Letters to the Editor
Al Dickerson
TO THE EDITOR:
I would like to add my sense of sadness and warmth to that of the generations of Dartmouth men who consider the passing of Al Dickerson. In a letter two months before his death he expressed the feelings he brought to the work we all knew: "I must say that in my observation as well as my personal experience I don't know of a more fun job in the educational world than deaning freshmen."
Each of us who had his counsel, whether on serious occasions or simply routine, profited from that sense of pleasure. It helped us over the early rough spots; it helped us gain perspective on those years; it helped make Dartmouth what it was for us. Future generations will not know it, but they will have missed something special.
Dean of Freshmen Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
"We Can Expect Reaction"
TO THE EDITOR:
A recently published study of the American Revolution as seen through British eyes, Those Damned Rebels by Michael Pearson, relates the part played at the time by William Legge, the second Earl of Dartmouth, after whom our college is named. He was serving George 111 as Secretary for the Colonies when, in January of 1774, the report of the so-called Boston Tea Party, which had taken place the previous month, was brought to London.
It was the Earl of Dartmouth who proposed the hard line policy toward the Colonists which was approved by King George. The port of Boston was immediately closed and a naval blockade was established. It was realized that this would hurt badly because most Bostonians earned their living from the port. Dartmouth hoped to set a searing example to the other colonies.
Now that the facts are more readily available to the public than ever before we can expect reaction. In anticipation of a demand from the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Order of the Cincinnati we had better prepare to defend or change the name of the College.
Since it seems stylish these days to change, a new name could be another of the great innovations that have converted Dartmouth from a liberal arts college for men to a coeducational university. We might consider the names of some of the living architects of the New Dartmouth. On the other hand, there is Wentworth, named after John Wentworth, the Colonial Governor, who modestly deferred to Dartmouth in 1769. However, this might get us confused with Wentworth Institute in Boston. And then there is Webster, after the immortal Daniel. Perhaps not. He knew a different institution. Maybe someone whose name starts with D to salvage all those letters on athletic award sweaters, highball glasses and blankets.
And then there is the troublesome seal of the College. We'll have to get the Indians off that. The two figures could easily be changed to a boy and girl walking hand in hand to their dormitory. And while we're at it let's change the motto. Hardly anyone knows any Latin anymore and nobody cares. We might, just to keep up an illusion of classicism, shorten it to memorialize the old alumni who loved Dartmouth as it was simply to "Vox Clamantis."
Winchester, Mass.
Had?
TO THE EDITOR:
President Kemeny's Bulletin of April 25 leaves me with the feeling that "I've been had." The Trustees have approved a recommendation that women students be housed in (a) separate dorms, (b) coed dorms, (c) suites—with male and female suites on the same floor. I refer to (b) and (c).
The coeducation plan was "sold," to the alumni at least, as a needed change in the educational stance of the College. In a bisexual world where women are coming to have important positions in all fields, the complete male must be educated to respect women for their ideas, their brains, and their points of view. Coeducation will permit this understanding and easy acceptance by classroom exchange of ideas and the informal camaraderie of campus life. Professors can do a better job when their male students are not off campus every weekend chasing "sex objects" or languishing in rooms dreaming of the chase. Of course, some of us were cynical enough to interpret the undergraduate vote on coeducation with a grain or two of salt thrown in!
About the last thing I expected was for the College to "aid and abet" the "Sophomore Dream"! Just how far does a top-flight college have to go to get its fair share of serious students? I know the present younger generation is really hung up on sex despite the protestations that it is liberating itself from the Puritanism of the older generation. Does the College have to go all out to get the "great deal of experience" which President Kemeny says we will need? Haven't other schools had some experience from which we might benefit? Or is this their experience—go all out and let the bedmates fall where they may? Is this what Alumni Fund money is for? I favor sexual education; but before college years and without lab exercises at my expense!
Middletown, N.J.
The Great Indian Debate
TO THE EDITOR:
Let me add my note to the growing opus on the Great Indian Debate: It is yet unclear to me how a society can dignify itself by judicious applications of T-shirts or mascots. I must also confess a lingering doubt whether serious thinking can actually be transmitted by those two items.
But, if the Indians are right—and it is always possible that they are—then I should say they have discovered the two most potent propaganda tools in history: the T-shirt and the mascot. Think of it. The Pentagon might easily increase enlistments by simply issuing Vietnam T-shirts to undergraduates. Racial equality might be achieved by putting only black and white animals together in our zoos. We could pass laws forbidding, say, the owning of a black cat—buy a white cat as well, or no cats at all. The possibilities for changing society are boundless.
If, on the other hand, the reasoning of the Indians is wrong, it might go far to help explain why those early primitives were so easily overpowered by that influx of rational Europeans.
New Haven, Conn.
TO THE EDITOR:
As a rule I do not believe in writing letters to the editor, because they accomplish little and, worse, they not infrequently look absurd on the printed page. However, I will break that rule on this occasion to register my dismay and disappointment about the puerile content and tenor of many of the letters appearing in the Alumni Magazine concerning Dartmouth's use of the Indian symbol.
The long dispute about that issue in your columns certainly displays numerous provoking arguments for either side. And although I favor doing away with this now clearly insensitive godhead, I acknowledge some telling points on the other side.
Unfortunately, however, a great number of the pro-Indian-symbol letters have been scarred by an incredible prejudice. Although determined to preserve the Indian symbo-lism, gentleman after gentleman has blithely recommended that anti-symbol but true-life Indians at Dartmouth should get out or keep their peace regardless of their consciences. Moreover, these intolerant sentiments have been communicated in the rudest language printable.
Frankly, such letters do their authors and their cause a grave disservice. It is a sad commentary on the liberal education supposedly received that a debate over issues so sordidly collapses to the level of a ballyhooing street brawl.
Therefore, I sincerely suggest that all letter writers either rise to the level of civilized discourse or adopt my rule—and refrain from writing at all.
Milwaukee, Wis.
TO THE EDITOR:
"Men of Dartmouth, set a watch
Lest the old traditions fail...."
It would appear that "the old traditions" have been taking quite a beating of late, especially with the advocacy of rejecting our justly appropriate and popular Indian symbol.
I presume that the next step will be someone's suggesting that Dartmouth's healthy Oak Green be watered down to a vapid, anemic chartreuse for some trumped up reason.
That should certainly cap the climax!
Washington, D.C.
The Appropriate Time
TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
The April issue of The Bulletin stated your decision to postpone a review of the ROTC issue until an "appropriate" time. It further stated that you had been presented with numerous petitions pro and con the issue.
I assume, then, that you've heard repeatedly the argument that a civilian input to the military is necessary to temper the tone of the armed forces. As a Navy pilot who has flown in Vietnam and spent the last two years training new pilots for the fleet, I can personally vouch for this argument. Officers from a liberal arts background, many of whom expect to return to civilian life, do serve as a check on over-militarization by keeping the civilian viewpoint ever present.
It is precisely at a time of war that the civilian-oriented input to the armed forces is vital. This is especially true in the case of a war which is unpopular among the civilian element of our society. The balance between civilian and military thought patterns within our services has been greatly endangered by the decision of many colleges and universities to eliminate ROTC as a means of showing disapproval of an unpopular war.
When, gentlemen, can the time be more appropriate for the issue of ROTC to be reconsidered?
Meridian, Miss.
The Ivy Presidents' Statement
TO THE EDITOR:
The Position Statement, as to the resumption of North Vietnam bombing, issued by the heads of the eight Ivy League colleges, as well as of M.I.T., not only appalls me, but it actually frightens me. It was premature, ill-advised, and, I felt, treasonous—even before our President's more recent embargo.
Such contrived collusion and unanimous agreement can only indicate a closed mind approach. Obviously they could not have enough privileged knowledge and information available to them as to the infinite delicate nuances and ramifications of the whole problem to be other than blind in arriving at such a judgment without some dissenters.
Aside from brushing away the perfectly basic issue as to who began the escalation, vivid memories of Dunkirk, and the great lesson of Chamberlain type appeasement—these gentlemen cannot exhibit either subjective or objective logic. Therefore, without either defending or criticizing Mr. Nixon, I would offer the following postulations.
1. College presidents are erudite and articulate.
2. They command, particularly in a joint statement, a considerable audience.
3. Such statements as that under consideration, while under the guise of doing just the opposite, definitely tend to inflame student reaction, by their implicit agreement with radical student thought ...
4. College presidents are more articulate than erudite...
5. Those who become college presidents are compulsive experts in all fields, and compulsive purveyors of their expertise in all fields regardless of their narrow original specialized diciplines.
6. College presidents are not generally political scientists.
7. They are not generally military strategists or logicians.
8. They are certainly not privy to the vast information—political, social, economic, and military which the President has at his. fingertips.
Is it not probable that Mr. Nixon, as an intelligent man of judgment, knowledge probity, and ethics—to say nothing of his huge store of available information—would have been judged in the right or possibly reasonable enough to avoid condemnation by at least one of these nine ivory tower experts?
Goffstown, N.H.
\V-H-W-
TO THE EDITOR:
A "Wah Hoo Wah" for Dave Dyche '24. What is the saying? "The needle is mightier than the sword," or was it "than the direct approach ...?" His letter in the AlumniMagazine is a classic.
Let's counterattack. Let's urge the Magazine, of which I have been an avid reader and an admirer for many years, to change its decision and restore "Wah Hoo Wah." Why compound the mistake which I think the College made in no longer using the cheer by giving up a heading which was so meaningful to us who read the Magazine? And I am not "shaken" to learn what it meant in Sioux. I would still be proud to have one given for me.
Brockton, Mass.
TO THE EDITOR:
Give a rouse and a loud Wha Who Wha (new spelling) for David Dyche '24, Thomas Bryant '18, Henry Perley '43, Peter New '49, Gilbert Osborn '53, Jack Hodgson '60, John McKoan Jr. '22, John Shafer Jr. '33, and Ralph Sanborn '17 (May 1972 issue).
Those gentlemen have eloquently spoken for the rest of us who are baffled, if not sorely distressed, by what's going on at Dartmouth these days.
La Jolla, Calif.
The Lord House Move
TO THE EDITOR:
I was extremely disturbed to see the phrase "fewer and younger trees will be cut down [by use of the College Park route to move the College Street houses] than would have been the case had Hanover streets been used" in a recent issue of the AlumniMagazine. I can assure you that this is not the case in the move. The street route would have destroyed a few large elms—probably doomed within the next decade anyhow—while the Park route has destroyed many trees both old and young and a valuable part of Dartmouth's local natural environment. Clearly the administration's decision was based on cost—primarily that of rerouting the power lines present in the area. Your explanation covered up an example of environmental abuse by the College in preference of financial desirability. It is questionable whether College priorities have yet been set to preserve the local environment for which it is so famous and for which it is indebted for its beauty as a place for higher learning.
Hanover, N.H.
Poetic Male Chauvinism
TO THE EDITOR:
I have just been reading over 56 DARTMOUTH POEMS... As a somewhat literate and slightly educated person, I was surprised to find such mediocre poetry so grandly published coming from students at such a supposedly 'good college'.
As a woman, I was revolted.
There is not one poem in the bunch which depicts the female sex as a thinking being. We are variously portrayed as bodies, faces, nipples, hair, pillows ... and so forth. A classic example is in the poem 'Thoughts' by Carl Phillips ...
"short skirts are nice on big girls and even nice on bigger girls and even nicer on biggest girls and nice off"
All the thinking that is done, it seems, is by the male sex ... at least in this collection of pretentious poems.
I wonder—is this just a normal phenomenon of our male chauvinistic society, or is it a product of the unhealthy atmosphere of this unisexual college? Or, was it just in the choice of the poems, in which case the Selector is to blame?
Norwich, Vt.
Minority Rule?
TO THE EDITOR:
I have been greatly disturbed by the abolishing of ROTC on the Dartmouth campus. This being the age of minority rule, much of it by violence, college officials have yielded to the demands of a minority of students who for selfish reasons demanded its abolition. Thus they have deprived many young men of training for a career in military service who must seek other ways with additional years to achieve that goal. The College also has been a loser: government money in support of training. That act (and others) has had a deleterious effect on Dartmouth as on other campuses where a radical minority has dominated a spineless administration, aided by equally thoughtless faculty members.
The admission of women in the fall semester of 1972 must add tremendously to the cost of administration and housing of students. And since the total enrollment is to be kept fairly close to the present enrollment, the plans will keep out an almost equal number of men, sons of Dartmouth graduates as well as others....
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Editor's Note: Mr. Barnett's letter contains misrepresentations that the AlumniMagazine has tried to correct before, apparently without success.
The ROTC decision by the faculty, far from being made under minority pressure, was made with the help of a student referendum in which only 8.8% of the students (90% voted) favored retention of ROTC as it then stood. The student vote was 25% for immediate elimination and 35.8% for elimination after contracts expired, which was the faculty action taken.
The minority seizure of Parkhurst Hall, the only attempt at minority pressure, came after the faculty vote and was a protest against the faculty's refusal to vote immediate elimination of ROTC.
As for enrollment under coeducation, 800 males will still be admitted each fall, as at present. And we have tried to make it clear in Magazine reports to the alumni that although undergraduate enrollment will eventually grow from 3000 to 4000, year-round operation will avoid "adding tremendously to the cost of administration and housing students."
