Letters to the Editor
Getting to Know Them
I got acquainted this last summer (1978) with a young lady who, surprisingly, proved to be a Dartmouth senior ('79). I want to assure any Dartmouth men who may not have been so fortunate that, if the rest of the Dartmouth young women are at all as nice and interesting and fun as my summer acquaintance, Dartmouth is in good shape. She was the first woman student that I had seen or met. I now think how lucky my own class would have been if we had had such women around.
Inverness, Calif.
Discrimination Suit
We would like to inform the alumni and other members of the Dartmouth community that Joan Smith is filing a class action suit against Dartmouth College under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for sex discrimination in employment.
Joan Smith was a professor in the Sociology Department, known in academia for her fine scholarship and at Dartmouth for her excellent teaching. On two occasions in the past year, Dartmouth failed to give her tenure, in effect firing her.
Unlike normal tenure reviews, Professor Smith's reviews contained many procedural irregularities. Furthermore, the standards used to measure her achievements were unusually strict and arbitrary. Meanwhile, two of her male colleagues in the department were granted tenure under normal procedures. In contrast to the Dartmouth scenario, Professor Smith has been actively sought by other institutions to accept a position on their faculties. She was offered a job at Brown and a tenured position at a comparable institution.
Professor Smith's case is indicative of the difficulties all women faculty face in obtaining tenure at Dartmouth. Approximately one per cent of the tenured faculty at Dartmouth is female. Far from trying to remedy this situation, Dartmouth has denied tenure, or postponed the tenure decision of each female faculty member eligible for tenure in the past two years.
The lack of senior women faculty at Dartmouth hurts Dartmouth students, faculty, and the College as a whole. Dartmouth needs female faculty to affirm the importance of the education of women equal to that of men, and to serve as the role models for women students. In addition, discrimination on the basis of sex is against the law.
As Professor Smith's students and as recent alumnae of Dartmouth, we are appalled by the discrimination against Professor Smith carried out by the Sociology Department and the administration. A college which grants tenure on the basis of sex rather than academic merit hurts not only the women involved, but its own reputation and quality as well. Professor Smith's departure is a loss for Dartmouth College.
We believe that equity in faculty employment will further improve the quality of a Dartmouth education. To help Professor Smith and to gain equality for women at Dartmouth, members of the College community have started a Title VII Action Fund.
Somerville, Mass.
[The Dean of the Faculty, Leonard M. Rieserv '44, was asked to comment on the above letter,and his response follows. Other aspects of thematter are discussed in "The College" columnin this issue. Ed.]
The letter contains a number of misunderstandings, but I am limited in responding to them by our general policy of not discussing details of a particular personnel action in a public forum. However, there are several points which can properly be brought to the attention of the alumni and alumnae who share a concern for the well-being of this College.
1. In recent years, of those persons promoted from assistant to associate professor, half were promoted with tenure and half for a term of three years with tenure to be decided in the second year. Professor Smith was in the latter category. What was unusual was that within a year of that decision, Professor Smith requested that her appointment be reviewed again. The extraordinary review which followed, on a very tight schedule to meet Professor Smith's deadline, has been afforded no other faculty member at Dartmouth.
2. An increase in the number of women holding senior appointments can be achieved either by promotion of assistant professors or by direct appointment into the senior ranks from outside the College. Most appointments as associate professor are made by promotion of assistant professors. This normally does not occur until a person is in the sixth year of the assistant professorship. Of the 55 women in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, most have been assistant professors for less than six years.
3. We constantly strive to recruit women faculty members and to encourage them to remain at Dartmouth. In recent years, almost half of our new appointments have been women. The attrition of women faculty members from among those who came at the time we began coeducation has been higher than we expected. We are making every effort to remedy this. To increase more rapidly the number of women in the senior ranks, we expect to make several appointments from other colleges and universities directly as professors or associate professors.
4. We shall continue to maintain our normal standards for appointment and promotion for any particular faculty member, female or male. To do otherwise would not be fair to the institution. In the final analysis, the departments, the deans, the Faculty Committee Advisory to the President, and the President and Trustees must exercise judgment, given all the facts, to provide Dartmouth with the strongest faculty possible.
Hanover, N.H.
Out of the Closet
In his letter which appears in the September issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, Edward M. Fritz '40 refers to my late classmate, Bill McCarter, who once wondered whatever happened to his senior cane.
This inspired me to look up the senior cane that I acquired about 60 years ago. It was where I thought it was, tucked away in tke back of, naturally, a closet, saving gone that far, I was curious to look it over mors carefully, I had forgotten that, in those days at least, the class was divided into categories with sack group being assigned a separate section of the cans — senior society, fraternity, "D" men, Tuck School, Phi Beta Kappa and one mysterious one that looked like DOG, whick must have been very exclusive as there were only four members, two of whom were my roommates. Does anyone know what those initials mean? I have a vague recollection of an organisation called the Dartmouth Old Guard. Could that be it?
Chatham, Mass.
South African Investments
Earlier this year the ALUMNI MAGAZINE reported on students organizing to ask Dartmouth to divest itself of investments in corporations involved in South Africa (as well as Rhodesia and Namibia). Similar efforts are being made nationwide, and a number of colleges have taken such action. As a local resident who has come to know and respect the student group concerned, I would urge Dartmouth's Trustees to take favorable action on the divestiture proposal.
This past summer many persons at Alumni College saw a movie sponsored by this student group, Last Grave at Dimbaza. I talked with several whose reactions to this film were similar to mine: South Africa is practicing "genocide on the living." We agreed that any Trustee of the College who must decide on this issue, as I understand they will in February 1979, owes it to himself and the College to see this film and ponder its meaning. Smuggled out of South Africa in 1974, this documentary leaves little doubt that investing in South Africa is much like investing in Hitler's slave-labor camps. No reporting on South Africa that I know of refutes the film's message that a black South African is really a slave laborer who has no control over his social, economic, or political future.
Whether the black is relatively well paid or treated according to the "Sullivan Principles" (proposed to provide more work-place equality) completely misses the point that he lives only at the sufferance of his "owners" who decide his fate. If not literal genocide, this is "cultural genocide." Generally separated from their families in the phony "homelands," these workers live in concentration camp-like barracks. While technically they survive, and may even seem well off by Southern African standards; their children back in the "homelands" enjoy literal genocide; only half live beyond age five.
If Dartmouth had known in 1939 what was happening to Hitler's slave labor in his concentration camp industries, I am sure it would have withdrawn investment in I.G. Farben and other beneficiaries of this labor. I hope our Trustees will perceive the analogy 40 years later.
Concerned alumni may obtain a copy of the student report to the Trustees on divestiture by writing the Upper Valley Committee for a Free Southern Africa, Box 172, Hanover, N.H. 03755.
Norwich, Vt.
Of Rare Caliber
It was with extreme sadness that I read, in the September issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, of the recent untimely and tragic death of my classmate, Dave Wright.
The brief sketch of David's all-too-brief career, while accurate, was far too incomplete. While I only knew Dave in our junior and senior years at the College, he was the individual I not only admired the most at the College but I often felt, after we had graduated, that he could'go on to solve some of those serious problems facing us all in today's world.
One knew immediately upon meeting Dave that he was not only extremely perceptive and intelligent, but that he also was one of the nicest people one could meet. He did excellently in the classroom, and always provided some of the most incisive comments during classroom discussions. However, he was probably the most well-rounded person I ever met in the Dartmouth community. One was equally at ease with Dave either debating a point of English history in Professor Robert's class or discussing the latest Dartmouth social or athletic event.
Dave knew how to organize people, and he was a natural leader. Perhaps because of his uncanny abilities as a leader, I often felt that he might enter the political or public arenas. If more people of Dave's caliber could be attracted into affairs of public interest, the current state of affairs would surely be different.
But people of Dave's caliber are extremely rare, and that is what makes Dave's death even more poignant and tragic.
I lost touch with Dave when he entered the Yale Law School, but followed his career through mutual friends. I had heard that he contracted Hodgkin's Disease and that he was becoming ever weaker with passing time. The end, while expected, came as a horrible shock.
Dave's loss will not only leave a gap in our class and the College community, but, even more importantly, will be a great loss for all.
Dave Wright, while now gone, will not be forgotten.
San Francisco, Calif.
A Remedy
The time is past to say I know what's wrong with the educational system at Dartmouth. I left Dartmouth in February 1967 upon learning that my father had leukemia. During my time at Dartmouth, however, I know that I and many others were troubled with the pressure applied by the three-course three-term system. To ameliorate affairs Dartmouth should follow the lead of Harvard and Holyoke, and institute an interim, a period of a week or two at the end of every term so that the students could integrate and consolidate and, in some cases, learn what they should have learned during the term; an interim to allow the student to prepare himself as well as he may for the stern, cruel (I might say from my own experience) final exams.
Great Falls, Mont.
Changing Times
I must quarrel with '33 alumnus Edwin S. Lapham's letter in the September issue, his comparison of the past with the current College, and his finding that (I quote) "Plus ça change, plus de même chose." In the years gone by since his Golden Age, many Dartmouth students have learned to speak French.
Westhampton Beach, N. Y.
Corrections
An editing error in the September issue indicated that some years ago a graduate student was killed in a fall while participating in a Geology Department "three-way stretch" expedition in Central America. In fact, the accident occurred during volcanic studies in Italy that were not part of the "stretch" program.
In the Reviews column in the same issue the name of a new literary journal started by Professors Sydney Lea and Jay Parini was incorrectly given as New England Quarterly. The title is New England Review.
The ALUMNI MAGAZINE welcomes comment from its readers. For publication, letters should be signed and addressed specifically to the Magazine (not copies of communications to other organizations or individuals). Letters exceeding 400 words in length will be condensed by the editors.
