THE UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR
THE College's three-day annual experiment in coeducational living, better known as Winter Carnival, was once again a happy disaster - disastrous indeed for any intended studying in the days before and after, but happy, nay more, glorious, in its excitement, its revelry, and its carefree abandon. Oh yes, you'might hear that "this isn't really our best weekend ... too crowded ... too busy ... too cold ... wait 'til you see Green Key." But that's all a sham. Anyone can have a spring weekend; only Dartmouth has Winter Carnival.
The signs that Winter Carnival 1964 was going to be one of the all-time great big weekends showed early. Fitting in well with the theme "Snow Business" was the announcement by ABC-TV that two shows of their reincarnated American Bandstand, now folk-flavored and known as "Hootenanny," would be taped at Carnival in Webster Hall.
Then "Oscar," the 37-foot Indian standing on the center-of-campus in the attitude of the statuettes they pass out in Hollywood, was being finished ahead of schedule; so a "reflecting rink" was constructed beneath him. Fireworks were added to the program.
Accommodations for Thursday night, usually available, were booked solid more than a week in advance. The College hostesses reported a new high for rooms sold, and this number, together with the girls staying in fraternity houses and hotels, indicated a record number of dates, probably over 2500. The housing shortage" was acute enough that some student called up a local inn on the Monday after Carnival to reserve a room for next year.
Another indicator was the ticket "black market." Tickets to the Harvard hockey game Saturday morning were sold out two weeks in advance. Signs on the bulletin boards in Thayer Hall and Hopkins Center signalled the dizzying upward spiral of their prices. On one sign which offered to trade play tickets plus cash for hockey seats someone had scrawled, "See God, Room 511 Heaven."
Watching the small groups studying the signs and talking nervously in lowered voices, one had visions of some mastermind, a would-be robber baron, perhaps a second-year Tuck student, trying to "corner the hockey ticket market as a seminar project. You could see him sitting in his undershorts, smoking a fat cigar, and keeping lines open to the "exchanges" in Hopkins and Thayer. Buying through agents from the official sources he could have picked up the tickets at $1 each. On Thursday before Carnival he had to be ready to sell. Beads of sweat might appear on his forehead and roll down his flaccid jowls as the prices came in ... $5 a pair ... $7 ... $7.50 ... $8.25. He walked to the window and looked out across Tuck Mall, thinking that at any time amateurs whose dates had "shot them down" at the last minute might dump their tickets on the market and send prices crashing. Flicking his ash on the vermilion carpet, he walked across to the phones, picked each up and said one word, "Sell."
If he sold out at $8 a pair, however, he'll never replace Uncle Danny Drew and the boys. Sports Information received a call Thursday offering $25 for one ticket, but there was none to be found.
Another interesting economics term paper might be done on the Fluctuating Price Structure of Hootenanny Tickets. ABC originally gave out the tickets as free passes on a first-come, first-served basis, but shortly before the start of the festivities they were going at over $4 a pair. But on Carnival Friday it was announced that singer-guitarist Josh White would not appear. The bottom fell out of the market.
By Friday afternoon the tickets had been bought and the dates were here. Many went down to admire the Field House while the Harvard tracksters trounced the Indians. That night blonde Sandy Pierce, a 5-foot-4-inch package of female pulchritude neatly done up in cranberry stretch pants and a delicious pink sweater, was crowned Queen of the Carnival Snows. Sandy, of the University of Massachusetts and Hartsdale, N. Y., could say only, "I can't believe it. I'm hungry." This year the Queen's duties were sharply reduced and the position made more of an honorary one, giving her majesty an opportunity to spend some time with her date.
The Players decided to forego the usual musical and try something a little more esoteric, namely The Story of Vasco by little-known but much-loved French playwright Georges Shehadè. The play was not in keeping with the Carnival Spirit and suffered criticism for that; but the production was well done and by its conclusion brought some of the more soberminded elements of the audience into what the program notes described as "a world as innocent and as exaggerated as the jungles and deserts on the canvases of the douanier Rousseau."
The Glee Club was in fine voice and the basketball team lost - both of which were expected. The surprises came on Saturday morning, and most of them were reserved for the Harvard hockey team.
Game time was 11 a.m., but long before then the general admission seats were filled. When the teams skated out for their pre-game warm-ups most people were on second helpings of their hot dog and Coca-Cola breakfasts. The Indians came out first and there was something in the way they sprinted around the rink that tipped us all off, something in Capt. John Carpenter's smile that said this would be an amazing game. When the Cantabs arrived on ice the expressions of displeasure almost drowned out the Dartmouth Five's stirring rendition of "M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E." The Harvard goalie was visibly shaken by the catcalls and jeers which accompanied each practice shot he missed. During the game seven of the 34 shots that came whistling at him would zip by.
"That was the greatest crowd I have ever seen, as a player or a coach," said Coach Ab Oakes after the game. "Our boys played fine hockey, but the fans really won the game."
The Indians took only two minutes to score and the crowd went wild. "I've never heard anything like this," one sweet young thing screamed in her date's ear. "Wait 'til one of them gets hurt," he told her.
After the team in Green had notched its third goal in the first period one fan solicitously wondered if the Harvard goalie "might get a sunburn on the back of his neck from that red light" which kept flashing behind him. The Big Green rolled it up, triumphed 7-1.
The ski team didn't fare as well. They surrendered the Carnival Cup to Middlebury's overpowering Alpine squad, and if the Austrians were wondering where their snow was, we hadn't seen it. There wasn't enough for even a token snowball fight out at the jump, thus cancelling a tradition as old as Carnival - or at least as old as jumping.
The "Snow Business" theme inspired some top-notch statues. Harvard University was featured in Wheeler Hall's tableau, "A School for Scandal," and a rotund pig, perennial symbol of the poorly-endowed blind date, was captioned "Take Her, She's Mine" by Hitchcock Hall. The fraternities also did fine work, some of which, like "How to Succeed in Business" must have barely made it past the IFC censorship board.
For Carnival the Jack-o-Lantern came up with a great effort in its scathing satire of "Hootenanny." In their version, M.C. "Jack Finkletter" introduces the Beach Boys "doing one of their favorite old folk tunes," which goes, "Michael row your board ashore, / Wipe out, wipe out; / Broke both legs, can't surf no more,/ Wipe out, wipe out." Inspection of the audience shots discloses a sign saying, "Ugly people don't cross this rope," and a placard, "Where Is Pete Seeger?" In another section the Jack-o advised students: .. if your date is sufficiently a horror, try to sit up front. No doubt the ushers will try to stop you, but we think that a good show of rowdiness seen coast- to-coast can be quite a satisfying experience." For the grand finale of the Jack-o Hootenanny the entire cast joins that "great singer of ballads and blues, Roy Rogers" in singing "Happy trails to you, until we meet again. ..."
The weekend came to a crashing, semiofficial, and somewhat pagan conclusion at 7:25 p.m. Sunday when four unidentified axe-wielders chopped down Oscar for reasons best, indeed only, known to themselves. Buildings and Grounds duly carted the big Indian away to some final resting (melting?) place and we faced up to the hour exams and papers that had somehow slipped out of mind.
PIRATES
Speaking of humor magazines, TheDartmouth got into the act recently when the directorate which was to take over the reins of that paper on Carnival "pirated" an edition from the outgoing directorate.
The issue, appearing on Tuesday before Carnival, announced that the weekend had been postponed due to "a severe German measles epidemic." Also on the front page were stories about the forced closing of Thayer Hall by the New Hampshire State Board of Health and a new process for the "production of ethyl alcohol from tap water and atmospheric
carbon dioxide." They had learned of the alcohol breakthrough by noticing "large piles of empty orange juice cans accumulating on the third floor of Steele Hall."
The beauty of the spurious edition was that the articles were almost "straight" enough to be true. Mrs. Joseph R. Boldt Jr. of Westport, Conn., for example, read the lead story about the College admitting 400 coeds next fall and went straight to the phone to call Deborah Boldt, 16, at Northfield School. Mrs. Boldt wanted to be sure that Deborah wrote for her application right away, remembering that the earliest applicants get the best rooms.
Carnival Queen Sandra Pierce of Hartsdale, N. Y., a Univ. of Massachusetts freshman,and her court: Ruth Lythcott of Accra, Ghana; Sage Dunlap of Woodbury, Conn.;Joan Flounders of Hingham, Mass.; and Roberta Graef of Ridgewood, N. J.
Richardson's winning dormitory statue featured, naturally, the Beatles.
Judged best of the fraternity statueswas Tri-Kap's graceful dancing couple.
