Alumni Writers Approve Review's Tongue-Lashing

It started as yet another mud-season imbroglio between the Dartmouth Review and the College. This time, however, the president stepped in to set the tone. "Even patience has its limits," a stern-faced James O. Freedman told a capacity crowd of faculty and onlookers at the end of March, and he went on to lambaste the student publication.

The president's speech came five weeks after the Dartmouth Review published an article that was based on a portion of a class conducted by Music Professor William Cole. The transcript was obtained by taping the class, a practice that is forbidden under the College's Code of Conduct. The deans took no action against any student when the story was published. But when four staffers of the Dartmouth Review con- fronted Cole after a lecture in the Faulkner Recital Hall, they were charged with har- assment and other offenses and given pun- ishments ranging from a year's probation to suspension for a year and a half.

President Freedman's address, however, did not dwell on the classroom incident; he dealt with the Review in a much broader sense. After acknowledging the need for freedom of speech—even what he called "obnoxious" and "detestable" points of view—Freedman went on to castigate the Review in unprecedented fashion. He de- scribed the student-run paper as "per- versely provocative," "bullying," "irre- sponsible, mean-spirited, cruel, and ugly," an "affront" to "responsible conservative thought." Freedman ended his speech with a plea for more civility and tolerance on campus.

"It was a masterstroke," observed one member of the administration. "He seized the moral higher ground."

Indeed, the faculty, which considered a spate of resolutions ranging from establish- ment of a Review watchdog committee to a demand for a lawsuit over the paper's name, instead gave unanimous endorse- ment to the president's speech. Even Eng- lish Professor Jeffrey Hart, who had been highly critical of the decision to discipline four Review staffers, said he would "cheer- fully support" the president's words.

In early April the Trustees followed suit with a resolution that backed Freedman's statement. And the president's mail from alumni, which had overwhelmingly ex- pressed unhappiness over the punishments meted out to the four students, reversed itself on Freedman's speech. "Out of every 20 letters received by the president," re- ports Senior Assistant Ruth Laßombard, "nearly all say, 'lt's great that you took a stand.' One, maybe two, disagree."

A week before Freedman's address, Dean of the College Edward Shanahan turned down a 20-page appeal written by the stu- dents, in which they argued that the dis- ciplinary hearing was marred by procedural error. Shanahan said he found no basis for reconsideration.

The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union says it will consider taking the students' side in a lawsuit brought as a result of the disciplinary process. Five years ago the state organization defended the Review in an unsuccessful libel suit brought by Pro- fessor Cole. This time the civil-liberties group will take on the case only if it thinks that the students' affiliation with the Re- view was a factor in their punishment—a violation of the First Amendment, accord- ing to the union.

Meanwhile, Dean of the Faculty Dwight Lahr and Associate Dean for the Humani- ties Richard Sheldon released a finding that Professor Cole "was not guilty of unduly aggressive conduct" toward the Dartmouth Review reporters. The deans stated that Cole was not guilty of malicious damage to property or coersion, as the four students had charged. Lahr and Sheldon added that the professor's use of profanity in the al- tercation, "given the nature and persistence of the actions by the four reporters, is un- derstandable and constituted a justifiable and moderate response."

The deans' finding was based on a review of written statements about the incident and interviews with witnesses, the four stu- dents, and William Cole. The report con- cluded with praise for the professor: "Students at few colleges," the deans said, "have the chance to study with a performer of international acclaim who also has pub- lished two scholarly works accepted as standard references on jazz musicians."

While Professor Cole was lauded by the deans, another member of the faculty, Jef- frey Hart, was singled out for condemna- tion by his peers. At the general faculty meeting addressed by President Freedman, Music Professor Jon Appleton condemned Hart's affiliation with the Review. Hart took the podium and denied that he has ever been an advisor for the Review and said that he disassociates himself from much of the paper's coverage.

The Cole incident and the protests it sparked resulted in steps by Parkhurst to deal with racism on campus. On April 4, the administration decided to beef up the campus-escort program, initiate a campus retreat and a freshman orientation program on racial issues, and to begin a series of "roadshows" or student-run skits and lec- tures in the dormitories that would explore problems of racism.

The three suspended Review staffers will not be around in the short term to see the changes; all have found jobs in Washing- ton, D.C. Former Dartmouth Review Edi- tor-in-Chief Christopher Baldwin 'B9 is working for the Policy Review, a conserv- ative intellectual journal. John Quilhot '9O is an aide for Senator Dan Quayle of Indi- ana. John Sutter 'BB is now with the Lead- ership Institute.

Debate champs

Dartmouth debaters brought home the Larmon Trophy this year from the National Debate Tournament in late March in Og- den, Utah. Dartmouth seniors Shaun Mar- tin and Rob Wick defeated Baylor University, 5-2, in the 74-school event, av- enging a 1987 finals loss to Baylor. Martin and Wick argued the affirmative of the res- olution: "The United States should sub- stantially reduce its military commitment to NATO." They had successfully argued the negative of the same resolution in the first two rounds of the forty-second annual com- petition. The Larmon Trophy, named after Sigurd S. Larmon 'l4, was last brought back to Dartmouth in 1986. The College has won five National Debate Tournament champi- onships and finished second three times since 1947.

Federates o banditos?

The College has cancelled its Morelia, Mexico, language-study program following reports of police harassment and extortion. The 23 students in the winter-term Morelia program were sent home two weeks early after two Mexican police officers demanded five million pesos (about $2,100) from pro- gram director Enrique Irazoqui, according to Richard Sheldon, associate dean of the faculty.

Sheldon said the Morelia police had also tried to sell students drugs and had extorted about $3O from another group of Dartmouth undergraduates walking in a park. "We just felt the students might not really be safe any longer," said the dean.

The Morelia program has been moved to Granada, Spain, for the spring term.

Oskar material

Oskar Holl, a German-Austrian docu- mentary filmmaker, plans to spend next year making a feature-length movie about Dartmouth. "While most people have some notion of what college is good for, few have any idea of what actually happens there," says Holl, who will also be a guest professor in the German Department and the Film Studies Program.

Holl, who was a Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor in 1980, plans to follow several students during the academic year. His previous works include documentaries on United States railroads and agribusiness, political jokes in Hitler's Germany, solar ar- chitecture, and the life of a German-Jewish emigrant family in the United States. The working title for the Dartmouth film: "The Making of a Better America: Dartmouth College as an Example of American Edu- cation."

Marriage factor

A married person with lung cancer is 1.5 times more likely to be treated with surgery than is a single person, according to a recent study led by Edward R. Greenberg of the Dartmouth Medical School. The seven-per- son research team studied more than 1,800 lung cancer victims in New Hampshire and Vermont and discovered several nonmed- ical factors that appeared to play a signifi- cant role in prescribed treatment.

The study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that surgery was also 1.5 times more com- mon for patients who were privately in- sured and who lived relatively far from cancer-treatment centers. Among patients who did not have surgery, those with pri- vate insurance were more likely to receive another form of anticancer therapy—either radiation or chemotherapy.

However, the Dartmouth team found that aggressive treatment, including sur- gery, did not affect post-diagnosis survival rates.

Penalty records

Were the students who were suspended because they harassed Professor William Cole given unusual punishment? A check of the records from the fall of 1982 to the fall of 1987 reveals that three students were expelled, 26 suspended, and 67 placed on probation. The College would not reveal the students' misdeeds.

Shocking, isn't it?

According to a 1982 study, more than 18 percent of deaths during surgery are caused by heart failure. Stuart Selikowitz suspects that at least some of those deaths might be related to leaking current from electro-sur- gical instruments. Selikowitz, who teaches surgery at the Dartmouth Medical School and is chief of urology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in White River Junction, has worked with two electrical en- gineers for years studying the issue.

Operating room staff, including Selikow- itz, report occasional slight shocks, tingles and even burns when working with elec- trical instruments. But perhaps of more concern is the possible effect on patients. While Selikowitz agrees that no threat exists in "the vast majority of circumstances," his experiments with animals have revealed electric currents in the heart during surgery "which potentially could cause a problem

. . . particularly in a weakened heart and under prolonged operative conditions." Se- likowitz and his colleagues are seeking pat- ents for several safety devices, including an electro-surgical hazard monitor.

Thayer looks east

Dartmouth graduate students in engi- neering will be the first in the nation to spend a term at the Bangkok-based Asia Institute of Technology. "We want our stu- dents to know there is more to engineering than Silicon Valley," says Daniel R. Lynch, Thayer's director of graduate programs. "We hope a term at AIT will help them see the transcendent nature of engineering as a profession." Although most of AlT's stu- dents are Asian, classes are taught in Eng- lish.

In Brief

• Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar of the United Nations plans to help cele- brate the fifth anniversary of the Dickey En- dowment for International Understanding with a visit to campus May 10 and 11.

• Judy Goldsmith, former head of N.0.W., Joyce Brothers, and a Catholic priest from Chicago who adopted two children were among the scheduled speakers for a three- day Senior Symposium in April titled "The Family: Myth and Reality in the Changing America."

• Morgan Guaranty Trust Cos. of New York has given $lOO,OOO to the College's $3 mil- lion drive to improve undergraduate in- struction. The money will support student science internships and help develop inter- disciplinary science laboratories.

• The American Express Foundation has given Dartmouth $BO,OOO to help recruit black and Hispanic students. The three- year grant will support summer workshops at Dartmouth for inner-city high school guidance counselors and representatives of black and Hispanic organizations, bring mi- nority applicants to campus, involve black and Hispanic undergraduates in recruiting, and provide scholarships.

• The average Tuck graduate receives a starting salary of $49,100— surpassed only by MBA holders from Harvard and MlT— according to a Business Week survey.

• William C. Scott, professor of classics and drama, is the first recipient of what is hoped to be a series of research professorships. His five-year term in a Humanities Distin- guished Research Professorship allows him to spend half-time on a study of musical design in the plays of Sophocles.

• A show of "New Collages" by Varujan Boghosian, professor of Visual Studies, is on display at the Aldrich Museum of Con- temporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, until May 1.

• Marysa Navarro, associate dean of the faculty, was one of 17 scholars commis- sioned by the Latin American Studies As- sociation to evaluate the progress of the accords proposed in August, 1987, by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Another panel member was D. Scott Palmer '59, chair of Latin American Studies at the Foreign Ser- vice Institute in Washington, D.C.

• John C. Hays, a fundraiser with 20 years of experience at Stanford University, is the College's new director of development.

• Jon Appleton, professor of music, has been elected president of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music.

By arguing both sides of the question over the nation's commitment to NATO, seniorsShaun Martin and Rob Wick won first place in the national debate championship.