Letters to the Editor

LETTERS

SEPTEMBER 1988
Letters to the Editor
LETTERS
SEPTEMBER 1988

Minding Mater

I have now had the opportunity to read the two stanzas of the revised alma mater as printed in the current Bulletin. While I am in strong sympathy with the principle of taking sexist usages out of our language, it seems to me that this revision fails in a number of obvious ways:

1. The new name: "Alma Mater." Are the revisers so illiterate as not to realize that they have substituted a female symbol for a male one? Why mother, indeed? Perhaps a proper title would be "In Loco Parentis."

2. The Lone Pine is still standing "above her." Shouldn't it be standing "above it"?

3. "Stand as sister stands by brother" might imply that brothers don't stand by sisters. In any event it is a substantial change from the original. If it is to be nonsexist it would have to be "stand as sibling stands by sibling," but then a rhyme would be needed for "sibling."

4. "Dare a deed for the old Mother" makes explicit the sexism of Alma Mater. Perhaps that and the prior line should both be chucked for a new couplet, like "stand and fight for our college/Dare a deed for; our college."

I offer no fall solution. But it is clear that the surgery performed on the anthem was not sufficiently radical.

New York, New York

In reading the report in The Bulletin, I was startled to realize that for at least three score and two years Dear old Dartmouth has been a WOMAN!! Even when the student population was all male, the College was a female. And the newly revised words still refer to "her" four times and to "the old Mother" oncenever mentioning "him" or "Father." Even the new tide is in the feminine gender.

Perhaps as the MEN of Dartmouth edge ever closer to being the minority, they can put up a fuss and cause another two-year study on how to make the College a neuter. After all, we don't want the alma mater (whoops! I mean the alma persona) to represent only the majority or only the minority. Then all of us men and women can become a bunch of "its".

Sun City Center, Florida

"Men of Dartmouth" should not be neutered. Its words should not be adulterated or changed in any way because it would take the spirit out of a great song.

Yet it is clear that the reference to "Men of Dartmouth" cannot represent a coeducational college.

I therefore suggest that "Men of Dartmouth" remain a beloved song of ours but that instead of using it as an alma mater we adopt "Dartmouth Undying" which is probably the most beautiful of all of our songs and certainly more sentimental and more fitting to be an alma mater.

Then, if our sisters at Dartmouth wish to have a song to balance "Men of Dartmouth," let us invite them to create a new song which may be sung as a companion piece to "Men of Dartmouth."

Montgomery, Alabama

Are we to assume that most Dartmouth students and alumnae(i) know so little Latin that they have not noticed the unpardonable sexism implicit in the title of the renovated Dartmouth theme song?

Perhaps a new committee is in order.

Missoula, Montana

Ooh, It Hurts

Although it is not a new phenomenon, I have noticed a recent spate of letters to the editor in which the writers make the stunning announcement that they are "disassociating" themselves from the College. All I can say in response is: "beat me, whip me, write me bad checks!"

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Free Speech

In the fall of 1969, when I started my Dartmouth education, Dr. Shockley (and perhaps Dr. Jensen, but memory fades), came to the campus to vent his theory that Blacks were genetically inferior. A crowd of students, led by a Black student, began rhythmically clapping as Dr. Shockley spoke, preventing him from presenting his peculiar brand of scholarship. The appeals of Dr. John Kemeny, then chairman of the Mathematics Department, to the broader purpose of the university to encourage free speech and thought no Matter how odious fell on ears deafened by the sound of the clapping. So far as I recall, none of the students was disciplined and, certainly, none of them received a suspension for a period of years.

Nineteen years and three college presidents later, the situation has come fall circle. White students are severely penalized for having requested a Black professor to reply to allegations that go to the very heart of what an institution of higher learning is about (namely whether a course is a gut) and then having printed his response. That these students were incidentally following President James Freedman's dictum that the College should encourage freedom of expression in all its forms only highlights the hypocrisy of this stance.

If the racial aspects of these two incidents were eliminated, there could be no rational explanation (other than the passage of time) for the disparity of treatment. That may be enough: criticisms of Black culture, academic achievement and the like may be off-limits in any American institution of higher learning. But let that be known from the outset. Let all applicants, students, faculty and even alumni know that that really is the policy being enforced, and don't gild it with paeans to individuality and freedom of expression.

Chicago, Illinois

The present controversy between liberal administration and faculty and conservative students brings to mind the teachings of the Great Issues course of the early 1950s. A required course for seniors, Great Issues brought distinguished speakers from many different disciplines, cultures and political persuasions to the campus for weekly Monday evening lectures.

As I recall it, there were many fine speakers with divergent views, and both liberal and conservative ideas were expressed. Students were required to keep a journal recording what they thought about each speaker's viewpoint. The journal entries were graded on depth and quality of thought, and not on whether the student agreed or disagreed with the speaker. The course proved the clear commitment of the College to teach its students how to think, not what to think.

I see much evidence of Dartmouth's failure to keep this commitment to today's students. If the faculty is not balanced with opposing viewpoints, can students get a welldeveloped background on which to base their own decisions? The accounts of President Freedman's spring meeting with the faculty make it appear that only one professor speaks out with a conservative voice, and he is overwhelmingly castigated by his liberal colleagues for doing so.

Why is it that a significantly large group of alumni raises private funds for the purpose of bringing conservative speakers to the campus? Only because the administration and faculty appear so blinded by their own views that they cannot tolerate dissenting voices. They seem to seek to inculcate students, not educate them.

Why is it that a group of students publish an off-campus newspaper voicing conservative views in the face of the strongest disapproval and opposition from both administration and faculty? It is because an utter vacuum of conservative thought seems to exist in both groups.

Why are students who protest and demonstrate for liberal causes treated with nothing more than mild disapproval while conservative demonstrators are suspended? It is because the College has become an ideological bastion rather than the true forum for intellectual discourse it purports to be and should be.

Hinsdale, Illinois

If Professor Cole were white, Protestant Tenth Generation American, his conduct towards students as an honored member of the Dartmouth faculty would merit dismissal from the College. And for President Freedman to turn the issue into a racial one, which it wasn't, and to expel students on those grounds while ignoring freedom of speech and press makes President Freedman guilty of tarnishing his high office just the same as Attorney General Meese's questionable ethics discredit his high office. President Freedman's inflammatory racial remarks about the Dartmouth Review could even endanger the lives of Black and White students on the Review as well as polarize the Black students and the White students on the Dartmouth campus for years to come.

Since President Freedman no longer enjoys the full support of either the students or alumni who sign the checks, maybe it is time for President Freedman to resign.

Palm Beach, Florida

No students were expelled in the incident involving the Dartmouth Review and Professor Cole. Three students were suspended, and one was placed on probation. The disciplinary committee cited the students's behavior in Cole's classroom. Ed.

The punishment of the staff of the Review seems to contain all the preceding years of irritation. No one mentioned the complaint against Professor Cole. One his pontificating on topics outside of his area of expertise is probably the most common failing of a professor.

Second his inappropriate language. I believe it warrants comment. Such language belongs in the gutter. It is not an essential part of the Black heritage. I found it in a lily white boot camp, in a mixed prison, or on an assembly line. This language is a prime example of expressive bankruptcy. The same words are used in every sentence, regardless of the topic at hand. It shows a lack of imagination, a lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others. Does Professor Cole really believe such language belongs in the classroom? To say it is an essential part of Black heritage is an insult to the majority of Blacks.

Burlington, Vermont

Alienated Alumni

President Freedman is wrong if he thinks his recent words and actions will heal the wide split existing within the Dartmouth community. Instead of constructive conciliatory steps, he has chosen to fan the flames of divisiveness and alienate thousands of alumni who don't share his liberal views.

Basking Ridge, New Jersey

Admissions Fairness

Why does the Dartmouth Admissions Office insult our intelligence with doctored data, such as that in the June Bulletin regarding the Class of 1992? Everyone of an age and IQ exceeding 15 knows the truism about lies, damn lies and statistics, yet their data blatantly obfuscates the key question: What price did Dartmouth pay in individual fairness to attain the group goal that constitute Dartmouth's class of '92's "success story"?

By its own choice, not ours, Dartmouth has divided the class of '92 into six categories: Women, Blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Residue (presumably white males). Honest data would include the following for each group: number of applicants; number admitted; percentof applicants admitted; SATs/Grade Averages of applicants; SATs/Grade Averages of admittees. (And please, Mr. Quirk, don't insult us again, either by telling us that the school that invented computer programming well, almost can't come up with valid data, or by lumping together all minorities' SATs/Grade Averages.)

Most alumni will agree that the desire for diversity, the importance of hard-to-quantify extracurricular accomplishment, and the need to help elevate disadvantaged groups justify some bending of the rules of individual academic capability. But those rules cannot be bent so far that they break. Until and unless Dartmouth demonstrates with honest data how far it has bent the rules, we shall-understandably fear that there is something to hide.

Bethesda, Maryland

Thinking Leaders

My congratulations to classmate Tom Bloomer '53 for his cogent and measured comments concerning President Freedman's call for greater intellectualism.

I do suggest that he has proved one premise but not another. The premise he has proved is that not all leaders were intellectuals when at Dartmouth. He has not proved the reverse premise that intellectuals are not likely to become leaders. It can be surmised that, within any population, a certain number of individuals will become leaders notwithstanding the level of intellectualism of that population, either high or low. The fact that leaders in the class of 1953 did not necessarily all come from the "intellectual" group does not prove that there would not have been the same degree of leadership had there been the higher level of intellectualism as called for now by President Freedman.

The question I raise is unanswerable in the present context. My response to Tom does not mean that I disagree with him, for intuitively I do think he is right.

Miami, Florida

Right-Wing Pest

George Lester '80's target in the May Letters appears to be anyone who subscribes to, or in any other manner supports, the Dartmouth Review. Being a subscriber, I:

1. Am a right-wing pest. 2. Enjoy a gin and tonic. 3. Enjoy lawn croquet. 4. Pine for country-club fun. 5. Am for campus homogeneity. 6. Am a lowbrow troublemaker. 7. Am a wealthy alumni sugar daddy.

I prefer being a right-wing pest to being a left-wing liberal. I do enjoy a gin and tonic after a golf game (prefer that to croquet) at the country club. I don't waste my time pining for something I want I've found that the old-fashioned way of hard work makes many things possible. If campus homogeneity indicates some measure of law and order, I do prefer that to the radicalism found on the campuses of many colleges today.

This lowbrow troublemaker has managed to get along pretty well over the years without trying to grab, under the guise of social justice, that which someone else has earned. With a Dartmouth administration becoming more and more liberal I find that supporting it is like shooting yourself in the foot—and this wealthy alumni sugar daddy doesn't want to do that.

North Redington Beach, Florida

Greek to Her

As the wife of a Dartmouth graduate, I have been most impressed by the accomplishments of the College's female graduates and undergraduates. I was nevertheless surprised to see, in the May essay by Karen Avenoso '88, that she believes that the poet Catullus was a Greek. I am no egghead but I distinctly remember studying Catullus in my high school sophomore Latin class.

Olympia, Washington

AIDS Idea

I'm glad Surgeon General C. Everett Koop '37 sent out those anti-AIDS brochures, but he seems blind to the obvious!

For one thing, when we look for a partner for sex (gay or straight) or for sharing needles, we are looking for someone who does NOT have the ailment (why go through the trouble of getting condoms or bleaching needles if we can be sure that our partner doesn't have the disease?).

He also says that early education is our best defense. It may be a necessary tool, but it is not the only good one. There is another option.

Why don't the various states authorize private physicians to issue wallet-sized certificates to those who score AIDS-Negative on the blood tests for the disease? These would demonstrate that the bearer of the document (with picture and name on it just like a driver's license) does not have the disease. Then when someone finds a suitable sex partner (gay or straight) or another "needle do-per," he or she can ask to see the certificate and show his or her own.

Such a program would be entirely voluntary and perpetuated through social pressure.

Eugene, Oregon

On President Hopkins

The trouble with the proclamations of the E.M. Hopkins Institute is that they are so limited, so partial. That great man, whom we gladly followed to school and war, has been whittled down into a statue or an ideology.

President Hopkins was a big man. Labels don't come close to representing him. Was he Conservative or Liberal when he openly opposed Prohibition in 1930 not on any theory but because students were buying poison? For such candor he got called on the White House carpet by President Hoover (and had a hard time keeping a straight face through the ceremonies).

Was he Liberal or Conservative when he made a secret deal with Joe P., a reliable bootlegger across the river, to take no action against him so long as Joe sold good stuff?

Was he an Intellectual or an Activist when he ordered an end to freshman rush, or gambled Mr. Baker's offer of $25,000 into a two-mil-lion-dollar library and then turned over its basement to Orozco?

Was he looking for Excellence and Philosophic Balance when, in Paris, he went off with Mr. Tuck (unbeknownst to the wives) to the Folies Bergers, not the least embarrassed at the whoops of recognition by other Dartmouth people in the audience?

Such a broad and vital personality can't be neatly extracted and sold as a nostrum for the present malaises of a growing college.

Anyone wishing to meet the original to go with him through World War I, the crazy twenties, the Depression, and a second world war—should read Charlie Widmayer's "Hopkins of Dartmouth" and then the wonderful little book of reminiscences edited by Edward Connery Lathem. It's an experience.

It's the experience of a man no less adventurous than Eleazar Wheelock. Here is Mr. Hopkins, interested in everything, farsighted, a pragmatist, not a theorist—the man in all his quiet force, scope, versatility, kind-ness—in his genuine modesty and irrepressible humor.

Even these labels don't come close.

Senior Lecturer in Policy Studies

Philosophy and Facts

The Review has made specific claims against the administration's handling of the Review-Cole affair. The administration has responded with broad philosophy but has never, to my knowledge, challenged the factual accuracy of the Review's report of the event itself.

Is this a default? Does this mean that the Review's summary of the event is accurate? If it does, it is difficult for some of us 3,000 miles from Hanover to support the administration's philosophy with the Review's facts. The gap is simply too wide.

Or is the administration about to release the "real" truth about the specific events of this affair and thus provide clear, factual support for its philosophical position?

Even here in faraway California, public television broadcast the taped remarks of Professor Cole. Was Professor Coleprovoked? I'm sure he was! Am I permitted to use that sort of language if I am provoked? You bet I'm not! Is this the "civility " of which President Freedman has spoken? Is this now ok behavior for Dartmouth professors?

San Leandro, California

See the summary in the April Alumni Magazine (pages 12 and 13), which was compiled independently of the adminiistration. The story includes aspects of the incident on which the Review and the College differ. Ed.

Firsthand Report

As an alumnus who was an undergraduate in the thirties, I cherish my Dartmouth experience. No one can take away my memories of the College and its symbols as they were in those years.

However, I applaud the different Dartmouth of today because it offers a broader experience to a wider selection of students. In large part I base this assessment on having spent seven consecutive years at Alumni College which affords a nearly twoweek opportunity to learn at firsthand what Dartmouth means today. I have met numerous inspiring faculty members, listened to a variety of stimulating lectures and talked with many bright students from all over the United States and the world.

As a result, I really feel that today's Dartmouth is an exciting place. I recommend that those alumni who have not been on campus for a number of years spend a few days in Hanover during a regular term, taking advantage of the programs offered to them by the College. This should really be done at a time other than at reunion or at football games. Enjoyable as these experiences are, they tend to emphasize the old days rather than to give a true feel for the pulse of the College.

Enthusiasm for Dartmouth does not mean agreement with every policy decision, but it certainly helps to put in perspective the negative impressions created by media treatment of campus controversy. The main thrust of Dartmouth is the ongoing education of some 1,000 new students each year, and that process is very much alive and well. Dartmouth today should be for the students of today!

North Scituate, Massachusetts

Delayed Rush

As most readers should know by now, the Trustees and administration recently decided to delay rush for the class of 1993 to spring of the sophomore year. The decision was made despite a report by the College's Committee on Student Life which expressed "strong reservations" about delayed rush.

Here are some likely results of the decision:

1) Houses will see membership (and revenue) drop by a third. In order to meet strict minimum standards imposed by the College, the houses will be forced to raise dues deterring less well-off students from rushing.

2) By restricting membership primarily to juniors and seniors, the administration will create a new division between upperclassmen and underclassmen.

3) Only two-thirds of the sophomore class is on campus during the spring. Many students thus will be unable to rush.

Just as the College is trying to promote sensitivity to the needs of students, it is deviating from its own mission. The administration and the Trustees have consistently ignored student opinion on such issues as the alma mater, and now they do so on delayed rush. We look to the alumni for support in helping us to rectify the situation.

The Coed-Fraternity-Sorority Council

Alma Mater: Lyrics by Hovey and Committee.