Spiritual Dinosaur

An alumnus and the Dartmouth Spirit discuss the Vox column inthe March issue.

DARTMOUTH SPIRIT: I see Assistant Professor of English Carole Berger's five years in Hanover have convinced her that old Dartmouth and coeducation are essentially incompatible.

ALUMNUS: What is your answer to that?

SPIRIT: Suppose you tell me what the essence of old Dartmouth was and what the Dartmouth spirit is. Then you may be able to answer your question yourself.

ALUMNUS: Trying to do that has thrown better men than I am but I will give it a try. To me the essence of old Dartmouth was a life-lasting, mind-sharpening, spirit-developing process. It was as foreign to our teachers and ourselves that it was necessary to have women in class or on campus either to improve or accomplish that process as it was to our women college friends that men were necessary or improving on theirs.

SPIRIT: So much for essence. How about me?

ALUMUS: Those old Dartmouth teachers were obsessed with accuracy. They called it intellectual honesty. They insisted on clearly expressed original thought developed from primary sources uncluttered with professional opinions, theirs or others'. They were fired up with love of their subject. They had such a passion to impart that love to the clods who were their students, and particularly to stir up dull minds and to bring to life dormant spirits, that they actually succeeded in ingraining the essence of old Dartmouth in us. This miracle, its intellectual excitement, the spell of the mountains, streams, trails, rivers, valleys, and plains of the North Country, the exuberance of youth, the ease of its fellowships, the joy of being alive, the wonder of being a part of God's creation, along with that special love of place we have, magically molded to create you, the Dartmouth spirit.

You have left an indelible and recognizable but indefinable mark on all who "went to Dartmouth" and did not remain clods forever. We call that mark the Dartmouth spirit. It can be felt, patronized, loved or hated by outsiders, but not by them possessed. Incidentally, that love of place I spoke of was feelingly expressed by an earlier Dartmouth assistant professor of English in his poem "Dartmouth Undying."

SPIRIT: Clearly the earlier teacher was imbued with my spirit.

Clearly the present one isn't, hopes my spirit passes, and concludes either the old Dartmouth essence or coeds best go.

ALUMNUS: That is what the lady says. That's what the lady means.

SPIRIT: Do you agree with her?

ALUMNUS: Unfortunately no.

SPIRIT: Why no and why unfortunately?

ALUMNUS: NO, because the old Dartmouth she hates so much forces me to see that to her to be a good coed means you not only have to be a woman, but a militant woman's libber. Now to anyone but a militant woman's libber it would not have to be pointed out that when we "spiritual dinosaurs" say, refer, or think of women we don't mean "women who know their place." I may be twice the lady professor's age and I have never met one of those. In my naivete I thought they went out with Ibsen, who was even before my time. What is more, I never knew or even met a Dartmouth man who married one.

This spiritual dinosaur is a coward. He delights in women who would flourish under the essence of old Dartmouth and the Dartmouth spirit. He is scared as hell of women who wouldn't or couldn't. He has never known an intelligent woman of character and culture who would not have luxuriated in old Dartmouth and her essence or in the Dartmouth spirit. Conversely, never has he known a militant - male or female, white, black, brown, yellow or red, minority or majority, ethnic or native, rich or poor well bred or rough neck - who would have liked the environment, tolerated the essence, or suffered your spirit.

Unfortunately, because as one who has always openly said he thought coeducation and the Dartmouth Plan of year-round operation to make coeducation possible were mistakes, I would like to be intellectually dishonest enough to pretend the end - an all-male college preferably with the traditional plan - justified the means, canning coeds.

SPIRIT: What if you are wrong about coeds and the lady right?

ALUMNUS: Then the answer is, happily, yes. And I would agree with her statement that it makes more sense to return to all-male status than to keep women in an environment, atmosphere, spirit and tradition they find inimical.

SPIRIT: HOW about "spiritual dinosaurs, sadly ill-equipped to deal with contemporary realities" and putting graduates "on the leading edge of constructive social change?"

ALUMNUS: Let me put it this way. In the bone marrow of those old Dartmouth professors was the belief that if the sound undergraduate liberal arts education got in you, got to you, or even sufficiently at you, you would not only "be on the leading edge of constructive social change," but more importantly on the right side of anything that was good for the College, the country, or the world.

If it didn't, you were an intellectual bonehead and spiritual clod fit only to join the company of militants who believe in militancy, sloganeering, and the exchange of ignorance as the method and function of education, who immediately ought to get off and permanently stay off the Hanover plain.

SPIRIT: Good for you. Maybe those who believe it best that I go and they stay and take over just might accept you?

ALUMNUS: I suppose you mean as a relic of old Dartmouth?

Anyhow, make that a bet and I'll take it.

SPIRIT: No bet.

ALUMNUS: I'll make you another bet.

SPIRIT: I don't think I like your bets. What is it?

ALUMNUS: That any old Dartmouth English Department would return the lady's article, if it was a weekly theme, with the spiritual dinosaur phrase circled and with the comment, "banal. unimaginative, colorless." Also that if in a replying theme I had referred to the lady as "a pachyderm who ought to be extinct complaining about the abuses she had to take from dinosaurs who were extinct," the phrase would be circled with the comment "colorless, weak attempt at wit and humor. Be specific. Refer to her as an American Joan of Arc obeying the voices of Glona Steinem and Bella Abzug to save Dartmouth coeds from that triple-headed Dartmouth monster - Dartmouth essence, Dartmouth spirit, Dartmouth alumni - in order to enthrone them on the leading edge of constructive social change."

SPIRIT: I have the feeling you are about to take the bit in you. teeth, so I am leaving.

ALUMNUS: So long, Spirit.

SPIRIT: I am glad you said so long, and not goodbye.

(Henri Esquerré is a retired businessman and former member of the Alumni Council.)