Present Shock
Now and then a doubt arises in some quarters that Dartmouth students receive exposure to a sufficiently broad range of opinion, political and social, of intellectual pursuits, or of recreational activity. It is a doubt quickly dispelled by the most cursory glance at the weekly calendar, a colorful flyer distributed each Friday listing extracurricular activities to transpire the following week.
Plays, concerts, lectures, symposia, films, exhibitions, athletic events, meetings: the offerings are so various as to boggle the mind as it is stretched. Take a sample of some 75 happenings scheduled for the third week of May, for instance:
One could start out Monday at 1 p.m. finding out about Sheeps and Fleeces forthe Handspinner, take in a discussion of Mine Workers in Zaire in the 1920s at 4:00 and choose for the evening among a senior fellowship presentation on Idle Tears andBlackbirds: Approaches to Metaphor, a Community Intermediate Dutch Class, fellowship with the Dartmouth Christian Fellowship, a lecture on Two Traditions inWest Coast Art, or films sponsored by the Russian Department, the Women's Program Committee, or the area Sierra Club. If none of these appealed, the specialist could have met with the Bicycle or the Chess Club.
Options were wide open for political and social issues during the week. The Women's Program offered competing lectures Tuesday at 4:00 on The ChangingRole of Women in Africa During theStruggle for Independence and on Law asIt Relates to Feminism. The Dartmouth Radical Union met that evening, and Wednesday the Daniel Webster Legal Society with the American Forum sponsored An Evening With William Rehnquist, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The Radical Union, a recently organized, still informal group, meets weekly; the student-sponsored forum invited four conservative speakers to the campus spring term - former Office of Economic Opportunity Director Howard Phillips, economist Milton Friedman, and presidential adviser William Seidman '43, in addition to Justice Rehnquist.
On Thursday, a fast man in track shoes - limbered up by the DOC's Wednesday early-morning birdwalk and conditioned by Wednesday evening's Assertiveness Training - could take in the Thursday Poets Workshop, grab a quick bite at Thayer, drop by the Jack-O-Lantern's Tupperware Party at 7:30, and still make Les Jeudi de North Fayerweather.
Friday presented a problem, with conflicting afternoon colloquia on CriticalBehavior in Cerium Magnesium Nitrate atUltra-Low Temperatures and Experts andPolicy Makers and evening relaxation with the Eleanor Frost Play Competition or a violin recital, preceded if time hung heavy by the GO Club meeting at 7:00.
If it all sounds very formidable, it must be recalled that the zealous function-goer would have been training to top form the previous week by attending the nightly presentations of the River Cluster's Future Shock Week.
