IN writing a column like this there is always a temptation to start off describing the weather. As mundane a subject as it is, the weather so often seems to catch the essence of a mood. It reduces complexity. It speaks for us. On rare occasions I step outside and taste the air, look at the trees and the sky and the land. For a moment I am completely infused with what I see. At those moments what I sense in nature is what I feel ... an overwhelming exuberance at simply being able to walk in the out-of-doors. I would like to mark the moment with a display of physical grace or trumpet voluntaries, but that is only a dream. The experience is fleeting . . . lasting perhaps only seconds, minutes if one is lucky. But those moments stand out in my memory as benchmarks of hope and renewed possibility.
What is the rest of the time like? It has been described. The worn paths connecting mail box, dormitory, dining hall, and place of study. Walking those paths with eyes down rarely even seeing the land or the buildings, preoccupied with things of seeming urgency. The eyes stray from the ground to watch a girl or a woman pass. The brutal tradition of slowly undressing the passing female with a critical, appraising eye persists as strongly as ever. Perhaps it really isn't brutal; after all, we are human. "Who so looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart." If Christ is right, who can claim innocence? More to the point, the formula is meaningless. We recognize our sexuality without pretense. We accept it.
The Winter Carnival approaches and we are exhorted to work on the center-of-campus snowman. As usual, the January thaw leaves a dirty landscape of frozen mud and snow for the winter weekend. An outdoor skating rink is set up on the Green for the Carnival ice show. Someone should have thought of that before. It would be fun to have outdoor skating on the Green all winter.
This year the Carnival will serve as a backdrop for one of Playboy's foldout features. The wife of a Dartmouth student has been tapped by lady fortune to unveil her undoubtedly well-rounded body. Of course the unveiling will not be at Carnival . . . that will be in a Chicago studio. Dartmouth will be her Eldorado. Our Ivy League temptress will undoubtedly be pictured gaily stuffing snowballs down the back of her smilingly tolerant boyfriend (we can't let on she's married). Our hip young lass digs skiing and so off she goes to the Carnival jump where her lively conversation and magnetic personality make her the center of attention. Always on the move, our hero satisfies her literary bent as she stops by Baker Library on her return from the jump to spend a relaxing thirteen minutes browsing through James Joyce's Ulysses. And so it goes. The script is full of excitement and sex appeal. We can wait.
For the others at Carnival the activity centers around concerts (The Rotary Connection and Gordon Light-foot), the Glee Club, a Dartmouth Players production of Lysistrata, the ice show, the ski competitions, and the fraternity parties. As usual the bands will be loud and the beer will be abundant. Those who belong to fraternities and many of those who do not will spend a good part of the weekend in one fraternity or another. An increasing number take advantage of the three-day vacation and leave town. The freshmen have their own party at the DOC House on Occom Pond.
It is on the weekends like Winter Carnival that the fraternities play their most visible role. The role seems to be in keeping with the long-held traditions and in some cases it actually is. But for the most part there has been change within the system. Some say the fraternities are dying and some say they are changing drastically. Both are overstatements. Essentially the fraternities have moved in the same general direction as the whole student body. Having never joined a fraternity myself, my impressions have always been somewhat remote. Consequently in late January I sent out 200 questionnaires to members of all 24 fraternities. The information and observations from those questionnaires form part of the basis for my discussion.
A majority of the houses have now "gone local," severing their ties with the national organizations and taking on new house names. Some of the best include: Heorot, an old English mead hall; Foley House, named after Professor Emeritus Al Foley; Tabard, the inn where Chaucer's pilgrims related the Canterbury Tales. Going local saves a good deal of money in dues to the national organization, a factor of increas- ing importance as the fraternities face more and more financial difficulties. The locals also don't have to deal with the detailed regulations and requirements that the national organizations impose. Fewer students place importance on the fraternity rituals, although many still value what they regard as an informal brotherhood or network of friendships among those in their house.
Fraternity members responding to the survey universally indicated that fraternities have become more casual in the last few years. Said one, "The atmosphere has become more relaxed, less superficial with more emphasis on individual interests." The traditional aspects of fraternity are being down- played. "The hell-night crap is dying," said one member of Phi Delt. "There's no pressure in being a brother and that's great." Another described the fraternities as moving away from the "Big Greener attitude." The reasons for joining the fraternities remain primarily social. The house provides sophomores with hitherto unavailable facilities for their social life. But after joining primarily for social reasons many say that the friendships they have developed through the fraternities have come to mean more to them than the social benefits.
In the last few years a number of attempts have been made to ease the rule barring freshmen from the fraternities. In the spring of 1967 a spring pre-rush was instituted for the freshmen and apparently it is a slight improvement. A move to open the fraternities completely to freshmen during the spring term was defeated in early February. However, it seems likely that the freshman barrier will fall eventually as artificial distinctions become increasingly distasteful.
One long-standing factor that has limited the role of Dartmouth fraternities is the rule against providing meals for the membership. This denies the members a regular excuse to get together under completely natural circumstances and use the facilities of the house. Many students who belong to fraternities and live in dormitories rarely visit their house more than once or twice a week.
A number of houses have taken on significant social service functions. Four houses, AXA, SAE, Sigma Theta, and Bones Gate, have each adopted responsibility for manning a Project ABC residential house in the Upper Valley. The ABC units house high school students from around the country who have come to local communities by way of a summer program at Dartmouth for special college preparation. The four ABC houses are located in Hartford and Woodstock, Vermont, and Lebanon and Claremont, New Hampshire. Each fraternity supplies two full-time resident assistants each term as well as providing three additional students each weekday night to help with homework tutoring. Another house, Alpha Theta, is involved in a "big brother" program in which members of the house work with local boys. DKE, in a radical reversal of style, is now known for its art exhibitions and its dramatic productions. In an experiment last fall DKE made it known that it planned to "sink," or accept for membership, any student who wished to join the house. This was a significant departure from the traditional means of selecting "pledges."
If the fraternities are more relaxed and less self-conscious these days, it is due in part to the loosening of most social restrictions throughout the College. With the dropping of all specific parietal regulations students feel their private lives are finally their own. The College does not attempt to impose its own standards on social behavior. There are a number of administrative regulations on the books but those who are discreet are rarely disturbed.
For the most part students at Dartmouth lead fairly quiet, normal lives. Each person makes what he can of what is offered. For some it is the pursuit of a profession, for others a semi-vacation, and for others it is a time for intellectual exploration whether within or without the classroom. For quite a few it is a time to sort themselves out. Each of these possibilities, among many more, has its own legitimacy for different individuals. Perhaps the hardest thing for a Dean to know is when a student should be left alone, allowed to pursue the unorthodox. Through all of this each of us has those occasional fleeting moments of acutely remembered experience. It is often hard to tell which of these moments should be pursued and which should be accepted without pursuit. A letter written by a former Dartmouth professor to a friend of mine touches on this. It begins:
"Eyes seeking the response of eyes Bring out the stars, bring out the flowers .. .
"This is from Robert Frost. I'm sure there's something from Shakespeare which would do the trick, but this is what came unsought into my mind. Except that I misquoted the first line: Eyes meeting the response of eyes: a subtle shift, it includes the idea of reciprocity, which seeking doesn't. But with my change I think you must recognize the phenomenon: meeting someone on a street, or in a crowd; a sudden smile, perhaps not even a smile, just a glance, and a spark as between two poles flashes. A more or less universal phenomenon, probably, even human vegetables must experience it, certainly lechers. But I'm not talking about either of these categories. To those I'm thinking of - the intelligent, the sensitive, the imaginative, the creative, the discriminating (especially these) it may happen often but not too often.
"Such an experience is haunting because of its transient, ephemeral quality: it has no consummation, no resolution; it remains in the realm of dream, fantasy. If its possibilities were to be realized the aura of romance would fade, vanish: if one were so rash - and this can be done in fiction, of course — as to act on the impulse to follow it up, pursue the fleeting relationship, one would most likely end up in disillusionment or in bed."
Deborah Noyes, a Skidmore junior whois the daughter of Carl B. Noyes '37and sister of Dave '70, is escorted tothe campus ice show to be crownedQueen of Dartmouth Winter Carnival.
"Frosty," a 35-foot snowman with along carrot nose and Dartmouth scarf,was this year's center-of-campus statue.