OROZCO'S LEGACY

Drawing and sketches return to Dartmouth.

It was 54 years ago this month that Jose Clement Orozco signed his name to 2,090 square feet of murals in Baker Library. The painting became part of art history the greatest mural in the United States, maintains Jacqueline Baas, former director of the Hood Museum and author of a monograph on the work.

In his 18 months at Dartmouth, the Mexican artist, who is considered a "national treasure" by the Mexican government, created almost 400 sketches and drawings in preparation for the mural. The College and Hood Museum recently finished eight years of negotiation with the Orozco family to buy the drawings for about $500,000. "To be able to study the creative process through such a relatively complete group of drawings, with the mural itself right there, is possibly unique in this country," says Baas, who notes that art students and historians from around the nation visit the mural every year.

Although time has solidified the painting's critical acclaim (and softened criticism by alumni who were offended by its anti-capitalist theme), the years have not been kind to the murals. Humidity and dust have damaged and dirtied the frescos. After the College installed a climate-control system in the room last year to prevent farther damage, the National Endowment for the Arts granted $25,000 for cleaning and restoration. Work is slated to take place later this year.

Trustee Challenge

Wilcomb washburn '48 announced in January his decision to challenge Robert Danziger '56 T '57 for his seat on the Board of Trustees. washburn is.the director of the Office of American Studies at the Smithsonian Institution.

Danziger, a real estate developer from Newton, Massachusetts, was nominated by the Council to serve a second five-year term. Serving two consecutive terms is common practice for alumni trustees, all seven of whom are nominated by the Alumni Council. Washburn is the seventh person to challenge the nominee in the Council's 76-year history. Only one current Trustee John Steele '54 was successful.

The Alumni Council has formed a committee to reconsider the ways trustees are elected. Noting that six nominations have been challenged since 1980, Vail Haak '49, president of the Association of Alumni, said, "If this is going to be an ongoing process, perhaps we should step back and reconsider our nominating procedures."

Sloughing Off Apartheid

No longer content with the once-gospel Sullivan Principles to determine the College's investments in companies doing business in South Africa, in November the College trustees broadened their policy. Companies will now be dropped from the portfolio if their business aids "enforcement" of apartheid. Shares worth $2.4 million in Tenneco were the first to be divested after the change. Dartmouth's investments in companies that do business in South Africa has dropped from 15 percent in 1985 to four percent.

Student protests have continued, with ingenuity making up for lack of participants. The College removed a wobbly protest shanty within minutes of its appearance on the Green last November. College officials noted that the students who put it there lacked a permit. Next week the protesters returned with a lightweight shanty and held it off the ground technically making it a sign, which needs no permit, instead of a structure. The group stayed about eight hours without incidient.

Long Division

A mathematical version of the four minute mile was broken last fall, when hundreds of computers around the world including six at Dartmouth factored a number containing 100 digits. Up until then it was considered an intractable task to factor any number with more than 90 digits.

The project was led by mathemati cians from the University of Chicago and the Digital Equipment Corpora tion. Jeffrey Shallit, an assistant professor of mathematics at Dartmouth, was the Dartmouth connection. Now the College, along with an even larger army of computers, is helping to discover the prime factors of a 102-digit number. From there the mathemati cians plan to tackle 106 digits. How far will they go? Shallit notes that the complexity of the problem increases by a factor of two for every three digits added. "I'd be willing to bet no one will be able to factor a number of more than 150 digits in the next five years," he said. "But I'd only be willing to bet five or ten dollars."

No Rehearing

In a written statement released at the end of January, President Freedman announced that the College's disciplinary board will not retry Chris Baldwin '89 and John Sutter '88, nor will the College appeal a New Hampshire court's preliminary in juction that reinstated them. The pair of Dartmouth Review staffers were suspended last year after an incident in the classroom of Professor William Cole. Freedman said a new hearing would "disrupt the community more than enlighten it" and an appeal could not "resolve the matter to anyone's ultimate satisfaction." Freedman ended his statement by urging the students to drop two pending lawsuits "for the good of Dartmouth."

A Nightcrawler, Maybe?

The computer virus that infected research computer systems around the nation in November was really a worm, says Stephen Campbell, systems administrator at Kiewit Computation Center. Viruses modify existing programs, he says, while a worm jams a system but does not damage its programs. The worm that halted computers at the nation's prestigious research universities also appeared in Hanover. Campbell was called from his home at 2 a.m. when the worm was discovered at Dartmouth. He managed to dig it out of the system and block its re-entry by 6 a.m.

In Brief

• Efrain Guigui, conductor of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra and the Vermont Symphony, has been chosen by the Vermont Council on the Arts as this year's winner of the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. Past winners include photographer Ralph Steiner '21, novelist Bernard Malamud and playwright David Mamet.

• Congress has awarded Med School Professor Miguel Marin-Padilla the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award. The prize provides more than $400,000 for his research on the structure of the human brain. Med students named the 26-year Dartmouth veteran teacher of the year in 1988.

• Dartmouth's psychology department ranks fifth in the nation in relative research productivity, according to American Psychologist.

Jose Clemente Orozco ponders his unfinished creation. A restoration of the murals begins later this year.