1973

On my way home from work today I realized I was in more dire straits than I have ever before known. No one has submitted an entry for my letter-of-the month award not even a postcard. I fear it may be retribution for my missing both the game and the Executive Committee meeting in Hanover tomorrow.

I did have a really nice note from BobBarr but most of it was directed at complimenting me on the Class Notes I had written thus far. This only makes things worse. Somehow he manages to collect so much between newsletters and to fill his narrations with so much personality and to still have time to say a kind word to a fellow scribe. Amazingly his one sentence of personal news for this column was pretty unadorned. By the time you read this, he will have begun work in the Alumni Fund office. Arriving home, however, I was overjoyed to receive a note about the meeting I would be missing and a cony of the following news release from Thad King: DARTMOUTH NEWS SERVICE, For Immediate Release.

"At a hastily organized news conference, College spokesman Alex Huppe, who had previously denied persistent rumors to the effect, confirmed the appointment to both reporters present. 'Following an exhaustive review of numerous candidates, we chose Barr anyway,' said Huppe.

"When informed of the search committee's decision, Dean of the College Edward Shanahan, laughed out loud. 'With his grades, I'm surprised that he could ever get an honest job.'

"Confronted with the news in the library, College President James O. Freedman, whispered the following: 'Clearly there appears to be some link between the anti-intellectualism of the past here at Dartmouth and this individual.'

"Proctor Robert McEwen, a lieutenant on the campus police force during Barr's undergraduate years, had only one question: 'Wasn't he in Animal House?'

"Barr, a 1973 graduate of the College, makes his home in Hanover. He is the only living alumnus who failed to get into the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration three times.

"Barr assumes his new position on October 3,1990, two days shy of his 40th birthday. When asked to comment upon his new appointment, all he could do was smile.

Thad suggests that this was a tongue-incheek release which Bob himself originated and from which I might wish to use excerpts for this column. I'm not sure where I had lost touch with reality. In the first place, it sounded perfectly real to me, and, in the second, I certainly should not have been relied upon to exercise discretion in editing it. What really burns me, however, is Bob s sending me such a sappy letter, instead of the release, so that I would not be able to use his genius to outshine his newsletters.

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