THE UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR
THE Senior Fellows this year have been an exceptionally close group — exceptional, that is, for Senior Fellows, who are by definition a breed of lone wolves baying at private moons. But even wolves need the companionship of kindred souls; and Senior Fellows, being at once students in excelsis and scholastic outcasts, feel a similar bond of blood coursing through their collective veins. They are united by a sense of special achievement, no matter how diverse their projects may be; and they are also united by the incomprehension of the outside world, of those undergraduates and even faculty members who cynically describe the Senior Fellowship Program as organized lassitude for the otiose few.
But that is simply one of the inevitable consequences of becoming a Senior Fellow. A SF must always expect sniggers and winks when he refers to his work; for as far as the College in general is concerned, he is a flaneur, and any resemblance he has to a conscientious individual engaged in maturing and implementing his capacity for extended research is purely accidental, and hardly noticeable anyway. He is a joke; he may be envied instead of despised, and tolerated rather than rejected, but, for the most part, he will never be taken seriously - he is the academic equivalent of a draft dodger, and is to be treated accordingly.
Thus it is small wonder that the Senior Fellows of '63 have tended to huddle together around the flame of their common cause and their in some cases uncommon accomplishments. Under the benign paternalism of Professor James Cusick, they have developed a camaraderie and spirit that would surely touch the heart of any human being (with the possible exception of a History major studying for Comps, from which Senior Fellows are traditionally exempt). Every Wednesday afternoon, as a matter of fact, they meet for lunch at Topside Thayer, and regale each other with vivacious anecdotes on the Dewey Decimal System and the roads between Hanover and New York City, though not necessarily in that order of importance. It has recently been the custom of these symposiums for the Fellows to report, one at a time, on the present state of their projects, a practice which frequently arouses both the fervor of the confessional and the passion of the pulpit; for in the Senior Fellowship Program, what one doesn't do is almost as significant as what one does do. (This is especially true, of course, when the two are identical.)
Every Fellow knows the disturbing and yet appealing plasticity that is one of the foremost characteristics of the Program: the moments or days or weeks of fallow that are indispensable to creation, the research that burgeons beyond all practical proportions and obstinately refuses to be curtailed, the outlines that become obsolete and information that ends up inapplicable but still fascinating; and it is this wondrous flexibility, this principle of expansion, that underlies half the problems and more than half the rewards of the Senior Fellow experience. At this point in the year (early May), some of the Fellows are just coming to grips with their projects, while others have very nearly completed their work and are fretting over bibliographies and carbons, which means that in effect their worries are over.
But what about the Fellows as individuals? If, as an invisible observer, you were to glance around the table at a typical SF afternoon luncheon, you would doubtless be intrigued by the wide range of personality evident among the twelve incumbents. The dark-haired, tough-looking customer in the ROTC uniform, stra- tegically seated close to the door, for instance: he is Steve Carlotti, a denizen of Warwick, R. 1., and, starting next fall, of Yale Law School too; his concern is "The Organization and Rehabilitation of the New Haven Railroad," whose particular woes are, he claims, endemic to the railroad business in general. Carlotti is a married student, as is the Fellow next to him, Jon Moscartolo of Spring field, N. J., who has been busily painting away on a mammoth mural - 40' x 8' - entitled "Spectrum," and who has a Dartmouth General Scholarship to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. He is talking to Freeman Botnick of Norwich, Conn., an amiable researcher of "Perceptual Motor Integration and Displaced Vision," a topic that has led him to subject the other Fellows to psychological ordeals by close-circuit television, and which will eventually take him to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
On his right is a Buddha-like figure engaged at the moment in spilling the salt. This is Bruce Berman, nominally of Beverly Hills, Calif., but actually a voluble inhabitant of "The Political Kingdom: a Study of Socio-cultural Change and Political Development in Ghana." Berman is headed for the London School of Economics on a Reynolds; near him, his roommate Joel Jutkowitz, former editor of the Daily D, is patiently brushing salt off his lap and contemplating the Department of Political Science at Yale. Jutkowitz, when he is not stage-managing Players' productions or cleaning his pipe, amuses himself with "The Social Development of Malaya." The chap across the table from him, Greg Knight of Kenmore, N. Y., has a more down-to-earth interest in a similar area. His project is "The Ecology of Primitive Agriculture in the Tropics," but his immediate destination is not Pago Pago, but rather the University of Minnesota, courtesy of the National Science Foundation. Dana Atchley, on his left, another potential Yalie - School of Fine Arts this time is buttering a cracker with an ink-stained band; he has been setting up type for the printed version of the journal he wrote this fall while investigating modern and traditional book design in Europe.
In contrast to such bohemianism is the suave appearance of Ken Novack of Newton Center, Mass., a quietly eloquent advocate of "Government by the Consent of the Governed," an urbane ex-1926 Fellow, a tastefully married man, and obviously a natural for the Harvard Law School and a Dartmouth General. Con- versing with him is a jovial, distinguished looking gentleman who is not a SF at all, but Professor James Cusick of the Economics Department, mentor of the Program and, by consensus, the Best Adviser (Sweepstakes Division) that a group of Senior Fellows ever had. His ambrosial locks are at present nodding in the direction of Dave Butler, Wakefield, Mas contribution to the study of "The Use of the Grotesque in American Literature," and an inveterate patron of the American blue-jean. Butler is subtly hinting that the Wanderjahren he plans to spend in France are spiritually equivalent to the graduate work in History that Steve Spahn will do at Oxford; but Spahn, onetime star of the Dartmouth basketball team and 1926 Fellow, is musing, out loud, on "The Historical Roots of Instability in Argentina," and thus fails to notice the sting of Butler's barbs. Peter Israelson, in the meantime, is enthusiastically undercutting both of them. Israelson's radiant joie de vivre stems from certain temperamental resemblances to a jet-set Dmitri Karamazov; his year's work is a piece of bravura scholarship on "Shakespeare and Music," and his Reynolds to Oxford will hopefully offer him new worlds to conquer, or at least to snow. Completing the Da Vinciesque tableau is the most obscure of the SF's, Carl Maves, who is listening enthralled to the brilliant repartee of his colleagues. No one, unfortunately, has any idea where he comes from or what his project is.*
For him, and for the rest of the Fellows and the Senior Class as a whole, graduation is fast approaching, and with it, the end of what is already in the process of becoming a memory. Back at his dormitory, on a May evening, he tries reading while the spring air stirs fitfully on the curtains. A sophomore drops by, asking for advice on a major. They go over a course catalogue together; the sophomore leaves. Around 11, the senior feels restless; he throws aside his book and decides to go over to Hopkins Center for a snack. In the hallway, as he is leaving, two freshmen are heatedly discussing a Chemistry hour exam. Once outside, he walks past the library; its dark windows reflect the moon, its lighted wind ows show desks and chairs and students still at work. Now he is crossing the Green, slowly, and voices come to him in the night. "... not bad if you get a good prof, but..." ... threw a show like you've never seen, all during... Footsteps crunch solidly down; Dartmouth Row, looming to one side, is a block of light in the surrounding gray. . . won three and lost two, which is a pretty fair record . ... grad school, and then get a job . ... significant difference, because Plato says . ... so I figure while I have the chance, I'd better make the most... He misses the the completed sentences, but he knows them all by heart anyway; he walks on.
* We do. Carl Edwin Maves of La Canada, Calif., has been studying the works of Henry James as a Senior Fellow. As the holder of one of Dartmouth's Reynolds Scholarships, he will study English literature at New College, Oxford University, next year. We know him also as one of the best Undergraduate Editors the ALUMNI MAGAZINE has been fortunate enough to have.
Newest member of the Hanover dog pack,
