Letters to the Editor
Sex and the College Student
TO THE EDITOR:
I was delighted to see in the public press the announcement that the Trustees have unanimously approved the removal of consideration of sex as a criterion for admission to Dartmouth College. The Trustees are to be applauded for this decision which will undoubtedly help to continue Dartmouth's position of leadership in higher education in this country.
Having maintained my contact with the Alumni Council for many years, I am aware of the pressures brought to bear on the Trustees and the administration against such a decision, but I am sure that the educational excellence of the College will be greatly enhanced. The Trustees have shown wisdom and foresight.
Henniker, N.H.
(Although some press reports have impliedotherwise, the Trustees indicated that theremoval of sex as a criterion for admission willbe a gradual process. Ed.)
TO THE EDITOR:
In a period when criticism is frequent and praise relatively rare, I'd like to congratulate the Board of Trustees on its historical decision with respect to the composition of the Dartmouth undergraduate body.
The Trustees' statement of principle is greatly to be applauded, not merely for its implications concerning the role of women at Dartmouth, but above all for its emphasis on excellence and contribution to national leadership as the primary objective of the College.
Knowing that the alumni have great reservations on the matter of the male-female ratio, it is to be hoped that the Board's decision will lead to a better understanding of the functions of Dartmouth - and therewith to a more openminded orientation to admissions criteria.
Most specifically, it would be well if the alumni were to consider the composition of the undergraduate body in a more businesslike way. In reading some statements of the debate in the Alumni Council, I had the impression of a business meeting of Standard Oil, in which a strong argument was being made to maintain the ratio of kerosene to gasoline produced by the company in the 19205! If Dartmouth's role is to prepare students for leadership roles in our society - and if women are to play these roles in greater frequency in the future - nostalgia for the past, be it kerosene lamps or road trips to Smith, can be overdone....
After all, it could be said that the College makes an investment in its undergraduates and that Dartmouth as an institution is particularly dependent on the support, not to mention the financial contributions, of its alumni. In this sense, just as any business must study its market, Dartmouth must respond to changes in the demography and economics of higher education. And given recent projections of the likely decline in the numbers of the age group of college students, it can be argued that the Board's decision is in any event inevitable if the College is to maintain its standards of excellence.
Perhaps this line of reasoning will help some alumni to realize that they have daughters as well as sons - and that the sex ratio of the undergraduate body is of less importance than the quality of the Dartmouth educational experience.
Hanover, N.H.
TO THE EDITOR:
After reading your thorough, balanced report on the male-female ratio controversy [January issue], I conclude that the majority recommendations of the ad hoc committee were excellent, lacking but two things: accenting the positive, and starting right now. If we're going where they say we should, let's not waffle and delay. Let the College make a firm commitment to move to equal access for equal ability, and start moving there immediately and inexorably, at a stated deliberate, non-traumatic pace.
Specifically: adopt the policy of reducing male admissions by ten next fall, and by ten more each fall thereafter, cumulatively; and of increasing female admissions by those numbers plus those additional (if any) that can be comfortably accommodated within existing resources, such as by fuller use of the summer term, reduction of exchange students, etc. Keep this up until equal access is substantially achieved, perhaps in 15 years. If this is too slow, make it 15 per year and do it in ten years. But set no end ratio now; wait and see what equal access requires among the actual applicants ten years hence.
If the end product turns out to be 2,000:2,000, so be it. Two thousand was not a bad male student body in 1930, so why is it bad for 1990? And if that leads to too few male athletes for the Ivy League, so what? Can't we play Williams and Amherst? And Smith, Wellesley, and Mt. Holyoke?
Arlington, Va.
TO THE EDITOR:
Having read through several articles and comments on the coeducation and discrimination debate, I must wonder if it is at all possible to view the matter objectively and in perspective.
Have we forgotten why Dartmouth went coed, why, despite all the rouses, it chose to relinquish the most established tradition of them all, its maleness? Though there was pressure from "higher up," it was the male student body which voted it in, and these founding fathers of coeducation were thinking mainly of themselves. The additional opportunity for women was, at best, a secondary consideration. It was a democratic decision, and like Mencken has written, democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. So now we ponder the overcrowding, year-round operation, and a new identity. And some feel the loss of a bond, to others and to the past, borne in part of shared tradition, in part of shared isolation and "hardship." Though largely intellectualized, this sense of loss has played a large role in the development of what may become a new tradition: a Dartmouth civil war of the sexes, brother against sister.
I submit that this divisive atmosphere would vanish of itself as talk of the "old days" became increasingly second-hand. Except now a new issue threatens to keep the conflict alive. Apparently, if you go coed, you should go all the way, or else you're "immoral" and "dishonest"! As it is, admission is more competitive for girls. Is this to say that the fewer girls admitted, the more unconscionable is the admissions policy? Is Dartmouth's all-male past then something dark and odious?
There is an element of arbitrariness in any admissions policy. Many bright, highly motivated students are rejected in what remains a largely impersonal and heavy-handed selection process. Why threaten Dartmouth's quality of education, personalized teaching, small-college atmosphere, and excellence in interscholastic athletics to right just one newly arisen aspect of the thorny admissions dilemma? Does it make sense for a college to jeopardize, for the sake of its applicants, the very qualities that attracted them in the first place?
Sure, 7,000 undergraduates can be loosed to trample the Green and jam the ivied halls, or we can choose to so reduce the male presence that we drop out of the Ivy League athletically and emotionally. If we listen to the moralists, I have a feeling that when all is done, and a great institution has been brought to its knees, the women of Dartmouth themselves may come forward to scorn our righteous zeal.
Frankfort, Ky.
(Moralists aside, Dartmouth is not, as onewriter claimed in the December issue, guilty ofa cover-up as far as "equal access" and the lawis concerned. The admissions practices of undergraduate insitutions are expressly exemptedin all respects from current federal sex discriminationlaws [Title IX], Ed.)
John O'Connor
TO THE EDITOR:
May I compliment former Dean Brewster on his eloquent and moving tribute to Proctor John O'Connor. The portrait will be a very special and lasting one to all of us who knew him.
I had the special privilege of not only having had Proctor O'Connor as a friend while an undergraduate at Dartmouth, but also later, as a fellow officer of the College. In my job with Dartmouth I dealt with Proctor O'Connor on an almost daily basis, and I quickly became reliant on his special gifts of awareness, practicality, and dedication. His humor brightened many a dark moment and his humanity touched us all. Under his guidance the "Campus Po" existed as a highly respectable, reliable, but most of all, human element on Dartmouth's campus.
I am thankful for having had the opportunity of working with John on both the special and exciting of occasions, as well as the more mundane of times. And I am most thankful for having had his friendship, even for the all-too-brief 11 years he was with us.
Wilder, Vt.
TO THE EDITOR:
My compliments to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE and, particularly, former Dean Carroll Brewster for the fine article in the January issue on College Proctor John J. O'Connor, who served Dartmouth so capably from 1964 until his untimely death last December.
John walked that thin line, known so well by every campus security head, which called for unlimited patience, sensitivity, creativeness, common sense, complete 24-hour-a-day involvement and, above all, a sense of humor and that all important "feel" for the campus scene. I speak from personal knowledge because from 1960-1968 I walked that thin line myself at Yale University as director of security and associate dean of students.
I clearly recall being visited by John in 1964 immediately after he accepted the Dartmouth position. Upon hearing that he was a retired lieutenant commander from the United States Navy I had misgivings because I had known other retired military personnel who had become heads of campus security. They usually "went by the book," administered through a chain of command, and didn't adjust and relate to students and a campus community. Five minutes after John entered my office and shook my hand I knew that Dartmouth had found a real gem.
It was my pleasure to have been associated with John not only while I was at Yale but since that time because my consulting firm has specialized in campus security. For several years I also served as executive secretary of the International Association of College and University Security Directors in which he ably represented Dartmouth.
While at Yale I recall how we worked closely on problems involving Yale and Dartmouth students who had gotten into difficulty. We were able to make our point without an arrest or action that would affect the student in later life. John always made it to the Yale Bowl for the Dartmouth-Yale game, and his presence down front in the student section did much to keep things on an even keel. He was also available at all hours after the game, roaming the Yale campus and pursuading Dartmouth students to "cool it" before they got in trouble. If they did get into trouble, we simply referred them to John.
He took particular delight in kidding me as a Dartmouth alumnus at the Yale game because I sat on the Yale side - for the same reason he sat on the Dartmouth side. Oddly enough, another Dartmouth graduate, Bob Tonis, was chief of police at Harvard University during the same period (he retired last year) and received the same treatment from John.
John was not a Dartmouth alumnus, but he dearly loved the College, Hanover and, above all, students. I recall how at one heated seminar of campus security directors during the student dissent era those attending were castigating students. The discussion was rather abruptly terminated when John stood up and with that big smile he used so often said, "Let's face it! None of us would be here if it weren't for students." His greatest reward seemed to be in helping a student who was in trouble, and he did it well.
Dartmouth will be naming another College Proctor soon but there will never be another John J. O'Connor.
Hamden, Conn.
Spiritual and Moral Needs
TO THE EDITOR:
In the November issue, on page 14, Dean Manuel is quoted as disapproving of wanton destruction and offensive comportment but as being hard pressed to find a solution to hundreds of students taunting officials and opponents while "cloaked in the anonymity of a crowd."
Recently I wrote to President Kemeny and later to Dean Traynham, raising the question of what the College was doing in the way of ministering to the spiritual and moral needs of the students. I think the College can no more run away from its responsibility to help keep its students from being savages than can the home, the church, and the primary and secondary schools in our society, and I believe that none of the segments is doing as well as it did in the past. We all know of the growth of criminal violence and lack of respect for our institutions, and to these is added the decline of good manners by Dartmouth students, and, I am sure, students of other institutions. The tendency to condemn all these things as wrong, roll our eyes to heaven and say in effect, "But what can we do about it?" is an unacceptable failure.
In my letters I commented on the end of compulsory chapel and the failure to replace it with anything having a similar purpose. The Tucker Foundation brought into being by President Dickey has, it seems to me, failed in its original purpose by ministering more to the outside than to the Dartmouth student.
I would hope that there were on campus the brains and the desire to devise methods of seeing that Dartmouth sends out into the world men and women of higher moral and spiritual values and more involved with the desire to conduct themselves like "ladies and gentlemen" than when they came to Hanover. Maybe restoration of compulsory chapel isn't the answer today, but, on the other hand, it would, I am sure, do no harm to make a student attend a gathering where he or she might be exposed to some teaching or atmosphere designed to bring home to them the fact that Dartmouth is and should be an experience in maturing culturally, shall I say, as well as mentally.
Abington, Mass.
(See page 18. Ed.)
Professor Mirsky
TO THE EDITOR:
May I add a small footnote to the story of Professor Jonathan Mirsky's dismissal from Dartmouth?
At the end of 1970-71 academic year, one of the women studying at Dartmouth as an ex- change student told Professor Mirsky that she wished to continue her study of Chinese, which she had begun that year under his tutelage. Dartmouth, which was not yet admitting women as degree candidates, would not allow her to continue her studies at Hanover. Moreover, the college at which she had spent her first two years did not have a Chinese program and was not willing to grant her a degree if she spent her senior year elsewhere. This left her with the choice of either returning to that college and abandoning her study of Chinese - or finding a college with a Chinese program which would accept her for her senior year and grant her a degree.
At Professor Mirsky's urging, she chose the latter course and applied to, as I recall, five colleges. One by one, the rejections came back - in each case with the explanation that professors in the Chinese program wanted to accept her as a student, but that college administrative rules forbade accepting a transfer student in her senior year. Professor Mirsky would not let the matter end there. He wrote letters to each of the schools, imploring the faculty members not to let the bureaucrats win. And, one by one, each of the schools changed the rejection into an acceptance.
This incidence is, as I said, only a footnote to Professor Mirsky's years at Dartmouth; there are hundreds more like it. But it illustrates Professor Mirsky's devotion both to his students and to one of the primary lessons of the liberal arts - that people with ideas and principles can triumph over mindless bureaucracy and pedagoguery.
Because Dartmouth has offered no explanation other than that of bureaucratic technicalities for the dismissal of one of its finest professors, I must sadly conclude that Dart- mouth has never learned the lessons it purports to teach.
New York, N. Y.
Shudder
TO THE EDITOR:
Inspired by the example of "M. Hayden '26," I have also instructed my chauffeur's son that he is not only not to apply to Dartmouth, but also must cease forthwith from making goo-goo eyes at a Dartmouth (shudder!) girl who lives down the street. But alas, my gardener has already sneaked his son into the College on the Hill. I want Mr. Farley to understand that I did my best.
Newark, Del.
(James L. Farley might be cynical, as "M.Hayden '26" says in the December issue, buthe's a great one for goo-goo eyes. Ed.)
Balch-Dempsey Regime
TO THE EDITOR:
As an ardent but anonymous admirer of that pair of complementary "bellmen" (if you please!) so appropriately, if belatedly, vignetted in the December issue, much more could be said by an alumnus who patronized the Inn well before the times of indoctrination for "Damon" Balch and "Pythias" Dempsey.
Permit me, however, to refrain from further swelling the Yankee and Celtic heads of the twain by extolling their professional virtues and their personal charms. It's quite enough to wail over the loss of another Dartmouth institution as Charlie threatens to retire to the northerly fastness of Lyme and, as John swears eternal allegiance to the Ould Sod, he vows to spend his autumn days on the Emerald Isle. Who, really, can blame either of them: they've earned the choice.
Yet, it's my demanded privilege to add remonstrance over Fate's decree that they, two and too, must ineluctably come to the moment of superannuation, such as so many of us oldsters are forced to endure but not relish.
So, as a voluntary spokesman for the hundreds of vintage alumni who have witnessed and enjoyed the entire Balch-Dempsey regime: here's hail, good luck and God bless!
Shades of Perry Fairfield & Don Gove, Fordie Sayre, Adele Ives and Buddy Lynch!
Hampton Falls, N.H.
Dangerous Dan et. al.
TO THE EDITOR:
Thanks to the articles "Vox" by Frank G. Long '77 and "Options and Alternatives" by Dan Nelson '75, I found the January issue most surprising.
The admissions office may be in for a change in personnel if it admits too many such dangerous individuals as Long, Nelson, Hutcheson and Andrews, who are intellectually so capable as to seemingly be able to survive the reigning campus orthodoxy, or at least intellectually so curious as to wish to seriously consider alternatives to it, and who are morally so shameful as to openly question its all-encompassing wisdom.
On the other hand, if the admissions office makes enough such mistakes Dartmouth College might yet survive Kemenyitis University. Not a realistic aspiration to be sure, but as surely as hope springs eternal in the Dartmouth breast, one greatly to be hoped for.
Yours for more surprises in the ALUMNIMAGAZINE.
Darien, Conn.
The Symbol (cont.)
TO THE EDITOR:
I was glad to have a letter of mine quoted in part in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE for May 1974.1 do not request, expect or hope that this will enjoy the same treatment. I'd just like to go on record for a second and final time.
On today's coverage of the Georgia vs. Arkansas football bowl game, there were Confederate flags in evidence - all in good fun, not as any indication of unfaithfulness to or lack of respect for the Stars and Stripes. Whose flags they were is not important and admittedly they were not a symbol of one of the colleges, but they reminded me that in like manner the Indian symbol was never a sign of lack of respect for Native Americans. It was instead a compliment at the same time that it was respectable fun. Who on earth would want a symbol that would set him up for ridicule!
If you want to ask all Indians who ever enjoyed the Dartmouth experience what their feelings are, I would be extremely surprised if the symbol were not to receive an enthusiastic and overwhelming vote of confidence, acceptance and support.
My love for Dartmouth has never wavered and I can promise that it never will. That is why I have written. One of less devotion could easily say, "Who the hell cares?"
Many letters have been written in defense of the symbol. I hope they all haven't fallen on too many eyes that did not care to see.
Good luck to you. Meanwhile, please throw this in the bottom of the file. When the College historian of a century hence looks back to now, I'd like to have him find double evidence that I was happy to have been counted.
Pittsford, N.Y.
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.
(Roger Masters is professor of government atthe College. Ed.)
