GOOD NEWS
So what else is new?
YES, yes, we know. Fraternities are an endangered species; Harvard beat Dartmouth for the fifth year in a row; the Rhodes Scholarship committee forgot about Dartmouth last time; the Nobel Prize committee apparently has never heard of Dartmouth; a professor has accused the College of sex discrimination; employees grumble about their pay; your sons and daughters send home eye-popping tuition bills and your postman delivers appeals for the $160-million Campaign for Dartmouth; the elms die. As bearer of such tidings, we sometimes feel an uncomfortable kinship with Emperor Darius' messengers, said to have been "terminated" for bringing bad news.
So, in the spirit of the season (and ever mindful of Darius' blunt example), we offer on the following pages a cheerful sampling of Success! Victory! Achievement! Positive-thinking! Let joy and peace reign over all.
Edgar's house
He is our only titled janitor (his T-shirt says Lord of Lord) and Edgar Stewart is coming up on his 42nd year at the College. More than one freshman has been gulled by Edgar's story of how his cat mated with a rabbit and produced little kitties that hopped. There's more to education than the classroom.
Friends in high places
Paul Tsongas '62 won the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts last month, defeating incumbent Edward Brooke. Locally, the College lost a six-year ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees but may have gained a friend when New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson lost his bid for re-election to Hugh Gallen.
Paid in full
Charles A. Collis '37 boosted the five-year, $160 million Campaign for Dartmouth to a $52.8 million total with the largest single contribution in the College's history: $5 million. He said it was not a gift but a "repayment."
Keeping them off the streets
The new student center scheduled to open in January benefited from $1 million of Collis's donation. Adjoining College Hall, the center will contain a large lounge with a dance floor, balcony, and fire place; a snack bar; pub; a games room; and student-organization offices and meeting rooms.
Less fueling around
The 1977-78 fiscal year was the best year for energy savings at the College since a conservation program began in 1973. A five per cent decrease in oil consumption and an almost three per cent reduction in the amount of electricity purchased amounted to a $130,000 saving.
Roll 'em
The 1949 brainchild of the recently retired director of films, Blair Watson, the Dartmouth Film Society continues to be the best entertainment bargain around. Fall term, 1,900 subscribers saw 26 featurelength movies in a seriescalled Double Vision. For a $5 membership winter term, a student can see 25 movies about women as part of a series called From Reverence to Rape.
Different strokes
Ginger Cox '77 and Tish Davis '79 rowed their custombuilt, 20-foot boat, the Vandrafalken, up the Inside Passage from Seattle to Skagway, Alaska, this summer - a 1,150-mile, 72-day excursion never before accomplished by women. "We would have kept trying even if it had taken us till Christmas," Davis said.
Rock an' dole
It used to seem that big-name rock groups forgot about their scheduled engagements at this out-of-the-way college as frequently as they appeared. This year, during Houseparties Weekend, "Boston" not only played to a full Thompson Arena but rebated $2,000 in ticket receipts to the College for purchase of a sound system for the new student center.
Prized Professors
When Professor Noel Perrin wrote in our June issue that it would be a good idea for the College to recognize excellence in teaching by awarding a prize, Jerome R. Goldstein '54 took him up on it and endowed a $1,000 annual distinguished-teacher award. Another award for teaching excellence was also established this year in memory of Robert Fish '18. The first recipients were Professors John Lyons and Bruce Pipes.
Good book
The Rev. John Eliot's "Indian Bible," the first Bible printed in the New World, was recently added to Baker Library's collection, but don't try to check it out. The librarian says it's "the most extraordinary volume" of America's Colonial period and one of Dartmouth's greatest treasures (see page 11).
We know a good fence
A first-place, $ 1,000 prize in an engineering contest was recently awarded to Scott L. Hunter '76, now a Thayer School student, for his design for a low-cost, hand-operated barbed wire fence-making machine and a new kind of barbed wire. Hunter said the fence could be easily produced in Third World countries.
Soviet strength
No one in the sold-out Spaulding Auditorium was afraid to clap after the dazzling October performance by the 21-member Moscow Chamber Orchestra directed by Igor Bezrodni. This year's tour is the group's first visit to the United States in ten years.
High stepping
The Dartmouth Marching Band, pride of the Ivy League, famous for the Marching Snowball formation, came close to successfully executing three tricky maneuvers and marched in a more-or-less straight line at the Columbia game.
Dartmouth men called 'human'
When the Wellesley House Council voted against letting some visiting Dartmouth sportsmen spend the night in women's dorms, 16 disgruntled Wellesley students wrote saying Dartmouth men should be treated "like human beings" and not "animals." "It's only common courtesy to provide them with a place to sleep," the women noted. "It's time for Wellesley to stop playing cat and mouse."
A friend indeed
Edith Sauter, proprietor of Edith's Sundries (formerly Edith's Cut-Rate), celebrated her 80th birthday last month. Edith has been attending to the needs of Dartmouth students since 1932, when she and her husband opened an eating club here. She's been in the sundries business since 1937. (Just for the record, Edith's real name is Clara.)
High profile
Who says academics labor in obscurity? Some do, but anthropologist Michael Dorris, chairman of Dartmouth's Native American Studies Program, and Tuck School Dean Richard West were recently cited by Change magazine as among "100 leaders of the academy." The group was recognized, said Change, "not just because, as the platitude has it, they are the curators of tomorrow, but because they have already defied major obstacles to achievement. . . . They have not been timid."
Play for pay
Thanks to an invitation from syndicated columnist Professor Jeffrey Hart, Peter Robinson '79 and Kelley Fead '78 wrote guest columns that appeared in 200 newspapers with a total readership of 10 million. Thanks to a threat of an Incomplete from Professor Noel Perrin, who told the 11 students in his Environmental Journalism class that they had to sell something written for the course to a magazine or newspaper or produce three rejection slips, Tim McNamara '78 earned $175 from the Boston Globe, 'Gemma Lockhart '79 sold a 30-minute TV program, Anne Bigelow '78 won the College's Grimes writing prize, and the class as a whole collected 34 rejection slips from The NewYorker all the way to Backpacker.
Roots-
The Class of '50 is one of several classes that have taken on the project of planting trees around campus. With the sugar maples, red oaks, and elms planted this year, 1950 now has 82 progeny in Hanover.
A place for us
The old wooden wing of Crosby Hall bit the dust in November, demolished to make room for a modern addition to the original brick structure. The renovated 168-year-old Crosby House and the new addition will be called the Blunt Alumni Center in honor of Carleton Blunt '26, who gave $1.5 million for the project. The dispersal of alumni offices to remote reaches of the campus during construction, while inconvenient for visitors, has its benefits: fewer staff meetings.
Symbolic
Not a single letter for or against a College symbol was published in The Dartmouth this fall.
So there
The football team won the Ivy trophy - again. The field hockey team, with an Irish coach, finished tenth in the nation. The women's tennis team won the New England championships - again. The men's soccer team went to the NCAA regional playoffs. Ultimate Frisbie (4-1) did nicely, too. And to think that critics of coeducation once said that Dartmouth sports were doomed.
Hole in one
Visiting Hanover this fall to check up on son Steve '82, Bob Schuh '56 aced the fourth hole at the Hanover Country Club. Schuh happens to be the resident pro at the Lakewood Country Club in Maryland.
Onewith a hole
The bagels are from Boston, not New York, but for the first time they're available, almost fresh, at a new delicatessen on Main Street. Wines are also for sale in town, thanks to a humane law recently passed by the state legislature permitting distribution in private stores. You won't find Billy Beer in the coolers, though, even at Moe's. The brewer stopped making the stuff.
Charles Collis and the man who started the place.
Is Lord Hall an animal house? Ask Edgar.
Cox (left) and Davis at the start of their excursion to Skagway, 1,150 miles away.
Brass in the Dartmouth Marching Band.
The proprietor of Edith's, supplier of sundries.
Joe Yukica filled up the Ivy bowl.
The wooden wing of Crosby went down in a cloud of dust.
