Letters to the Editor

The Ratio

TO THE EDITOR:

In the outpouring of opinion on the subject of , the undergraduate ratio, it seems to me that there is one important statement that has not been made with sufficient force. Granted that the collective opinion of the alumni, if there be such a thing (which I doubt), might be of some help to the administration in reaching any decision affecting the future of the College, the final ; responsibility for such a decision can and should rest only with those who are directly in touch with the current campus scene and have full access to all of the facts involved.

It seems fair to assume that relatively few, if any, of the alumni who have been away from the College five years or more fall into that category. Any others, I would suggest, have no right to lay the dead hand of outdated, uninformed and largely emotional convictions on the administration's decision-making process.

An all-male campus was a great thing in my day. It would appear that a mixed campus may be an equally great thing in my son's day. The justification or the proportions of the mix are no longer within the limits of my competence to judge. I urge my fellow alumni to take the same position, and put their trust in the administration, in consultation with its duly constituted advisory bodies, to formulate a decision that will be properly tailored to the times.

Ridgewood, N.J.

Interpreting the Trustees

TO THE EDITOR:

The Trustees recently published a statement on admissions policy whose expressions, especially of the fundamental purpose of the College, seem to share the kind of "sublime meaninglessness" possessed, in one historianview, by terms of "high but uncertain import. "I would not wish to ascribe sublimity to that corporate prose in itself. But since an exact sense of a phrase like "significant positive impact or. society" is not to be found in the words or then context, I took the statement to intentionall; embrace so many possibilities as to be meaningless.

Comforted by that observation and the assumption that the remainder of the statemen meant to acknowledge the untenability of an admissions policy that discriminates against one sex, I was able to ignore the unsettling indirection of the accompanying explanations in addressing that central issue. In "The College' in the February issue, the interpreter of the Trustee statement also sidesteps the issue and threatens to use the high-blown words not to embrace but to limit possibilities. He asserts as the goal of. education progress toward one kind of "positive," "significant," and "impactful" life and then offers the possibility of turning goal into the tool of discrimination ("if it is coneluded that at the moment 'leadership' position in society are not readily available to large numbers of women, it seems conceivable that for the next few years the number of male and female students might stay approximately the same"). Finally, he obfuscates with triviality ("athletic ability might well be regarded as an important qualification...")

Is the column a PR sop for those alumni who still can't cope with coeducation, or does it in fact reflect Trustee thinking?

Ithaca, N.Y.

(Our guilt, if any, does not extend to "impactful"! Ed.)

The Exorcist

TO THE EDITOR:

I have read "Options and Alternatives" [February issue] with barely muted anger. The photograph and the nursery rhyme preceding the article should be offensive to anyone whose education has embraced even the most rudimentary elements of Western civilization. I found the crudely lettered signs and their so-called message personally repugnant. While I have observed the interment of some Dartmouth customs with sadness, this tradition of capricious crudity is one whose exorcism is long overdue.

As an alumnus who initially greeted coeducation with serious reservations, I can assure the jingoists on campus that they have about as much chance of expelling coeds from Hanover as the environmentalists have of restoring the horse to American highways. Although alumni who experienced the "masculine heaven" may have some right to message their nostalgia, I do not believe that these students have any right to invoke its memory as a vehicle for retrogression. If some male juveniles cannot cope with the reality of coeducation, I would personally invite them to follow their own prescription and vote with their feet.

However, I was only slightly less disturbed by the sentiments attributed to certain coeds. If these young ladies perceive themselves as an "unsuccessful experiment in the education of Dartmouth men," I suggest that they might improve their lot immediately by disabusing themselves of this messiah complex: they were admitted as students, not as missionaries. And if they have now "come to do . . . things for themselves that up to now have not been done for them," I can only applaud this tardy insight into one of the realities they will face when they leave the comfortable cradle in which Dartmouth has traditionally coddled its students. I must admit that the orgy of self-pity suffusing their comments hardly encourages me in my belief that the pronounced masculine atmosphere of Hanover will breed a hardy strain of women who will do us great credit in the future.

In the meantime, until the boys and girls in Hanover give me tangible reasons to revise my current image of the Dartmouth experience, I will find it quite difficult to respond generously to the appeals of an Alumni Fund whose indirect result will be either to underwrite a maleinspired jihad against our women or to enhance the self-indulgent agonies of some coeds.

New York, N.Y.

(The article concerned You Laugh, a play performed by some undergraduate women commenting on their experience at Dartmouth. Ed.)

Blue, Green and Gold All Over

TO THE EDITOR:

I never knew her name, nor she mine. She was just a friendly "blue lady" who spotted my run. Ny red nose when I was suffering "The-End-of-February-in-Hanover-Blues." I don't remember what color the lunch meat was that day, but I'll never forget her warm concern and the hot cup of honey and lemon tea that she fixed for me Thank you, Emma. It was a golden moment in my Big Green experience.

Lexington, Mass.

(See "Life with Emma: Hard Lasagna andBeers in the Dishroom," March issue. Ed.)

Sneers and Jibes

TO THE EDITOR:

I was for a short while an active member of the Class of '26 before having to take over out family business from which I have recently retired. I regret that I do not recall ever having seen "M. Hayden '26" (whose angry reaction to your Mr. Farley in the December issue caused him to admonish his chauffer [sic] not to send his son to Dartmouth). I wonder if he really was a member of that class. I never encountered him at any reunions. Frankly, I would prefer to think that he does really exist, playing on his private golf course and enjoying his chauffer [sic] and a high style of life. But I rather suspect that your magazine simply created him to provoke controversy and (economic) class war, and to promote your new internationalist culture writer. When my old friend Sid Hayward was in charge, such things didn't happen.

The March letter of E. Nickerson '49, with its snide sarcasm about the alleged Mr. Hayden's servants, is, I must say, typical of the equalitarian jealousy one finds so commonly these days, not just among the blue-jeaned, propertyless intellectuals and those who write the IRS tax codes, but, alas, more and more frequently among the younger, post-Hopkins alumni. Such sneers and jibes are directed against those of your readers who have succeeded, who have worked to achieve a high standard of living on the base of a hard-won, rugged, old-style Dartmouth education. I'm saddened to see you lending your columns to these dreary juvenile shenanigans to èpater Ithaute bourgeoisie, as the late Professor Verriest would have said. After all, where, if not from successful alumni and friends, do your faculty and staff salaries come from?

But to return to my original point. Can you produce evidence that there really is an M. Hayden '26? If such a highly successful and clear-thinking Son of Dartmouth actually does exist, I ask him: please let us hear from you again and again and again.

Scranton, Pa.

(We didn't invent M. Hay den or, for thatmatter, Wesley Monnell. Ed).

The Word

TO THE EDITOR:

So at last the Holy Spirit is moving oncampus, praise God! ["God and Man at Dartmouth," March issue]. If Jesus Christ is theHead of the Church and Christians are theBody, then it's high time that the Body doing its own thing and started to find out where the Head is going. And it's the Holy Spirit thattells us what direction that is. Through prayer aChristian can develop sensitivity to the Spirit's leading, then check it out in the Bible to makesure it's really from God. The two must corroborate because the Lord doesn't "speak" out of both sides of his mouth — that is, one way in the Bible and the opposite through the Holy Spirit.

Increasingly across the nation there are churches where this Truth is functioning. And what do you suppose starts happening in these churches? Well, the sick are healed, miracles occur, tithing becomes commonplace, needy parishioners are cared for, Bible classes are full, love flows, the prophetic word is spoken, and the people's faith soars.

I know this, not from philosophical speculation or carefully researched theory, but after just one year as a reborn Christian. It is my own experience in such a church (St. Paul's, Darien, Connecticut) where on a steaming Wednesday evening last summer I sat on a folding chair in back of the last overflowing pew to hear the Bible taught to a congregation packed with college kids. Here 16,000 tape cassettes were produced last year of the country's leading Bible teachers. Such is the hunger for the Word. Average family giving has increased from $7 to $18 a week in three years and the budget is nudging $300,000. A thousand people attend Sunday services. The ministers are true shepherds of the flock. Dozens of marriages have been saved. As for me, the Lord used me to heal an amputee of gangrene as he lay near death. He tells me which applicant to hire in my business and whom to promote.

Yes, God still communicates with His people just as He always has, but "ya gotta listen up." So the challenge for the ordained clergy of the Dartmouth community is to listen and to move in obedience to the Holy Spirit. When that happens, the church will overflow with people, blessings, and love, and no one will ask, "Where is God?"

Westport, Conn.

And Raspberries on the Side

TO THE EDITOR:

The cover of the February ALUMNI MAGAZINE was piquant, appealing, appropriate and touching.

I also run a four-minute mile every morning, grow ecstatic over losing at gin rimmy, and just love a maraschino cherry in my martini.

Cleveland, Ohio

The Symbol (cont.)

TO THE EDITOR:

It is disappointing to be lectured by the Trustees to give up our efforts to have the Indian symbol reinstated. I am saddened. I was brought up to believe that Dartmouth College was originally founded as "Dartmouth College and Moor's Indian Charity School."

I don't object to the blacks, including Tweety on the February cover of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, nor to the suggestion that we had abused the Indian symbol. No, what I object to is an apparent misdirection of our newly found conscience. Why don't we redirect ourselves to educating the Indians and publicize this by the use of our dignified Indian symbol.

Native American studies are all right for white students, but how much effort is being made to educate Indians? If the College would agree to re-establish the Indian symbol in exchange for alumni assistance, I'd be the first to go to the North Carolina mountains to try to recruit a Cherokee Indian.

Statesville, N.C.