Letters

McLaughlin's Legacy

Although I can understand President McLaughlin's reasons for wanting to retire from the Dartmouth presidency this spring, I find the decision regrettable on several counts.

First, I think it a poor time, and on relatively short notice, to try to find a satisfactory replacement having the many desired abilities. In my view it will be a long time before Dartmouth sees another president of McLaughlin's abilities and perspicacity.

Second, at least some of the ambiguous forces that have caused unrest and undue difficulties on campus will read into his retirement some measure of success for their policies. And may this not encourage further tactics?

Finally, the decision is regrettable because it places in jeopardy many of McLaughlin's forward-looking initiatives. A very real danger is that they will be curtailed or obstructed.

Few can deny that President McLaughlin's tenure in office has been difficult. And yet, in my estimation, he has shown himself a fighter for the things he deems right a fighter in the best traditions of Dartmouth and America. Hence I cannot picture him now as bowing out from the worthwhile enterprises so recently begun. Nor do I believe he will stand by idly and allow past progress to go by the board. The alternative is that he will make the best use possible of the months ahead to remove with the help of the vast majority of the alumni body those disruptive influences that have caused such discord on campus, so that the College may hold to its original course as a great educational institution, espousing all the forward-looking, progressive values that have made Dartmouth what it is and for which McLaughlin clearly desires the College to stand.

New Haven, Connecticut

The departure of President McLaughlin affords all of us in the Dartmouth family a great opportunity. That opportunity is to appoint as the next president of Dartmouth a person with an international reputation as a scholar and a humanitarian. The very capable administration of the College and its powerful fundraising mechanism will then have a leader of respect behind which it can function at its best.

Bradenton, Florida

Despite the sensationalism published by the local media and the Alumni Magazine during the reign of our President, the truly substantive change that has taken place during the past five years has been the dramatic increase in the College's unfunded debt. Recent local articles on the President's resignation have used figures in the neighborhood of $100 million for new debt. I have found it extremely difficult to pinpoint the correct figure, but all the information I have points to a considerably higher figure. (How can one get an accurate total when local press reports allege an error of $13 million in the College's estimate of the Medical School's costs relating to the hospital move?)

Even assuming the lower figures are accurate, a new debt of $100 million incurred since 1980 would bring with it some pretty serious interest payments. Without any debt reduction, annual debt service should run well over $10 million. I submit that the financial problems attendant on reducing that debt and paying the interest on it will dominate the future focus and planning of the College. Decisions on virtually every issue will have to be made against the backdrop of the necessity to meet the debt. What seems certain is that the College will change, whether for better or for worse.

What upsets me about this is that no one has asked any of us alumni (or anyone else to speak of) whether or not we wanted a change, and if we did, what kind of change we all wanted to see. Change is now a foregone conclusion. What kind of change will be determined in the coming years by the need of the College to pay the debt? Whether the changes finally please or displease the alumni, they will have the President and Trustees to thank. The fact is, no one asked us for our vote.

Brookfield, Vermont

Robert E. Field, Vice President and Treasurerof the College, replies: "As of June 30, 1986,College debt stood at $107,612,000. It is theTrustees' responsibility to allocate resources andto approve funding of facilities. Trustee policy isnot to incur debt except for facilities which arerevenue producing and therefore self-supporting.Examples are dormitories and student loanfunds. As a result, 89 percent of the annual debtservice is self-supporting. The remaining 11 percent relative to the impending purchase of theMary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital properties isnow more than offset by investment income. Thetotal debt of the College is 20.7 percent of ourendowment which is average for the peer institutions with which we compare ourselves."

Trustee Politics

My respected but misguided 1930 classmate, Ave Raube, writing in behalf of the Alumni Committee for a Strong Dartmouth (are not all alumni for a strong Dartmouth?), is again trying to influence the membership of the Board of Trustees, having failed to do so last year. He urges the nomination by the Alumni Council, for a trustee seat to be vacated, of U.S. Circuit Court Judge Laurence H. Silberman '57, a former banker, ambassador, and undersec- retary of Labor.

It is evident from Raube's material that Judge Silberman is a very able and successful individual who no doubt would add distinction to the Dartmouth Board. However, he is being promoted as trustee for the wrong reasons.

Raube's group contends that the current board is too liberal and needs infiltration by more conservatives. Hence the recommendation of Silberman. But political and economic orientation should not be the determining factor in the selection of trustees. It is hoped, therefore, that the Alumni Council will not listen to those who respond to Raube's recommendation.

I would add, incidentally, one more reason why Judge Silberman's nomination -akin to election-is inadvisable. He is a lawyer. Boards of trustees of colleges and universities have too many lawyers, especially at a time when lawyers are at the bottom of the list in public esteem. I speak from the vantage point of dealing with boards for 50 years, having served as president of four institutions of higher education and as a trustee of four colleges (but none as prestigious as Dartmouth or other Ivies).

I should like to record, moreover, my objection to the way Dartmouth trustees are elected by the Alumni Council. It is a prime example of the old-boy network, since the alumni as a whole have no say in the election unless some disgruntled group like Raube's committee nominates by petition. The practice at Yale, from which my wife and I have degrees, is much superior, as a number of candidates are nominated for whom the alumni vote by mail ballot or in person at reunion time. Dartmouth should adopt this system.

Kingston, Rhode Island

In November the Alumni Council renominatedMichael Heyman '51 and nominated Joseph Mathewson '55 to the Board of Trustees. As announced in the College section of the Decemberissue of the Alumni Magazine, Council members have until early February to file a petitionfor the nomination as Alumni Trustee of an eligible alumnus. An article in the January 9 issueof The Dartmouth reported that The AlumniCommittee for a Strong Dartmouth does not intend to challenge the nominations of Heymanand Matheivson, according to committee headAvery Raube. - Ed.

Hopkins' Name

The advertisement in the November issue reporting the establishment of the Hopkins Institute states that its purposes are to help the College "regain philosophical balance," to "make available to the Dartmouth community facts and viewpoints it feels are being neglected in discussions on the campus," and "to do everything within [its] power to attain as nearly as possible the goals [Mr. Hopkins] reached."

As the above statements reveal, this is a special-interest group that is using Mr. Hopkins' name to further its own purposes.

As we are all aware, conditions existing at the time of Mr. Hopkins' administration were very different from those existing today. This applies to conditions worldwide as well as to those directly concerned with undergraduate education. It seems to me that we are not in a position at this time to say what Mr. Hopkins' opinion would be on these matters.

There can be no objection to a group with special interests using proper methods to advance its views, but I question the propriety of associating Mr. Hopkins' name with opinions and philosophies with which he may or may not have been in sympathy.

Upper Montclair, New Jersey

Overcoming Blindness

I'd like to comment on intern Lesley Barnes' October Undergraduate Chair column, "Who Is Dartmouth For?" I understand Ms. Barnes' consternation over what she considers to have been disruptive events. But an important factor to keep in mind is that they got students like her to think about the College, where it's at now and where it's going.

While I was at Dartmouth I participated in the Interracial Concerns Committee, the DCD's predecessor, and I spent most of my time trying albeit unsuccessfully, in my view to get students to train a moment's use of their brainpower on issues of race relations and communication. I ended up feeling frustrated and irritated at the complete lack of consciousness I saw in those around me.

Because of my own experience, I find it quite natural that the DCD members went from protesting against South African apartheid to manifesting their own feelings of alienation and discomfort at being fringe members of Dartmouth society. It's not that they want the College to support the DCD. They simply want to feel a part of the College. Not an unreasonable request.

It takes a great effort to shake people out of unconsciousness and into understanding. And I'm heartened that some are taking the risk to do it.

Madrid, Spain

I am writing to commend Lesley Barnes. Here is one undergraduate who has her head on straight, and I like to think that the great majority of the students are of similar frame of mind. It is too bad that these militant minorities cannot see the whole picture but are blind except for their own limited scenarios.

More power and publicity for those like Miss Barnes!

Silver Spring, Maryland

Mere Mouthpiece

The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine has gained the reputation among undergraduates as a mere mouthpiece of official administration policy, depicting exclusively the positive events in Hanover. While the December article titled "Assaults Mar Dartmouth Night Weekend" seemingly works against that perceived bias, errors of omission continue to undermine the magazine's credibility.

While the writer dutifully reported the assaults at the football game, skillfully intertwining references to the Indian symbol and its use, he failed to describe an incident more thoroughly distressing than an Indian banner or two. To protest what they see as a sexist alma mater, according to The Dartmouth, "approximately 12 people wearing bulky jackets and hats and carrying plastic bags dumped simulated bloodied tampons on the grass in front of the area where President McLaughlin was speaking." The next day, a group calling themselves "womben to overthrow dartmyth" claimed responsibility for the act, which was designed to "graphically illustrate the presence of womyn at dartmyth."

The message behind the Alumni Magazine's article was subtle yet simple: tampons are all right, Indians are not. The magazine did a disservice to Dartmouth and its alumni by omitting an account of an event that was infinitely more interesting to Dartmouth students, while emphasizing the confiscation of Indian banners.

Hanover, New Hampshire

Grovelling Cheerleaders

The alarming specter of Western civilization teetering precariously on the brink of the abyss is a frequent theme of these columns. I wish to raise it to the readership once again as a result of the last Harvard game.

In the days of my youth the Dartmouth football team could be depended upon for an electrifying spectacle of athletic prowess. As time passed and my generation aged, so too, apparently, did the football team, the quarterbacks' eyes becoming less falconlike, the backs no longer ranging the field as though on the wings of eagles.

Through this decline, however, we, the patient fans, drew solace from the cheerleaders. Their strenuous, if only occasional, pushups recalled the honed athletes who in earlier years were instead on the field.

Today, even this consolation is denied us. The cheerleading squad salaams to the field like courtiers of some lesser oriental potentate. Is this then to be the culmination of the glorious Dartmouth tradition — from the legendary exploits of Calvin Brooks, Charlie Nadler and other steel-eyed heroes of yesteryear to the grovelling cheerleaders of today? The battle of Waterloo, sir, was won on the playing fields of Eton.

Princeton, New Jersey

Bully Boys

I rise to protest. During the halftime of the Harvard-Dartmouth homecoming game last fall, while the Harvard band entertained on the field, several hundred Dartmouth freshmen encircled the Harvard band in force a couple of times before returning to their seats. The Dartmouth band thereupon took the field, and half a dozen Harvard cheerleaders began running around the Dartmouth band. Before they had proceeded very far in this symbolic quid pro quo, the green freshmen poured out of their stands once more and overtook the Harvard cheerleaders, tackling some and wrestling others to the ground. The band played on. No injuries resulted, but there could have been serious ones. In any event, this bully-boy tactic incensed me and must have offended others as well. On a campus where peaceful dissent and protest are protected rights, this scene of the strong imposing their will on the weak suggests a degree of exuberance amounting to a largescale battery carried out within the full view of thousands of spectators. It was an ugly spectacle.

Leland, Michigan

Eleazar's Muse

Regarding Frank Kappler and his Eleazar: The god Howara was my guide Each night I took my lonely ride To preach what I knew to be true, That Apathy can rescue you. As I grow old (and fall apart) And look back on my Dartmouth start, I wish that when I'd pulled my pranks I'd had a Muse as great as Frank's.

(a.k.a. The Masked Stork) Natick, Massachusetts

Bonfire Inventor

The October article on the bonfire transported me back to the fall of 1962 when I was a freshman at Dartmouth. I sure enjoyed the trip. But a note on the star-shaped design: a Thayer school engineer did not invent it as the article suggests, but rather a lowly freshman from the class of '66 deserves the credit.

Toward the end of the football season that year, we were short on combustibles railroad ties and, especially, fill materials. There was some discussion of making the fire much smaller. The traditional bonfire design at the time was a beehive. Each tier had eight ties placed end-to-end in an octagon, and after about 35 tiers, the fire was tapered into a dome to complete the beehive at about 50 tiers high.

One evening, when I probably should have been studying my German vocabulary, I was instead thinking about new bonfire designs. Somehow I hit on the star shape, which uses fewer ties and less fill than the beehive but retains the 40-foot diameter.

After fellow freshman Walt Harrison and I built the sophomores a model, they agreed to let us use the new shape for the last home game of the season, with Columbia. The original design had seven points, but when we tried to lay it out on the Green, we couldn't get the angles right. We changed to a six-pointed star, and built it up to 66 tiers high-by far the tallest fire that had been built. It set a precedent for succeeding freshmen classes.

Less than 20 minutes after we finished construction, someone lit the fire early, about two hours ahead of schedule. The theory at the time was that someone had sneaked a small time-bomb into our bonfire, hidden in an old sofa that we used for fill. Maybe now that 24 years have passed, the culprit will step forward to take credit for the prank.

One last note: it is very clear that the class of '66 was more effective with their bonfires than today's frosh. Dartmouth's football team in 1962 was UNDEFEATED!

Potomac, Maryland

Good Company

Joseph O'Leary's thoughtful October letter about educating college students reminds me of another approach: at Stanford, from which our son and one of our daughters graduated some years ago, the objective was to educate students so that they would never be bored with their own company.

Back in our day, Joseph, I believe that Hoppy would have agreed.

Santa Barbara, California

Green Grammar

The College's new Vice President for Development and Alumni Affairs, Skip Hance '55, writes in the October issue to thank "each of you who are Dartmouth's benefactors." Come, come, Mr. Hance. It is either "each of you who is" or "all of you who are." Perhaps he should slip across the Green and audit freshman English occasionally.

Mr. Hance's grammar parallels that of David McLaughlin who, on his first visit to San Francisco after becoming president, told us at a reception that it was a pleasure "for Judy and I to be here." The correct usage of "I" and "me" does not require an Ivy League degree.

No, I am not an English teacher. I am a lawyer who thinks that the leaders of a great educational institution should themselves speak and write as educated people.

San Francisco, California

Hanover Song

"O Tempore O' Mores/' indeed. If Frank Lepreau (October Letters) had included Hanover in his globetrotting he would have heard "Eleazar Wheelock" and all of the other great, glorious old Dartmouth songs when the Alumni Glee Club unleashed 55 mighty voices on the assembled multitude at Thompson Arena at reunion time last June. And this was not the first time, but was actually a repeat performance of a 1981 concert same time, same place.

Now, I had a hand in putting together both of these excursions into nostalgia, and I can say that never once did I hear a "tuttut" or receive a mild wrist slap for including these numbers in our repertoire. What's more, in 19 and 90 we will play it again, Sam-and again and again, until the granite of New Hampshire is not in our brains but over our brains.

If Frank would like to hear (and rehear) "Eleazar" and all the others, he or anyone else can send $12 to Ron Rose '52 at 2642 Massillon Road, Akron, OH 44312. He will send a cassette of this same concert.

Concord, Massachusetts

Athletic Doctor

I greatly enjoyed your December profile on Dr. Alan Rozycki '61. I had the pleasure of his acquaintance during my eight years spent in Hanover both at the College and the Medical School. I look back on one of our first encounters during a Sunday morning basketball game in Alumni Gym. I found myself guarding this old baldheaded man and expected to take it easy during the game so that he could keep up with us young ones. Well, keep up he certainly did; it was only later that I learned of his wonderful athletic achievements in his own days as a student.

Dr. Rozycki and I found ourselves constantly disagreeing on political issues. Yet, his sincerity and intelligence were responsible for many a lesson learned by my friends and me both in the medical and world arenas. Alan Rozycki makes me proud to be a physician.

It is good to see that Dr. Rozycki is still keeping up with the youngsters-even if he has cut his running down to only one and a half laps around Occom Pond.

Congratulations to old friend Nancy Wasserman '77 for the excellent feature.

New York, New York

Abortions Intentional

In the September Letters, Daniel B. Luten '29 asks: "If, as some allege, abortion be murder, can a miscarriage be less than accidental homicide?"

His analogy is faulty. To carry it to its logical extreme, a person who dies from a heart attack has committed accidental suicide. I am sure that both proponents and opponents of abortion would agree that an abortion does not just happen. Someone has to decide that it should be performed and someone must perform it, knowing that he is performing an abortion. Miscarriages, however, frequently occur through no fault of or decision by the mother, father or doctor.

It is true that some pregnant women do not follow their doctors' instructions and may contribute to a miscarriage. One might consider this a case of accidental or involuntary homicide. Likewise, if our coronary victim had given himself a poor diet and little exercise, he might be accused of accidental or involuntary suicide.

However, not all deaths can be classified as a form of homicide. I have no legal background, but I have understood that murder involves an action (or inaction) intended to cause death, while accidental homicide (or involuntary manslaughter) refers to a death caused by ill-advised action (or inaction) without the intention of causing death.

My examples of negligent behavior regarding health might fit this category of accidental homicide as I have defined it. The miscarriages I have heard of-and certainly the three miscarriages and one stillbirth my wife and I have gone through do not. Perhaps Mr. Luten is using another definition.

I hope that both sides of the abortion controversy will not be distracted from the real question by Mr. Luten's (rhetorical?) question.

Jerusalem, Israel

Youth Vote

According to the results of the last trustee election, half of the undergraduate alumni are members of the classes from '65 through '86. There is one trustee, Ann Fritz-Hackett '76, from this half. Yet there are 12 trustees from '43 to '56 classes making up just 20 percent of the College's graduates.

Make yourself heard, Ms. Fritz-Hackett. You have 20,000 of us behind you.

Princeton, New Jersey

Guides Saluted

Graduates of any college find many obvious reasons for acknowledging the benefits derived from having spent four years as students there. Recently and not uniquely I have somewhat surprisingly discovered within myself a deep feeling for my own experience at Dartmouth that later included two terms on the faculty.

I call this surprising because, except for the war years (WWII) and for visiting posts at African universities, I have been devotedly associated with Yale for more than half a century and have been assuming, therefore, that Dartmouth provided only the initial, though very important impetus for becoming an academic person but not for my thinking or writing. In subjective fact I thought I had said a wished-for farewell to Dartmouth in a Commencement oration in Webster Hall.

The discovery occurred inadvertently as I page-proofed and indexed another book which perhaps seeks to summarize what I think I have learned over the years and which therefore also reveals what I have-not learned. Again and again the source for many ideas therein seemed vividly to be various undergraduate instructors at Dartmouth. Let me then name them, if only for the nostalgic benefit of survivors from my generation in Hanover, plus and minus 1929.

I keep thinking of Lew Stilwell who told us to kick over convention and seek better values; of Franklin McDuffie who could make my clumsy sentences almost intelligible and who also exhibited the light that literature and art throw upon existence; of Royal Case Nemiah who diminished ethnocentrism, perhaps egocentrism, without removing reasonable pride; of McQuilkin DeGrange who maintained, perhaps not successfully, that there is potential order in chaos; and of Gordon W. Allport whose "insights" (one of his favored words) remain influential and significant within and beyond his profession, including me. Towering over a department which, in spite of the efforts of Ernest Martin Hopkins and us students, disowned him and refused him dignified status, was James MacKaye whose engineering background and penetrating mind lifted him far above his nominal colleagues.

Like most of the few classmates and others whom I treasured, these intellectual and emotional guides I have named are now dead. Still, as is evident, I cannot resist an impulse to salute them as well as our college that gave shelter and encouragement.

Sterling Professor Emeritus Yale University New Haven, Connecticut

Shanty Rights

I feel compelled to comment on Daniel J. Skiest's October letter regarding "unequal treatment" of the shanty town protesters.

I sense that insofar as liberal and conservative perceptions go, "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." To condone on the one hand the "peaceful" protest manifested by the shanty erection and condemn on the other hand the "violent" dismantling of these structures is beyond my comprehension.

Aside from breaking various laws and regulations, the perpetrators had no more right to construct those eyesores than sanitation workers, to protest ill treatment, would have in dumping a monumental pile of garbage there. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this "beauty" should not have been forced on the aesthetically minded and those who take pride in the clean, congruous grounds of our beloved campus.

As a practical matter, if the structures had still been up when I went back for my 35th reunion, I would have gotten up in the middle of the night and torched the damn things myself.

Chicago, Illinois

While one might decry the methods used by,those who destroyed the shanties, their purpose was, to my mind, far more honorable than that of the creators. The shanties were, after all, illegal. It borders on the absurd to refer to shanty-bashing as "destruction of property," as Daniel J. Skiest does in his October letter. The shanties were no more "property" in the legal sense than if I were to erect an outhouse in the middle of Times Square however appropriate the symbolism.

As for the protest itself, Peter Brimelow pointed out in an essay in Barron's last year that "the simplest solution to [South African President Pieter Botha's difficulties would be for him to don combat fatigues and declare himself a Marxist-Leninist. The fact is that the timid bourgeois politicians who make up South Africa's Nationalist government are utterly unlike the ruthless gangsters who run the Soviet Union let alone the even more exotic characters presiding over the other states in Africa." The point is that, for all its failings, the South African government is still far more

humanitarian and civilized than most other governments in Africa. To fulminate against South Africa while keeping quiet about Afghanistan is to implicitly condone genocide as long as it is not being practiced by whites against blacks. I for one do not accept this.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The Indian

William Fisher certainly doesn't speak for me when he writes, "It causes great joy in the hearts of thousands of Dartmouth men and women" to see the Indian symbol removed from the masthead page (November).

I think the College community has wasted a lot of time, effort and substance over something that is evil only in the eyes of the beholder. Never in all my Dartmouth days and since have I heard anyone make any demeaning remark about Indians; quite the contrary. It has been a matter of pride, especially in talking to non-Dartmouth people about the College. Certainly, there is so much tragic in this country's abuse of the Indians. All the more reason for reminding people that they are the original Americans and all that that means.

Recently I was privileged to be part of a joyous 80th birthday celebration for M.K. "Tavey" Taylor '28 and his wife Louise near Santa Rosa, Calif. We were 69 in total, including eight of his Dartmouth "family": Carl and Phyllis Ward '32, Bob Allen '33, Ilona and me, and Jim and Mary Wilbee '42.

That is the Dartmouth community I feel I belong to, and it has nothing to do with ethnics, religion or anything else derogatory.

Berkeley, California

For years I have been puzzled and dismayed about the controversy and furor over the Indian symbol. I am sure that just about everything that could be said about Indians and Dartmouth has been said; yet, Mr. Fisher's message stirred a thought that may not have been expressed.

The great diversity (genetic, cultural, religious) exhibited by the human race is undeniable. It is also intellectually fascinating and of great help in advancing civilization -depending upon one's definition of civilization and what one perceives as an advancement. The blacks are not the same as the whites, the Watusi and Pygmy differ as do the Scandinavians from the Arabs and the Greeks from the Chinese. But recognized distinctions do not necessarily imply superiority or inferiority except in the eyes of the beholder.

The tender freshman of my day attached to himself the noble qualities of the Indian -his bravery, his stamina, his ability to survive in a harsh land, his worship of nature, and his respect for the animals he took for food, clothing, and shelter. As students we were not conscious of the Indian s inferiority"- only his superior qualities. We had no feelings of guilt just pride.

Perhaps Mr. Fisher is more sophisticated than we were, or perhaps he is more bigoted and attributes to the Indian an inferiority which we did not perceive. I personally regret the loss of the Indian symbol and think, given Dartmouth's origin, that it was appropriate. But it is gone now, and Mr. Fisher's letter seems a tempest in a teapot. If his soul needs cleansing, perhaps he could find some other way more meaningful and perhaps more helpful to him than badgering the Alumni Magazine and Campion's.

Lakewood, Colorado

May I respectfully suggest that a prerequisite for the next college president be a male American Indian, preferably a chief.

Venice, Florida