Letters
Meaningful pursuit
I have read many a "class notes" article over the past 21 years. None have surpassed the thoughtfulness, inventiveness, and sheer interest evoked, by Bruce Jolly's '65 notes in the December '85 issue. As a resident of Brown Hall for four years, perhaps I had a special interest in this article; however, I do believe this approach to class notes (reminiscences coupled with important concerns of another time as well as the present) makes the notes become far more than what they usually are "trivial pursuit." I am not saying anything else about Bruce's notes for I would like the readers' curiosity to lead them to read the December '85 notes if they haven't. Let's see more of it.
Suffern, N.Y.
Arm in arm
Can you imagine an entire student body standing together, arms linked, belting out the alma mater? Sounds corny, perhaps, but we saw it happen at football games, commencements, convocations, even at informal gatherings in front of the President's house in a time of turmoil. It provides a sharp contrast to the image of a campus torn apart by racism, sexism, and overall intolerance Dartmouth College as described in recent press accounts.
Let us tell you about what Dartmouth was like for two Jewish women-'minorities' in a predominantly white, Protestant, male environment who graduated in the Class of 1984.
The less than praiseworthy events which occurred during our four years at the College included publication of the Review's article, "Dis Sho Ain't No Jive," the destruction of a sukkah commemorating the Jewish harvest holiday, and heated controversy over the College's disassociation from the Indian symbol. We lived through these events on campus and read about them in virtually every major national publication.
The Dartmouth family was becoming increasingly diverse, and suffering the growing pains associated with any maturation process. To contribute to increased understanding of these changes, we helped shape forums for informed discussions groups like the Interracial Concerns Committee. We supported the efforts of peers, faculty, and administration as they began development of Judaic Studies courses. We participated in the Older and Wiser Program, to orient freshman women to the campus. Where were the reporters to chronicle these ongoing efforts?
Clearly, bad news makes headlines. A demolished anti-apartheid protest shanty provides a great photo opportunity; a daylong moratorium on classes and the informal education and real learning that take their place are difficult to capture in a quick lead. We do not deny the existence of problems at Dartmouth College. Rather, we emphasize that the unique commitment of the Dartmouth community to peaceful and sometimes innovative resolution of specific issues, and to the College as a whole, has been lost in a barrage of negative publicity. In the words of one of our most famous alumni, Daniel Webster, as he argued the case for Dartmouth College in a very different place and time: "It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those of us who love it."
Washington, D.C. LISA LEFFERT '84 Boston, Mass.
Into print
Dartmouth students have made the international papers. Be assured that it shows the College in the coldest of possible lights. You see, the short article in The Herald Tribune regarding the "destruction of a shantytown," didn't have the space to go into the deep philosophical and intellectual journey that, no doubt, the 15 or so students who used sledgehammers and crowbars to express themselves must have gone on before arriving at the decision that the shantytown "doesn't constitute an allowable protest." All the newspaper has space for is a report that the incident occurred.
But don't despair, the College did get into print. Right there next to the reports about the coup in Lesotho and a few pages behind an article about being black in America a generation after Martin Luther King.
I'm holding out hope that it was just 15 drunks. An alcohol inspired act...just like the good ol' days. It would be perversely reassuring if the blame could be laid at the doorstep of an over-zealous group who wanted their campus to look pretty during the three-day drinking binge that we all remember fondly as Winter Carnival... they had a few beers and then decided that the Green could use a good cleaning. They were just acting in an alcoholic haze of good intentions.
But that's not what the short article in TheHerald-Tribune seems to report. The implication is that this was a premeditated, politically-inspired act. That the gang of 15 took it upon themselves to be the arbiters of what is an allowable protest. And the result of the article, when read on balance with the rest of the news of the world, makes the students of Dartmouth College (or at least 15 of them) look like petulant white kids who don't want their winter party ruined by the intrusion of quite a serious and complex international and moral problem. It smacks of the old privileged white-ostrich-head-in-the-sand gambit with a new clever twist ... trying to rationalize it quite desperately with political jargon.
That's the folly. Because after anyone who read that short article put the paper down they were left with either or both of these impressions: The 15 sledgehammer- and crowbar-wielding students were yobos who, lacking the ability to articulate their views resorted to physical destruction, or, that they were narrow-minded reactionaries who refuse to allow a different set of opinions and values have a platform.
Any way you read the article the ivory tower shows its cracks and the students look stupid.
London, England
A different image
I haven't been back to Dartmouth's campus since 1973. What I've heard about the place since then comes from the mouths of younger alumni here in New York, or from the pages of The New York Times.
In recent years, the reports sent back from Hanover have been almost universally unflattering. In the past five years or so, I recall only two laudable news items; one involved a medical breakthrough at Hitchcock Hospital, the other told of Louise Erdrich's novel Love Medicine.
The rest of the headlines would be laughable if they weren't so painful. If we can believe the reporting of the Times, and I choose to, schools like Harvard, Yale, and Columbia remain institutions where academic breakthroughs are made and progressive social and political ideals abound. Reports about Dartmouth give a different image a picture of a place rife with internecine squabbles, dissatisfaction with the administration, boorish fraternity behavior, antiquated sexist attitudes, and intolerance of many stripes.
The capper to this onslaught of bad news, of course, was the trashing of the shanties on Dartmouth Green, an event I heard about not only in the Times but in Newsweek and on NBC as well. It was surely covered elsewhere as well. Dartmouth does manage to attract attention.
My purpose in writing is to stress, for those of you not aware of it, that the image of Dartmouth in the outside world is very negative at this time, especially in comparison with other Ivy League schools.
Members of the Dartmouth Review staff take credit for the incident on the Dartmouth Green. They can also, to an enormous extent, take credit for Dartmouth's sad image. The material'they promote is racist, sexist, homophobic and, frankly, juvenile. They have gone well beyond the bounds of intelligent or responsible dissent. For some reason, outage from the right is more excusable in this society. A left wing outfit as objectionable as the Review would not only be sent off campus; it would be under investigation as a subversive organization.
The Review gets alumni donations. Its staff members, establishment types all, will be rewarded with good positions in business or at law firms or wherever they choose to go next. Defenders of the status quo aren't likely to go broke. Individually, all I can appeal to are their consciences. Collectively, perhaps we can let them know that to millions of Americans, they help make Dartmouth look like something from before the Age of Enlightenment. Let's be serious; that negative image, grounded in a bit of truth, does matter.
New York, N.Y.
An open letter to the Trustees
For the last 15 years the papers have published nothing but derogatory remarks about Dartmouth, but the front page article in the Friday, January 24, New York Times was the straw that broke my back.
How any Board can justify supporting an administration that will even permit the construction of such shacks on the Green, much less let them stay there for some extended time, as they evidently were allowed to do, is beyond understanding.
I realize that the job of Trustee is a labor of love, but your labors seem to have given birth to an institution that is so far different from what your own college experiences must have been, that one can hardly recognize it.
One also knows that it is not your Board that destroyed the old traditions and created the problems that are poisoning the loyalty of the alumni group, but your lack of any action to correct these conditions means you are condoning the past, which makes your Board just as guilty as the Board that created the original sin.
Possibly time has dimmed my recollections, but I remember the student body as one group working together. Now, evidently due to lack of administrative guidance, there seem to be numerous groups all striving for their particular ends and to hell with the College as a whole. No organization gets very far under such existing ditions.
I apologize for having been so longwinded, but it seems to me that you have handed control of the College to a group of 18- to 22-year-olds who have, obviously, frightened the current administration into permitting them to run roughshod over any and all regulations. If the present administration cannot control the student body, it is your duty to get one that can and will. I hope you will not postpone your duty much longer.
Highland Park, Ill
The beginning of the end I can't stand it any longer. This stuff about Yukica and Leland has finally gotten to me.
The beginning came with any number of statements by President McLaughlin and others that I have read over the last 18 months which clearly imply or indirectly admit that there is something wrong because College athletic teams do not have winning records.
The beginning of the end came when I received a couple of letters from Henry Eberhardt at the Alumni Center. Henry assumed since I was concerned about the Yukica/Leland brawl that I, too, thought that whatever problems Dartmouth had in that area could be solved by winning a few football games.
Here's how I see it. Dartmouth is a place for learning things in the traditional sense. I doubt that anyone would disagree that basically we are talking about intellectual learning complemented by a host of other more generic learning experiences.
Now, how the College can jump from the above to the need to have winning teams and (what has to follow) to recruit athletes for the same purpose is hard to understand. Not only is it inconsistent with the fundamental purpose of the College but it is unfair to the student who comes to Dartmouth not because he wants an athletic career but to be a student who secondarily wants to compete in a sport at an intercollegiate level.
I would recommend: 1. Dartmouth get the rest of the Ivy League to concentrate on athletic programs for students rather than students for athletic programs.
2. Coaches be instructed to work with the athletic material that turns up from the normal college admissions policy and to do norecruiting whatsoever. If the College feels that it wants to put a certain value on athletics (as on other extracurricular achievement) through its admissions policies let it do so but let it do it for the student body as a whole.
3. Athletic programs be expanded so more students can participate in intercollegiate athletics.
4. Opponents be picked that share the same values towards athletics and are likely to field teams of comparable skill.
5. Somehow Dartmouth gather the resources necessary to convince its alumni that their fragile egos can be better protected by the thought that their college is one of the best educational institutions than that it has a winning football team. If it does it probably will remain such an institution.
6. The College administration show some real leadership.
Bolton, Mass.
Failing the old traditions
"Men of Dartmouth set a watch, lest the old traditions fail." It's not the old traditions that are failing Dartmouth. It's Dartmouth that is failing the old traditions.
The Dartmouth family has long taken pride in Daniel Webster's image. "It's a small school but there are those who love it." After firing Coach Yukica and abrogating his written contract on November 29, Dartmouth has achieved the notorious nationwide image of the bully you love to hate. Back-to-back 0-7 seasons in the Ivy couldn't begin to do the damage that this broken contract has done to the Dartmouth
image. Each of us alumni likes to think that we and our friends are people of honor. When we make agreements, our word is our bond and our handshake seals this agreement as a contract. Little wonder that we are ashamed and embarrassed by the administration's attitude towards its contractual obligations.
Dartmouth is justly proud of all the titles that its football teams have won in the Ivy League. Joe Yukica coached for three of these titles, and in doing so, he earned his contract. It is time for Dartmouth to welcome him back as head coach.
Cape Neddick, Maine
Who's in charge?
I opened the January/February DartmouthAlumni Magazine expecting to find reams of copy relating to the College's latest crises, detailed sickeningly in The Boston Globe and The New York Times. To a reader of these publications, it seemed as though the fabric of the College was coming apart blunder following blunder. Wasn't anyone in charge?
THE YUKICA INCIDENT: Without regard to the merits of the case or the coach's qualifications, the firing, follow-up statements and conduct, and the ultimate decision were monuments to bungling.
THE SHANTIES: Here again, vacillation and indecision have characterized the administration's policy. Personally, although I am strongly in favor of sanctions and divestment, I don't think that the administration should have tolerated the desecration of our Green.
THE FACULTY: A bunch of yapping dogs that should be exiled to the doghouse. Their ad hoc committee has accused the president of being arbitrary and dictatorial. I wish that he'd be a real dictator and throw the rascals out! Their problem is that they think that they should be in charge.
Which brings to the fore again the question: Who is in charge? The president and his administration? The faculty? The students? The Trustees? The alumni? Surely, each one of these constituencies is entitled to some voice in determining the policies of the College, but does such voice have to be so raucous, strident, and selfish as to drown out all others, particularly that of the alumni?
In the corporate model the ultimate power is said to lie with the stockholders who elect the board of directors, who appoint the president. This theory, however, is rarely actualized. Most corporations are run by the president, with interference by the board only when dissatisfaction reaches a saturation point.
It's difficult to determine from the newspapers just how Dartmouth College is being run. Certainly its public relations department is a joke. Perhaps it's time for the Board of Trustees to intervene?
I had looked forward to having some light thrown on these issues in the DartmouthAlumni Magazine and I was very much surprised to see them apparently treated as minor, immaterial, and inconsequential. Perhaps they will be thoroughly aired in your next issue.
Westboro, Mass.
[See page 26 ff in the March issue. Ed.]
Something's wrong
This is my first letter to the Alumni Magazine, and I am writing in reaction to recently-reported events and President McLaughlin's January Bulletin response. While Mr. McLaughlin has greater optimism than ever, I cannot share his view. As one who has been involved over the years in alumni-applicant interviews, I am concerned for the College I represent. Recent occurrences indicate a continuing and dangerous decrease in campus cohesiveness and communications from ten years ago. I no longer know if I can justly "wax enthusiastic" about my alma mater.
Perceptions among my alumni friends ranging over many classes and persuasions agree on one point: there is something wrong with the ability of the current administration to induce unity, particularly when compared to the performance of its immediate predecessor.
Therefore, I respectfully suggest an effort by the Trustees to consider the propriety of appointing better leadership for Dartmouth College.
Miami, Fla.
View from afar
I was greatly dismayed to read the article concerning the College in The New YorkTimes on Friday, January 24, 1986. I cannot say that I was surprised. The violence which took place in Hanover during the week of January 20 is an obvious consequence of policies which have been pursued during the McLaughlin years. In a letter to this magazine several years ago, I criticized both President McLaughlin and the faculty for pursuing policies which were designed to silence an unpopular group. That policy is and was disastrous because the free exchange of ideas, even ugly ideas like those typically expressed in the Dartmouth Review, is essential to a liberal education.
Viewed from afar, the Dartmouth faculty appear to be nothing more than sanctimonious neo-puritans who organize hypocritical symposia on toleration of dissent. President McLaughlin appears well intentioned, but incapable of heading off misguided faculty efforts to silence dissent from the right and equally incapable of acting decisively to put an end to student violence regardless of its political motivation. It is shocking to hear that there is any equivocation concerning the necessity of severe disciplinary measures for students who take over buildings or for student vigilantes who take the law into their own hands when they disagree with administration decisions, however weak-kneed.
Based upon the Times article, the only voice of sanity at the College appears to be that of Rabbi Paley. He, at least, seems to have recognized that outlawing groups of any political persuasion is dangerous and, in the long run, counter-productive. I submit that the faculty/administration witch hunt aimed at the Dartmouth Review has done much more harm than merely turning a silly little magazine into a national cause celebre. It has also turned the Dartmouth campus into a place where violence is acceptable.
I have two observations concerning the future. First, I ask whether President McLaughlin's usefulness has come to an end. The College needs leadership which encourages free expression and does not equivocate on the subject of student violence. President McLaughlin is not providing such leadership. Second, I believe that the Dartmouth faculty (I recognize that I am being unfair to many members of the faculty in referring to them as a monolith) needs to examine its own attitudes towards a generation of students which, in many respects, does not have the same set of political or social values as itself before it conducts any more symposia on toleration of dissent.
Salt Lake City, Utah
Oh, to have Hoppy around
A recent reading of Charles Widmayer's Hopkins of Dartmouth prompts this letter. As a Class of '31er, approximately in the middle of the Hopkins years, I well know the way "Hoppy" was and is revered by a good number of generations of Dartmouth men. And so, perhaps, it might be well for us to bear in mind a portion of what he said in his inaugural address: "There has been no phase of college activity which has been of such personal interest to me as the alumni movement; there has been none in which I have believed greater possibilities of good to exist. I am convinced, however, that this movement will fail of major usefulness unless it bases itself, and is based by the college, upon intelligent understanding of the problems which education must face ... Knowledge of conditions in the time of a man's own undergraduate course will not be sufficient. He must know the problems of today, and foresee the general characteristics of those of the future, and his efforts at all times must be rigidly to hold the college to its highest ideals."
Then, in a later address to Cornell alumni, stressing their value to an institution, their value in proportion to their understanding of the changing responsibilities of higher education, he said, "The emotional alumnus, harking back only to undergraduate days, is an incomplete alumnus of minimal value at best and a positive detriment at his worst."
Again, to quote from Widmayer's book, "At the beginning of his administration he sounded the note he was to repeat innumerable times: the alumnus has little to contribute to his college if his relationship is merely a nostalgic and sentimental one, but he has much to contribute if he will strive to understand the changing function of the college and the educational effort to fulfill that function."
Certainly, were Mr. Hopkins around today, he would be voicing some of these same thoughts. I'm glad they were recalled to my thinking.
Neivtonville, N.Y.
Five minutes and counting
Saw the picture of those ugly outhouses on the campus in front of Baker Library. Understand the McLaughlin-Shanahan administration-I use the term loosely has permitted them to be on campus for two months.
How long do you think that Ernest Martin Hopkins and Lloyd Neidlinger would have let them ugly up the campus? Five minutes, maybe ten.
Palm Beach, Fla.
Symbols of a partisan cause
Has the College explained its policy in allowing structures to remain on the Green for months as symbols of a partisan cause?
The shanties that were "on display" from November to January raise the question of the Green's accessibility, over a period of months, using equally shocking "attention getters."
Boca Raton, Fla.
Out, out ...
I read with disgust this morning's newspaper report of recent events at the College regarding apartheid and Martin Luther King Day. While I disapprove of the racial policies of the South African government, I am convinced that divestment is an ineffective means of bringing about the positive long-term change in that country which we all seek. I also do not believe that the College acted properly in tolerating the construction and maintenance of an eyesore shantytown, particularly if the rationale was (as reported in the press) "to avoid confrontation."
That said, however, I consider the actions of the students involved in its demolition to be outrageous. They have shown themselves to be unwilling to engage in a free exchange of ideas the crux not only of a liberal arts education but of American political beliefs as well. Their actions demonstrate that they have failed to truly learn from their education at Dartmouth. It is that failure, and not the essence of their opinions, which provides a basis for their immediate expulsion, on academic grounds, from the College.
Silver Spring, Md.
Why do pencils have erasers?
I have been reading the paper and today I read all the letters in the recent issue of the Alumni Magazine. Taking them all together rather that one at a time I am moved, once more, to comment. First of all I agree that those who take the time to write letters are Dartmouth and their opinions are valuable to the Dartmouth community, to the administration, and to the future course of the College. To say they are always right would be foolish, but we can say they are concerned and willing to put their name on the line while expressing their eternal interest. That counts.
Secondly, there is a mountain of evidence indicating that the elimination of the Indian as a Dartmouth symbol was wrong in any number of ways. It was a foolish mistake that had no basis in history, in numbers, or human interest. It was simply a response -a complete surrender to a power group that didn't even represent the minority it professed to champion. It did nothing to improve the image of Dartmouth, and the shanties on campus and the reactions that followed reveal that it may have done a whole lot of harm. The "Wah- Who-Cares" stickers made me want to throw up.
Thirdly, the situation reveals the present Board of Trustees as a band of ostrich-like mugwumps who are completely irresponsible to the feelings of interested alumni who want to know "What the hell are you doing about the mistakes that have been made?" Certainly the Sullivan Principles although high sounding are a wimpy cop-out concerning the African question. Either divest or have the courage to say we are going to keep our investments where they are because they provide funds for scholarships and faculty salaries. I don't think divestiture will solve the apartheid problem. It's without effect but, at least, it is a valid moral position.
Finally, all history and all the letters reveal that it is possible and logical to correct errors at any level. That's why we have erasers on pencils and backspace keys on Macintoshes. The Vietnam War, the 18th Amendment, the Edsel, New Coke, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, and the Fifth Down were all mistakes. We corrected them.
It's time to correct Dartmouth's dumb decision to cancel the Indian. Let's form a committee, get an executive order, build a tepee, or do whatever has to be done to restore the noble Indian symbol, its art, its songs, its cheers, and its spirit to its rightful dignified place at Dartmouth College. It won't die out. Let's get it back now.
Wakefield, Mass.
Wish him good luck
At Dartmouth, in one of Herb West's Comp Lit courses, I remember my first exposure to a cynical truism "when it is a matter of the individual against the institution there is a tendency for the institution to survive."
Coach Yukica's treatment at the hands of Mr. Leland, the DCAC, et al. is a case in support of Herb's universal sympathy for the world's underdogs and his contempt for administrative incompetences which so often result in "Peter Principle" public relations disasters.
Why does the College not back off, grant Coach Yukica the final season on his contract, and wish him good luck for a successful team next fall? Such backtracking would alleviate the currently negative public relations posture the College finds itself in, while giving a boost to a good man and an excellent coach.
By the way, didn't the Dartmouth CollegeCase, as argued so successfully to our advantage by one of our more illustrious alumni before the highest court some years ago, have something to do with the "sanctity of contracts"?
Hingham, Mass.[For more on the Yukica case, see p. 54. Ed.]
A variety of beliefs
Americans share a common heritage of commitment to individual liberties that joins them in a national community; they also possess differing cultural heritages that distinguish them from one another. During our best moments as a nation there has been a general consensus that those liberties necessary for vigorous and uninhibited debate are a vital part of our common heritage. When we have violated those liberties by imposing the values of a true or assumed majority upon all Americans, our cultural diversity has erupted into bitter and debilitating conflict.
Lately the members of the Dartmouth community seem to have forgotten these lessons. Both the Review and the anti-apartheid shantytown testify to the variety of beliefs that distinguish those of us who nevertheless feel united by our attachment to the College. Both show that speech must sometimes be offensive to be effective. Both are much less cause for alarm than are an administration that refuses to recognize our diversity and a faction that seeks to suppress it by violent means. I fear for the College only when its champions profess to articulate a consensus that finds no room for our great tradition of passionate yet peaceful dissent. And I fear for the College now.
Princeton, N.J.
Disturbed
I am very much disturbed by the story in The New York Times of January 24 describing the "sit-in" in President McLaughlin's office, and the events leading to it.
I presume this was a "media event," as were the demonstrations last fall in Washington in front of the South African Embassy. It is a sad day for our country or our college when a handful of misguided are more influential than the majority. I think that 99 percent of all Americans think we should let South Africa work out its own problems. American-style democracy is not necessarily best for other countries.
I do not endorse apartheid. But when you see the conditions in some 30 black-ruled countries in Africa, where tribal rivalries set black against black, it is clear that blacks and coloreds in South Africa are better off economically and politically than anywhere else on the continent.
Our economic and political pressures on South Africa are encouraging the blacks to violence and many whites are emigrating. Unless we do a complete about-face, we will see chaos, confusion, and eventually Communism in South Africa. Is this what the demonstrators want?
President McLaughlin should expell these few agitators. Or will he ask the alumni to reduce their contributions by the percentage of their income derived from corporations doing business in South Africa?
Naples, Fla.
The sledgehammershit Dartmouth
The sledgehammers may have aimed at the anti-apartheid demonstration but they hit Dartmouth.
Sarah Lewis said it best: " 'My grandfather went to Dartmouth, my father went to Dartmouth and my brother goes to Dartmouth now,' Sarah W. Lewis, a freshman who is one of the protesters, told Mr. McLaughlin in his office this morning. I cannot convey, to you the shame I feel about attending this institution now. The problem is this is 1986, and we're not living in the '40s or 1900 any more; we can't stand by for this.' " From The New York Times, January 24, 1986, front page article.
Great Neck, N.Y.
Inappropriate criticism
Since a group of Dartmouth professors has chosen to go public with their pique at the College president, and since that has even brought comment in the press here in the boondocks, I feel it becomes appropriate to comment on what I regard as inappropriate criticism.
It seems to me the faculty committee has failed to learn two important lessons. The first of these is a lesson that applied in my years at the College, and applies equally today. Then as now, the entering class comprised individuals who were all outstanding in their pre-college schools. Most students survive the cultural shock of discovering they are not the only capable people in the world. They gain respect for the abilities and opinions of others and learn that no matter how smart one may be, how capable, how energetic, how creative, there probably is somebody who is more intelligent and capable. I have to suggest these faculty critics should have paused before voicing such strong opinions to the public.
Second, they appear to have forgotten that a college must serve at least four separate constituencies, all with different perspectives yet all essential to the college. These are: 1) students, 2) faculty, 3) parents, and 4) alumni. These last two are absolutely essential to the financial stability of the college, whether the faculty critics recognize it or not, and to ignore their views and ideas is a threat to the health of the college. I regret a part of the faculty opposes ROTC. There is majority consensus in the four constituent groups that approve ROTC on campus, in the form that has been adopted.
I regret we can't afford both new science facilities and new and improved living quarters at the same time. But if capital limitations prevent this, there is a strong argument that says the learning experience in dorms, the growth of interpersonal relationships, the poise, the development of responsibility, is of greater importance, lasting over a greater span of time, to a greater number of people, than the addition of the latest technology in our labs.
The newspaper story here has the faculty group alleging "lack of leadership. I suggest the situation is quite the opposite. When divergent opinions and ideas are evident, somebody must make decisions, or the college will grind to a halt in a mass of rhetoric. President McLaughlin has demonstrated leadership by making decisions. Just because these dissidents didn't get their own way doesn't signify that they are correct, and the decisions were wrong. They have had ample opportunity to express their views. Their petulance in their minority position is disappointing especially when expressed so brazenly in TheNew York Times and other media reports.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Going too far
The actions of minorities and some faculty at Dartmouth have gone too far. Their ability to shut down classes using unacceptable tactics for political activism and cheap media attention is not only shocking. It is contrary to the College's liberal tradition of a fair, dispassionate hearing for all points of view without resort to the discredited power plays of the 60s. Dartmouth should be first and foremost a place for scholarship and acquisition of perspective on today's turmoil not a handy platform for polemics.
There is no reason to question the validity of a strong student protest against apartheid. But there is equally no justification for the means chosen to express it. Before seizure of the administration building a major forum for South African issues had been scheduled in Hanover. And the College s policy of active support for the Sullivan Principles was a step in the right direction. Destruction of the anti-apartheid shanties was an ambiguous and unfortunate statement apparently unsupported by faculty elements.
What might be best for the Dartmouth we have known and loved are some major changes in admissions policy and criteria for selection of faculty.
Essex, Conn.
Applauding the convictionto speak
The admissions office is charged with admitting students who will "have a significant positive impact on society." Happily, these are the same students who will speak their minds on the controversial topics of the day. Happily, these are the students who will protest; who will sit-in; who will build shantytowns. I applaud those who have the conviction to speak. I condemn those who resort to violence and the destruction of property. These people have "forfeited the right to continue at Dartmouth." Dartmouth awaits their resignations.
Kinderhook, N.Y.
Watchdogs and orthodoxies
Reacting to your December report ("Conservative Watchdog Monitors Campuses") I would like to think that Accuracy in Academia is in for a tough time at Dartmouth. Students are somewhere between independent and unruly. Faculty are credentialled intellectuals jealous of creative prejudices. It's a heady atmosphere, sufficiently imbued with critical astuteness against "inaccuracy" and political bias. Facts won't stand still. Philosophies and scientific certainties are overthrown in unending succession. That learned enemy of inert ideas, Alfred North Whitehead, said it well, that "knowledge does not keep any better than fish" and must address "the new world of new times."
Orthodoxies are red meat to good teachers. For student engineers and surgeons accuracy is important, but must bow to changes culminating in "state of the art." In the humanities, accuracy is a contradiction in terms, up against the zestful play of imagination, aspiration, art, poetry, an history's record of the crimes and follies and lost causes we call civilization. Even the business schools fairly quake with conflicting theories, God and mammon just off stage.
The college years are not real life, only a rite of passage. "Academic in my dictionary refers to "the school or philosophy of Plato; sceptical," and also "unpractical, not leading to a decision." How valuable the freedom of those years, given to (or at least available for) challenging the status quo before having to experience it! The luxury and pain of thinking, to be followed by "the scrimmage of appetite everywhere," as Delmore Schwartz put it.
Among old tests of doctrinal rigidity, I like Adam's navel, faithfully represented in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel theological dispute centered thereon. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was stoutly anti-navel. In World War II a Congressional subcommittee denounced distribution of a pamphlet to U.S. soldiers on grounds that in it "Adam and Eve are depicted with navels." Whitehead again: "Nothing, no experience good or bad, no cause, is in itself momentous enough to monopolize the whole of life to the exclusion of laughter."
Chevy Chase, Md.
Premises, premises
I have recently had material from my classmate, Ave Raube, who heads an "Alumni Committee for a Strong Dartmouth."
Like all alumni, I am for a "Strong Dartmouth." I also share some of the specific goals of the Committee the restoration of the Indian symbol, for example, ending the alleged compromising of standards by overreacting to the Federal Affirmative Action program by using quotas and allowing reverse discrimination in admissions and hiring practices. But I cannot agree with the premises upon which the Committee states its case.
In the first place, it is the administration, not the Trustees, which is responsible for some of the more recent events which have harmed the Dartmouth image-the handling of the shanty business, the prime example. By placing all the blame on the Board of Trustees, the spokesmen for the Committee betray an ignorance of the nature of college and university organization and administration. I speak as one who has been fifty years an administrator three deanships, three vice presidencies, and four presidencies of institutions of higher education ...
Out of this experience, I maintain that the Committee does not understand the appropriate role of a board of trustees. A board has three major responsibilities for the institution: To insure its financial soundness, to select its president, and to establish its major policies.
Some of the specific ideas of the proposed candidates for trusteeship are sound the open display of the Hovey Grill murals, for example. But again, the generalizations are not. Mr. Provost states that the faculty must be "suitably directed, informed, and controlled [emphasis mine] by the Administration." Professors have been defined as individuals "who think otherwise." They are the most independent professionals in the world and not likely to be "controlled" by any administration, no matter how tough. He goes on to insist that the "basic function" of the faculty is "to teach, not to advocate the latest fanciful doctrine whether it is bent to the left or to the right." The implication that the faculty are indoctrinating in their classrooms cannot be sustained. Outside the classroom, they have a right to express opinions just like other citizens, and they may be wrong, just as other citizens can be wrong.
Most damning of all is his objection to faculty and students dealing with "questionable and divisive" issues (he cites the nuclear freeze, South African divestment, abortion, among other issues). The major purpose of a college education is not to prepare its students for a job, nor even to heighten their cultural and emotional growth important as both are. The major purpose is to teach students to think. We in the education business aren't sure how to accomplish this, but the best way we know is to deal with "questionable and divisive issues."
As I read the material the Committee has distributed, it is apparent that it believes Dartmouth has become too liberal, too "bent to the left," to use Mr. Provost's term. My experience teaches me that college and university faculties are about as diverse a group as can be found in society today. If the supporters of the Committee doubt that, they should attend any faculty meeting.
Certainly, the College is in trouble, especially since the most loyal collegiate alumni in the nation is bitterly divided over today's Dartmouth. All elements of the College trustees, administration, faculty, staff, students, and alumni must strive to find suitable ways to restore it to its former greatness and glory.
Kingston, R.I.
[Dr. Horn is president emeritus of the University of Rhode Island. Ed.]
The truth always hurts
Since I was among the 500 respondents to the magazine's survey last May, I noted with particular interest your report of the results under "Vox Clamantis" in the December '85, edition. I'm not surprised that my classmate, Don Goss, utilized his many analytical skills in helping to interpret the responses.
As a lifelong follower of Dartmouth athletics (Wah-Hoo-Wah!!!), I can empathize with your ambivalent feelings about how to treat sports on a monthly basis, especially given the abysmal competitive records of most of the major varsity teams during the past several years. With the sole possible exception of Columbia, Dartmouth's men s teams have generally become the doormats of the Ivy League and, consequently, the targets of such terms as "patsies" by columnists at the Boston Globe and elsewhere. The truth always hurts, but, unhappily, I believe such criticisms are accurate and deserved, based upon the won-lost records of recent seasons. The unpleasant fact is, simply, that Dartmouth athletics have become a major embarrassment to many alumni, myself included.
"Just how we will handle that department remains to be seen/' you note. For whatever it's worth, I recommend that you face the issues squarely and report on them as fully as your space requirements will allow. I suggest that two of the most recent sports columns one a profile of John Berry '44, the other a re-hash of the 1971 Harvard football game hardly qualify for serious attention by alumni like myself who are dismayed by the decline of Dartmouth athletics and who, if we were better informed about the circumstances contributing to that decline, might better appreciate and understand how this sorry state of affairs can be corrected if that's still possible.
In summary, ignoring the problem won't make it go away. So why not face up to it, and let your readers judge for themselves?
Acton, Mass.
Timely and noteworthy
The featuring of Fred Plum in the "Alumni Album" was timely and noteworthy. Dr. Plum is one of our heroes and truly is a physician's physician.
Lincoln, Neb.
A special learning experience
Just a note to comment upon Howard Coffin's contribution to "Alumni Album." Though Howard refers to Mark Lansburgh's gift of the "Dartmouth Fragment" and other chant manuscript fragments he has deposited in Special Collections in Baker Library, he does not allude to the phenomenal importance these treasures hold for our students, or the special excitement they kindle in young minds. Even discounting the intense publicity which surrounded the examination of the Beneventan leaf last spring, that experience of exhilarated learning which my students and I engaged in with Professor Thomas Kelley when examining the fragment from a musical standpoint for the first time, will remain a high point in my life. Though I have had the good fortune to discover (or more properly rediscover) a number of fragmentary music manuscripts in English libraries and castles, I have always been basically by myself when this took place. The opportunity to share the special experience of a new discovery with students had simply been impossible before.
Treasures like those given to the College by Mark Lansburgh have significance which goes far beyond their potential monetary value. They are vehicles which lead us into the world of ideas, assist us with our study of the past, and provide us with a glimpse into the very lives of those persons who produced them. I for one cannot wait until the spring term when my students and I can get at the business of assessing the contents of the new fragments.
May I add my voice to Howard Coffin's and the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine's in expressing my thanks to Mark Lansburgh. He has made Dartmouth a very special place for students to study medieval music. This kind of care for the quality and development of resources for future generations cuts to the heart of what the intellectual legacy of this institution is and should be. Quite simply, Mark has given to the College some of the most important tools we will ever have to study the musical past.
Hanover, N.H.
[Prof. Summers, chair of the music department,was instrumental in bringing the "DartmouthFragment" to life, as we reported in the Summer'85 issue. Ed.]
On the right road
I would like to congratulate you on "The Impact of Section 504" (December '85 Magazine). Despite the occasional touch of condescension ("Indeed the reason why most ... are as appealing to the disabled.") I found the article to be well done.
I particularly appreciated the fact that the author realized that handicapped access helps parents with children in strollers. I am the parent of a severely mentally and physically-handicapped three-year-old who will never be able to take advantage of the improvements in Hanover as a student but he will be able to take advantage of them as a visitor with his parents.
I hope that Dartmouth continues to make the further improvements outlined in the article. The wheelchair-bound are perennially second-class citizens in a way no minority will ever be and I applaud any and all efforts to make that status less glaring.
Bethel Park, Pa.
The endowment: a footnote ortwo
More than a bit has been made of late about the growth of Dartmouth's endowment over the past eight years. Rightly so. It has been impressive growth. In the course of increasing from $157 million in mid-1977 to $434 million on the date of the Trustees' November 1985 meeting, the endowment successfully rode the crest of the dramatic market growth in that period in fact, slightly ahead of it.
Credit for the lion's share of the gain, however, has not been given where due. In that period, gifts to endowment from more than six thousand alumni have added more that $115 million to the total. Proportionately, that probably is a larger contribution to endowment growth than any other major institution in the country has enjoyed.
Hanover, N.H.
[Mr. Winship is Vice President of Alumni Affairs and Development, emeritus. Ed.]
The myth goes on
Without commenting on the rest of the letter of Francis Horn '30 recently published in the Jan. Feb. '86 issue of the Alumni Magazine about Indian students, I would like to correct the error in his final sentence. It reads, "Perhaps some other college will give them free tuition of $10,000 a year."
The myth that Native American students at Dartmouth get free tuition is a vigorous one, but utterly untrue. The admission decisions for Native American students, likeall others, are made at Dartmouth on a "need blind" basis. ("Need moot" would be more accurate.) But financial aid decisions for Native American students, again like financial aid decisions for all students, are based solely on demonstrated financial need. All Dartmouth financial aid awards are made after extremely careful analysis and in full compliance with established procedures, including many that are federally mandated.
Hanover, N.H.
[Mr. Hoisington is Director of Financial Aid atthe College. Ed.]
Geography 101
Professor Hill in his article in the November '85 issue of the Alumni Magazine states: "Aldridge performed not only throughout Britain, but in many European cities as far north as Moscow, as far east as Constantinople, and as far south as Zagreb."
Contrary to the inferences, Moscow is further east that Constantinople, and Constantinople is further south than Zagreb.
Hanover, N.H.
