Letters to the Editor
Coeducation (Cont.)
TO THE EDITOR:
Every Dartmouth alumnus whose fondness for the College takes the form of wishing for her a bright future of service to society must enthusiastically applaud the preliminary recommendations of the Trustee Study Committee regarding coeducation, as these were outlined to the Alumni Council in January and to the entire alumni body in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE of February 1971. As one such alumnus I congratulate the committee—composed of students, faculty members, administrative officers, alumni and trustees—and single out Trustee Dudley Orr, committee co-chairman, for his masterful presentation of the committee's case for coeducation.
To my mind, the committee's recommendations and Mr. Orr's analysis rank with the most memorable of the historic documents concerned with Dartmouth's 200-year development. I urge every alumnus who did not read Mr. Orr's statement to do so, for it is to be doubted that any analysis of the pros and cons involved "in the case for coeducation at Dartmouth could improve on his report.
Winnetka, Ill.
TO THE EDITOR:
I read with interest and increasing concern the report of the co-chairman of the Trustee Study Committee concerning the subject of coeducation in the February 1971 issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.
In spite of the fact that the studies and reports deal at great length with the peripheral issues, I have yet to find a presentation on the most important questions:
Will a greater feminine presence improve the quality of the educational experience which is being provided the undergraduate at Dartmouth? If so, why?
If an affirmative and convincing answer can be given to these questions, then I for one would be considerably more enthusiastic about determining how it can be done, when it can be accomplished, what a noble step it would be, what legal entanglements might possibly be avoided in the future, what financial problems might possibly be solved, and who is in favor of it.
Cumberland Foreside, Me.
TO THE EDITOR:
Much has been written about coeducation, pro and con. My concern here is not about coeducation, per se, but the more important issue behind it, the potential division of the strongest alumni body in the country. None of us wants to see that happen. The damage could be irreparable.
While Dartmouth has fared comparatively well during the past few years of campus unrest, there is considerable uneasiness among the alumni over both incidents and philosophies in Hanover. The removal of ROTC, depriving students of their freedom of choice and the military of essential civilian influence, is one example.
The alumni are concerned over the seemingly increasing preferences for student and faculty opinion over that of the alumni from whom comes a substantial part of the financial support of the students and faculty.
Now they are concerned over the report of the Trustee Study Committee on Coeducation. Rightfully or wrongfully, it has been interpreted as not being the objective study it was supposed to be.
Too much confusion and too much opposition to coeducation among the alumni makes a final decision on it premature at this time. The unaninimity of Dartmouth College and the solidarity of its alumni are paramount; coeducation is secondary at this time.
President Kemeny has declared this a year for sober thought and discussion. Why the haste over coeducation? Give the alumni more time to study and digest the issue. Let's see how well it works out at comparable institutions—Yale and Princeton.
This plea for caution is based on my contacts, conversations, and correspondence with alumni as a class officer, head class agent, and a solicitor on the Third Century Fund. My conclusion is that the adoption of coeducation now would alienate too large a percentage of the alumni.
Financially, alone, the timing seems wrong. We're in a recession. The Alumni Fund quota has been increased by $400,000 to balance this year s budget and we are told that we are facing a potential operating deficit of $500,000 next year. We are told, too, that a capital outlay of $6.5 million will be required for coeducation plus an increase in annual operating expenses of $250,000.
Issues should not be decided on dollars alone, but even Dartmouth College can't run without dollars. The Quayle Study indicates that the greatest objection comes from the older classes which provide the larger share of alumni donations. We can't afford to lose this support. We can't afford to polarize and divide Dartmouth's greatest strength, her alumni.
My own mind is not made up on coeducation. The information coming out of Hanover is not sufficiently objective to enable me to form a final opinion. It appears that many of the older alumni are in a comparable position or strongly opposed.
Let me repeat, the issue is not coeducation per se, but alumni unity. I love Dartmouth College. My intent here is not to hurt her but to preserve her and strengthen her. It is my opinion that caution at this time will do just that.
Melrose, Mass.
TO THE EDITOR:
You Dartmouth men are really something else again. You want to enroll 900 women at Dartmouth and call it coeducation. Nine hundred is a beautiful number, enough to provide female companionship, yet not enough to threaten the position of the Dartmouth male.
Call it what you will, 900 females is a quota. It would be described as tokenism in other circumstances. Or do you perhaps believe that only 900 women are well enough qualified to meet Dartmouth's high standards?
You talk about establishing a "normal" social environment. Well, in case you didn't know, fifty percent of the people in this country are women. If you really want coeducation, why don't you open Dartmouth up on a competitive, non-quota basis to the best applicants, whatever sex they may be? Then you wouldn't have to increase enrollment by one-quarter while introducing stratagems like off-campus and summer studies to disguise the fact that Dartmouth is no longer a small college.
An all-male or an all-female school may well have a place in the 20th century, but overt discrimination against women should have gone out in the 1920's. Maybe when you are shouting the virtues of coeducation you should do some hard thinking about what coeducation really means.
Washington, D. C.
TO THE EDITOR:
It has always been a source of great pride to me that my father was graduated from Dartmouth. Whether this pride was inherent or imprinted, I do not know, as I was fed "Dartmouth's in Town Again" as a garnish to my Pablum, and lulled to sleep with "Dartmouth Undying."
I understand that there is serious consideration of initiating a program of coeducation at Dartmouth. May I call to your attention that in today's society, individuality is more highly regarded than conformity. By confusing itself thoroughly with coeducation, Dartmouth would not only sacrifice many years of priceless tradition, but also the respect of many people (not necessarily alumni alone) who admire its current policies of male identity.
I still feel that Winter Carnival should be hosted by hairy-chested men, not women.
La Jolla, Calif.
TO THE EDITOR:
I note that the Board of Trustees has substantially increased .tuition, room, and board rates effective in September. I also note that a Trustee Study Committee has recommended that Dartmouth College become coeducational in the near future, Dartmouth presently being the only Ivy League college formally remaining all male.
With costs of education escalating, it seems rather extraordinary to recommend changes which will aggravate an already terribly difficult economic problem. The rationalization is that coeducation is "a matter of simple justice," but I personally fail to see the justice involved in completely eliminating the individual's freedom of choice.
In other words, should an individual desire to go to an all-male Ivy League school, I think he should have that choice available to him, but obviously he will not.
I have very fond memories of my undergraduate days at Dartmouth, but it will no longer be the place I recall so well. My interest will diminish, and I am sure there are numerous others who feel like I do. Diminishing alumni support in the face of rising costs, compounded by the additional expense of going coeducational, does not augur well for Dartmouth's future.
Philadelphia, Pa.
TO THE EDITOR:
The decision seems to have been made. The rush to become coeducational is now over and we will join our "sister" institutions in offering "justice" to all women who wish to come to the Hanover plain. The College may be in serious financial trouble, but let's join the philosophy of the Federal Government and incur an even bigger deficit. Watch how that estimate of $275,000 of additional costs for coeducation grows and grows.
What is wrong in waiting to see how Princeton and Yale solve their coeducational problems which have been many? If we are still attracting the top student and top all around boy, why the rush? If the quality of our applicants does drop off to where we aren't getting the top students, then take another look, but what's the rush?
I have two daughters who may consider Dartmouth and I'm sure I would love to see them go there, but not at the risk of destroying what I still believe is a school that has something different to offer. One of the last remaining choices a student has who wants an all-male school. Isn't it justice to give a choice?
Reston, Va.
A Medieval System
TO THE EDITOR:
On this the 200th anniversary of the College surprisingly no learned articles have appeared to note the fact that Dartmouth today loyally perseveres in the maintenance of her traditional mode in the election of her Trustees. Two hundred years ago, as an Indian school, the Trustees alone elected the Trustees. Today, with but small change, the exact situation prevails.
That whereas all the other Ivy League colleges and universities departed from their medieval antecedents and enfranchised their alumni to elect the Trustees, Dartmouth persevered and today is the only proud bearer of the medieval tradition of a self perpetuating Board of Trustees completely free of alumni interference.
Congratulations Dartmouth! In this age of too rapid change it is fine to see the traditional upheld.
Stamford, Conn.
Lead Pollution (Cont. )
TO THE EDITOR:
Professor Gribble's reply to my letter in the December issue indicates a commendable concern for the conservation of our environment, but there are certain inaccuracies in his commentary. While he states that "the continued and uncontrolled automobile discharge of organic lead compounds (e.g tetraethyl lead) into the atmosphere is a definite cause of serious concern," the fact of the matter is that organolead compounds are present in the air in only minute amounts. These compounds reach the air from the evaporation of unburned gasoline, and even in this situation the lead compounds are much less volatile than the hydrocarbons. Almost all atmospheric lead is inorganic. primarily chlorine and bromine compounds, which are handled very differently by the body and which are the subject of current discussion.
That the "concentration of atmospheric lead over Los Angeles ... is approaching frightening levels" is open to discussion. The current concentrations of lead in the ambient atmospheres of residential-commercial Los Angeles neighborhoods, the point at which significant exposure occurs, is in the range of 2.4 µg/m3. The air levels of lead in rural Ohio or New Mexico are less than 0.5 µg/m3. However, the blood levels of lead in persons exposed over the course of years to these dissimilar air lead levels are indistinguishable. The inference is that the influence of atmospheric lead levels upon body lead levels is very small, not clearly demonstrable and certainly not "frightening." For reference purposes, the permissible industrial lead exposure (40 hours per week) is 200 µg/m3.
Of course with sufficient exposure lead can be toxic and capable of causing most of those phenomena listed by Professor Gribble. However, he completely neglects the quantitative aspects of exposure. Every chemical compound is inherently toxic; when a compound is administered by the appropriate route, in the correct physical form, and in the proper dose, a toxic (unwanted) response can be elicited. It is not helpful to the cause of environmental conservation to present these lists and to say that lead causes "death in extreme cases," a fact of which most people are aware.
Professor Gribble attributes to lead the thin eggshell phenomenon, which has been noted in birds along the coast of California. The evidence is that this disorder may be related to DDT-induced impairments of calcium metabolism. Waterfowl poisoning by lead is related to the ingestion of metallic lead shot by birds. Neither phenomenon has anything to do with lead in the atmosphere. Ammunition manufacturers are attempting to develop soft iron shot as a substitute for lead in shotshell loads for waterfowl.
Our common goal of environmental conservation is best promoted when specific and accurate information is applied to points under consideration.
Cincinnati, Ohio
How Much Subsidy Repaid?
TO THE EDITOR:
The high participation of Dartmouth graduates in both annual and capital giving has long been the envy of the Ivy League and the pride of our whole body of alumni. Anyone who is interested in education in general. however, and in Dartmouth in particular must, in the light of the announced financial difficulties of our sister school in New Haven, reexamine not only the whole financial structure of the "College on the Hill" but his own obligation to it.
Although we may have "done well" in light of the records of others, I would be willing to wager that the great majority ofus (this writer included) has not begun to repay the College for our actual obligation to it.
To demonstrate this fact I have made the following assumption (which I believe to be true): ASSUMPTION: The tuition paid for a non-scholarship member of the Class of 1939, in fact, resulted in a yearly subsidy of approximately $6OO which was made by a combination of return on endowment and Alumni Fund contributions. Therefore it can be assumed that each member of the Class of 1939 had, at the time of his graduation, a debt of $2400, unless he believed that "someone else" was obliged to pay for his education.
Accepting this assumption, I have gone one step further. The average graduate of the Class of 1939, not a believer in the "welfare state," feels an obligation to pay his own way and recognizes—prudent business man that he is—that any debt paid over a period of years is increased by interest on an unpaid balance.
What, under these circumstances, does a graduate of the Class of 1939 still owe on his debt, even though he has given generously both to the Alumni Fund and the two capital fund drives that have taken place since his graduation? To arrive at this amount I have made several assumptions:
(1) Interest would accrue on all unpaid balances at the end of each year at the rate of 4% (would you like to borrow money for that today?).
(2) Alumni Fund contributions 1939 to 1945 were zero. (We were away at war.)
(3) Contributions during the years 1946 to 1950 were made at the rate of $25.00 a year.
(4) Contributions during the years 1951 through 1960 were made at the rate of $50 a year and, in addition, a contribution of $500 was made to the first capital fund program.
(5) Contributions during the years 1961 through 1970 were made at the rate of $100 a year and a capital gift contribution of $1,000 was made in the recently concluded Third Century campaign.
(6) This would result in a total giving of S3,125 since graduation from college.
With this kind of a giving program, the 1939 graduate from Dartmouth would stillowe $2,400 to the College. If by any chance you question these figures we would suggest that you put this program on your computer and check its results.
All of this leads me to only one conclusion: those of us who are concerned about our Alumni Fund and Endowment Fund supporting today's undergraduate body should realize that what we actually are doing is not supporting today's undergraduates. In fact, we are not even supporting the College for the investment that it made in us, unless we are at least to some degree following the program which the fictitious alumnus of this letter has done.
If the Dartmouth fellowship is to have any meaning its members should be interested in paying their debts. It might be well, as the financing difficulties of educational institutions increase over the next years, for each of us to ask himself the question, "How much of the subsidy made in me has been repaid?"
Bethel, Conn.
"Dead" vs. "Alive"
To THE EDITOR:
While I have not examined Superior: Portrait of a Living Lake, reviewed in February's ALUMNI MAGAZINE, I should like to criticize a paradox being perpetuated by the book's title and the editor's review notes. The concept of a "dead" or "living" lake is misleading to our ecological understanding. Popularly, Lake Erie has been labeled a classic example of a "dead" or "dying" lake. Actually, Lake Erie is characterized by high nutrient levels and high biological productivity. Lake Erie is more "alive" now than ever, but this increased biological productivity partially manifests itself in nuisance algal growths and replacement of traditional high value fish species (lake trout, whitefish, sturgeon, etc.) with less desirable species (yellow perch, whitebass, smelt, carp, sheepshead, etc.).
It is important to note the commercial fish harvest from Lake Erie has consistently averaged 50 million pounds annually over the last 50 years. This production has often equaled the combined harvest from the remaining four Great Lakes, and at no recorded time has Lake Erie's proportion of the Great Lakes fishery dropped below one third. Fish from Lake Erie may now be considered unsafe as human food, but "dead" implies an absence of life which I doubt can be found anywhere in Lake Erie except, perhaps, in very limited areas where extremely high concentrations of industrial toxins enter the lake.
In contrast, the "purity" of Lake Superior is identified by low fertility and limited biological productivity. Accordingly, Lake Superior does not sustain nuisance amounts of algae, and the more desirable fish species can still inhabit the Lake's waters. However, Lake Superior's commerical fish harvest has averaged near 20 million pounds annually over the years and ranks below the production of Lake Michigan, and considerably below the harvest from Lake Erie. As Lake Superior contains more than 22 times the volume of water in Lake Erie, one might be more correct in calling Lake Erie "living" and Lake Superior "dead."
Milwaukee, Wis.
In Praise of Military Educators
TO THE EDITOR:
DEAR PROFESSOR LUEHRMANN:
After reading the superb letter of John Mecklin '39 to Mr. Cunningham, and after reading your report, "The ROTC Decision: An Explanation," I became convinced that I ought to reply to you by way of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE.
First of all, to provide you with some data about my background and hence a rationale for my writing this letter, I may say that I am a graduate of Dartmouth College and two-year medical school (Class of '17), a past member of the Dartmouth Medical School refunding and refounding committee, an alumnus of two other universities, and a longtime professor in the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine of the University of Minnesota at Rochester. As a Medical Reserve Naval officer who ultimately achieved flag rank, I served four years of active duty during World War 11, a few months of which were in the South Pacific Theatre, and I have participated intermittently in the educational programs of the Armed Forces for more than five years, 1955-60, as a member of the Medical Panel in the Department of Defense (Research and Development and Research and Engineering). In June of 1970 I was one of the guests invited to take part in the global strategy discussions at the U. S. Naval War College; in August I attended the Dartmouth Alumni College; and just recently I visited, for instructional purposes, the U. S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and the North American Air Defense Plant (NORAD), located in the center of Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs. Such, then, is an attenuated precis of my own service in both educational and defense affairs.
Since you were "only ten years of age during World War II" and since you do not mention in your letter to the editor that you have had experience in ROTC-correlated studies, I assume that you have not made any visits to colleges and universities which offer the ROTC modified program and learning methods. I am enclosing a copy of a clipping from the Minneapolis Tribune of November 16, 1970, in which it is indicated how satisfactorily this modified program has been received by the large majority of graduates of the University of Minnesota. It also indicates how successfully the ROTC coordinate academic teaching program was handled by President Malcolm Moos in cooperation with the Board of Regents.
You say in your letter that "for the 49% who, according to Mr. Quayle, are business managers . . . and the 5% who are doctors . . . [how would they] like to have to share a portion of their practice with a military officer, also under orders?"
The answer is that it has been done, and is continuing to be done, in most of the top university medical colleges in our country which have Reserve Medical Units in one of the branches of the Armed Forces. At the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine and the Mayo Clinic there were two such medical specialist units in the Navy from 1933 until after World War II, during which most members of both units were on active duty. After World War II both specialist units were consolidated into a medical company Prior to that time, in fact as long ago as 1909, Drs. William J. and Charles H. Mayo each accepted a first lieutenancy in the United States Army Reserve Medical Corps and were consultants as colonels, then as brigadier generals, to Surgeon General William C. Gorgas, and they continued actively as reserve medical officers until the time of their deaths in 1939. They urged members of the staff to accept Armed Forces reserve medical corps commissions and, with the faculty of the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, provided within the Mayo Clinic short periods of "cram" training to more than one thousand medical officers. In addition, during World War II the Mayo Clinic was represented by a general hospital which functioned actively, this hospital having been in existence years before the war. There were innumerable other university-connected hospitals in this country working in the South Pacific Theatre and in Europe and Africa. Most of these Armed Forces Reserve hospital units have continued to exist, continuing correlated Armed Forces and medical training. So, my answer to you is that we (the doctors) would be delighted, as I believe we and they always have been, to share a portion of our practice with the departments of the Armed Forces and their representing officers, bringing pleasure to ourselves and great profit to those sick and injured during wartime.
You wrote that "Dartmouth loses all effective control over staffing and content of courses that often amount to 10% of all courses taken for credit by a student here." From what I have seen in the Navy, on ships, on aircraft carriers, on atomic submarines, in hospitals, and at Armed Forces academies, the officers teaching academic courses in the academies have an educa- tional background equal to that of the Dartmouth faculty and the teaching program by commissioned and noncommissioned officers of staff and line to sailors, marines, and soldiers has been excellent.
I mentioned that I recently took an afternoon off from a surgical meeting in Colorado Springs to visit the Air Force Academy. I was fascinated with the academic program there and its correlation with the military and with the character and educational tional background of the officer faculty. I attended a class in physiology which is a required course in the first year at the Air Force Academy. The day's topic was on the physiological and diagnostic principles of electron cardiography. There were 15 men in the class. A major and a captain stood by while one of the men assigned to the topic for discussion who had studied it for three days presented it with demonstrations by one of the cadets in a manner as admirable as that achieved by the best resident doctor of medicine or surgeon in any postgraduate program. You will be interested to know that in the twelve or thirteen years of existence of the Air Force Academy, ten Rhodes scholars have been chosen from among the graduates. Two were chosen last year from the Class of 1970.
I believe, as you might have inferred from these remarks, that ideally all sections (including your own teachers and faculty members) correlate with the program of undergraduates or graduates of Dartmouth, and the faculty there should be proud to have commanding officers of the type which I have seen for the last five or six years in the Dartmouth Naval ROTC program. They all have fine educational backgrounds, as most of the Navy faculty members have in academic subjects, and they also have had an extension of the educational processes through the Armed Forces; and I might add that most of these courses are far better educationally than some of the programs in many of our colleges. Many of the Armed Forces officers have been given opportunities to receive graduate degrees in all special fields, including medicine, law, engineering, aeronautics, and business administration while on duty orders.
I should like to comment on your supposition: "Let each of your readers imagine himself to be the president of Dartmouth College and to be confronted by the following proposal from the General Motors Corporation. GM, recognizing the need to recruit bright, well-rounded junior executive officers, will establish a Junior Executive Training Corps program at Dart- mouth. Twenty JET students per year will receive full tuition scholarships and a stipend, and Dartmouth will be paid overhead costs of running the program. The three JETC courses, dealing with the history of mechanized transit, production line management, and union negotiation, must be taken by all JETC students, and Dartmouth must give degree credit for each course. GM will appoint the teaching staff, who must be given faculty status, the senior member to be full professor. Students who sign JETC contracts at the end of their second year must serve as junior executives at General Motors for at least three years. Finally, any student dropping out of the program may be required to leave Dartmouth at once and go to work on the assembly line in Detroit for two years." You did not say, Mr. Luehrmann, that this would be a voluntary program.
I will say that, in my opinion, such a program could be correlated with the teaching and learning program of any educational institution whose president, faculty, and board of trustees possessed the breadth of vision to understand that this type of program actually might prove to be valuable to the men engaged in it as well as a real contribution to the educational programs of our universities and colleges which, as everyone knows, should be and are constantly changing. I personally know that such a program was instituted in the 1950's at the Chrysler Corporation's plant in Detroit (Dearborn) by the great automotive engineer, the late Fred M. Zeder, in correlation and coordination with the University of Michigan—offering degrees in science (B.S. and M.S.) by that university.
I might remind you of the instance in which the students were asked to vote on whether or not to retain the ROTC at Dartmouth. They had practically no knowledge or experience in recognizing the need for the ROTC in our civilian colleges in order to supply the 50% of the officer complement required in the Armed Forces Some were even downright disloyal to our country and to Dartmouth College when they stated that even if the United States were invaded they would not fight (TheNew Yorker, October 18, 1970).
I would conclude, too, that when considerably more than a majority of the Dartmouth alumni reached by Mr. Quayle and his associates not only voted in favor of keeping the ROTC at Dartmouth but were critical of the way it was phased out, they might well be interested in knowing why a man with so little knowledge of American global strategy was made a member of a faculty committee to study the policy in respect to ROTC at Dartmouth. I have not the slightest tincture of animosity toward you, Mr. Luehrmann, but in the spirit and vernacular currently used by some of our medical students, I really wonder if you did your homework. I will say, further, that I do not feel that members of the Dartmouth faculty during the period of decision whether or not to retain the ROTC acted properly, nor do I think that the Executive Committee should have granted the right of referendum to students without a general review such as is going on at present, with students playing a role in the governments of the colleges. "Teaching and learning are our business," true enough, but it is a long span since the autocracy of King Louis XIV, and neither teachers nor students, any more than alumni, can presume in these times to claim the spurious authority of "I am the state."
If you would like to be considered as a candidate for attendance at the U. S. Naval War College global strategy meeting next June, I should be very happy to place your name in nomination, for I feel that if you spent five days with the intensive instructional program of lectures and discussions with officers from all of the Armed Forces and participated in the discussions with the 150 or 175 prominent Americans invited each year, you would completely change your opinions. If, in addition, you could be given a leave of absence to spend a week or ten days observing the educational program and the character and teaching at each of our Armed Forces academies, you would return to Dartmouth as an overwhelming convert to the associated educational and ROTC programs, whether they are carried out in the academies or in our colleges and universities, and realize what a tragic loss to the often broad educational programs offered to students in our eastern liberal arts colleges elimination of the voluntary ROTC programs has been, and even more so to our country, not only in general but because these programs have been considered (in the past) to provide a superior education which is now denied to those loyal Americans who voluntarily choose (if accepted by the Armed Forces) to pursue their Armed Forces officers' training in an American undergraduate college and university.
REAR ADM. M.C. USNR (RET.)
Rochester, Minn.
Dr. Tepper is Associate Director of theDepartment of Environmental Health, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati.
Mr. Barton writes from the Center for GreatLakes Studies, the University of Wisconsin,Milwaukee.
