Letters to the Editor

God's Red Pencil

What in the world do you mean, "Only God and their professors, closeted with their red pencils, know for sure"?

References to various groups of students in the preceding paragraph ("Grades: The Gentleman's 'B'," December issue) might serve as antecedent for at least the first of the plural pronouns. Which group is a tangle. I should hope this is not a misguided Trinitarian's impulse to imitate the feminists' use of the feminine singular.

Whether or not God owns a red pencil, the sure knowledge presumed for closeted professors about the fitness of grades students get boggles the daylight out of me. But I have never known what grades mean. "Grade inflation" compounds the problem as well as calls attention to it, so inflation is worrisome. What has always worried me is the mystique by which a gallimaufry of observations — subjective and objective — is transmuted by way of grading to a set of ordinal numbers: class rankings.

You quote the registrar on the difference between grade point averages for students in humanities courses and students in the other two divisions: "I am relatively sure the difference cannot be explained by overall superiority of students enrolled in humanities courses." What makes him so relatively sure? Are the same students enrolled in all courses? Otherwise, what independent data can he have? Or is he playing a hunch? Is the hunch founded on a conviction that grades ought to follow some kind of curve, or a flat line? If so, why doesn't he say so?

Folks haven't ever managed to agree on assumptions and definitions about grading. I suspect there are inherent difficulties in achieving more than lip-service agreement as to a "philosophy of grading." Meanwhile, we brandish innuendoes at one another.

Grade inflation is one of the least of the difficulties that beset the education of the young. If Dartmouth hasn't anything more serious than that to worry about, the state of the College is hale.

Albany, N. Y.

The Coach's Contract

In a newspaper article of January 17 headed "Cosmic Muffin Frowns on Yukica's Coming," by Gil Peters, it is stated that considerations were so attractive he [Joe Yukica, the new football coach] could not refuse. Here is the way it is stated: "Other earthly considerations — a reported six-year contract that includes a house on a golf course and guaranteed paid tuition at any college for his three teen-age sons."

Probably the house can be justified, but how can the tuition deal be justified? Theoretically, the Ivy League does not permit subsidizing athletes, but here is an Ivy college subsidizing three students.

It is ironic to raise money on the Alumni Fund and use it as payola to a football coach. No coach is that good.

I don't blame Yukica for taking the deal. I do blame Seaver Peters [Dartmouth's athletic director] for stooping so low and doing it so quietly that the alumni were not aware of it.

This deal should be withdrawn immediately. It is definitely not in keeping with honest practice. If you think this payola makes me happy you are more naive than I.

The present-day liberalization is breaking down all tradition, ethics, courtesy, and rules.

Coeds living with the men, beer and booze everywhere, lack of pride in appearance, abolishing the Indian, forbidding old songs, and now payola to a football coach are all evidence of the inability of the present non-Dartmouth administration. The intent is to make Dartmouth just another educational mill instead of the special individual college it was.

I wonder how many alumni are aware of this kind of dealing. You can get an answer from some if you have the guts to publish this letter.

Squantum, Mass.

[Athletic Director Seaver Peters '54 says thathe, too, was "amazed" to read the article, in theBoston Herald Traveler, because "it is grosslyinaccurate." Dartmouth, according to Peters,stayed within the advertised salary range offrom $26,000 to $30,000 in hiring Yukica.

As for the house, Peters says that "we dictateto the head football coach that he must live inthe house at 19 Lyme Road for purposes ofentertainment of alumni, friends, and prospectsand their families, just as we dictate to the deanof the College, the dean of the Tucker Foundation, or indeed the President the home in whichthey must live." The provision of a house forthe football coach goes back to BobBlackman's time.

In 1954, Dartmouth joined many othercolleges in offering tuition aid for the childrenof faculty and administrative officers. Theamount was once equal to Dartmouth's tuition,but the present level for new employees is$1,000 per child per year. Peters says thatYukica is as eligible for this fringe benefit "asany other new administrative officer."

Peters did not comment on the length ofYukica's contract. By way of comparison, sixyears is the time most assistant professorsspend here before being granted or deniedtenure. Ed.]

Cripes

While I enjoyed your December issue immoderately in December, little did I suppose that you were yourselves so enamored of it that you would send out the identical edition again in January.

Indeed, I see where you claim, in your postal confession on page 3, that you turn out nine (presumably different) editions a year, with a combined January-February issue. I hasten to inform you that the one I just received in mid-January is not it.

Although I am still as confused as I was in December about the Bakke case, reading all the enlightened opinions about it — which dominated your December letters-to-the-editor — a second time has neither lifted my spirits nor the veil of obtuseness which makes me grateful that it is the Supreme Court, not I, which does the ultimate deciding of such matters. But reading these screeds over again, with a growing sense of déjà vu, did convince me at last that, by God, I had already benefited from all this wisdom. So I looked through the mess at one side of the desk, and sure enough. ...

Well, fun is fun, but if you do get around to printing a January-February edition, I would like to reserve one, please.

Cripes, Bakke may have decided to go back in the Marines by then. I wouldn't want to miss a thrilling chapter. Cheers to all.

Sarasota, Fla.

[Either the Dartmouth computer botched ouraddress labels for the December issue or elseabout 18,000 labels somehow got lost ordestroyed. Or else our printer put them on someother magazine; but he says he didn't do that,and we believe him.

Before any of this was known, some 18,000copies of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE — roughlyhalf of the subscription list — were mailed onDecember 14. Then our printer discovered hehad no labels for the remaining 18,000 copies.The trouble was; there appeared to be nopattern to the missing labels. In some towns,readers received their copies in good orderwhile their neighbors waited in vain. (How wistful the wait was became evident in one of ourmany telephone inquiries — Wife, at home: "Ithink he gets it at the office." Husband, at office: "I think I get it at home.") After scores ofilluminating conversations of this sort, we concluded that most readers in the Far West andthe Midwest and in New Jersey, Florida, andWashington, D.C., failed to receive theDecember issue. So, we ordered new addresslabels and in early January sent the moldering18,000 copies to those areas. When it was allover, some readers got two copies, most got onecopy, and a few got no copy at all.

This episode was almost as bizarre as theDay the Birds Died — but that is another story. Ed.]

On Names, etc.

I suggest:

1) The nickname for the College's athletic teams simply remain "The Green." If Harvard can be the Crimson, and Stanford the Cardinals (a name which, in Stanford's case, designated a color and not a bird .when it was chosen), I see no reason to change a traditional nickname. It makes sense to change harmful traditions, but not harmless ones.

2) The College eventually add a law school — preferably named after Daniel Webster — to its graduate schools. There hardly is an overabundance of law schools in New Hampshire, or even in northern New England.

3) At some time in the vague future, the Athletic Council contact Al McGuire to see if he might be interested enough to return to the place he began his coaching career, enjoy the challenge of taking Dartmouth back to respectability (if it isn't there by then), and welcome a relatively low pressure position in an idyllic setting as the appropriate place to conclude a distinguished coaching career.

Palos Heights, Ill.

Softened Attitude

As an opponent of coeducation at Dartmouth, I confess that the following letter which I received from an attractive coed in the Class of 1981 has softened my attitude somewhat:

"I am from California so I am a long way from home. I have not had one pang of regret for going to school so far away. Dartmouth is such a warm, friendly place and I felt right at home from the first day. I love the outdoors. I have really enjoyed exploring the area — it hardly seems like a college campus!

"Work here at Dartmouth is hard but then that is to be expected. I fee! that I am learning a lot. The best part of my experience here has been the people. I love the people here: fellow freshmen, upperclassmen, professors, administrators, etc. All are willing to give their time to care. I'm very happy after my first term at Dartmouth and am really looking forward to the winter term (snow and all!)."

Maybe I went to Dartmouth about 67 years too soon.

Plainfield, N.H.

Cheers and Warnings

Three Eleazars and a star shell for Anne Bagamery for her timely article in the December issue under "The Undergraduate Chair."

It's about time an undergraduate spoke out boldly as she did about "jerkism" — that arrogant, irresponsible, obnoxious behavior of some students at College public events."This is the kind of thing alumni have had occasion to write about many times in the past, but I am glad to see that there is at least one undergraduate who recognizes how such rowdyism hurts the College beyond the Hanover plain.

I hope her article appears in The Dartmouth or that it has already appeared there and that College authorities don't pass it off just as high spirits.

Ms. Bagamery makes me like girls as Dartmouth students!

Yarmouth Port, Mass.

Congratulations to Anne Bagamery '78, for her "Undergraduate Chair" essay "Animal Acts." During my days at Dartmouth, 1916-20, alcohol was a minor problem, since the state was mostly dry and one had to go to Boston or some other city to get liquor. The problems of today are the direct result of the vast increase in the availability of alcohol everywhere. A World Health Organization study bears out this fact — the more alcohol is available, the more problems result from its use. Alcohol is recognized as the #1 problem drug today. We have 250,000 heroin addicts in the U. S., but there are 11.2 million alcohol addicts or alcoholics.

In 1910, the per capita consumption of absolute alcohol for persons 15 years and older was 2.6 gallons. With the anti-saloon drive most states went dry, and for 13 years, alcohol was illegal in the U. S. At the end of the prohibition years, the per capita consumption of absolute alcohol had dropped to just under one gallon. Then came repeal in 1933, and gradually liquor was legalized, advertised, and glamorized, until today we are at a new all-time high of 2.61 gallons per capita.

In addition, many states, having lowered the drinking age to 18, are finding that highway fatalities have increased accordingly. Over half of all highway fatalities are alcohol-related.

The same alcohol which causes the student behavior which Anne Bagamery deplores also causes brain damage and birth defects. It is a factor in a third of all suicides, in half of all violent crimes and highway fatalities. Alcohol is also a factor in half of all first admissions to mental institutions.

Reduced permissiveness toward alcohol and reduced availability of it would help greatly to reduce the sorry results of this #1 drug use on America's campuses.

"The wisdom of the years concerning liquor Is in these simple words — don't ever doubt it — The one best way to get along with liquor Is, of course, to get along without it."

Wolfeboro, N. H.

Vitality in the Arts

"The Hopkins Revolution" by Henry Williams (December issue) articulates a major and important change which has come over Dartmouth since my days.

Having lived overseas for a major portion of my time since graduation in 1950, I had not returned to Dartmouth for 15 years. In 1965, while on leave from The Asia Foundation in Korea, I returned to Dartmouth with my wife who brought me back to Hanover to attend the summer National Association of Teachers of Singing workshop. The Hopkins Center was in full use, and I was extremely impressed with a new vitality in the arts in Hanover which I attributed to the existence of the center itself.

Here is a case where physical structure was essential to development of changed attitudes and interest in the arts. Having been in the business of making grants, I have turned down requests from many organizations which have wanted to construct a building with little thought given to its effective use. I am delighted to have seen the Hopkins Center effectively used. It has added a new and needed vitality to Dartmouth.

Bethesda, Md.

Vive Rassias

Today's New York Times has a story about Dr. John A. Rassias, professor of romance languages and literature, and his unique method of teaching French. It's great.

In the years 1918 to 1922 I took French with instructors, long since deceased, for four years and emerged only with the conviction that I must avoid anyone who might address me in that language. Most of my colleagues were equally inept.

Apparently, Dr. Rassias understands that only by using a language under conditions similar to those under which people live will one gain ability in that form of communication. His methods are a bit dramatic but many of us live through one dramatic scene after another. The more drama, the more we learn.

I applaud the system of students living abroad - if they are with families which have something to offer. Our high school experience with American Field Service students abroad taught us that some host families might be almost illiterate in their own language. I trust that Dartmouth takes steps to avoid that.

Vive la francais (I hope that's correct).

Norwalk, Ct.

[Besides the January 8 edition of the Times, seealso the May 1977 and February 1974 issues ofthe ALUMNI MAGAZINE on the Rassias method. Ed.]

Elliot Kofoed

It may seem strange to link the lives of a youth dying at 26 and a man who lived out his years, who never met. But Elliot Kofoed fulfilled the aspirations of Robert Hutchins.

In 1935, Hutchins exhorted Chicago graduates: "My experience and observation have led me to warn you that the greatest, the most insidious... the most paralyzing danger you will face is the danger of corruption.... Believe me you are closer to the truth now than you will ever be again.... Take your stand now before time has corrupted you. Before you know it, it will be too late

Elliot lived as though he had been guided by that speech.

Commemorating Hutchins, Milton Mayer stated: "I shan't miss him: I have all of his life and some of his letters at my disposal.... In a lucky life like mine there are one or two people you don't miss when they're .gone; living or dead they're looking over your shoulder. Anyway, I'm an optimist, and I abide serene in the starry confidence that we or our latest descendants shall see his likes again."

For his friends Elliot would have liked it that way. Can't you picture him putting to us these penetrating questions?

Why, in the face of our dwindling energy resources, can't we appreciate the truth in David Brower's statement that "the promotion of growth is simply a sophisticated way to steal from our children"?

Why, when the shift from oil to alternative energy sources must be undertaken within the next two decades, is one quarter of the world's scientific talent engaged in development of weapons systems and global arms research expenditures six times those for energy research?

why, when hunger and malnutrition contribute more than any other factor to political instability and cause more fatalities than any war, do world military expenditures exceed the income of the poorest half of humanity?

Why can't .we recognize that national defense establishments are useless against the nonmilitary threats to national security — unemployment, soaring population, inflation, ecological deterioration, and hunger?

And I can imagine Elliot reflecting on the human condition: "In our lifetime crime has taken on new meaning. During the Vietnam war there was the crime of silence. Its perpetrators, by giving tacit approval of the war, prolonged it, and increased its ravages, out they were never punished. Meanwhile, war protestors were jailed for 'disturbing the peace.' Today, protestors against nuclear pollution are jailed for 'criminal trespass.' And in these dissenting acts we have seen criminality transmuted into morality."

Elliot would say, "Think about these things for a moment."

Hanover, N. H.

A Century of Saturday Heroes

There's a new book out that I got for Christmas, just finished reading, and thought many fellow alumni might be interested in, too.

Ivy League Football Since 1872 by longtime sportswriter John McCallum, published last fall by Stein and Day, is as the name says, a history of football among the Ivies since Yale beat Columbia, 3 goals to 0, some 105 autumns ago. Passing mention is made of the 1869 game between Princeton and Rutgers, but that's quickly dismissed as more soccer or rugby than football.'

Yale is rightly credited as the cradle of football as we know it, where the game was invented and refined. The book pays due homage to Walter Camp, Pop Warner, Pudge Heffelfinger, and all those legendary Elis. If there's a fault to it, it's that McCallum doesn't know quite when to get off Yale's bandwagon and start beating the drum for some of the other schools, like Dartmouth, who've also played significant roles in football history. But since the book evidently grew out of McCallum's contacts with the late Chet LaRoche, Yale quarterback in 1916 and later the head of the National Football Hall of Fame Foundation, perhaps the Blue bias is understandable.

Nonetheless, there are lots of interesting anecdotes and details about Big Green football, too. Did anyone remember we won our first unofficial Ivy title in 1920? That we only shared the league crown in 1925, with Penn, while winning the national championship? There's a section devoted to Coach Fats Spears, to the 62-13 shellacking of #1 Cornell in 1925, when we pioneered the long-ball offense; to Red Blaik's coming to prominence as a coach; to the famous 12th-man game at Princeton, the fifthdown game vs. Cornell, the hurricane game of 1950 at Princeton, the unbeaten teams of 1962, 1965, and 1970, a fine tribute to Coach Blackman, some details of the memorable Ivy championship wins over Princeton in '65, Yale in '70, Cornell and Ed Marinaro in '71, and Penn in '72.

There's a lot of other good reading here, too, a lot of stories to share over a tailgate. McCallum's a good writer, though one suspects too much of his material is drawn from old alumni football newsletters, and not enough from firsthand interviews with coaches and players. On the whole, though, a book well worth reading and having.

Morganville, N.J.

The Open Door

The recent letters about the accessibility of Dartmouth presidents in comparison with their counterparts at other institutions reminded me of an earlier period in Dartmouth history when the administration was having problems with the management of The Daily Dartmouth.

The editor-in-chief of the paper was an exceedingly independent minded young man who was not inclined to heed any advice or warnings about the way he was running his journal.

At the time I was serving on the Board of Proprietors of The Dartmouth as alumni representative and Al Dickerson was the administration representative on the board.

He called me one day to complain that the editor would not listen to reason about the conduct of the paper and had even repeatedly refused to meet with the President of the College to talk things over. What could the College do about the situation?

I suggested that the President might go around to see the editor of the paper. Al hardly thought I was serious, and I was not asked for advice again.

It was a case of the student being inaccessible to the President.

Rutland, Vt.

Excellent People, Really

I was intrigued by a couple of letters in the January/February issue dealing (of course) with coeducation. In the first, Dr. John W. Smillie '38 writes, "I was of a minority of my class and previous classes in not (his emphasis) being opposed to admitting women to the College. ..." A few paragraphs later he states, "Pre-eminence is eventually obtained by the turning out of excellent people year after year. Teaching fewer men each year, in my opinion, is not the path to maintaining excellence, let alone increasing pre-eminence."

The logical conclusion to his statement is that Dr. Smillie feels that the turning out of educated women is not "the turning out of excellent people." I am forced to wonder what Dr. Smillie thought women were being admitted for: typists? barmaids? charwomen?

In the second letter which caught my eye, Robert H. Zeiser '49 asserts the primacy of the alumni because of the size of its bankroll. I would be the first to acknowledge the debt of gratitude that past, present, and future students owe to generous alumni. This does not, however, mean that those alumni are necessarily wiser, only wealthier. I would submit that a gift to the College made under that assumption is purely self-serving, and not made out of any love for Dartmouth College.

Medford, Mass.

Stories Clean and Otherwise

Two items in the November issue brought these thoughts to my mind.

1) The reference to the Cleveland alumni being tough on speakers. A friend in Portland, Oregon, told me that the club there was very tough on speakers from the College. Then the visitors began to bring their wives and the rough talk ceased. (Incidentally, at a class smoker in the early twenties Dean Bill was the speaker. In his talk he told a number of stories — all clean — which were received with good humor. At the end of his talk he remarked on this and told us he had found the jokes in his son's Sunday school paper.)

2) In the band article the gem "Now folks, now whip out your gongs . . made me recall four sixth grade boys who, sitting at a moving picture show, did, on the command, "whip it out," just that.

Rye Beach, N.H.

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.

[Clayton M. Wallace is executive directoremeritus, American Council on AlcoholProblems. Ed.]

[Elliot Kofoed '73, of whom Dr. Margoliswrites, died of cancer in November. Ed.]

[Scott Thayer spent a year at Dartmouth as anexchange student from the University ofCalifornia at San Diego. Ed.]