Letters to the Editor
Snow! Ah, Snow!
My aim is to clarify the meaning of and to introduce an hypothesis relating to the Dartmouth cheer, wah hoo wah, to which some have attached pejorative or sexual connotations.
First, however, as an associate professor of communication at the College of Saint Catherine in Saint Paul, Minn., I am especially aware that rhetoricians (communicators) from corax, Tisias, and Aristotle to the present have recognized the importance of establishing one's ethos, or source credibility, when one asserts. Therefore, I shall summarize my own pertinent background which may add credence to my research.
I am a Yankton Sioux duly enrolled (#346-UO 2212) at the agency in Wagner, S.D. 57380. I was born on the reservation and lived there until my matriculation at Dartmouth College in 1927.
Professor John Hurd '21 compiled a list on page 37 of the October 1965 issue of the DartmouthAlumni Magazine which indicated I was the fifth American Indian to earn the A.B. degree (Class of 1931). The second Indian graduate was Dr. Charles A. Eastman '87, a distinguished physician and a Sioux.
Since my Dartmouth graduation I have earned two research degrees at the University of Minnesota: an M.A. in English and philosophy, and a Ph.D. in linguistics and communication. I am the first American Indian awarded the Ph.D. by the University of Minnesota.
Further, I learned the techniques of unbiased research and interviewing as a broadcaster on local and regional stations, and as a newscaster and analyst with CBS News, Hollywood.
So much for ethos, or source credibility.
During my annual visit to the reservation this fall I asked individually several fellow tribesmen who spoke the Yankton Sioux dialect fluently about the meaning of wah hoo wah. Without hesitation each informant said wa meant snow. None knew what hoo - which I pronounced as who - meant.
I have appended Xeroxed pages from two Sioux (Dakota) dictionaries. The first was copied from page 213 of An English-DakotaDictionary compiled by John P. Williamson A.M., D.D. and published in New York by the American Tract Society in 1902, which gives the meaning and spelling of snow as wa.
On page 157 of Paul WarCloud [sic.] Grant's Sioux Dictionary (Pierre, S.D.: State Publishing Co., 1971) snow is spelled wah.
On page 5 in Williamson's dictionary, ho is listed as an interjection meaning ah. Since language is a dynamic, ever-changing vehicle of thought, particularly in the oral tradition, ho may have shifted in sound to hoo.
I have found no data on the origination of wah hoo wah as a cheer. However, since wah is definitely a Sioux word, is it not possible that either Dr. Charles A. Eastman '87 or the Rev. Francis P. Frazier '20, both Sioux, introduced the cheer when they were undergraduates, and for cadence, as well as a mild interjection or expletive, added ho, which is pronounced differently in the Sioux language than the hoo in the cheer?
The translation would then be SNOW! AH. SNOW! What could be more appropriate for Hanover's lovely winter mantle and for the exuberance accompanying its appearance?
I dislike adding an anticlimactic observation; but it seems relevant. I think the dropping of the Indian symbol is puerile. I chose Dartmouth College because it was founded for the education of Indians. I do not think the Indian symboil is demeaning. However, if the symbol eventually chosen is a computer the implication would indeed be demeaning for Indians. Perhaps though, such a dehumanising act might well be appropriate in ten years when Orwell's 1984 arrives!
(Tunkanwastena, my Sioux name.)
St. Paul, Minn.
(Mr. Hardman's letter, and several others in this and earlier issues, suggest that it is time to re-print "The Mystery of the Wah Hoo Wah," which appeared in the November 1965 issue of the Alumni Magazine. The author, the late John B. Stearns '16, Professor of Greek and Latin at Dartmouth for 34 years, never claimed the last word on the subject, but he had plenty of ethos. too. "The Mystery of the Wah Hoo Wah," written in a day of comparative innocence, follows on page 12. Ed.)
TO THE EDITOR:
Having mislaid my Alumni Magazine, I am without the address for submissions to the "name finding" endeavor. Therefore, I send this to you in hopes that it will find its way to the proper officials.
My suggestion for the new Dartmouth alterego is
The Dartmouth Blizzard.
I arrived at this choice by many different and twisting paths. And, I think, the name is a good one. Here are some reasons:
1. It is original. No other school I know of carries this appellation.
2. It is suggestive of irresistible and pervasive power - certainly no bulldog, tiger, Quaker, etc., is going to make much headway against a blizzard.
3. There is a definite regional significance to the name - as anyone who has spent a winter in Hanover will attest.
4. The name carries the nobility of natural phenomena. It is clean, biting, and, as mentioned above, strong.
I would suggest that the name be used in the singular, somewhat after the manner of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Please, no little Dartmouth Blizzards running around. Media-wise the possibilities are tremendous:
"Dartmouth Blizzard Sweeps Into Town"
"Dartmouth Blizzard Blankets Harvard"
"Dartmouth Blizzard Freezes Princeton" for fairness sake
"Dartmouth Blizzard Thawed by Yale"
I feel it is a tremendous name. I hope you consider it seriously.
St. ThomasU.S. Virgin Islands
TO THE EDITOR:
I would like to express my hearty endorsement of the thought expressed in James Hitchcock's ('09) letter, published in the January 1974 edition, stating "It is doubtful if a successor can become such an integral part of Dartmouth College as the Indian emblem." I would like to re-establish our Indian symbol. I was pleased to observe, on the page following his letter, that the Green Key Society is seeking expressions of opinion.
But as to Dr. Hitchcock's idea of our using an owl, I feel our Philadelphia alumni would be most unhappy. After all Temple University with an enrollment of some 30,000 students (ten times the size of Dartmouth) has been proud to use the owl as their symbol for many decades.
Wellesley, Mass.
TO THE EDITOR:
What is your column, "Give A Rouse for ... "? Is this supposed to be some kind of recognition, acclaim, applause?
My zillion-pound Webster's doesn't help me. It says:
noun: an awakening as from inaction; a bumper of liquor; a drinking frolic.
The definitions as a verb don't help much either. Here are some of them:
To stir to strong indignation or anger; to bring out of a state of sleep, unconsciousness, inactivity, fancied security, apathy, depression, etc.; to blow air through to aid development of yeast; to make erect. (To WHAT?!?)
So, why not caption your column with words that make sense to your readers; something like:
"An Aay-Oh-Aay for ...".
Or, better yet, "A Wah Hoo Wah for ... "
Florham Park,N.J.
TO THE EDITOR:
A grave injustice is being done to two of our respected alumni from the Class of'21. I believe it is incumbent upon you and the members of your staff to take the appropriate steps to notify Ellis Briggs and Bob Loeb and advise them that some boob has gotten hold of their names and is using them in advertisements in the DartmouthAlumni Magazine, the substance of which are not only innane but irrelevant. I think it is incumbent upon you or some members of your staff to tell these evidently fine gentlemen that someone is making a fool of them.
Somerville, N.J.
"Life in the Real"
TO THE EDITOR:
Your article in the January issue entitled "Dropping Out" was exciting and refreshing. We do most everything backwards. We should come into this world 80 years old, then we would know what to do with our time.
Questions that prevail among young people have not changed. These questions are: What is adult life all about? Can I survive in it? Will four years of college better prepare me for wrestling with real life?
Unfortunately, the teaching profession attracts more than its share of those who can't make it in the "every-day-market-place" world. So they retreat to the ivy covered halls of higher learning and study the past. Consequently, many students graduate better prepared to live a life in ancient Greece than in our world of tomorrow.
In terms of a young person's adjustment to "life in the real" he who receives a B.A. degree is that day four years behind his counterpart who chose to go to work instead of college. Many in college know this intuitively and restless because of it. Only a few have the courage to challenge the tenet of society and say, "College is not for me, for now."
One of the fundamental problems in higher learning is imbalance between the sciences on one hand and the humanities and social sciences on the other. Scientists are breathless in their pursuit of trying to understand the unknown, while many of those who teach and study the humanities and social sciences are captured by the past and some are even terrified by the future.
The "Drop Out" is saying loud and clear, "You are not providing what I need and want; therefore I seek to broaden my learning and understanding in other fields of endeavor."
Atlanta, Ga.
ROTC
TO THE EDITOR:
Numerous recent letters about the restoration of ROTC at Dartmouth have, in my view, missed the central issue of the problem. The most common defense of ROTC is that it insures a civilian presence in relatively high levels of the military establishment, and that it therefore gives civilians some control over the military. Whether or not this assumption is true, there is a more fundamental goal of a peaceful society than civilian control of the military. This more basic goal is the elimination altogether war and of the military establishment whose profession is making war. An important question to ask about ROTC is whether it serves this ultimate goal or instead helps prolong the existence of a powerful military establishment in our society. I don't know the answer to this question; I simply ask that it be considered in discussions of the future of ROTC at Dartmouth.
Athol, Mass.
Franklin McDuffee
TO THE EDITOR:
I've just, in the past hour, got around to reading (rather than merely skimming through as I do on each issue's arrival) the AlumniMagazine for December, and I've come on a piece signed "R.B.G." which, after referring to the masthead, I take to have been written by Robert Bruce Graham, in which he attributes the poem "Dartmouth Undying" to Richard Hovey.
Despite the fact that my rooting around my bookshelves fails to find any reference work to support my recollection, I believe that "Dartmouth Undying" - probably the most truly poetic college song ever Written - was the work of Franklin McDuffee.
Ordinarily I would not write a letter to the editor of the Alumni Magazine, or any other publication, without checking my facts. But I do so in this instance because I do not know how soon I can make such a check and, more significantly, because I am particularly sensitive to the matter.
When I was a senior, living off-campus in a house on Lebanon Street, with Ted Swanson as a roommate, Franklin - and Bill McCarter - both of them members of the English faculty scarcely half-a-dozen years older than we who were English majors, came many a Saturday night to our rooms, to drink (for although it was the preposterous period of prohibition, Ted and I were generally adequately furnished with reliable potables), to sing, and to talk.
Those talks, often going on until two or three o'clock Sunday morning, were to me an extremely valuable ingredient to my education. We argued about what Edna Millay's position would be in American poetry. We compared Elinor Wylie with Genevieve Taggard (I wonder how many of today's undergraduates know the names). We debated whether Kipling was an artist or a hack.
In this experience, I - and I suppose Ted too - were impressed, but by no means overawed to the point where we curbed our own tongues, by Franklin's and Bill's seniority. Bill's forte was pinking us with the ironic rejoinder, the Socratic query. Franklin's part was the opening of new insights.
If I remember rightly, Franklin had won a (Rhodes?) scholarship and had only recently returned to Hanover from Oxford where he was the first American ever to win the Newdigate prize for poetry.
He was a man of exceptional grace and talent. Both he and Bill McCarter died at an unhappily early age.
Franklin McDuffee was an exceptionally able poet. The lack of mentioning him in the article by R.B.G. should be corrected.
And I am bound to add that in my view, an article which opens with the statement that "... Dartmouth has fashioned a special tradition of nurturing poets...." and then goes on to enumerate them, is remiss to its premise when it omits from mention Richard Lattimore and Marshall Schacht.
Lakeville, Conn.
In Extenso
TO THE EDITOR:
There are still those among us who believe that Dartmouth, in a willy-nilly way, has embarked upon a policy path that may ultimately destroy much of that which, two decades ago, was the basis upon which the College was recognized as one of the great institutions of learning in this country.
The introduction of creeping permissiveness during recent years, particularly in policy matters, alarms many greybeards like myself well as graduates of such recent vintage as 1972 —to judge from "Letters to the Editor."
Specifics, such as ROTC and "The Indian," are only straws in the wind, I would suspect. Better letters than I could write have already explored these things in extenso. What is troublesome is that the administration seem be singularly unresponsive to what seems to be a growing wave of dissatisfaction with the way the store is being run.
Those of us who have spent years outside, in the cold, cold world, recognize the value of keeping an eye to the future and an ear to the ground. Perhaps you could be of great service to Dartmouth by endeavoring to acquaint her administrative group with the validity of some such concept.
Temple, N.H.
All But One
TO THE EDITOR:
I was very much interested in the picture or page 29 of the January issue showing the Dartmouth men returning on the Gripsholm in 1942
The tall man, third from the left in the rear row, was the late Robert G. Kendall, one of my closest friends in the Class of 1921 and a fraternity brother in Chi Phi.
Bob was in the shipping business and was captured by the Japanese shortly after the outbreak of the war. He spent two years in Stanley Prison, and returned on the Gripsholm, as pictured in 1942.
His son, Robert G. Jr., was in the Class of 1953, and he may have written you also, but thought I would do so anyhow.
Rockport, Mass.
(Other readers who supplied names of the Gripsholm passengers are Dan L. Lindsley '16, Roger Evans 'l6, Edmund J. Bowen '20. Richard Parkhurst '16, Richard E. Rughaase '42, Gordon E. Torrey '37, and Mrs. M. L. Southwick. All of the Dartmouth passengers on the Gripsholm but one - the gentleman standing at far left - are identified in the caption below. Ed.)
Seated (from left): Carl Eskeline '16, the late Walter LeCount '14, the late Mrs. RussellDurgin. L.K. Little '14, the late Russell Durgin '15. Standing (from left): unidenrifiedpassenger, Christopher Livingston '28, Robert G. Kendall '21, C.W. Biddle '19, StewartJ. Teaze '18, and the late M.L. Southwick '18.
(Mr. Schackne and many other readers are right. Ed.)
