Circling the Green

Back to Bakke: Of 24 faculty appointments for the current academic year, 11 went to white women and none to minority-group candidates. The departure of one black professor brought the percentage of minority faculty members down from 7.7 to 7.5. Affirmative Action Officer Margaret Bonz suggests trying a little harder. "It seems," she says, "that it may no longer be fashionable to be actively engaged in affirmative action."

• No Guineveres: Casque and Gauntlet, described in the student handbook as "a senior society whose object is to recognize character and achievement through contributions to Dartmouth College," for the second year in a row voted by a slender margin not to consider women for membership.

• Laurels: George R. Stibitz, emeritus professor of physiology; creator almost 40 years ago of the modern digital computer, received the first Emanuel R. Piore award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for outstanding achievement in the field of information processing.

• Early Returns: More than half of the undergraduate women contributed $730 to the Campaign for Dartmouth through a special fund drive initiated by Elizabeth Hauge '79.

• Slow Boat: Professor John S. Major, who has never visited China although he has spent years studying and teaching its history, will conduct a group of 15 undergraduates to the People's Republic during spring break, March 13 through 27. An Alumni College tour he was to lead last April was turned down at the last moment by Chinese authorities.

• Great Books: The Committee on the Freshman Year has endorsed the inclusion of a course based on the major literary works of Western Civilization in the Dartmouth curriculum, following a favorable report of four of its members on discussions with the director of the Great Books program at Columbia University.

• Persuasion: The Dartmouth debate team continues to collect trophies as the strongest season the Forensic Union has enjoyed in a number of years continues. From November through mid-January, five two-man teams competed in North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and California, picking up 14 trophies on the way. After playing host to an invitational tournament here the week before Carnival, when 17 of 44 teams were snowed out and some rounds were argued in Boston, the Green debaters were off to Northwestern.

• William Y. Arms, a British mathematician, has been named director of Kiewit Computation Center. He succeeds John McGeachie '65, who resigned last June to enter private business.