Letters to the Editor

"Long-needed Involvement"

TO THE EDITOR:

Traditionally, the process of higher education ends with graduation. What the conventional academic approach to education often lacks is an extensive inquiry into the relations between thinking and doing in our society. Dartmouth College through the student valedictory address, with Project ABC, with faculty participating in presidential primaries and finally through vociferous alumni letters, is clearly involved in society's problems. The plethora of mail from alumni represent stimulated expressions of thoughts, words, and actions directed to the College and to our affluent society. This communication I applaud as a healthy continuation of our educational experience, and more importantly because it represents man's inquiry into our urban, scientific-technological society, its ethical and moral foundations and the ramifications of these operating tenets.

Certainly the threats of chaos in some of the traditional local government functions such as public safety and education along with an unknown and unclear U.S. foreign policy indicate that all levels of government need re-evaluation as to priorities and programs. The mixed feelings of the American electorate with a minority President-elect emphasize the turmoil. After years of quietly building pressure, this volcanic openness must be considered a healthy part of the democratic process. As a nation divided with restricted suburbias and sick cities, the unequal and traditional rules of the government game must be changed. Dissatisfaction with bureaucracies, fights among interest groups to achieve maximum power within the system, have become forces affecting government. As opposing factions demonstrate their intent and pressure for change, should government - that public sector interested in the proper allocation of revenues to meet the needs of the people - be the focus of the discontent? Government must change its operations if it promotes inequalities and increases disparities within the general society. Violence and riot-revolution must be only a last resort for unequals seeking their fair share or opportunity.

Only through discussion and direct com- munication can the legitimate issues be aired. Communication, such as the comments in the latest issues of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, add to this evaluation. Hurrah to Dartmouth for its long-needed involvement.

Ithaca, N.Y.

Milton Gill

TO THE EDITOR:

The death of Prof. Milton Gill this past month is a very sad loss to Dartmouth and all who knew him. Regretfully I had only one course with him but it was the most memorable of all. Professor Gill's enthusiasm for music was deeply felt and yet uninhibited in his presentation, in his involvementwith students. Few will forget his constant motion between viewgraph, tape recorder, phonograph, and piano as he brought the essence of music to us, as he made it alive. I'm sure many more than myself made it to Rollins Chapel on a Sunday morning as much to hear Professor Gill play Bach as for any other reason. Never again can we listen to Bach, Beethoven or Mozart and read, sleep, or entertain our guests. I hope an endowed chair in the Music Department or a scholarship fund for music students can be established in memory of a great teacher and a great man.

Suffolk County AFB, N.Y.

Another National Gone

TO THE EDITOR:

My fraternity has just closed its doors at Dartmouth. It all happened so quietly and quickly that few are even aware of the fact. Chi Phi Fraternity, which had a 68-year existence on our campus, has been removed from the list of active chapters and has had its charter revoked by the Chi Phinational congress for an obviously premeditate and arbitrary action.

A year ago, the brothers decided that the National had seen its last initiation fee from new members at Dartmouth. The brothers decided and talked the chapter corporation into going along with them as a local. Realizing at the last that the alumni really should be informed, they drafted a letter apprising us of the situation and even called for our opinion. Unfortunately, the alumni never did hear the outcome of that poll, but it mattered little because the path had long since been set. The national fraternity itself made the final severance move as it obviously had to do with all the initiation fees months overdue and probably long ago spent on furniture or a few extra kegs for the boys.

It is unfortunate that the end of a long tradition has come. The real losers are future generations of Dartmouth men who will never know the difference. Such is life as it moves forward - or is it backward? With over half the Dartmouth fraternities now turned local, I suppose that general sentiment runs counter to mine, but I recall fondly my fraternal associations and what Chi Phi meant to me as a member and executive officer. As a member of the Chi Phi Club of New York, I met men from other chapters throughout the country and from all walks of life. Men such as newscaster Walter Cronkite, Gerald Phillipe, board chairman of General Electric, and Bill Phieffer, former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, all came to our dinners and were glad to speak on behalf of the fraternity system, surely not because they had nothing better to do but rather because they felt that the fraternity system had given them something special in the way of leadership ability and a more mature outlook As a local fraternity we now lose identity and the chance for such contacts with men from all the other chapters. We are just another "Ivy Club on an ivy campus."

To most readers, I suppose this letter will produce only a yawn, but for the few remaining who do not see the fraternity system as an anachronism on its last legs but rather as a real hope for the young men of promise in our country, it is a very sad commentary.

Short Hills, N.J.

Newton Notes (Cont.)

TO THE EDITOR:

The Newton affair, I see, still engages lively interest in your columns. Pro or con, we do his "valedictory" injustice by continuing debate. What he said he had a perfect right to say - considering that this is a free country and that he is a Dartmouth man. Vox clamantis in deserto!

I have read Mr. Newton's speech which. I must say, I found a bit cliché. A lot of people have been saying the same thing, perhaps a little better. He, not his speech, is the best argument for bringing the war to an end quickly. Surely, a Dartmouth valedic- torian should have something more interesting to say at Commencement than deliver himself of ill-tempered polemics.

Valley Cottage, N.Y.

TO THE EDITOR:

The Newton Valedictory still seems to excite comment and I write at long last to express a view that I have not seen in print.

Unfortunates such as Mr. Newton crop up with regularity in every college generation. The really distressing thing is that he got boos not from his classmates but only from the alumni present. What has Dartmouth done in four short years to one of the finest groups of teenagers ever to enter our gates?

The blame for this sad state of affairs must surely be placed on the administration and faculty. Their influence has now been made manifest. If today's search for truth at Dartmouth produces such a monstrous result it is time to use a broom.

Monticello, Ill.

TO THE EDITOR:

I too had a son in the Class of '68, and I too listened with great interest (and enthusiasm) to Mr. Newton's address. I have followed the correspondence you have published with great interest, and I would like to make a comment on the correspondence itself:

Your correspondents have argued both sides as to whether Mr. Newton was patriotic but they all seem to agree that "patriotism" is a cardinal virtue. Is it?

Mr. Newton took the truly Christian view that the first loyalty is to God as Truth and Justice. Those of us who do not believe in any God would take the view that the first loyalty of Man is to the survival of Man — not any limited political division, but Humanity as a whole. I can see loyalty to the immediate community, the area the individual can see and grasp, but the nation-state is an artificial thing, and perhaps from the point of view of survival a dead duck. In any event, patriotism as loyalty to a nation is not and should not be the first of the loyalties of man. Perhaps its very artificiality is the reason why it must be "inculcated" and why it is so hotly defended by the obviously unthinking.

Norwich, Vt.

Memories of President Nichols

TO THE EDITOR:

While roaming the Colgate campus I discovered in a hilltop cemetery overlooking both the university and the town a simple shaft inscribed:

ERNEST FOX NICHOLS Tenth President of Dartmouth College 1906-1916

The local story is that in the late 1890's four unmarried faculty members lived together and that all four found wives among the girls of the village. One of these was Ernest Fox Nichols, who came to regard Hamilton as home.

I cherish two memories of President Nichols.

At the presentation of the Greek play on May 20, 1910 I sat where I could observe the faces of Gen. Frank W. Streeter, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the College, attorney for the Boston and Maine Railroad, and commonly thought to be the real ruler of New Hampshire,'and President Nichols. General Streeter was a big hulk of a man with a perfect poker face, while President Nichols' rather delicate countenance seemed completely transparent. As they talked, the contrast between the two men was striking.

My only personal contact with President Nichols was in the fall of 1910 when the treasurer's office claimed I owed the College $125, while I contended that $62.50 was all that was due. They sent me upstairs over the old Dartmouth Bank Building (where Robinson now stands) to see the President. He decided in my favor! Such were the responsibilities of the President in 1910.

Hamilton, N.Y.

No More Dinosaurs

TO THE EDITOR:

I know now that I shouldn't have taken my 9-year-old granddaughter to Hanover last summer promising to show her the great dinosaurs which used to be on exhibition in Butterfield Museum. Naturally I thought they had been transferred to Wilson Hall, as people used to come from all over New England to see them. When I inquired about them at Wilson from slumbering workmen - a few attendants - and a group of student hippies - they looked at me in amaze- ment as though I were some visitor from outer space. Probably they thought I was looking for a live dinosaur, but at any rate I finally had to leave Hanover without so much as seeing a dinosaur bone! Now I am sure my granddaughter thinks I am a real "schmo" as she frowns whenever I mention Dartmouth.

What, if I do say so, became of those fine specimens and is there any chance that they might be somewhere else on the campus?

The Museum's Answer

TO THE EDITOR:

Thank you for allowing me to answer the letter from Maximilian C. Shaw '27 concerning the absence of "dinosaurs" in the Dartmouth College Museum. Mr. Shaw's memories of Dartmouth pre-date mine by a few years but I think that I can clear up the mystery of the extinction of the Dartmouth dinosaurs, at least.

When ButterfLeld was torn down to make way for Baker Library the specimens it contained were placed in storage until the library could be shifted from Wilson and the building prepared for the Butterfield specimens. When I arrived at Hanover in the fall of 1932 there were four large plaster casts of extinct animals on exhibit. As I remember one was of the shell of a very large tortoise, the original of which came from India. Another was of the shell of a Glyptodon, an armadillo-like creature. The skull of this one is still on exhibit in the Pleistocene case. A third was the cast of the skull & jaws of a Dinothenium, an elephant-like beast of Europe. The fourth was a cast of the skull of a Stegodon, another elephant-like beast from India.

All four casts, except for the skull noted above have been discarded from the Museum collections for three reasons: First, they were space-consuming objects in a building where space, both exhibit and storage, is at a premium. Secondly, they had "little teaching value since they were rather poor casts by modern standards and since all four animals that they represented were side branches of the main line of evolution of their groups. And lastly, except for the Glyptodon, they had nothing to do with the paleontology of this country.

There was a fifth cast that you may have seen in Butterfield and that, when I was a student, hung on the wall of the lecture hall in Silsby. It was of the complete skeleton of a Ptesiosaur, possibly the closest relative of the dinosaurs of the bunch. A few years ago, when the lecture hall was refurbished, this cast disappeared. The Museum was not notified and, even if we had been, there would have been nothing we could do about it because of the lack of space.

I am sorry that Mr. Shaw has lost face with his granddaughter and I am exceedingly sorry that I was away from Hanover at the time of their visit so that I might have given a guided tour to the little dinosaur material we do have.

Director