Letters to the Editor
The CPDT Advertisement
TO THE EDITOR:
WAH HOO WAH to Ellis O. Briggs '21 and Robert L. Loeb '21 and their advertisement in November's Alumni Magazine.
It is too bad that a few Papooses can change an age-old tradition that did nothing but bolster an enviable Dartmouth (and Indian) tradition. Although a "Pale-Face," I am still proud to be a DARTMOUTH INDIAN! Now I feel lost, what with the actions of the squaw-acting Alumni Council.
Reminds me of the immature "indian" takeover in Washington, D. C.
New Fairfield, Conn.
TO THE EDITOR:
For the benefit of us unwashed readers out here in Alumni Land, who is Ellis Briggs? Why does this man feel he has the right to publish his inflammatory propaganda in the Alumni Magazine? And, who was the editor who allowed it to be printed? I think the readers have a right to know.
Apparently, Mr. Briggs feels that certain individuals have been infiltrated into high positions in the administration and even the board of trustees to betray Dartmouth College or even worse to, sell it down the river. Perhaps he thinks we ought to establish a loyalty committee to check up on their beliefs. Heard it before? Well, so have I, and it stinks worse than raw sewage.
Ithaca, N. Y.
Editor's Note: Mr. Briggs, who is president of the Class of 1921, resides in Hanover. A Career Foreign Service Officer, he served as United States Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Peru, Brazil, and Greece. As for the AlumniMagazine's advertising policy, space is available to special alumni groups and organizations, so long as their sponsors or officers are identified. However, there is now before the editors and the Alumni Advisory Board the question of whether advertising should not be restricted to goods and services, with the advocacy of special causes relegated to the letters-to-the-editor section, where we do try to give alumni especially a chance to have their say about Dartmouth affairs and higher education in general.
The Alumni's Voice
TO THE EDITOR:
On page 28 of the November issue you quote President Kemeny in his Convocation address. Referring to the decisions to invoke the Dartmouth Plan (with which I agree) and coeducation (to which I am opposed), President Kemeny says that these decisions "... were made because the faculty and the student body of Dartmouth College overwhelmingly supported coeducation." Whatever happened to the alumni? I had always thought (or hoped) that we had a voice in the operation of our College.
Two other decisions disturb me greatly: the abolition of Dartmouth Night, certainly without any consideration of alumni feelings on the matter, and the faculty decision to drop course credits for the undergraduates teaching and working in Compton, California under the Tucker Foundation. The faculty apparently feels that a student can only learn while sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture (even last year's). In my opinion, a student living and working with high school kids anywhere can learn more about life in a few weeks than he can in Hanover, and after talking with a number of the Dartmouth undergraduates who spent 10-12 weeks in Compton, I believe that their experience was so worthwhile that the faculty is badly in error in discontinuing credit for these students.
Los Angeles, Calif.
The Indian Symbol (Cont.)
TO THE EDITOR:
As a daughter of the late Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a Sioux Indian and Dartmouth graduate in the Class of 1887, I am saddened by the demise of the traditional Dartmouth symbol. My father was very proud of his ethnic heritage and was also very proud to be a "Dartmouth Indian."
Northampton, Mass.
TO THE EDITOR:
Apparently the policy with respect to Dartmouth traditions is to shoot first and ask questions afterward. The recent foolish flap about singing Men of Dartmouth at Convocation is another example. The Indian symbol decision makes us look a little silly, particularly since the football team wore the Indian on the sleeves of their uniforms this past season with no apparent harm to anyone's sensibilities.
Winchester, Mass.
TO THE EDITOR:
The enclosed comment from the NationalObserver deals with the action of the Council of the Miami Indians in approving the name Redskins for athletic teams of Miami University. The concluding paragraphs speak for themselves:
"It's clear, then, that America's Indian population has by no means reached a consensus on the question of Indian-related names and symbols in the world of athletics. One wonders if Dartmouth as well as Stanford, which has also dropped its "Indians" designation, might not have acted prematurely.
"Indians are a minority unlike all other minorities in many ways, and conceivably the supersensitivity with which some colleges have dealt with ethnic-group feelings need not be applied so patronizingly to the first Americans.
"Anyhow, the decision of the Miami Indians is revealing. It shows their tribal leaders to be not only large-spirited, but confident. And perhaps wise."
Tucson, Ariz.
Dean Chapman's Resignation
TO THE EDITOR
I note with regret the resignation of Dr. Carleton B. Chapman as Dean of Dartmouth Medical School in a recent issue of the Alumni Magazine. Dr. Chapman joins the growing list of deans and administrative medical school personnel who have initiated major curriculum changes or developed new medical schools and have departed the scene before finding out how their experiments may turn out.
Having been associated with a medical school which renovated its curriculum in the early '6os only to see the innovators resign, I can only look with disfavor upon this situation. In any new or developing curriculum there are always adjustments and revisions which must be made in subsequent years and in my opinion require the attention of the administrative personnel who developed them in the first place.
Unless Dean Chapman has some compelling personal reason for his resignation, not so stated in the article in the AlumniMagazine. I sincerely believe it is very remiss for him to leave Dartmouth Medical School at this time.
Richmond, Va.
Misinformed ?
TO THE EDITOR:
Ever since Dartmouth published a newsletter in which it was claimed that "wah-hoo-wah" was really an obscenity in the Sioux language, I have wondered how true this statement was. At last, I have found two Sioux dictionaries, neither of which list any term like "wah-hoo-wah." I think it is time for the College to admit that this was a deliberate prevarication dreamed up by some overly concerned friend of the "native Americans."
It seems to me that the Indians (and if the National Geographic can call them "Indians," why can't we?) have ample legitimate reasons for complaints without resorting to misinformation. I also think the College owes its alumni an apology.
This letter is from a native American who just happens to be of European ancestry.
Northampton, Mass.
Editor's Note: Dictionaries to the contrary, the colloquial use of the phrase was explained by Indians on the campus, including John Olguin, then Director of Indian Programs.
The Wrong Hutchinson
TO THE EDITOR:
I believe credit should be given where due. The William L. you have listed after my name on page 33 of your November 1972 issue is undoubtedly the son of classmate John Hutchinson. My son, Jin, opted for Princeton; I suspect watching the Stanford Indians become the Cardinals was enough to deter him on Dartmouth. I guess better a goldenrod than a petunia.
Palo Alto, Calif.
Bud Misplaced
TO THE EDITOR
Re: "Undergraduate Chair," November 1972 issue of the Alumni Magazine.
My loyalty to Dartmouth was severely shaken when my loyalty to Milwaukee made me recoil in horror from Mr. Kimball's narrative concerning the Dartmouth Marching Band (of which august group I was once a member having had the honor to destroy my back and my membranae tympanum playing the large bass drum). While Milwaukee, an Indian word meaning the Sweet Waters, is certainly famous for beer, it eschews all. thought of, and any responsibility for, Budweiser, a watery pap of doubtful ancestry concocted from Mississippi mud some 400 miles to the south in a small schtettle called St. Louis.
Milwaukee, Wis.
Relax
TO THE EDITOR:
Old timers, don't let them give you ulcers.
You can't win. You can protest and complain but our Prexy from Princeton just sits back and smiles and waits for us to fade away, leaving it all to him and the coeds.
He's got that all computerized.
So relax. Have another hot rum toddy to mellow the granite in your brain. Then go out in the back yard and burn your senior cane with the Indian head on it before anybody finds out you still cherish the horrid symbol.
Union, Me.
Harvard Post-Mortem
TO THE EDITOR:
To the critics of Coach Jake Crouthamel, I would add for their benefit that Bob Blackman too found fault, griped at the "cheap shots" that sometimes happen in the arena at Harvard.
There is very little space between the sidelines and the colosseum walls. It seems to be a method of destruction to slam our best players into the stadium wall. What say, Jim Chasey? And I don't blame Bob Blackman, Jake Crouthamel, or any other coach for shouting to high heaven to stop the out-of-bounds shots in that stadium.
Until the critics have to live under the terrific strain Dartmouth coaches and teams have to endure for three months, let them think twice before they pin a label on a man as respectable as Coach Jake Crouthamel.
Norwich, Vt.
