains the campus temper until the last openings are filled; then the mood gives away to overwhelming relief and joy. A little beer is spilled here on these words. After the party you suddenly find out you're "snowed" with work. The hour exams are upon you.
Dartmouth Night on October 2 before the Navy game, turned out one of the best celebrations and rallies ever seen on campus. From the steps of Dartmouth Hall, President Dickey in his address to the undergraduates, their dates, and the Dartmouth family, especially emphasized to the freshmen that they were now a part of a lifelong fellowship. I am sure the '58s felt his welcome that evening. Captain Lou Turner and Coach "Tuss" McLaughry both spoke of the team's high spirit in the face of Navy. The Band and Glee Club added some emotional flavor with Glory to Dartmouth and The Hanover Winter Song.
The crowd turned to the middle of the green where the '58s began a snake dance carrying railroad flares. Overhead fireworks boomed and green sparks opened like umbrellas over the Baker spire. When the great pile of railroad ties was lighted the whole campus seemed to feel the uprush of the flames. There was a sort of jubilant barbarity in the scene. Faces darted in and out of the crowd, the weird burning light on their features. The Hanover dogs tripped you unseen in the press of feet. Old Dartmouth Hall herself felt it as the elms' grasping shadows danced over white brick and green shutter. The elm trees thought they had won and finally swallowed the buildings, but the fire grew lower, and we went off to Baker whistling and happy before the battle was resolved.
EACH fall Dartmouth recalls a familiar student figure. He is in my class, and I know he was in yours. The student hunter is likely to be an odd chap. At least his fellows look upon him as such. He's a distinct personality. You can't just blanket him as a "chubber." He doesn't even hang around with the gang over at the D.O.C. office. The sound of heavy clumping boots in Herb West's Comp. Lit. swings everybody's attention to the rear of the room. Bob was in a heavy brown canvas hunting suit frayed around the cuffs. You could see the sidelong glances, "Yup, I guess he is a little nuts!" Bob is always in his hunting clothes during October and November. He has that rustic brier-proof look.
Perhaps now I've jogged your memory and you do remember that screwball hunter in your own class. I know him pretty well now, but I have to admit it took a lot of research. He's not the sort that leaves a lot of marks on the records hereabouts. It strikes me that he is perhaps unique at Dartmouth. There aren't any of the species at Yale or Harvard or any of the other city schools. This figure deserves a portrait, if not in Baker, here where the whole family can look him over and see what he gets from Dartmouth and what he gives to her.
Now take Bob for instance. There are certain things about Bob that set him apart. One of these is his car. I've heard him gripe about having to register it every year, but I figure he's just kind of independent. The car is a rusty beaten-up 1927 Model A pickup truck. Ot one time it was painted a bird's egg blue, but now that's rubbed off and another layer of a darker color shows through. The truck bed has been redesigned into an enclosed box of wire and boards. That serves as a traveling dog house for Bob's setter bitch, Lady. At first Bob kept Lady over at the fraternity house, but the brothers wouldn't stand for it. Why should they? Didn't Lady chew up the sofa that Bartlett's mother donated? Didn't she bark all night? Now they shook a menacing finger at Bob. How about the time she bit the sandwich man? Lady's being in the truck explains why the cab is filled with loose cans of dog meat not to mention a few empty boxes of shotgun shells and dirt and leaves dragged from ail the back roads for miles around.
It's a good thing Bob's roommate likes hunting, too. Those two fellows keep our dormitory either mad or laughing all during the season. Last year Maurice, the equally distinctive roomy, left a green bearskin on a bush under my window to dry. One of those surprise warm days brought such smells forth that I had to vacate. That's nothing though, just ask old Percy, the janitor, -about that pair.
"Well, - - - when I come in the bathroom - - - I smelt somethin' fun-ny. T'want in the basins. T'want the johns. T'was in the show-wer! Feathers all ova. Them fellas from 306 been cleaning partridges in them bathrooms! I warned 'em befoa. Superintendent, he don't - - -."
I went up to 306 myself, just to check on things before I wrote this article. I hope the dean doesn't read this 'cause, "Them fellas been cookin' in the room," as Percy would say. There were a few dirty cups and saucers scattered about on the sparse furniture. A half eaten grouse carcass reposed on a plate on the window sill. The room itself looked like an Indian camp. In one corner were a few old burlap sacks where Bob put Lady when the nights were too frosty. There weren't many books around though Bob and Maurice study hard. I found copies of Fieldif Stream flung carelessly here and there. Accidently shuffling a few of these as I moved around, I upset an open bottle of gun oil Bob had left where he was cleaning his shotgun. I guess he couldn't get it back together because the parts were carefully placed in their order of assembly on a sheet of newspaper. It was the only neat thing in the room.
The walls around me were decorated with all manner of things from the woods. There were grouse tails spread fanwise, old hornets' nests clinging to their twigs, and, among other things, a stuffed deer head donated to Bob's fraternity by a grad of the class of '25. The trophy was slightly mothy. One eye was completely missing while the other had been cocked askew so as to glare at me with singular defiance. "Get out'a here city feller and don't come back no more!" I did.
After watching these two hunters from a distance as I have described, I finally closed in to examine the birds at close range. Over at Alpha Delt on a Saturday evening, I spotted them having a beer in the company of other known hunters. This looked like the opportunity I sought.
Bob was talking about an early morning before-classes duck hunting expedition up the river. He told of the pre dawn darkness with the soft roll of mist over the brown water. How he had crept to the river's edge through the still dripping meadows to wait for the chilly stars to fade away and the sun to strike across the Vermont hills to the west. "It was just light enough to see when I heard their quacking as they came toward me over the river. I fired and missed," he said. "They were too far. My God, but those black ducks are pretty though. Did you ever notice the way a duck flies? There's nothing like it anywhere."
Maurice told next of two partridges he had bagged that very afternoon. "It was by the old Lyme Center cemetery just off Dorchester Road. You remember the spot, Bob?" He drew deeply at his cigarette then crushed it out on the floor. He described it with his hands. "There are four white birches growing atop a little knoll at one corner of the walled-in cemetery plot. I heard wings, like he'd left a tree, off to my left. Then I saw a glimpse of grey-brown swinging round those birches. When I fired I only guessed where he should have been. The bushes were too thick to really see. There was no thud, but I heard wings fluttering amongst the dry leaves and I found him dead amongst the old tombstones. I reckon he's at home with the old hill folk. Hardly a feather out of place on that bird." He lowered his voice. "The ruff was still full, kind of dark purple, dusky like a Concord grape."
Bob and Maurice graduated last June so I suppose they studied a little harder after gunning season. They won't be remembered as the president of this club or that organization. You and I recall them though they left nothing tangible here at Hanover. Why, the old red shotgun shells have fallen apart, brown and rotten where they were left last fall in the grouse coverts. One thing I feel certain though, neither one of those two will ever forget his duck or his grouse. They are as much a part of Dartmouth as all the classrooms and the buildings, too. I only feel sorry I never learned how to join them.
One of the new student parking lots, this one behind Thayer School
We take pleasure in introducingGeorge H. Cassels-Smith '55 as ourUndergraduate Editor for 1954-55.From Ruxton, Md., and the GilmanSchool, he played freshman lacrosse,has sung in the varsity Glee Club fortwo years, and is a Sigma Nu and anEnglish major. An outdoor enthusi-ast who knows the prize fishing andhunting spots around Hanover,"Duke" also likes to sketch, withcreditable results as shown at thebottom of this column. His fatheris George R. Cassels-Smith '25.
