The Undergraduate Chair
IN a struggle which bore marked similarities to a battle between the Chinese army and Western technology, the freshmen won the tug of war early last month.
The Chinese hordes, of course, were the multitudinous freshmen, and the upperclass technology consisted of a random bulldozer, on leave from the Campus Excavation Project, which served as an admirable and firm anchor for the sophomore end of the rope.
The freshmen, after a few tentative tugs had proved just how effective a mooring the dozer was, took counsel with themselves and resolved on a new plan of attack.
Wave after wave of Sixties (they are expendable) surged across the green, only to be cut down by murderous crossfire from the sophomore bunkers around the bulldozer. Yet as one rank fell, more hordes welled forth in the greatest onslaught of man-on man Hanover has seen. On into the dusk the mighty contention raged.
At last, with the sophomores still firmly entrenched, the exhausted freshmen fell back to the north. A truce team of Palaeopitus, Plant and Operations, and Captain Gaudreau's henchmen took the field, calling for negotiations.
Treacherously, during this conference under the white flag, a suicide freshman feyadeen slipped into the sophomore camp and cut the vital knot with his Thayer Hall blade.
The sophomore class, wearied by its long ordeal, running short of supplies, and deprived of its modern weapons, then succumbed to two successive freshman heaves.
Said Major General E. L. M. Skip Kerr, head of the Palaeop peace-makers, after the fracas: "It was a little disorganized. I hit one freshman over the head with the butt of my starting pistol, but it just slowed him down a little bit."
Excess numbers, besides gaining the freshmen a victory in the annual tug, provided the wherewithal for a general student victory over the administration.
Arguing that the rooms-for-dates situation has deteriorated badly because the freshmen, in their multiplicity, have forced other students to move off campus and thus occupy otherwise available local girl-lodgings, the IDC got the administration to allow a dormitory to be opened for dates Saturday night of the Holy Cross weekend.
The administration has been fighting this sort of thing for years, fearing a second Houseparties, and Parkhurst was therefore somewhat nettled when the cry went up for a dorm for Friday night, too. But with editorials in The Dartmouth (pithily suggesting the possibility of infractions of "serious college rules"), rumblings of a projected Thayer Hall putsch, and a general air of rebelliousness evident the Dean backed down.
Gile Hall was tapped for both nights because its occupants had, according to IDC statistics, ripped out more telephones than any other dorm residents. (Intrepid Gilemen had uprooted two at that time.)
But the whole carefully contrived victory almost dissolved when a wag peered into the Dean's office and wondered aloud where the dates who were coming up Thursday would stay. The Dean, after seven adrenalin shots, was pronounced recovered.
He'd better keep his adrenalin handy for next year. The word is already going out that 1957's goal is to get the fraternities open for dates for at least Saturday night of the second home football weekend and maybe Friday night.
The freshman class may very well be spiritless as a class, as some have been heard to charge, but it is chock-full of individuals who want to go, go, go. Only a few less than 1,328 freshmen, for example, decided they wanted to be Class President last month.
The UGC Elections Committee, its ring inundated with beanies, quickly recovered composure and held a primary that served to narrow the field to a little less than 226. Victor in the subsequent elections with a plurality of 10,364 (more or less) was Popular Pat Patrick, of Omaha, Nebraska, who talked to the people in their own earthy language. Later he modestly expressed the intention, to reporters congratulating him on his resounding triumph, of making the Class of 1960 the best in Dartmouth's history.
Chosen to execute other vital class functions were Robert Farmer, vice president, Richard Chase, secretary, and Robert Jervis, treasurer.
Irwin Zooker, age 6, suffered a fate similar to that of his predecessor, Joe Smith, in never getting on the ballot. Chairman of Freshman Elections Dave G. Weber proved his party regularity by moving promptly to block the nomination.
Zooker got the fate he deserved. He had been making a drive for some sort of campus recognition - any sort at all, just recognition - all fall via the classifieds of TheD, chiefly as a tormentor of the brothers of SAE. He, or persons acting in his name, swiped the fraternity's toy lion (symbol of love, power, and continuity to the 455 million SAE's in the 37 corners of the globe) and thereafter teased the brothers almost daily with his gentle couplets, such as:
"Brothers of Sigma Alpha Everybody: Half the world is pure and free, The other half is SAE, ha, ha, ha. - Irwin Zooker, age 6."
Others hinted at the lion's location or promised its return — an event which finally came about.
Giddy members of the Dartmouth College Fellowship succumbed to the plague of Rhymeitis, and Zookerisms such as this began making their appearance:
"Pledges: At the stake you will be burned, If the hum cup ain't returned. - The big brothers."
But Zooker's political demise evidently discouraged his legions of followers, and the classifieds have returned to commercial advertisement.
Further investigation of the influx of numbers reveals that the SOC - Sophomore Orientation Committee is what it means - recently voted to stay in existence past the tug of war, and thereby, in its own estimation, took a step towards becoming a "permanent sophomore honorary society."
This may be what the SOC thinks, but it is hardly the truth of the case. On the contrary, the SOC has been handled by a group of behind-the-scenes manipulators whose machinations have been aimed only at getting some work out of the "SOCmen" and, through them and their system of command, out of the freshmen. They will be expected to work on Winter Carnival sets and the statue as directed by the Winter Carnival Board.
The Winter Carnival Board is a new alphabetical agency which is supposed to run Carnival in the interests of and as representatives of everybody, and thus free the DOC from some of the onerous chores involved. This year is supposedly one of transition - a feeling-out of how best to do it in the future.
Palaeopitus named Robert E. Smith, a senior from Scarsdale, N. Y., to be the first president of the WCB, and his list of titles (vice president of the Class of 1957, UGC, Palaeopitus, varsity tennis, KKK, and C&G) suggests he has been successful in the past.
The six WCB members are supposed to take care of things like housing, tickets, meals, traffic, publicity, competitions, and the other miscellany which go into the creation of what has come to be called, endearingly, America's Best Known College Weekend.
A few excess of the teeming hosts of 1960 have been deposited for the winter in Old South Hall, which stands, ancient and degenerate, midway between Rogers Garage and a big tree. (No one has yet ventured into the upper stories, but the bottom two have been compared to Charles Addams' imagination.) Reports reaching Hanover indicate that while all is well with the freshmen themselves, an instructor who was sent down with aid and succor was gobbled on entrance by a giant spider, named Rufus, who is a friend of the frosh.
Liberal arts education, which is supposed to educate as opposed to train, might have done these lads a service with some training. Four of our number, en route to Harvard, stopped off in a Litchfield pumpkin patch and lifted some Halloweenery before a buckshot barrage sent them scurrying. But before even the Litchfield limits were reached, a roadblock hemmed them in. They were carted to the local pokey and forced to make restitution. Moral: don't steal pumpkins from the chief of police in Litchfield.
