On the Road

It's a wonder anyone got anything done around here last month, with ail the extracurricular elucidation on various erudite topics that was coming our way. Aside from the routine specialized seminars and colloquia on such subjects as "The Brush Border of Intestinal Epithelial Cells," brought to us by the folks over at Gilman Hall, a lot of well-known people with all sorts of opinions were hitting the road north.

Ikar Zavrazhnov, first secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, came to talk on "U.S.-Soviet Relations" and warned us that separate American-sponsored peace negotiations in the Middle East "are going nowhere" and will continue to without Russian participation. The following week, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. George Bush urged the improvement of U.S. relations with China, which is as concerned as we are, he said, about the spreading influence of the Soviets.

Kate Millett, better known for her feminist writings, talked not about sexual politics but about "Woman as Artist" and sculptor, which she has been for 20 years. Conservative black economist Walter Williams recommended not more social programs to aid minorities, but fewer. Minimum wage legislation and other government intervention in the free-market system, he argued, "though well-intentioned, spell disaster for disadvantaged minority groups."

"Born-Again" Charles Colson, of Watergate infamy, packed them into Webster Hall and then brought them repeatedly to their feet in an emotional speech about his religious experience and the Prison Fellowship he founded after his own jail term. Only a few days, later it was "Porn Again," pairing Oui and Esquire columnist D. Keith Mano and conservative sociologist Ernest Vanden Haag in a lively debate over pornography control.

And then there was the lady who was peddling $800 packages of pots and pans, china, crystal, and cutlery to the sturdy sons of Dartmouth at their fraternity houses. The College had spoiled part of the act by declaring dormitories off-limits for such "soliciting." "It's like a Communist state," said the pitchlady, who denied indignantly that she was "soliciting."

Opera made its debut with plenty of bassoprofundo in The Merry Wives of Windsor.