Letters to the Editor

The President's Report

TO THE EDITOR:

I suppose that most of us Dartmouth alumni - and undergraduates, too - have at times entertained questions concerning policies and decisions of the Trustees and administration of the College.

But President Kemeny's report in the April issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE should certainly answer most of our questions, allay any of our fears, and cement our faith that our college is in reasoned, logical, and very capable hands.

And I, for one, am profoundly grateful.

New London, N.H.

TO THE EDITOR:

Rather than write direct to President Kemeny, may I take this opportunity to congratulate him and your magazine for his comprehensive and complete report of his first five years as President of Dartmouth and you for making space available in your April issue to publish it.

During the period under review, all alumni have been somewhat aware of the various pressures and problems, but this fine report puts it all together and helps us all to understand better the difficulties the administration of the College has faced.

Congratulations again on an excellent report.

Weston, Mass.

TO THE EDITOR:

I can't help wonder if other alumni may have been as disturbed, dismayed, and incredulous as I - or just apathetically inattentive on reading that portion of President Kemeny's report in the April ALUMNI MAGAZINE covering the College budget. A $53 million figure and a little simple arithmetic tells us that it costs the College $13,000 per year per student to operate. Think of it!

In the face of such a simple, but eye-popping observation I feel compelled to draw a prosaic or somewhat pedestrian analogy.

I have what I always thought to be a not unusual, but fortunate family and family financial situation. There are seven of us - my wife and I, three youngsters, and two expensively aging and infirm parents-in-law. Using the College standards, 1 would need an income, after all federal taxes, of $91,000 to break even. My income doesn't approach that, and I don't peronally know anyone whose does.

How do we manage to survive? I guess I just don't know, but I feel it is more pertinent to ask how can the College spend so much? Dartmouth's budget has increased 430 per cent in 15 years. I know of no individual or institution that can say the same. No sensible person can rationalize inflation or lack of government help as the culprits. And any sensible person can see that if the same pattern perseveres for the next 15 years, the College will cease to exist. It not already priced out of the educational market, endowment funds will have been dissipated or become worthless.

But as for my little analogy. My family lives very comfortably in a spacious well appointed 13-room house. We manage to support five cars. We pay large medical bills. We pay larger property tax bills. We support the arts and worthwhile charities. All three children went, or are going to, college. (Not to Dartmouth, which refused them, but to schools of quality which are less expensive yet strangely remain solvent with less handsome support from alumni and endowment.) We certainly never considered seeking financial aid. We eat and dress well, and my wife and I travel pretty much when and where we choose - in and out of the country. We don't worry too much about money, but we do save regularly. We owe no one, and I know that inflationary elements affect us as much in more ways than they do the College. All this we do on a fraction of one family's theoretical proportionate cost at Dartmouth. The clincher is that I could hire two Dartmouth full professors with the difference (See March ALUMNI MAGAZINE).

I would suggest that the College budget is ludicrous and ridiculous - Dr. Kemeny's pretty rhetoric to the contrary. It is terribly wrong and completely out of touch with reality. I would suggest that my fellow alumni apply the same simple yardstick and ponder the absurdity that Dartmouth cannot educate - superbly - a student for less than $13,000 a year....

The President's lofty thinking just ignores the one basic essential factor, the purely local Hanover economy, which could be controlled, but is never discussed or considered. If inflation is a real problem, I somehow feel it was invented in Hanover. To a New Hampshire resident the real estate ads in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, for example, have always been a joke. The $200,000 house advertised can be bought almost anywhere in the state outside the Hanover area for $50,000 - or less.

With things going as they are, in 20 years I shall be able to buy vegetable-garden land in front of a crumbling Baker Library for $50 an acre. Isn't it ironic that the old conservative of the early forties should unhappily see the same end in view as the young radical of the late sixties.

Goffstown, N.H.

(Exclude operating expenses for the MedicalSchool [about $10 million], the other graduateschools and graduate programs, the HanoverInn [about $2 million], and some of the auxiliary activities, and the current educational costper undergraduate is closer to $6,000 - roughlytwice tuition. Of course, Mr. MacGregor isright that the overall budget is an "eye-popping"$52,764,000. In 1941, before therewere a Hopkins Center, a Tucker Foundation,graduate programs in Arts and Sciences, a Murdough Center, a Kiewit Center, a FairchildCenter, a four-year M.D. program, offerings inenvironmental studies, foreign studies, blackstudies, and before taxes on dormitories anddining halls reached their present rate, etc.,Dartmouth spent $1,933,635.50. In terms oftoday's inflated dollars that figure translates toabout $8 million. Ed.)

TO THE EDITOR:

I've just finished reading President Kemeny's report of the first five years of the 13th presidency of Dartmouth College. As a member of the first class to matriculate and graduate under the 13th President, I have some comments I would like to share with fellow alumni.

Each of Dartmouth's Presidents in this century has molded the College in his own manner. Each President in his time has risen to the demands and challenges which faced his administration, his faculty, and his students. The success of Tucker, Hopkins, and Dickey is dramatically manifested by their alumni who have consistently influenced the course of our history. The tremendous loyalty and support of Dartmouth alumni is, I think, a profound expression of graditude to the College and its leaders for a significant and highly memorable undergraduate experience.

What has been true for Presidents Tucker Hopkins, and Dickey is also true of President Kemeny. He was risen to the demands and challenges which face his administration, his faculty, and his students. He spoke at my Convocation (the 201st Convocation of the College) and promised to make Dartmouth the best undergraduate college in the country. If you want to know whether he has kept that promise, read his report in the April ALUMNI MAGAZINE or better yet talk to one of his alumni. I, for one, feel that my Dartmouth experience was the best possible undergraduate experience available and that it has prepared me for the present and the future.

President Kemeny has my congratulations and gratitude for an impressive first five years in office. If you want to know how impressive the past five years have been, read his report. Within it be sure to note that the Alumni Fund has doubled during the last five years, which strikes me as a silent but significant vote of confidence in the College and its 13th President. May the next five years of the College's third century be as fine a testimonial to its President as have the years preceding. I think the time is right to "give a rouse for" John G. Kemeny!

Boston, Mass.

Disputing an Old Champion

TO THE EDITOR:

It is ironic yet sad to read Ellis Briggs' latest diatribe in the same issue as President Kemeny's five-year report to the Trustees.

I first met Mr. Briggs in 1963 when, as a newly retired Foreign Service officer, he spoke before an International Politics class I was taking. He impressed me greatly with his biting sense of humor and perception of the State Department's problems; he was a regular gadfly.

May I try to let down an old champion gently. It is sad that the Dartmouth Briggs knew and loved has seemed to change, as has the America he so ably served. The irony is that both loves have grown and become stronger, not without some pain. Hopefully, we will be better for it.

1. Co-education and year-round operation are magnificient commitments to the future of American education. I am personally very proud of Dartmouth's thoughtful incorporation of those innovations. The problems of year-round operation are shakedown in nature, not substantive.

2. Briggs knows the women asked that the alma mater ["Men of Dartmouth"] be retained two years ago; the women I have met are as gung-ho Dartmouth as anyone.

3. I have yet to meet my first fastidious Dartmouth man and cannot imagine what one would be like.

4. The Trustees pay a high price for the "honor" of what is becoming almost a full-time job; to call these men "supine" is ridiculous.

5. Considering his background, one would expect Mr. Briggs to be more sensitive to the attitude of non-WASPs. We must condemn conscious and unconscious racism....

The Dartmouth experience is expensive, very expensive. So is excellence. The Trustees and John Kemeny are tough with money and I truly believe the College gets full value from the money it spends. My fear is that the costs may be too deep, the fat being too long gone. Excellence costs money and the alumni are the only reliable and consistent source of gift dollars. Not the government, not the corporations or foundations. This is right, because only the alumni can care enough whether Dartmouth prevails and excels. No one else.

Dartmouth has entered a new age, less secure and not as comfortable, but as filled with the promise that got it started. Mr. Briggs, please hang in. It's not less than the Dartmouth you knew, but more, and it is as traditional as the Dartmouth you knew - because it is the Dartmouth you knew.

Boston, Mass.

On ROTC

TO THE EDITOR:

Those who relate the exclusion of ROTC from Dartmouth to its incompatiblity with the College's liberal arts orientation or equate its abolition to similar bans on physical education majors and athletic scholarships have sadly missed the mark. The question of ROTC at Dartmouth is and always has been a political one. The College recognized as much when it deferred reconsideration of its position until after the impact of United States involvement in Southeast Asia had subsided.

The result of the College's clearly political decision to eliminate ROTC was likewise to eliminate from its student body many whose views regarding the need for national defense outside the context of Vietnam do not correspond to those of the majority. In so doing the Dartmouth community has imposed a tyranny by the majority no less offensive than other such impositions which have existed and continue to exist in our country.

Had ROTC not been available at the College in 1965, it is likely that I would have attended some other undergraduate institution. Had I done so, it is still probable that I would have found myself a Marine infantry platoon leader in Vietnam in 1970. But during the intervening undergraduate years elsewhere, would I have been confronted with the views of a David Kubrin or a Jonathan Mirsky? Would the same opportunity for the independent study of history of Southeast Asia have been presented? Could I have arranged a leave of absence in the spring of 1968 that allowed me to go to Vietnam and observe, as a free-lance newspaper correspondent, what was actually taking place there? I have little doubt that these aspects of my liberal arts education at Dartmouth had considerable influence on my later actions as a Marine in Vietnam.

The tragic nature of our involvement in Vietnam demands that colleges such as ours accommodate ROTC. Otherwise, we will concede the future domination of our armed forces to narrowminded professionals and witless hirelings. Neither our country nor the world can afford an army of Westmorelands and Calleys.

Cambridge, Mass.

TO THE EDITOR

have come to the reluctant conclusion that the faculty at Dartmouth College needs to be reminded that when it comes to setting policy, they are in an advisory capacity, and that policy is determined only by the Board of Trustees acting in the best interests of the Dartmouth alumni, as well as the student body and the faculty.

When the Board of Trustees makes the final determination about the future role of ROTC at Dartmouth, I have faith that they will decide that every student who matriculates should be given a free choice as to whether or not he or she should prepare themselves for serving their country whenever and wherever its vital interests are at stake. Just as their forefathers did.

President Kemeny promised publicly that when we had withdrawn our forces from Vietnam the future of ROTC would be reconsidered. I am one who believes his word is good.

Ft. Meyers, Fla.

On ROTC's Critics

TO THE EDITOR:

Your correspondents of April - Anton and Brandenburg - no doubt have opened the floodgates for months to come.

We used to have an expression in the Air Force - "Ya gotta have losses in big operations" - and certainly the development and furtherance of maturity and intelligence that Dartmouth is supposed to input were lost on these birds.

I look forward to the letters in the months to come!

ALFRED E. CREHAN '51

Franklin Lakes, N. J.

TO THE EDITOR:

With a sense of sadness and deep regret I have just read the two letters from members of the Class of 1971 which appeared in the April issue. The one so ignorant, arrogant, and totally immature, the other so hysterical as to merit nothing but pity and concern for the state of mind of its writer.

The Class of 1971 must be proud of these two men!

Francestown, N. H.

TO THE EDITOR:

In reading through the April issue, I read Guy Brandenberg's tirade with some interest. He continues to make the mistake today that he made in the take-over of Parkhurst Hall.

He talks about how it's wrong for Dartmouth to allow ROTC on campus, because, I imagine, Dartmouth should not allow itself to be used as a processing center for automaton defenders of the U.S. power structure, which I think is what he thinks officers in the military are. He fears that the government will use its military force to change people's minds, to limit their freedom, to dictate how they shall live. The government tried this tactic in Vietnam, and failed. The tactic is immoral and wrong.

Yet this tactic of force to change people's minds is exactly what the Parkhurst sack was and it is exactly what Mr. Brandenburg threatens in his last paragraph.

This country's legion problems will not be solved by threats and force. Intelligent discussion and interchange of ideas are the key.

The ROTC input to the armed forces provides a temporizing influence, and the availability of ROTC scholarships makes it possible for students to earn their own way through college without having to rely on daddy or financial aid.

I think Dartmouth has a place for ROTC, impassioned tirades notwithstanding.

Mayport, Fla.

TO THE EDITOR:

Since the time I graduated from Dartmouth I have read with regularity the letters-to-the-editor column of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Now in the April 1975 issue I run across for the first time in 54 years a letter that fills me with equal parts of awe, wonderment, and nausea.

It is the only letter that is printed in full on page five. Or should I not more aptly describe it as "juvenile, fulminating, philippic"? I think so.

(1) Awe that anyone can live any length of time on a straight diet of dill pickles. (2) Wonderment why Dartmouth gave him a degree instead of kicking him out on his bucket as soon as signs of mental aberration appeared in him.

(3) Nausea that Dartmouth failed to do so.

With far more accuracy of use and applicability to the matter at hand, I join the graduate and undergraduate student body at Dartmouth in saying to Guy F. Brandenburg, who can't even get his Latin quotations correct: "Quo Usque Tandem Abutere, Catalina, Patientia Nostra?"

Columbus, Ohio

TO THE EDITOR:

I am amazed at the Trustees of the College. I know that they are concerned with academic freedom. It would appear to me that they should be equally concerned with the product. The valedictorian's speech at the 1971 graduation should have alerted them to the fact that something was wrong. The publication of that speech and its national circulation by the media certainly did not enhance the reputation of the College.

Now we have the letter-to-the-editor, page five, April 1975 issue of the Magazine, signed by Guy F. Brandenburg '71

To any thinking man, the test of the education is the product. I know that the product can be directly related to the faculty. I am sure that Professor Mirsky's conduct contributed to that product. Professor Mirsky's action at a presentation of awards to ROTC students in the stadium, which I witnessed, was anything other than reasonable, mature, or in recognition of the rights of the minority.

How long will it be before the Trustees wake up to their responsibility?

Manchester, N.H.

Professor Mirsky

TO THE EDITOR:

It was ironic to find in the April issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE both President Kemeny's comments on the value of Dartmouth's high quality teaching staff ("this faculty is our single greatest asset," p. 18), and the news that Professor Jonathan Mirsky will be separated from the College.

Those of us who like Don Pogue [see letter in April issue] had the pleasure and the privilege of knowing Professor Mirsky realize that he, in fact, came very close to fulfilling Dartmouth's self-avowed ideals. He was unfailingly committed to scholastic excellence, he was dedicated and inspiring in his teaching, and he demonstrated the courage of accepting the burden of his personal convictions. How dis-heartening to find that, despite all this, the ALUMNI MAGAZINE can only manage to say "... Professor Mirsky was fired or resigned - or something in between ..." Surely, both students and alumni deserve a more satisfactory explanation.

Not that any of this will now make any difference. At this point, all we can do is thank Professor Mirsky for his contribution to Dartmouth's stature, and reassure him that at least some ears heard his Vox Clamantis in Deserto.

Cambridge, Mass.

(For Professor Mirsky's views on the matter,see the last page. Ed.)

TO THE EDITOR:

By his choice of year-titles in his five-year report, John Kemeny seems less concerned with life outside the Hanover plain than he was five years ago. Luckily, however, for me and many other students in that period, Jonathan Mirsky was around to keep alive questions that plagued most of the rest of the world as Kemeny slid into the "Year of the Budget."

Jonathan Mirsky is leaving Dartmouth. Next year's incoming freshmen, who were after all 12 years old during Kemeny's "Year of Cambodia and Kent State" will not have Jonathan around to shake them out of their middle-class comfort-induced apathy and make them look at the life on the globe that most folk face, to get them to stop bull - ing about things they hear and start thinking and finding out for themselves. Anyone who had Jonathan as a teacher-friend at Dartmouth will tell you that knowing him was an experience that changed his or her life. His dedication to teaching and to his students was unmatched. A Mirsky course meant prodigious amounts of reading and writing, with each word you wrote read and criticized by the teacher with care; it meant developing a bull - detector to tell you when "sources" might be lying or when you might be deceiving yourself; it meant long discussions and arguments in his Bartlett Hall office, which was open from morning till evening for students to drop in (no "office hours" there); it meant exciting evenings in Thetford Hill with Jonathan and former students who always came back to visit and with visiting scholars and Asia-travelers who stayed there.

Jonathan did not teach history as a gentlemanly discipline designed to inject a little past culture into Americans from the provinces. History for Jonathan and his students does not stop in the past; it means most importantly what we do now. It is seeing how our actions make history, and taking the responsibility for the results of our actions. Otherwise we merely plow ahead, thinking we understand the past, while evil men dictate the present and destroy the future.

That concept of history means that on occasion one must annoy if not frustrate people in power, and that is what Jonathan did. At Dartmouth, in Lebanon, at CRREL, in Washington, he really bothered people. Now in gratitude for his honesty and courage he is being cast out of Dartmouth. It is a double tragedy; incoming students will not have a chance to have help from this historian in changing their lives and Jonathan is thrown into an academic job market where there are no buyers, ending a 20-year-long career of teaching and helping college students.

Kemeny's year-titles are evidence that the institution's concern is primarily with the business of running the institution. The fact that the power-wielders at Dartmouth feel that Jonathan has no place there is evidence that they don't want people, including themselves, to know what is really happening "out there," a long way from Dartmouth.

Vershire, Vt.

TO THE EDITOR:

A published letter on page four of your April 1975 issue lamented the departure of Professor Jonathan Mirsky from the Dartmouth faculty. In times such as these when our national sovereignty is endangered by advocates of detente, to those of us who favor a continuation of our national independence, his departure brings a sigh of relief. The undersigned, a few years ago, witnessed Mr. Mirsky leading a band of Communist sympathizers with placards around the State House at Augusta, Maine. We wonder whether his courses teaching Communism and Marxism will still be in the curriculum. If so, are they disavowed?

On March 4, 1953, President Dickey told the Boston Alumni at the Copley Plaza Hotel ballroom, "For my part the past six years have fortified the position I took in 1947 that I would not knowingly be a party to employing a person who accepts the discipline of the communist party. Such a person is disqualified for service in an American educational enterprise because he presumably accepts the obligation of membership in a conspiratorial group committed to the use of deceit and deception as a matter of policy. The business of higher education will prosper only if it is carried on by men with honest and independent minds whose position before the laws of our society is such that they have no need to take refuge in any American tribunal behind a privilege against incrimination by their own words."

We know that the godless slave-camp-operating Communists are attacking our American free institutions today even with more strength than in 1953. It is time Dartmouth took a position on standards. There are many on record. Among them was and is Colonel Franklin A. Haskell, Class of 1854, hero and author of the Battle of Gettysburg, who lost his. life in freedom's cause at Cold Harbor. We believe scores of living alumni have witnessed soldiers and sailors giving their lives in what they believed was freedom's cause in World War 11. It seems time that our present administration should and can declare whether or not Dartmouth intends to maintain such tried and just standards of liberty and free enterprise. It can do so by declaring to Washington a desire for reopening ROTC, to supply needed officers to combat the present Communist attack upon our free institution, an attack which is subtly sweeping over our national life.

It would seem that the Bicentennial Year, now being celebrated on both a state and national level, provides a fitting occasion. It was New Hampshire's John Stark who held the line at Bunker Hill, in 1775. He also bequeathed to New Hampshire her present automobile registration number plate motto, "Live Free or Die."

Concord, N. H.

(In that speech in Boston in 1953 PresidentDickey also said, "But let all who applaud suchan expression . . . ask themselves whether theyare prepared to honor the performance of...protecting the independent-minded teacher fromthe foul penalties of incrimination by recrimination and insinuation." Ed.)

TO THE EDITOR:

I am writing in regard to the firing Of Professor Jonathan Mirsky. While at Dartmouth I studied Chinese history and language with Professor Mirsky. Afterwards, I spent two years in graduate study at Stanford University, and at present, I am a doctoral candidate in Chinese history at Harvard University. The longer I am in this field, the more I come to value my study with Professor Mirsky. Over the past five years I have learned much about Chinese history which I did not know on leaving Dartmouth. But I have learned nothing more important than what Jonathan Mirsky taught me, which was, above all, a sense of my academic and social responsibilities as a thoughtful human being. In his daily actions Jonathan Mirsky teaches an attitude of rational skepticism, tempered by human concern, which is necessary not only for those who wish to be scholars, but anyone who cares to be an intellectually responsible member of his society.

I am both saddened and angered by the need to write this letter. Indeed, one of my last memories of Dartmouth is of writing a letter much like this one, not only in regard to Professor Mirsky, but also in defense of the importance of the study of Chinese at Dartmouth. It was been five years since then, and although I do not know the present status of Chinese studies in the eyes of the administration, it is obvious Professor Mirsky's position did not improve.

That Jonathan Mirsky will no longer be teaching at Dartmouth is a disservice to future Dartmouth students and contravenes Dartmouth's oft-stated commitment to academic excellence. Whoever is ultimately responsible for this action has taken a course which can only lead to the diminishing of educational opportunities at Dartmouth.

Brighton, Mass.

TO THE EDITOR:

We wish to express our deep concern over Professor Jonathan Mirsky's departure from the College.

At its best, Dartmouth is an institution which seeks to instill in its students an appreciation of moral as well as of intellectual values. As such, it can ill-afford to lose a person of Professor Mirsky's knowledge, integrity, and courage. During our undergraduate days, those qualities were a source of inspiration to us as they were to hundreds of our contemporaries.

It may now be too late for Dartmouth to correct the grave error it has made in this matter. For the sake of the College and of the Dartmouth community, we hope it is not.

Washington, D. C.

Academic Honor

TO THE EDITOR:

I have been pondering your query, "Honor: The Vanishing Principle," for more than a month now. It bothers me deeply that my peers find it necessary to cheat to fulfill their academic commitments. And although the natural thought is that these students are only hurting themselves, the ecology of the situation affects the entire college and indeed the character of this generation as a whole.

But even while the answer ultimately lies within each individual, the scope of the question needs to be broadened. Why is it that 55 per cent of those polled felt compelled to cheat? Was it the system itself that couldn't provide a better alternative? In their minds did the letter "A or the numbers 90-100 occupy the goal-space that should have been reserved for the prospect of acquiring knowledge?

Somewhere along the line of the traditional education process, quality has been sacrificed to quantity. The prevalent question today is not "What did you learn in school today?" but "What did you get in school today?" And the once revered and honored academic institutions become stepping stones in a turbulent society and a diploma a rite of passage instead of a symbol of a person whose decisions have been tempered with judgment.

I study in a system that has no grades and quite frankly it turns me on to learning - for its own sake. Credit is given for courses taken and work completed. Evaluations are written in each course for each student (sometimes by the students themselves). Yes, it puts a lot more responsibility on both students - to motivate themselves without external goals - and professors - to become more personally involved in the teaching process - but isn't that exactly what we're looking for?

The ravages of the Dark Ages evolved into the Renaissance. The contradictions of the Roman Catholic Church evolved into the Protestant movement and the Reformation. The shame of Vietnam and Watergate evolved us into what looks to be a new era of political awareness and participation. Let us hope that the present academic dishonor evolves us into an era of enlightened teaching methods.

Santa Cruz, Calif.

TO THE EDITOR:

The cheating issue is now some months old but I suppose comments are still in order.

Cheating is, of course, encouraged by the fierce and, in my opinion, wicked competition for grades that is part of the American educational system.

I am sure that many of my fellow alumni feel that such competition is part of the American ethos. I can only view it, after some 25 years of teaching, as wholly destructive. It has nothing to do with what I understand to be the true spirit of education (or of America either, for that matter). To me it is indicative of the character of the vast part of American education which is directed at coercing students into doing things that their teachers think are good for them.

When I started the first college of the University of California at Santa Cruz ten years ago I was dogmatic on only one point: We would not have letter grades but only pass-fail with written evaluations of the students' work. In my perhaps arrogant opinion pass-fail (now evolved into pass-no credit - so a student cannot fail a course in the conventional sense) is the most notable achievement of this campus. None of She dreadful consequences that were predicted by the timid and conventional came to pass. Students worked and loafed in about the same proportions as on other campuses that I am familiar with. They got their share of fellowships and admissions to graduate and professional schools. They were, for the most part, free of the corrosive anxieties produced by conventional grading systems (though, to be sure, they found other anxieties to take their place). But most interesting and important of all from a pedagogical point of view was the fact that teaching became more rewarding and, I believe, effective. It was startling to me to realize to what degree the necessity of attaching a grade to each student had limited the ways in which I thought about my teaching. Thus, for me at least, the greatest liberation that came from doing away with conventional grades was my own liberation as a teacher. Teaching simply became much more fun.

Since most professors believe that suffering is good for their students, they are consistent enough to believe that it is good for them, too, so I suppose there is very little chance that the academy will do more than dabble with ungraded systems as long as it survives. And that's too bad. To my former colleagues I can only say, "You don't know what you're missing."

Santa Cruz, Calif.

Heartfelt Thanks

TO THE EDITOR

I offer my quite belated but quite heartfelt thanks for your February, 1974 issue which featured the first ten years of the ABC program. Because of the detailed information therein and the initiative of a colleague, Susan Brown-Kaplan (Finch '71), at least three Charlottesville students will get 'a better chance' in September.

Photocopies of "Ten Years of ABC" have greatly facilitated presentation of this worthy program to interested, but as yet nonparticipating, institutions. The benefits of the instance, have extended far beyond the Dartmouth community.

Charlottesville, Va.

QxR!

TO THE EDITOR:

I am not a good skier and my chess could be considered fair - that is about all.

I spent some time during Easter Week with my young daughter Michelle (13) and my son Nicholas (8) and we could not fill out the Kopec Vs. Ocipoff final chess moves as reported in your February 1975 issue.

Or some of the moves are missing, or something definitely is wrong! There is no double check that we can see, but then again we are only the readers.

Sometimes newspapers and magazines purposely put in misspellings or even make mistakes on chess moves to get readers' reaction. In this manner they can figure out roughly what the reader's interest is and this of course can be helpful for future editorial policy. I trust this is not the case.

Best regards and now that spring is here, a good baseball season - and chess to you all.

Guatemala, C. A.

(Unfortunately, the position of some of thepieces in the final moves of Kopec Vs. Ocipoffwas obscured in the photograph accompanyingthe article. Ed.)

Terse Verse

TO THE EDITOR:

For the Alumni Fund

I hope it's all right if I break into verse As long as I keep it reasonably terse. It was true in our time and it still is the case And a fact that alumni must have to face. No college we know can fulfill its real mission If it has to depend on room, board, and tuition. So let us remember we now can repay Some part of the help that we had in our day.

Cumberland, Maine

(Page Smith, a noted historian, was a foundingfaculty member of UC at Santa Cruz. Ed.)