LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

What About Indian Boys?

TO THE EDITOR:

I read in the January issue of the plans for "Project A.B.C." to uncover and develop underprivileged and disadvantaged secondary-school students from minority groups, particularly Negro, in order to prepare them for college and leadership. It's an ambitious and highly laudable endeavor, but might I make one observation and suggestion?

Dartmouth College was and is a direct outgrowth of Moor's Indian Charity School. If the Negro is a "second class citizen" in our country, the poor Indian must be, at best, third class, living in poverty virtually isolated on his reservation. Would it not thrill all Dartmouth to recapture the tradition of the Indian Charity School? Could we not find at least one Indian boy to send to this eight-week project this summer?

The Indian numbers are small, 800,000, and his voice weak, in contrast to the gro's millions. Who will be his champion? "The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness" still applies to the Indian, as witness the enclosed newspaper article about his need for help.

If our conscience bothers us because of the exploitation of Negroes, as indeed it should, what about the noble redman whose lands we took over and whose numbers we reduced almost to extinction? How wonderful it would be for him to hear a real Wah Hoo Wah from Dartmouth!

Statesville, N. C.

Thanks from Boston

TO THE EDITOR:

Information concerning the very successful celebration of the 100 th anniversary of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Boston will be found elsewhere in this issue. As the one privileged to be president during this significant year, I would like to take this means to express sincere appreciation to the Dartmouth Clubs from Hong Kong to Hanover that swamped us with messages of all types, even in verse. We appreciate the outpouring of good will and accept the challenge of the Hanover Area Club to compete in efforts to improve our service to the College.

The scope of our celebration required more than the usual amount of cooperation from the College staff in research and planning. Our annual dinner was designed to honor the two College Presidents who have done so much for alumni groups - Drs. Dickey and Hopkins. In our work with the College staff we found that the same high standard of professional efficiency is in that area too. This should surprise no one, as Dartmouth would not be where it is today without superior leadership and administration.

Boston, Mass.

There's Just No Time

TO THE EDITOR:

Somebody ought to tell Robert Cort '26 who complained that he never heard any Dartmouth songs between the halves, that he ought to get with it. Anyone knows that a college band can never, but NEVER, jUSt parade up and down the field playing the old favorites like Eleazar Wheelock, The Backs Go Tearing By, Dartmouth Undying or the alma mater just as they were written. You have to put on a combination of a Broadway musical and a parody on national events and there's just no time left for the familiar songs.

And if you ever did get the band to play the sentimental old corn, people listening on radio would never hear them because the between-halves "experts" take over with their "expert" comments.

Palm Beach, Fla.

"Arm-Chair Theories"

TO THE EDITOR:

Integration, Communism, Universal Religion, etc., are nice arm-chair theories but people would have to be a lot more like animals and a lot less like human beings to live out these theories. If this is not a truism then we have learned but little in our study of Man.

Philadelphia, Pa.

"It Won't Be Popular"

TO THE EDITOR:

I call to your attention and propose that you print the following statement by President Louis T. Benezet of the Claremont Graduate School and University Center (a good Dartmouth man as his father was before him), even though it won't be popular with the lads up there who are strutting around pounding their chests:

Current sociological research is revealing that even the most stringently selected student body will be found to contain only a minority of true scholars upon entrance. The rest may be bright and able grade-get-ters; but they will be found typically a good many miles or years short of genuine motivation for the life of the mind.

Disregarding this, the most selective colleges have delivered their working philoso- phy into the hands of the professoriate. The professors have taken the entering students scores almost literally to mean that their classes are now 100 per cent filled with young scholars able, willing, and ready. Academic workloads accordingly have been increased by as much as 50 per cent. The popular tri-semester plan, for instance, has been grasped as an opportunity to make each of the three courses per term an exercise of heroic proportions, as if each student in the class were preparing for a professional career in that subject. Sixty years, ago William Rainey Harper of Chicago warned against this trend.

At the same time, what used to be called courses of general education courses aimed at a nonprofessional approach to a subject, often tying it in with other subjects or with various contemporary ideas and problems have been abandoned by the selective colleges in favor of a return to the approach of the academic specialist. The common remark is that such courses are an insult to the modern good student.

Insult or not, what it means is that for the beginning student or the amateur scholar less and less appears in the selective-college curriculum. He is expected to plunge into the professor's own world of scholarship and sink or swim. This I find to be the true condition of curriculum in those colleges of our land that are presently boasting the most finely selected student bodies and charging by many hundreds of dollars the highest prices.

The simplest result of it all is that certain of these colleges are earning once again an old label; Grind school. Conscientious professors and worried about it, but they see, neither the cause nor the cure.

New York, N. Y.

An Appreciative Reader

TO THE EDITOR:

To the one or ones who composed the editorial on Page 11 of the January number an accolade for its gracious and satisfying' contents. We all will admit that the atmosphere about us has a tremendous influence on our behavior both mental and physical

Englewood, N. J.

Credit belongs to only one: AssociateEditor Ray Buck '52.

A Kennedy Bowl?

TO THE EDITOR:

Much has transpired in the several months since the untimely and unfortunate death of the late President Kennedy. A great deal has been done throughout the nation and the world to commemorate his name and honor. So much of this well-deserved tribute, however, was carried out at a time when the peoples of the world were undergoing a delirious and unparalleled emotional crisis that testimonial was largely that of changing the names of many long-standing and well - established projects, airports and urban renewal programs. There has been only a modest amount of original thinking given to the subject.

President Kennedy was not only an outstanding statesman and humanitarian, but continued to enjoy the pleasures of the sporting world. He enjoyed Ivy League football both at Princeton and Harvard and continued his interest in his spare moments away from the White House. I think it fitting therefore that tribute be paid in the form of a sporting event. I propose that a football bowl game be established in President Kennedy's name (The John F. Kennedy Bowl) to be played annually at Harvard Stadium between the Ivy League champion and the winner in a comparable league such as could be found in the mid-west or perhaps mid-Atlantic states.

Since the Ivy League schools are not permitted to participate in postseason bowl games, I think this would be a selective honor to the late President as well as to Harvard University, the entire Ivy League, and national sports. In addition I might add that this consummates an original idea to pay homage to a great man rather than changing names to suit the situation.

Cleveland, Ohio