Circling the Green

• Leveling: To smooth out unforeseeable fluctuations in investment income, the trustees have approved an "Endowment Utilization Formula," by which a prudent amount of endowment income may be used in any given year, with the excess ― up to 20 per cent of yield ― going into a stabilization reserve as a hedge against leaner times. To avoid excessive changes in endowment yield, inflation-keyed floors and ceilings have been set on the annual increase in the amount of endowment income to be used. Capital, or even "quasi-endowment," will no longer be touched, President Kemeny announced, except in "catastrophic years."

• De-paving the Way: Lest the campus in time disappear under asphalt, a committee of town, gown and surgical gown has been looking into ways that parking lots might be beaten into greensward and commuters' cars banished as far as possible from the center of town and the campus. The chronic problem of clogged streets and mushrooming parking lots has become acute with plans for the new Rockefeller Hall and the Hood Museum, which will eliminate lots at the same time they will ― by Hanover zoning regulation ― require additional off-street parking. In February, the trustees authorized a full study of a cooperative venture with the town and the Medical Center to establish five peripheral parking lots, whence a fleet of jitney buses would ferry passengers into town and onto campus. There were other less drastic options, but all agreed that "doing nothing is not an option."

• Building: Plans for the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences, incorporating Silsby Hall and designed by Lo-Yi Chan '54, have received a final go-ahead. Ground for Rockefeller Hall will be broken as soon as possible, with occupancy aimed at the fall of 1982. The plan is also for a new apartmentstyle dormitory, adjoining Channing Cox Hall and a more or less an identical twin to it, to be completed by late 1982. A center for the study of German and two racquetball courts, calculated to improve the ambience of the River Cluster,. will be included in the new residence hall.

• Good Doctoring: Dr. Jeanne Arnold, who teaches family medicine at the Dartmouth Medical School while she directs the Family Medicine Institute in Augusta, Maine ― not as neat a trick as it may seem, since there's a close training affiliation between the two ― was among ten finalists nationwide for the 1980 Good Housekeeping Family Doctor of the Year Award. She and her husband were in family practice, together before she took up teaching and directing.

• Reading Reading: The issue of the fine, sometimes blurred line between what is too much and what not enough for a student reading period has been set at rest with a final decision by the executive committee of the faculty that two days' break before examinations was as close to perfect as they were likely to get. The matter was referred back to the executive committee when the full faculty meeting at which it was to be considered adjourned for lack of a quorum.