Letters

Petrus Extraordinaris

The fellow with his nose in the rock on page 36 of the May issue is not a rock hound(canus petris vulgarus) but, as almost any geology student in the Connecticut Valley, north or south, would attest (and many, indeed, already have) quite a different variety: my remarkable colleague Pete Robinson '54 Petrus extraordinaris), son of Robin Robinson '24, whose deeds as mathematician, registrar, and purveyor of classical music are not unknown on the Hanover -Plain. A rock hound is to Pete as a disk jockey is to his father as a fiddler is to Isaac Stern. The raincoat, the pose, the crushed little finger are trademarks of the field component of this complex scholar, but they reveal nothing about the Tahiti volcanologist, the crystal chemist, the mineralogist, the metamorphic penologist, nor indeed the plate tectonics synthesist that inhabit this implausible figure to say nothing of the alpinist. Certainly if a celebration of Stoiber and Lyons is to mean anything, it must speak of their enduring capacity to inspire awe and terror of the scope of their knowledge, and to understand how that gets transmitted, one only has to look at Pete.

Pelham, Mass.

Of Empires and Ice Cream

I have recently returned from a stimulating experience at this summer's Alumni College. The theme was the nature of empire. Professors Garthwaite, Lustick, Major, and Navarro and their associates are to be commended for producing a stimulating and demanding curriculum, reminiscent of the best in Dartmouth education. Steve Calvert and his colleagues ran the program very smoothly, and also deserve accolades.

In another vein, I must relate to my fellow alumni that another of our cherished traditions has bit the dust. I am hesitant to name the lastest transgression against the honored past, lest I thereby transform a possible oversight into a bureaucratically immutable fact of life. However, my duty to inform and rouse my fellow alumni must prevail. Perhaps we can still save the day and restore what is now lost to future generations of Dartmouth students.

No, my friends, the College hasn't surreptitiously gone single sex, and no new pseudosculpture desecrates the Baker lawn. The awful truth is that Ma Thayer has done away with the soft ice cream machines! O temporal' O mores!

No longer can freshmen restore their fried brains with this elixir of life. No longer can Hanover's canine contingent gain sustenance from the frozen nectar pitched them by students exiting Thayer Hall. No longer can those with diverse educational, religious, and racial backgrounds compete in wholesome competition in building the world's highest (soft) ice cream cone.

Why has this tragedy occurred? If the College has insufficient funds to support these innocent instruments of pleasure, perhaps some wealthy alumni would be willing to endow DDA as necessary. After all, an alumni body that would support the likes of the Review could surely be expected to support a cause considerably more benign. While it's nice to have a "Toro-fied" Green resembling a Better Homes and Gardens layout, surely it's more important to adhere to priorities and time-honored values associated with soft ice cream. While the common ice cream available at Thayer is fine, can a leading liberal arts institution afford to ignore the pinnacle of Western culinary achievement? What about the impact on recruitment?

It is with confidence in the ultimate Tightness of the world that I have raised this vital issue with the Dartmouth community. The cone is now passed to you. As for myself, my soft ice cream is about to drip into the word processor, so it's time to log off.

Alexandria, Va.

The June/July Issue: A Delight

• The last issue of the Alumni Magazine was a delight to us. I laughed until the tears rolled down my cheek at the memorable story about John Stearns. Being a Dartmouth daughter, a Dartmouth wife, and a Dartmouth mother, I read the Magazine from beginning to end.

Your query, "Got any great Dartmouth stories?" brought to mind the pieces my father wrote for the 1911 Class Letter after he retired from "the B & G." They were gathered together for his children and grandchildren, close friends and neighbors after he died.

I am one of those who hates to give up on the Dartmouth Indian symbol. As a child in Hanover I remember especially the reunions of one of the older classes at which a real Indian (was his name Eastman?) always appeared in full Indian regalia. I was in high school when Roland Sundown attended Dartmouth; he was such a fine person and proud of his heritage. He appeared with the band at games, and always with great dignity!

It would be very fine to see an article in your Magazine about the Indians now attending Dartmouth their background, college activities and career plans. Something similar to your profile, "Nine from '84." Keep up the good work.

Richmond, Va.

[The alumnus you refer to in paragraph 3 was Charles A. Eastman '87, a Santee Sioux who went on from Dartmouth to become a physician, author, and lecturer. Raymond Wilson, who recently wrote OHIYESA, a biography of Eastman, noted that in addition to tending to the injured at the Battle of Wounded Knee, Eastman helped found the Boy Scouts of America. We will, incidentally, be printing a profile of a Dartmouth medical student's experience on the Navajo Reservation in a forthcoming issue of the Magazine and plans are underway for more extensive profiles of Native American alumnilae. ED.]

"Dartmouth on Trial"

As an alumnus of the College whose loyalty has been impaired by the administration's policies since my graduation, 1 have followed with dismay the account in The Wall Street Journal of the reporter from the Dartmouth Review who went undercover, as it were, to expose the practices of the Dartmouth Gay Students Association. What concerns me is not so much that Dartmouth would seek to punish an individual for her purported violation of a criminal statute (would that they had taken the laws against underage drinking so seriously during my days there), but that the College, in the person of its president, would sanctimoniously contend that the issue to be tried is one of "fundamental values." Even allowing for a tinge of bias in the Journal's editorial page reportage of the matter, what comes through pellucidly is that the College really has no idea as to what its purpose should be.

While few would dispute that "respect for the rights of others" should be "reinforced" in the "educational process," whose rights are being violated if all students are being taxed through their tuition dollars so that the unfortunate lifestyle of a few is encouraged? Of course, we should all adhere "to principles of honesty," but who is being dishonest when the College exercises its prosecutorial discretion to railroad a writer who did nothing more odious than that which Daniel Ellsberg did when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times? Openness and integrity in interpersonal relationships are laudable, but whose openness is impugned if the College seeks to obscure its funding of the Gay Students Association? These are more than the "rhetorical questions" which the College president suggests are improper, but are questions addressed to the role of the College in regulating the affairs of its students. In short, President McLaughlin's iteration of these fundamental values is less than convincing and pales beside the true values fundamental to Dartmouth or any other educational institution: the search for truth, the development of the mind, the preparation of the citizen. By fostering debate on the issue of what the College should be doing as an educational institution, the Review is "reinforcing" these true values. By distorting the issues and appealing to subjective concepts of what conduct is to be discouraged in "interpersonal relationships, it is the College which subverts these values.

That the Review is a thornin the side of the Dartmouth College administrators is undoubted. That they would arrogate to themselves the power of the attorney general to punish purported violations of the criminal laws of New Hampshire is improbable. That they would deny their true motives in seeking this extraordinary remedy is laughable. That the Review constitutes the remaining voice crying in the wilderness of academic dishonesty is undeniable.

New York, N.Y.

The Lighter Side of Life: A Remembrance

The June-July Magazine was an unusually long one and had so many interesting articles which gave us a different perspective about college life from what we usually get. The article about John Stearns was particularly enjoy able.

Your query on p. 54 "Got any great Dartmouth Stories? prompts me to write you of other stories about college life which I have heard. Many have been passed down in my family from President Nathan Lord which reveal a very different student and faculty life. My father, Johnnie K., lived in his grandfather's home both before and during his college days and heard many tales told by him, and my father passed them on to his family.

In those days there were no intercollegiate athletics and intramural sports were few and informal. Nor were there many social or recreational clubs or activities to engage the student's interests outside of his educational life. To give vent to that side of their life, the students had to find their diversion by playing pranks on the faculty and the townspeople. The president being the College's disciplinary officer and infrequent contact with individual students thus was a favorite target for their pranks. Chapel service was held every morning in Dartmouth Hall at 6:00, before breakfast. One morning, word had been passed to the students that a trick was to be played on him by removing the Bible the night before. So every student was there eager to see what the president would do when he found no Bible on the pulpit. They rose when he entered, every eye on him to catch any sign of embarrassment in him when he noticed its absence. Not a sign as they sat down, wondering what would happen. He gave a brief prayer, a hymn was sung, and when he came to the pulpit to announce the Bible reading, tenseness was at its peak. When they heard him say "I will read the 119th Psalm" there was a faint gasp. They listened in stunned silence as he repeated the 176 verses and when he dismissed them they went out completely subdued.

One other incident in the game of wits between the students and the president captured my fancy. The president lived in a house on Wentworth Street facing the Common. He had a stable with a few horses and some carriages which were necessary for him to have in the days before the railroad came to the Upper Valley. One dark evening in the fall, a few students silently entered the yard, got hold of the shafts of one of the carriages, and with hardly a sound, pulled it over to Main Street down past the few stores all the way down the hill to Mink Brook. Then they turned through a gate in the fence to a sand bar at the edge of the brook. They paused to get ready to turn the carriage around and let it roll into the water. Suddenly they heard a sound from the carriage and looking up, saw the door open and the president step out. He was smiling and said, "I thank you for the nice ride you have given me. Now I should be glad to have you pull me back home." Dumfounded, they could do nothing but comply.

I have looked through the histories of the College which I have to see if these stories or others are there, but I found nothing. I feel sure however that the Archives must have a collection of stories about the lighter side of life in those days. Whether that is a subject which would interest the present day I don't know. With many thanks for that interesting Magazine.

Pomona, Calif.

A Fatuous View

Laurie Kretchmar '84 ("Undergraduate Chair," June/July) reveals at least I didn't know about it that in the fall of '82, a young Dartmouth student hung herself in Hopkins Center's Center Theater. Laurie allows that she was "intrigued" by the death. I find that very intriguing. Laurie did a little research and found that "every theater has a ghost." This clears things up for Laurie, who now realizes how "consciously dramatic" was the act of suicide. Just another publicity hound, don't you know?

Laurie develops her theme: Dartmouth.is no worse than anywhere else when it comes to accusations of conformity, narrow-minded perspectives on life, and anti-learning. Why, she says, there are students interested in learning here; look at the senior fellows!

Next she mentions another student who died of cancer, but in apparent reference to the suicide, follows with the observation that those who "leave the fold" voluntarily are viewed as "disloyal." Dartmouth is not "unbearable enough to lead to leaving altogether, Some like [the suicide] ... might call that complacency. Others, like me, refer to it as realism."

Words do not suffice to comment on this fatuous view of a representative lady of the "new" Dartmouth, who publicly amuses herself with a superior tone and a knowing shrug of the shoulders at the expense of the supreme tragedy of a death of a young girl, indeed, her classmate. The never-ending pain that reverberates through that girl's family must have turned up a few notches when they read this obscenity. Nor is it easy to make restrained comment on an editorial policy that allows such callousness to surface on these pages. It seems to say that "loyalty" to Dartmouth is a far, far higher value than is loyalty to human life.

New York, N.Y.

The Accomplishments of '84

As a recent graduate of Dartmouth, I was enamored to read of the accomplishments of nine of my classmates. Brad Hutensky, although prudent in his admission of trepidation, unfortunately fell short of indicating the accomplishments of our class.

The Dartmouth community has changed, despite the opinions of Brad's advisors "more than 40 professors, administrators, and students." Dartmouth's female population has accomplished far more than to merit 2/9 th's representation! This well-intentioned article does not "present a fair cross section of the intellectual, athletic, cultural, and social activities of our class!"

Because Dartmouth's athletic reputation has been enhanced by the strength of the women's teams, I would like to know why there was no female athlete-scholar from the class of 1984? I knew quite a few.

New York City, N.Y

[No article featuring nine students out of a graduating class of 1019 could really be representa- tional. Author Hutensky '84 made every effort to include more students, but limitations of space unfortunately-prevailed. ED.]