The Dartmouth Chubber Defined

Apartheid aside, while shanties were going up on the Green and then coming down, an effort was quietly being made no fanfare and without protest to discover more about a now familiar figure: Who or what is Chubber? Apparently he first appeared on the Hanover scene 50-odd years ago: in December, and he was on skis at the time, hishing over the nearby snowy slopes. Later he was able to hish his way, so to speak, on to the pages of The Dartmouth. His appearance in print created a small, even a medium-sized uproar. There were protests, gripes, anger, jeers. Chubber had struck a nerve! But there were also smiles, laughs, snickers. Chubber had struck the fancy of a campus that still retailed a Jack-o-Lantern sense of whimsy (peculiar to Dartmouth), emerging in the late twenties and carrying over into the depressioned thirties.

Chubber, surprisingly, during the decades that followed managed to hang in there; maybe there was something about the name. In any case, somewhere along the line Chubber suffered a "ski-change," to paraphrase the Bard. This was not so much a geology major, a little childish at times, a brightie, not particularly political, and not above engaging in some Cro-Mag- non-like roughhouse in Robinson Hall's Outing Club room. This was a Chubber not quite so rompy, still nursing a 3.8 CPA but no longer aloof, more political-minded, more willing to join in some discussion, to ask, after the arguments have siphoned down to basics: "All right, you tell me, what is more profound than rock?"

Chubber is still around, and probably will be for some time to come. Actually, he's not considered to be such a bad sort. Recently he loaned his name to a new publication on campus: Chubbers, published by the Alums of Cabin and Trail.

Footnote: Chubber first appeared on the editorial page of The Dartmouth on December 15, 1933. He was coaxed into print by Brice Banks '34.