Letters

The Robes of Academe

Finding myself in the same dilemma as Dr. J. S. Haft, '49 (see his letter, October 1983) regarding academic regalia of Dartmouth graduates with non-Dartmouth doctorates, I once did a little research on the subject and came up with a solution.

If you have the honor of representing the College on such an occasion as an inaugural at another institution, you should "forget" your non-Dartmouth doctorate that day and don the regalia of your highest Dartmouth degree in most cases the A.B. The College will send down a hood (though you must find a bachelor's gown and a cap). This will gain you a place in the first eleven among the delegates in an academic procession, taking precedence over holders of whatever degrees of all institutions except those whose foundations antedate Dartmouth's. Thus, for example, you will be miles ahead of a Bryn Mawr Ph.D., a Michigan M.D., or a Stanford Sc.D.

On other occasions where you wish to display your Dartmouth colors along with your doctoral regalia, the following is suggested. Wear the doctoral gown open, a very white shirt, and a Dartmouth tie (vintage, Campion) of heavy silk, white medalions of the College seal interwoven with the green background. It's a real plume the other birds will be quick to spot and ask where you got it. A song then rises in your throat, but do not expect to get many bars into it before an antiphonal chorus of: "But we've all heard that song before." You then offer a final threnodic, "Where, Oh Where?" One caveat, though: when the feeders are opened, take a little care not to spill anything on the Dartmouth tie!

St. Simons Island, Ga.

Alpha Phi Alpha the First Black Fraternity

I received my November issue of the magazine in January. Nonetheless I greatly enjoyed the feature article on Professor E. E. Just. One correction must be made however. Professor Just was indeed a founder of Omega Psi Phi. But the first black fraternity in the United States was Alpha Phi Alpha.

Milwaukee, Wise.

Just's Research Continues at Dartmouth

Readers of your article on Professor E. E. Just will be interested to learn that his discoveries serve as part of the background for an important research program at Dartmouth. Professor Just described changes in the cell surface of sea urchin eggs that occur upon fertilization. We now know that these changes are due to the rapid entry of calcium into the eggs, which in turn elicits the rapid release of certain enzymes from the eggs into the surrounding medium. This process, in which calcium causes the release of cellular components, is an example of the process known as calcium-triggered exocytosis.

Dr. Robert Jackson, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Dartmouth, and his associates are investigating the biochemistry of calcium-triggered exocytosis in sea urchin eggs. This research program is of considerable significance for both biochemistry and medicine because calcium-triggered exocytosis is a poorly understood process that is at the basis of many other important biological events. Among these are: the release of insulin from the pancreas in response to low blood sugar, the release of histamine from blood cells in response to allergens, the release of adrenalin from the adrenal gland in response to stress, and the release of substances that transmit nerve signals from the neural cells.

You may well wonder why Dr. Jackson has selected the caldium-triggered exocytosis of enzymes in the sea urchin egg for investigation rather than one of these other events. The reason is simply that, for a variety of reasons, the process in the sea urchin is much more amenable to biochemical analysis than it is in any other cell type. There is every reason to expect that discoveries in the sea urchin system will be directly applicable in understanding these other systems. Behind the diversity of biological form, there is generally a unity of biochemical substance. 'Professor Just's and Dr. Jackson's research illustrate the point that a subject which at first blush may appear limited and esoteric is, in fact, often of wide significance.

Hanover, N.H.

[Prof. Lienhard teaches biochemistry atDartmouth. Ed.]

The Magazine: ObviousAmusements

The Alumni Magazine offers an obvious amusement to alumni: we look for pictures of classmates in order to marvel at how quickly they are aging. Unfortunately the Magazine also offers pictures of our fellows' mentalities. In the October issue, for instance, Les Huntley '33 dully complained about being obliged to sing of granite in his brain. (It took him half a century to be insulted.) Immediately afterward, Richard F. Lewis '45 and Robert G. Pumphrey '36 revealed unhumorous symptoms of rocks in the head: they cited evidence that in our violent alcoholic society guns are dangerous, and they concluded that guns aren't.

In the November issue Joe Searing '33 corrected another alumnus's misquotation from "Mending Wall." Good for him. But then he asserted that "Frost had his neighbor quote the catchy cliche 'Good fences make good neighbors' only so that Frost could spend the rest of the poem soliloquizing in devastating rebuttal."

Sigh. Louis Untermeyer's selection of Frost's poems (a Washington Square Press paperback) quotes an exchange of letters with Frost in explaining that Frost favored walls. But we don't need Untermeyer; the poem makes that point.

The Frostian speaker calls his neighbor to the task of mending the wall every year. He characterizes the neighbor as a stupid savage who doesn't understand why he's mending the wall. The speaker obviously wants to wall himself away from the neighbor, and his apple trees from the neighbor's pines.

It is nature and hunters (guns again) that tear down the wall. Did Frost ever write a poem in favor of nature? Think twice before answering, especially if your class number begins with a three.

Storrs, Conn.

La recherche du temps perdu

The four successive Letters to the Editor in the November 1983 issue of the Magazine from men spanning the four decades from the 1920s to the 19605, (and taking up no more space than two and one half columns of one page of print) delighted me because they were so representative of the Dartmouth education and spirit of those decades.

For example, I do not believe that many if any members of the DCAC of those days or these would take issue with either the context Or the spirit of Melville P. Merritt '20's letter, "Scholar-Athletes," or that many Dartmouth men of those decades would fail to approve of Harry Wallace '34's unheaded tribute to Ort Hicks.

Nor do I believe that many if any Dartmouth men of those decades would fail to recognize in even the snippets that follow, the stamp of that obsolete education he received at Dartmouth and be grateful for and proud of it. For example, from Quentin L. Kopp '49's letter headed "Freedom of Ideas," "The point is: freedom of ideas. People ought to stop being so uptight about the Review. Like Vonnegut, it's another part of the Dartmouth landscape." From G. Robert Thompson '58's letter headed "On Fraternity Constituencies," "There appears to be an implication in Mr. Scheu's comments that unless one agrees with a certain (official) point of view in a given situation, one is disloyal or even undesirable as a member of the Dartmouth Family."

After indulging in this remembrance of things past, it was enlightening to be brought back to the reality of today by "The Indian Symbol (cont.)" piece in The College section of the same issue of the Magazine. Therein Dartmouth alumni were, in essence, told that Dartmouth's traditional Indian, Dartmouth's traditional Eleazar song, and Dartmouth's unique cheers were fit symbols for the College when Dartmouth's unenlightened faculties only tried to imbue in their students the sacredness of intellectual integrity and the lasting value and joy of the life of the mind and the development of the spirit.

With the quantum jump forward in education everywhere in the '6os and '7os, with the resultant coming to power of Dartmouth's "So much more complex, so much more exciting, and so much more diverse," and by inference so much more learned, liberal, able, developed, cultivated, and humane faculty of today, the symbols had to be made to seem unfit, because in no other way could Dartmouth maintain its leadership position in academic New Thought and in the higher morality of the Tucker Foundation and the Upper Valley of those decades.

Delray Beach, Fla.

The Annual Report

My hopes for Dartmouth's future were dashed this morning when I sat down to read A Report of Dartmouth College 1982-83. After learning that President McLaughlin was a "Phi Betta (sic) Kappa" graduate of the College, finding "It's" in lieu of "Its" in the Provost's report, and Dean Shanahan's penchant, despite his doctorate in English, for vapid phrases such as "residential life initiative," "high quality personal counselling," "energetic network of undergraduate area coordinators," and "determining whether or not they have the determination to function in a quality way that is supportive of the central education mission of the College," I felt anger and then sorrow. An annual report should reflect the best of an institution; if this is Dartmouth's best, its "central education mission" now seems elusive.

New York, N. Y.

Amen

While I whole-heartedly concur in the blessing extended to Orton Hicks '21 by Harry Watt Wallace '34 in the November issue of the Alumni Magazine, I should like to suggest a correction of another statement made in Mr. Wallace's letter: Dartmouth College and only Dartmouth College has Ort Hicks.

Let us give thanks.

Chevy Chase, Md.

Will the real stern paddle . . .

I note with a degree of perturbation, and more than passing interest, the letter on page 12 of the December 1983 issue entitled "The Bouchard Retrospective: Gaught in Time," which relates to a claim by Joe Dunford '40 that he is the stern paddle in the canoeists photograph in the September '83 issue, page 38.

Some people will go to extreme lengths to usurp the limelight; I beg to correct Joe Dunford's fallacious recollection and set the record straight for the sake of posterity. The picture was taken in 1938, and I have a copy of it, including two related sequences taken at the same time. I am the stern paddle, as evidenced by my superior physique, and the bow was under the capable control of my roommate Edwin H. Baumer both of the Class of '40.

Honolulu, Hawaii

A Share of the Kudos

Thank you for the coverage in the December issue. In the case of the renovations to McNutt Hall, the architect Randall T. Mudge deserves a share of the kudos.

Resident Architect

Hanover, N.H.

Taking Dartmouth Home

In reference to your article on the 147th Alumni Council in the December issue, I would like to correct the statement made concerning the- "Take Dartmouth Home enrollment program.

The program is administered through the Admissions Office to allow undergraduates to visit private and public secondary schools during vacations in order to speak to prospective applicants and college counselors. "Take Dartmouth Home" is not restricted to public high schools, as stated in the article.

Hanover, N.H.

Divine Deeds

Shelby Grantham's article, "Crossroads" (December 1983) mentions an attempt to interest the late Bishop James Pike in the deanship of the Tucker Foundation. Bishop Pike is described as being located at "the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Washington." Bishop Pike was a remarkable man, of many talents and great abilities; but not even he, in a long and controversial career, could move the Cathedral of St. John the Divine from its location on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan to Washington.

Before his election as bishop of California, Bishop Pike was the dean of St. John the Divine in New York; as bishop of California, his episcopal seat was Grace Cathedral, located on Nob Hill, San Francisco.

As a matter of record, the cathedral of the Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. is the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, more familiarly known as the National or Washington Cathedral, located on Mount St. Alban's, off Wisconsin Avenue, N.W.

Let's hope that the Magazine's new look will not overlook proofreading and checking.

Pasadena, Calif.

Dear Alumnus .

I wonder how many alumni know of Edward Tuck's classic reply to individuals who urged him to use his influence to change a policy of the administration at Dartmouth?

When Orozco painted the frescoes in the reference room of Baker Library in the '30s, many alumni were deeply disturbed by the way he represented capitalism with plutocrats groveling in piles of gold, modern education as a faculty of skeletons oblivious to the world around them, and present day religion by Christ chopping down the cross. Many of them wrote to Tuck urging him to put pressure on the College to have the paintings obliterated, believing that after the several million dollars he had given Dartmouth to establish the Tuck School he would have effective influence.

Tuck received so many such letters he had a one-sentence form letter to reply. Dear Alumnus,

I give my money to Dartmouth College to support the institution, not to dictate its policies.

Yours,

Edward Tuck

This is an excellent example of the finest type of alumni loyalty and, incidentally, of the impact of brevity. I expect Tuck could have disliked the murals as much as others did but he would not use his contributions to buy influence. Alumni might think this when threatening to decrease their contributions to protest policies they dislike.

Gwynedd Valley, Perm.

The Symbol (cont.)

I have a solution to the Indian symbol impasse: hereafter refer to our athletic terms as the Dartmouth wolves.

I would feel honored not offended.

Virginia Beach, Va.

No Sweat

Your commentary on renascent problems with the proper symbolic representation of the College has prompted this letter ("The Indian Symbol, cont."). While I have no specific solution to offer, it strikes me that we should be able to do better than to either accept the current colored "green" depiction or wrangle over not returning to a discarded, though to my mind, heroic figure. Did the originators of "The Big Green" really have in mind an adjective? If so "green" might best be left to Vermont, as. in the Green Mountains. If we are to be adjectivally colored, then let it be white, evoking an image, perhaps, of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. "White" could also evoke images of snowy purity as well as spectrally encompassing all the colors of the rainbow. Small problems with "white" include "white lies" and "whitewash." But then I didn't say I had the solution.

Did the Learned Originators of "The Big Green" or "The Green" have in mind a piece of landscape? Certainly there is a (I prefer) "large" green stretching lazily across midcampus. But there is so much more interesting turf around that I really cannot believe that is what they had in mind. Or, perhaps less likely, did the selection of "green" refer to the verb form, as in "The Greening of the Gray," "The Greening of America," to make green, to become (or turn) green. Could this refer to undergraduate complexions after certain weekends?

It strikes me that what is needed is a commission to review this matter again. Surely there are enough persons of good heart for the task a blend of those individuals with a proper sense of history and good taste to allow for the identification of elements in our collective past that would fairly represent our College symbol around which all might rally. F. Sheldon Prentice '72, has suggested the "Tutor" in a recent letter to the Alumni Magazine. If that is what the commissions finds for, then so be it.

Finally, I must mention what I trust is a typographical oversight in your editorial comment "... a spirited outporing (??) of opinion" doesn't quite make it spelling-wise. I guess if you were referring to sweat you might be able to squeak through, but even then 1 think not, and if I have so erred, Editors, please correct them should you consider this for publication.

Ossining, N. Y.