The College

FIVE years ago last month half a hundred war protesters "took over" Parkhurst Hall on a sunny afternoon, remaining in a more or less peaceful state of siege until removal in the dark of the night by the New Hampshire state police. The drama of confrontation, already well rehearsed by SDS and police at Berkeley, Wisconsin, and Harvard, had finally been played out at Dartmouth.

Last month, several years after the archetypical drug raid at Stony Brook, the New Hampshire state police made another nighttime visitation to Dartmouth to arrest II students for possession and sale of marijuana. Some say that use of illegal drugs, although dating back at least as far as Richard Hovey's time, took a slow, rather meandering course to Hanover. So, too. did the state's efforts to thwart it.

Last month there also was a Senior Party (with optional black tie) styled after the Senior Prom of the 1920s, suggesting that nostalgia, like the gypsy moth, has made a belated invasion.

If there are lessons here is unclear, except that fads, causes, and spring all come late to the North Country.

The bare pines rising over the Green in May were for tree chopping competition duringWoodsmen s Weekend and not, as one campus wag suggested, for executing the deans.