Letters to the Editor
A Coaching Miracle
TO THE EDITOR:
The 200 or so fans who saw the Dartmouth-Princeton game at Hanover last season may or may not remember that Coach Bill Van Breda Kolff and his Tigers humiliated rookie coach Dave Gavitt's Indians, 116-42, rolling up the score in order to remain the No. 4 rated team in the country. After the game Coach Gavitt said to me, "You wait. It may take us five years, but they're going to regret this night."
Needless to say, it has not taken Dave five years. It only took him one. Last night his sophomore-laden Indians defeated Princeton, 62-60, knocking an 18-4 Tiger team from the top of the Ivy heap. Furthermore his club has beaten five other Ivy opponents and has a shot at three more wins against Yale, Brown, and Harvard. We haven't had a winning Ivy basketball season since Rudy LaRusso muscled the Indians to the top in 1959. Gavitt, by the way, was the sixth man on that team.
In basketball one cannot underestimate the importance of the coach. Look at the New York Knicks under Red Holtzman. At present Columbia is leading the league and there has been talk that Lion coach Jack Rohan may be named Coach of the Year.
Those who have witnessed the change in fortune of the Indians this year might tend to differ, however. Gavitt has been using a combination of senior Joe Colgan, a bunch of sophs, and mirrors to put the Green solidly in the first division of the Ivy League this season. He's done an incredible job. Furthermore, if Coach Gavitt can get the students, the alumni, and the administration solidly behind him, it is certain that Dartmouth will rank among the basketball elite for many years to come.
New York, N. Y.
All Dartmouth delights in the fact thatCoach Gavitt has been named New England's 1968 Coach of the Year.
Vietnam Protest
TO THE EDITOR:
The overriding issue of our times is, without question, the war in Vietnam.
I shall not argue the rights or wrongs of our being there. I want to tell other Dartmouth men what we are doing, now that we are there.
From the peace-loving nation we all knew, or thought we knew, we are become the most jingoist nation on earth, with weapons that beggar description. Nothing like them has been seen, or thought of, in warfare before. Good old American know-how certainly knows how! From returning soldiers I have been made privy to a few of our scientific triumphs!
Mini-guns mounted on Huey Hog helicopters. These little beauties are a rotating, multi-barreled machine gun which can fire 6000 rounds of 30-caliber ammunition in one minute. These are used to "hose down" rice paddies. There might be VC there.
For the villages, we reserve napalm, which not alone burns everything within great areas but also exhausts all oxygen, thereby asphyxiating any persons not burned, and has the additional advantage of seeping into any interstice or crack and therefore can reach the inhabitants taking refuge in formerly safe underground shelters and incinerate them. Only recently the "new, improved" model has been made available. Water will not extinguish it; hence, it can be used equally effectively in the paddies!
Do you know about that little gem, the Cluster Bomb? It's a long canister filled with metal tennis balls. Within each ball are smaller balls. When released, these can lawnmow anything or anybody within a hundred yards. So far - so good. Again, American ingenuity has improved it. The new "guava" bomb, dropped from one fighter bomber, can shred an area a mile long and a quarter mile wide. ...
And all the time, over all, the Forward Air Controllers (FACS) hover looking for signs of life below. If they spot activity of any kind and they seldom can ascertain just what it is they are privileged to let go. If people run from the attack, well, then naturally they're suspect, else why would they run? They then call in the B-52's. These carry 3000 lb. bombs. Each can set fire to an area of 50 miles and turn everything in the entire area into a cinder. ...
I could go on and on. I do not editorialize. These are the facts, as reported. And yes "Charley was there."
I write you this because we are all in such a bind that there is little one can do but raise a voice of protest in the name of all we've ever been taught, and hope that when we share such information, others will too.
New York, N. Y.
"An Appeal to Conscience"
TO THE EDITOR:
I see from the last ALUMNI MAGAZINE that Neil Robertson of my class ('66) burned his draft card. I returned mine on the same occasion he did, the October antiwar week. I hope people will realize that our act of protest is an appeal to the conscience of our fellows, not a rejection of conscience. We put ourselves on the line for prison to tell you that our belief is as deep as those of our friends now dead in Vietnam, that no coercion will force us to fight against the belie, of our conscience nor will we be silenced in our protest of that immoral coercion.
New Orleans, La.
"In Our Day"
TO THE EDITOR:
In our day, thank God that we Were not involved with LSD; Our hair was cut and sometimes clean, We never talked back to the Dean.
I wonder now what college men Would think of curfew (was it ten?).
There would today be demonstrations And innumerable orations To show their lack of veneration For the older generation.
In our day - it was different then, We were sensible young men.
The world, we knew, was in a mess But we were ready, let's confess, To put it right when we took charge.
How does it look now by and large?
Portland, Me.
Short-Changed
TO THE EDITOR:
On receiving the January issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE I looked with some anticipation for an account of the football game at Princeton. You know what I found!
It seems to this voice crying from the wilderness that if other games in the season are worthy of a write-up, surely the Princeton game, which from the score must have been quite an epic, was deserving of the same treatment.
Calgary, Canada
The Band Program (Concluded)
TO THE EDITOR:
I read with dismay and deep concern the two letters published in the January issue telling of the affair between-the-halves at the Dartmouth-Princeton game last fall.
can find no other mention of this spectacle in that issue of the MAGAZINE. NO comment, either for or against, from any of the Administrative Staff, the Faculty, the Band, or the present Student Body.
If those two letters tell the story with reasonable accuracy, surely someone in the College community with brothers or relatives fighting or perhaps dying under Soviet-supplied weapons would want to know how the Dartmouth Band could publicly praise the Soviet Union. And so do I.
New Castle, Pa.
TO THE EDITOR:
A Wah-Hoo-Wah for Geoffrey Azoy, Princeton, and Bob Scott '62 for their forthright criticism of the unusually poor taste of the Dartmouth Band programming a salute to the USSR.
After the mealy-mouthed manner in which the matter of misconduct by students at the Wallace meeting was handled it is not surprising that the college administration should try to be all things to all people. ...
"Whither the wind bloweth there is my path." And that leads only to a loss of traditions and ultimately to a loss of the freedoms which so many of our predecessors at Dartmouth and in fact our contemporaries and younger have paid the highest price to protect.
Japan
