Letters to the Editor
Women
TO THE EDITOR:
The secret is out, "blind enrollment" is a possibility, and all over the world our alumni, clutching their privates and casting hostile looks at mother, wife, secretary, and daughter, are reaching for pen and paper. Me too. (But with both hands, and a typewriter.)
Women are okay. I've taught them for years. They're human. Let them in, more and more of them. You can rest assured that they will perpetuate all the hallowed traditions, from throwing up at the pledge banquet to becoming politically paleolithic in old age. If you need some group to discriminate against – that's human too – let's discriminate against fat people. Think of the result as the alumni rush to be identified with the good guys! What a boost to the nation's health!
Meanwhile, diehard misogynists can always cancel their alumni contributions. After all, it's a lean time, and any excuse seems a good one.
Storrs, Conn.
TO THE EDITOR:
Among all the photographs reproduced in your December issue, nine of the 150-odd faces belong to women. Two are watching an elephant, one is reclining on a rug, one is nibbling goodies at a reunion, two are at alumni meetings, and two are spectators at rugby games. One is a student. What does this mean?
Chicago, Ill.
W.S. WOLSTON'75
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Static
TO THE EDITOR:
Flushed with enthusiasm as a result of a won gridiron bet, my senior law partner, Phil E. Gilbert Jr. '36, thrust a copy of your December issue upon me with a "read it and weep" expression. This was no doubt meant to point me in the direction of your condescending one-paragraph account of the Dartmouth football victory over Princeton.
Having never before seen your publication, and being entranced at what promised to be a demonstration that Dartmouth men can sometimes both read and write, I took the magazine in hand and immediately stumbled on your puff piece about radio station WDCR and its new sister FM operation, WFRD. Now WFRD may well prove to be a fine young operation – in time – but it is not, as you represent, "the nation's first commercial FM station operated solely by undergraduates."
WPRB-FM, Princeton, New Jersey, is.
If memory serves me correctly, WPRB-FM began operating in October 1955 (just over 20 years ago if you have trouble counting), and has been covering central New Jersey with high fidelity music and undergraduate comment ever since. In doing so it has won a number of awards, and it has quite a number of distinguished broadcasters among its alumni. It wishes its youthful imitator all the success in the world – but, please, let us not allow parochial enthusiasm about being "the first" to get out of hand.
Princeton '59
New York, N.Y.
TO THE EDITOR:
I am disappointed that your writer did not take the trouble, in preparing his article on the Dartmouth radio stations, to find out the real nature of the faculty petition concerning programming. It is not an attempt to "force the station to play more classical music at certain hours," as the station manager told Dan Nelson, but rather, in the words of the petition, a call to establish a committee to "examine the programming of WFRD and WDCR and its relationship to the cultural aims of the College, the educational and cultural needs of the community, and the available radio resources of the region."
As your article makes abundantly clear, intelligent programming has been the last and least concern of the station directorate, which has tended to concentrate on management, commercial, and technical operations, leaving the problem of content very largely in the hands of disc jockeys. The faculty would like to get more actively involved in helping the students to realize the variety and potential of educational radio, in its broadest sense – that is, radio which takes an intelligent and critical attitude toward its materials rather than imitates the large commercial stations all over the country, and their standardized pop and rock recordings. It is our hope that students going from Dartmouth into radio careers will bring to their work a heightened perception of how radio can help to enrich the lives of its listeners, and not only be commercially successful.
Professor Arthur Luehrmann and I, who started circulating the petition only after long and fruitless efforts to bring about some discussion and exchange (he as faculty adviser to the station, I as a member of a station-designated program committee whose recommendations were filed away and forgotten) will present the petition, which was signed by 80 colleagues without any great activity on our part, to the General Faculty at its next meeting. We sincerely hope that it will bring about radio programming more responsible to the College and the community than the 12 hours of progressive rock, progressive jazz, easy progressive and pop that had been announced for the afternoon and evening hours (from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m., with only news breaks) for WFRD-FM, which will be reaching a much wider audience than its sister station after 6 p.m.
I suppose it shouldn't matter, but I would have hoped that "my" magazine might do a better and fairer job of reporting what one of Dartmouth's loyal alumni (and a former member of the WDBS directorate) is trying to do to help the College fulfill its aims and its responsibility to the local community.
Hanover, N.H.
Conrad Snow
TO THE EDITOR:
I hope the Dartmouth family everywhere felt a welling of pride over the character and career of Conrad E. Snow '12, whose death, at the age of 86, occurred on December 21, 1975.
Here was the only kind of man who, while a government employee, could survive after daring to charge that a member of the Senate of the United States was using his high public office as a platform and screen from which to shout baseless accusations about the loyalty of public officers. His sense of fairness and justice could not be downed by charges and threats strewed abroad in times of danger and fear. His character truly was made of the granite of his native New Hampshire, hard and firm in the face of the clamor and confusion of major political and social changes.
The beleagured Department of State of the Truman-Acheson-McCarthy era was fortunate beyond its wildest hopes to have such a man within its walls when the need came for a leader of its loyalty-security hearing board. The times demanded a knight in shining armor with the character and fearlessness to challenge a powerful enemy who had many wiles and no scruples. As chairman of the hearing board, Conrad Snow provided the Democratic Administration with a voice armed with the impregnable authority of a lifelong Republican, a retired Army general, an experienced lawyer and a universal reputation for integrity and courage. Those of us who were in that fray must be ever grateful for the protection of that armor, even if it could not shelter the whole nation from the injustice of false charges.
The sons of Dartmouth sing that its spell on them remains wherever they may roam. Part of that spell is kinship with people like General Snow in whose personality, deeds, and words glowed the highest aspirations of the Dartmouth fellowship.
May there be more sons and daughters as sturdy.
Washington, D.C.
(Conrad Snow's obituary appears in this issue. Ed.)
Cover
TO THE EDITOR:
Three years ago, on the Metro in Paris, I sat opposite a teenager in a lavender T-shirt with DARTMOUTH COLLEGE superimposed in deep purple. Smiling smugly to myself I thought, "He doesn't know how funny that looks to a Dartmouth wife and mother." After receiving your December issue my sense of humor fails to sustain me. Why PURPLE?
Woodstock, Vt.
ROTC
TO THE EDITOR:
From reading The Bulletin of November 1975, I assume that the ROTC has been reestablished at Dartmouth.
I was reminded of a statement by Fred M. Hechinger writing in the November 1 issue of Saturday Review. He writes: "One can argue the case for or against the presence of the Reserve Officers Training Corps on a university campus; but it is difficult to look with respect on institutions that, having banished the ROTC in response to student demands, are quietly inviting the corps back, without as much as an effort to come to grips with the moral issues involved in such action."
I trust that Dartmouth has made that effort and is fully satisfied of the rightness of its action.
Newport, R.I.
(For more on ROTC see page 11. Ed.)
Mistake?
TO THE EDITOR:
The Bulletin referred to the $600 cider and doughnuts issue: "... this custom was cancelled to save money." Now that decision has been reversed and the item will be returned to the budget next year. To publicly acknowledge a mistake is an admirable quality. But was it a mistake?
Under present economic conditions, I feel the original decision to cancel was sound. Please don't tell me it's only $600 – it is the principle that concerns me. It seems to typify a vacillating administration afraid to "bite the bullet" and gives in to immature dissidents who have not yet experienced the real world and others who have escaped from the real world.
Lakehurst, N.J.
Gladdened
TO THE EDITOR:
I recently had the opportunity to return to Dartmouth after a much-too-prolonged absence, and feel obliged to write concerning my impressions.
Regardless of whether Dartmouth has admitted women as degree recipient students, of whether the Indian symbol is used to describe the College's athletic teams, of whether Reserve Officer Training is offered to students, of whether the College has adopted year-round education, it appeared as if Dartmouth is still attracting finer students, presenting them a finer education, and preparing them for their future lives finer than any institution around. I was impressed by their spirit, amazed by their dedication, and gladdened by their sense of purpose in attending an institution of Dartmouth's caliber.
In this day of increasing national distrust of the educational system and diminishing indices of national educational preparedness, it is reassuring to know that Dartmouth has upheld the same high principles of educational excellence that motivated most alumni to attend the College, and which have guided them throughout their lives.
After all, isn't that what Dartmouth College is all about?
Bolingbrook, Ill.
The Symbol (cont.)
TO THE EDITOR:
I find hard to take the conclusion of the Trustees that the symbol is working against the "objectives of the College in advancing Native American education." Are the Trustees implying that all these years, through the use of the symbol, we have been unfair to our Indian brethren? I doubt that this is so. Nor do I ever remember seeing a comprehensive statement of the position of the objectors. Will the Trustees please supply us one.
Meanwhile will the alumni overcome their lethargy and ponder the matter seriously! Surely we and the College have failed to "set a watch." If blacks want black angels and a black Christ, why can't the Indians have a stalwart brave? What is the matter?
Concord, Mass.
(Negative effects of the Indian symbol were discussedin a 1972 Alumni Council report, asdocumented here and in The Bulletin. Ed.)
TO THE EDITOR:
At the risk of being accessory to extending the agony of the Indian symbol controversy, I pass along a striking sentence happened on today. It occurs in a description of an end-of-season football game that once put the quietus on Dartmouth's claim to "the mythical Eastern championship." The sentence: "Hammering their way through the surprised and weak forward line of the Green, the Indians broke down the first-half strength of the team and scored a decisive victory, destroying any claim to the mythical championship, as well as the clean record for the season."
The sentence is from Athletics at Dartmouth by Horace G. Pender '97 and Raymond M. McParlin '20, published in 1923. The game it describes was the final one of the 1913 season: Carlisle Indians 35, Dartmouth 10.
Westport, Conn.
TO THE EDITOR:
Why keep the Indian symbol if its significance has been lost?
Dartmouth men of long ago recognized it for what it was – a sign of the love and respect Eleazar Wheelock had for the Native American, for whom he endured great hardships in founding "The College on the Hill."
With this sacrifice forgotten, the symbol is merely a hollow emblem to those who today enjoy the benefits that have grown from his high purpose.
Personally, I would like to see it restored, but only if it can be separated from caricature and its true meaning once again made alive, as it always will be with me.
South Easton, Mass.
(Mr. O'Hara teaches English at the Universityof Connecticut. Ed.)
(Mr. McGuire is chairman of the board oftrustees of Princeton Broadcasting Service Inc. Ed.)
The ALUMNI MAGAZINE welcomes views and comment from its readers. For publication, letters must be signed; addressed specifically to the Magazine (not copies of communications to other individuals or organizations); and kept within a limit of 400 words.
(Mr. Sices is professor of French at the College. Ed.)
