Letters to the Editor

A Faulty Decision

TO THE EDITOR:

I was extremely sorry to read of the faculty vote of January 31, 1969 which in effect withdraws the support that for many years Dartmouth has given to the training of reserve officers for service in our Armed Forces. That the withdrawal is to be gradual does not take away from its finality. Nor does the reasoning that military training has no place on the campus mask the fact that the basis of the decision is hostility to preparedness rather than the situs of the courses.

The faculty decision constitutes an affirmative step away from cooperation with our country in the most effective staffing of our Armed Forces and this action against our defense forces is so widespread that it will undoubtedly have a serious and destructive elfect.

Dartmouth has lived through similar campaigns before. I remember the "No More War" program of the Green International in 1933. I recall the undergraduate editorials and the fervent pledges not to fight. This was the time of the famous Oxford peace pledge. All were based on the mistaken theory that reducing one's military capability would somehow mollify the aggressors.

In the long run, however, it developed that there were predatory forces seeking our destruction active in the world and when the threat against us became physical and uncontrovertible, many of those who had been most pacifistic in student years became our most enthusiastic soldiers.

1969 is no time to begin dismantling the structure of defense that we have created over the years. Castro is still in business, so are Nasser and Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-Tung, not to mention the invaders of Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev, Kosygin, Koslov, Shelepin and their partners.

I hope that the Nixon thaw will continue and grow but I must say that it would be a brave man indeed who would predict what these worthies would do in the future and it is a foolish one who would guarantee that no danger would result to the United States from their activities.

So much for the merits. As to the timing of the decision itself, I suggest that giving in to pressures of this type leads inevitably to greater demands and progressively greater retreats. If the decision is wrong, it should not be made regardless of pressure. If the decision is right, it should be made independently and freely and not when the heat has been turned on.

Members of the ROTC are voluntary participants in the program. It is difficult to see why they should be discouraged from serving their country. The reliance in the faculty report upon the initiation of a lottery system purports to furnish an alternative solution of this pressing national problem, but in fact is meaningless since this method of selection has no chance of acceptance.

Dartmouth has faced the problem in a more direct way than Yale (whose decision was shamefully disingenuous) but I dispute the erroneous assumption upon which both proceed.

Member of Congress

Washington, D. C.

Students Consulted?

TO THE EDITOR:

I have just read the report leading up to the phasing out of the ROTC program. Nowhere did I have any evidence that the students had been consulted - in line with the times!

If 400 students have voluntarily chosen to take ROTC, eliminating the program would deprive that many smart young men of having an opportunity to prepare themselves for a short or long period of military life. Certainly they are being taught a respect for our country which seems to be missing in some of the academic world today.

Pasadena, Calif.

Editor's Note: There was student consultation. Student ROTC leaders met with the faculty study committee and other students had a chance to make their views known at open discussion sessions scheduled by the committee.

"A Welcome Sign"

TO THE EDITOR:

The Faculty's vote to phase out the ROTC program at Dartmouth comes as a welcome sign and a significant reminder to me that my alma mater continues to lead or, at least, keep pace with certain groups and institutions which are realizing that perhaps more rapid progress toward the demands of today's society can be achieved at the expense of programs whose raison d'etre ceased on board the USS Missouri, September 2, 1945.

Lieut, (j.g.), U.S. Navy

APO, San Francisco

In Defense of ROTC

TO THE EDITOR:

When I read about the Dartmouth faculty and administration downgrading ROTC because it is not compatible with the high academic standards and intellectual integrity to which Dartmouth claims to be solely dedicated, I can only conclude that the faculty and administration are running scared from a minority group of students who would make life difficult if they can

Perhaps the ROTC program could be improved or updated but, taking it as it is don't believe that students in the program have been intellectually stunted even thous they may have had to cut their hair shorter

I think the academic standards at Point are as high as Dartmouth's or any Ivy school's, and the intellectual horizons of C; dets as broad as those of Ivy students. Additionally, cadets acquire a dedication to Duty, Honor and Country not always found in Ivy products. I think this dedication makes a pretty good frame on which to hang the rest of a man so he can stand up straight and be counted when required.

Some Dartmouth men have served their country with selfless dedication. But it would seem, at least recently, that they must have had the backbone to begin with rather than anything Dartmouth could have built into them. Softness toward students seems to be the way of the new breed of administrators and instructors. Of course it's easier to sort of preside over bull sessions than to actually teach. Is there a yellow streak in all this? Or is it Machiavellianism?

Because there's nothing soft about administrators and Ph.D.'s when it comes to money. My last five years in the Army I was detailed to General Staff in the Pentagon. I developed, and then had to supervise, a non-material research program involving several Ivy schools as well as other leading universities from coast to coast. Today I can look back on it as an interesting experience ... as you can look back on combat you survived. At the time I would have preferred the Hong Kong flu.

I visited all the schools periodically and met many renowned scholars. They liked to chide me about my "military" mind, comparing my requirements for specifics with their intellectual "openness." But they were amazingly well organized to take Uncle Sam to the cleaners. It was my job to see that they didn't. Without exception, the college and university administrators were primarily concerned with getting the most favorable cost-plus (emphasis on "plus") contracts for their schools whether or not their schools had the competence to deliver as . promised. So much for the standards and integrity of the academic high command.

I think the administrators and teachers have some soul-searching to do. I don't acknowledge their right to let students regard themselves as mature leaders. Undergraduates are still in basic training to become leaders. Some discipline is indicated. I see only faculty irresponsibility in letting youngsters build dream worlds in which all becomes beautiful if everyone just thinks beautiful in his own beautiful way. That's just like raising pheasants in a sheltered yard and turning them free in the woods at the beginning of the hunting season.

There is no Utopia in sight. It's a world full of people who don't think beautiful Nobody has yet come up with a lovable answer to Stalin's question, "How many battalions does the Pope have?"

It takes strength for a nation to survive and the strongest nation you can build is one whose leadership is not only intellecmally enlightened but understands the need for disciplined organization for the good of all and a dedication to Duty, Honor and country. . . a concept which seems to be fading from the Ivy undergraduate scene and being helped out faster with the academic back of ROTC.

Colonel USA-Ret.

Union, Me.

Coeducation Questioned

TO THE EDITOR:

In your February issue it was demurely tucked between the cover of Fred Harris Cabin and the portrait of Francis Brown. By March it was a cover story in itself. The perennial issue is with us again, but now it enlists the support of "the findings of other institutions." Coeducation now has on its side the adolescent plea: "But Mom, all the other kids are doing it."

Before I continue I might say that I speak from the vantage of a student. I am not a wrinkled, wealthy alumnus who remembers only the good old days and forgets mid-winter syndrome. A recent graduate, I am now experiencing coeducation at Stanford University. I think the time and the place are amenable to viewing the issue with just perspective.

Why go coed? I believe almost everyone will admit the reasons behind coeducation are entirely social. Twenty bright minds in the classroom are twenty bright minds be they twenty male or twenty female or a composite of each. Women solve chemical equations and analyze Frost poems the same way men do. The argument concerning the scholastic advantages of "the feminine mind in the classroom" is a little bit of nonsense.

On the social level, the minimum ratio of men to women for sound coeducation seems to be about 60-40. At Stanford the ratio is two to one, and the student newspaper cries for a balance to rectify the "unhealthy" social climate caused by too many guys and not enough girls. And the complaints concerning the situation comeperhaps surprisingly - from women as often as they do from men. I have heard similar complaints concerning the coed situation at Cornell.

The move to "coeducation" by Yale is nothing more than tokenism. It makes good copy for the "Education" section of Time, but it does nothing for the student body. (However it does give leverage to Yale recruiters who can now tell their high school prospects that Harvard no longer has any advantages.) In effect, having a distinct minority of girls on campus in the guise of "coeducation" is somewhat of a cruel hoax.

How, then, does Dartmouth avoid tokenism and at the same time maintain its own character if it goes coed? How, for example, does it maintain its ideal student body size if it opts for true coeducation?

But as a member of the now generation I don't want to be accused of betrayal by being too rational. As a Stanford student body leader reportedly said last year, "It's time we stopped thinking and started feeling." Ergo, let us feel.

My own sentiments are first ones of pity for those who have not experienced the strong and unique fellowship I think only the non-coed Dartmouth can offer. Maybe its full meaning can't be totally appreciated until you've been out for a while, but the renowned Dartmouth fellowship is a very real thing. Somehow I can't feature it being the same if the "fellowship" were coed.

I don't feel socially stunted or sexually perverted because of my 36 months on The Plain, and I don't really know anyone who does. And I certainly have nothing against women.

A particular Lady is very close to me, though, and I don't want to see her drastically changed. Nor do I want to see her in the reported internal disarray of her rival Princeton - caused, it seems, by a quiet committee who decided to add a few tigresses to the Old Nassau den.

But it can happen.

Menlo Park, Calif.

"Wait It Out"

TO THE EDITOR:

Concerning coeducation at Dartmouth:

1. I believe that 90% of the alumni are against it.

2. 40% or more of the students are against it or are relatively uncommitted.

3. Financially who is to pay for this?

4. Let's name names as to who is for or against such a change.

It's said that this is the trend of the times. Then why not wait out the trend for a few years?

New Canaan, Conn.

"Hollow Stuff"

TO THE EDITOR:

Admittedly the image of the Dartmouth "animal" could be refined, inessential as it is to what Dartmouth really stands for. But I sometimes wonder if the current pressures for coeducation and a more liberal, if not libertine, academic experience are not clamorings of that same and very much unre- fined animal that lives in each of us and which, up until now, for better or for worse, we have felt it wise to suppress and keep in its proper place.

Today it appears that tradition is a dirty word and self-restraint a residual weakness or psychological hang-up left over from an outworn morality. I infer, from what I have read, that the solution to student problems lies in nurturing a "meaningful relationship" between the sexes, but I judge, from what I have seen, that this "relationship" is often made of hollow stuff and burns out faster than a short fuse touched to the torch.

Let us hope that academicians under fire are not forced to capitulate to the inscrutable whimsy of a "Playboy Philosophy," and that future moves toward coeducation and the abolition of long-standing parietals at Dartmouth be guided by a strong sense of history and the knowledge that these moves are irrevocable. The merits of coeducation just might be strong enough to justify the revision of a formula which has been working well for two hundred years. But it seems to me that if a closer relationship between the sexes did not help the Roman Empire, it can do little for Dartmouth.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Coeds Endorsed

TO THE EDITOR:

It has taken a little time for opinions to become convictions, but at this point I feel that they are sufficiently seasoned to mem expression.

I begin with a word of approbation for the administration in granting James Newton freedom to express himself as Valedictorian of his class. Dissent and protest, yes. violence and disruption, no. I am aware of the emotions stirred in many of his listeners and having a son in the active army reserve' I sympathize with their distress. But conventional habits of thought must be jolted and new thinking must be stimulated if man is to justify the belief that he is "something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions."

As part of this cry for enlightened thinking we must examine the massive build-up of the military-industrial complex - a complex so dangerously powerful as to elicit grave warnings from countless thoughtful citizens. Of awesome significance is the virtual certainty that if the military's estimates of their ability to win a decisive victory in Vietnam had materialized, we would indeed be inextricably involved in the "America Century," and would be determined to police the world and to impose a "Pax Americana" - a wholly immoral and untenable position.

I believe it was in this context, coupled with the moral and legal issues involved, that Mr. Newton spoke of not winning in Vietnam.

Another call for fresh thinking is found in the question of coeducation at Dartmouth, which I endorse. Being acquainted with coeducation in prep schools and at Middlebury, I am convinced that nothing else can accomplish as much to give young men and women an understanding of each other as persons, and at the same time provide opportunities for normal friendships between the sexes. Playboy has done a magnificent job of portraying girls as playthings to be viewed and appraised much as a new model car might be. Coeducation, with all its pitfalls, is one of the best means known to our society for elevating women from things to persons and for promoting true and meaningful sexuality.

Bethel, Conn.

If 50 Is Young . . .

TO THE EDITOR:

Thomas W. Braden '40 is an able man, so I was pleased to read in the MAGAZINE that he had been nominated by the Alumni Council as a Trustee, for a second five-year term.

It struck me, however, that your report noted that he is Dartmouth's youngest Trustee.

The same issue noted formation of committees to study coeducation and the functions of the Dartmouth presidency. Perhaps we also need a study of the Trustees, then functions and their relationship to the object of all this structure - the students.

If the youngest is 50 (just guessing, Tom), doesn't that say something about the Board as it sits today?

Amherst, Mass.

More Than Reported

TO THE EDITOR:

Regarding your article under The Faculty (April '69): Your contact with Robert College in. Istanbul, Turkey, is even closer than you realize. My husband, Walter W. Arndt, chairman of the Russian Department here, is a graduate of Robert College's Engineering School and subsequently taught engineering there. I myself, instructor in the German Department here, graduated from the American College for Girls, also situated on the European side of the Bosporus, only a few miles away from its brother institution. Also, just recently did I realize that my music professor at R. C. was a graduate of Dartmouth, Charles Estes '05.

Hanover, N. H.

Depressed Reader

TO THE EDITOR:

Reading the letters columns in the April issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE could be amusing were it not so depressing.

One could laugh at Mr. Norm Sherry's sentence, "Lee Bridges' 'Response to Dean Seymour' in the February issue is not too surprising, considering the connection with the London School of Economics," but I am depressed to be reminded that so many people of Mr. Sherry's era never got beyond Joe McCarthy. One could laugh at the incoherence of Mr. Royal I. Blanchard's letter about ROTC, but I am depressed that many letter-writers appear to be convinced that intemperate ranting is a substitute for coherent argument.

The most depressing letter of all, however, is that of Mr. David W. Heusinkveld '49. Consider, if you will, the following transparent absurdity: "Democracy is sacrosanct in our politics but has no place in the operation of a college." It boggles the mind! Are you ready for another? "Officers and teachers .. . should be convinced absolutely that they are more capable of deciding what is best for the students than are the students themselves." I am a teacher and if I ever felt that way, I'd quit. Let me quote another sentence: "The moral decay and associated rising crime rate in our country is in large measure due to permissiveness." What, Mr. Heusinkveld, is more symptomatic of "moral decay," the fresh, unhypocritical approach many of our young people take toward sex or the blatant racism of most people your age?

And one final one: "It is human nature for the immature to commit any act they find through experience that they can get away with it." That, Mr. Heusinkveld, is ridiculous. I have worked very closely for seven years with "the immature." I have seen that, treated as people and with the respect that any human being deserves, the young respond with maturity and responsibility. Indeed, granting that there have been excesses, I am convinced that campus disorders are mainly the result of the frustration young people experience in dealing with parents, officials, and teachers, who, like you, have decided that 21 is something other than a legal age, and who have closed their minds to anyone under it.

Meriden, N. H.

Transcendental Meditation

TO THE EDITOR:

Classmate Doug Greenwood's article on James Marsh (1817) and American Transcendentalism in the March issue was of par. ticular interest to me. For well over a year I have been practicing a technique known as Transcendental Meditation (as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). Unlike Marsh's Transcendentalism, meditation is a technique rather than a philosophy. Any philosophy is a series of thoughts but in meditation it is the thinking process which one transcends.

With the technique one learns how to reduce the perception of a thought to subtler and subtler levels until, perceived at the subtlest level, the thought drops off, leaving the thinker alone by himself in the state erf pure consciousness. Another way to describe this process would be to say that for the first time in life one goes from the situation describable as "conscious of..."to simply consciousness, or the source of thought. This expands the conscious capacity of the mind by enlivening the subtle ' levels of the nervous system as one perceives thoughts at subtler levels. For even state of the nervous system there is a corresponding state of mind. The nervous system can be cultured to support the direct perception of pure consciousness while maintaining normal activities. This is what Indian philosophy means by "liberation."

The process of transcending leads the meditator to that "higher knowledge than that acquired by the senses" of which Marsh talks by going beyond the senses (or any conditioning) while remaining awake. This state is unlike any other both experientially and from the standpoint of physiological readings which indicate much lower metabolic rate than in deep sleep, even though one is awake inside. In other words, it has been found that a different physiological state is gained corresponding to the state of experiencing Transcendental Consciousness.

A recent course at Dartmouth taught this technique to 26 people (including two professors). Over 1600 have learned in the Boston area, and there is a permanent center at 27 Concord Ave., Cambridge. Sean Fay '69 is the president of the new Dartmouth Students' International Meditation Society.

Dartmouth students (as well as all men in our pragmatic age) can now go beyond mere transcendentalism and directly experience the Bliss of the Transcendent (Marsh's "Divinity Within"). This direct experience leads to fulfillment on all levels of life. To point out the distinction once again -it takes more than the thought of water to satisfy a thirsty man.

Cambridge, Mass.