Reflections on Dartmouth

65 Years Ago

An editorial in The Dartmouth of May 7, 1920, announced the inception of "Our Own Employment Bureau" with the appointment of an "Associate Dean with the intention of helping men graduating from the College to find favorable positions." This precursor of today's office of Career and Employment Services was in "constant touch" with "various sorts of business and industrial concerns" and strove to "offer help and advice to men, in the predicament of indecision."

Students had a chance to join the newlyformed Ledyard Canoe Club, which later that month embarked on its first 180-mile trip down the Connecticut River to Long Island Sound. When Evan Woodward '22 recalled that trip and subsequent ones five years later in an article for the Alumni Magazine, he told of many adventures, some thrilling, some humorous. One "choice anecdote" from the second cruise related how Charley Throop '22 was asleep in the blankets at the bottom of his canoe while his running mate, Don Bartlett '24, paddled during the night watch. "As ustfal, signals were flashing down the line by flashlight. Bartlett, irritated by the blinding of someone's light, barked, 'Put that light out!' Instantly there was a scramble amidships, as Throop fought with the blankets, and he was all but over the side into the river before restraining hands reached him. Said all he heard was 'LIGHT OUT!' "

20 Years Ago

Humour and pranksterism reigned as two groups formed on campus, each challenging the philosophy (and even the collective I.Q.) of the other. It all began when "the latest group of oddballs," an organization calling itself LOTF (Lest the Old Traditions Fail) stole the bell clapper from the tower of Dartmouth Hall as a protest against "creeping weenyism, the apathy that sits back calmly while...

hideous new buildings are added to the campus... and the Administration rolls placidly by, unopposed." LOTF's aim was "to maintain Big Greenism to counteract progress," the College's "most hideous product." "I'd rather be Greenie than Weenie" was their battlecry.

Letters to the editor and editorials debated the methods and motives of such a group until, inevitably, a countergroup was formed to challenge them. The Committee to Outlaw Big Greenism and Punting (COBGAP) claimed to share the same "primary goal: an ever-greater Dartmouth. Unfortunately LOTF has failed to realize that times have changed and Dartmouth must change with them." Following the defeat of masked representatives of LOTF by COBGAPers in an hour-long quiz game, LOTF returned the "napped clapper." As exams approached, LOTF bade farewell in a letter to The Dartmouth's editor: "We would like to preserve the feelings and attitudes which the good traditions symbolize ... we went to such extremes... to bring this issue of weenyism to campus-wide attention. But mainly we went to such extremes because it was more fun that way.... After all, it's spring."