DR. WHEELOCK’S JOURNAL

The College's future in 70 charts and graphs.

If you are planning to steer any young people Dartmouth's way during the next decade or beyond, highly recommended reading is the Planning and Steering Committee's report, an "executive summary" of which you should receive shordy-or by now may have received already-with its covering letter from President Freedman.

The 150-page report is accompanied by an enormous amount of data, more than 70 charts and graphs—and, to our spare New England taste, a plethora of adjectives. It enumerates five specific, continuing commitments: to faculty and student scholarship; to teaching; to a diverse community; to Dartmouth's current size; and to student life. (If there is any over-commitment in the report, it is to the word "excellence.")

The report details initiatives already under way to begin to fulfill these commitments. To list just a few: a comprehensive study of the curriculum; increased efforts to attract support and research grants; the Women in Science project (see below); the new chemistry building; the recent addition of Arabic, Japanese, and Hebrew language study; plans for the demolition of some of the Hitchcock Hospital complex to make way for the expansion of Baker and new quarters for the Math, Computer Science, and Psychology departments; and a center for the evaluation and improvement of teaching.

Apparently the 15th member of the Wheelock Succession has hit his stride.

Another philosopher heard from, amid the spate of letters (90 percent of them favorable) received by the president in the wake of the recent uproar, was Theodor Seuss Geisel '25, characteristically, thus:

After reading the Dartmouth Review a disgusted reader said, "Phew!" This gift from Bill Buckley is Muckley! It's Uckley! Bill, give it to Yale. Oh, please do!

Imagine this: a new shopping mall in the middle of a hospital, in Lebanon, New Hampshire, no less. Center Court, a first-of-its-kind commercial area, will be located in the new Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Traffic will include about 4,500 people daily—patients, employees, visitors—for the patronage of the Center Court's tenants. Not just flowers and gifts, but also clothing, dry cleaning, video rental, banking, fast food, hair care, medical supplies, and many other services, will occupy 20,000 square feet.

We're beginning to look forward to U.S. News & World Report's rankings of colleges and universities the way we did Your Hit Parade. This week (oops, this year) Dartmouth slips two notches to eighth—MIT and Duke sneaked in.

In the category of "student satisfaction," however, the Big Green remains Number One in the U.S. News list.

Number One also, for the seventh successive year, is the standing of Dartmouth's cross-country team in the Heptagonals, the first seven-straight wins in Heps history.

Number One honors in the Ivy League, as well, to Coach Bobby Clark's soccer team, thanks to its 4-1 victory over Columbia's booters in the final game of the season.

And, as this is written, Over-Confidence U. is the Green's most feared rival for at least a share of the Ivy tide (Dartmouth and Cornell are currendy tied for the top spot). Columbia was an example—the Lions gave the Green a battle that was far closer than the 34-20 score would indicate.

The Student Assembly has endorsed the Afro-American Society's proposal to make Martin Luther King Day an official school holiday, which means the elimination of classes. Since the College took about 200 years to recognize the Fourth of July, it might take several generations for MLK Day to make it to the calendar. Suggestions that the day be devoted to events and studies celebrating King's philosophy and achievements strike us as a good compromise.

The College gets good marks in another local manifestation of a national effort—the United Way. Traditionally, the Dartmouth community alone kicks in one-fifth of the entire Upper Valley campaign, the goal of which this year is $700,000. If you're a United Way volunteer elsewhere, what do you think of 60 percent as a participation figure? That's what the faculty and administration come up with regularly. The students' campaign, the only one among the Ivies, has a goal this year of $4,500. Many of the agencies served by the campaign are those to which hundreds of students already volunteer, through the Tucker Foundation's activities.

One more worthy endeavor. To honor the late Harry Tanzi, who you will recall was the renowned grocer/honorary mayor who died last January at the age of 92, a group of local people have established a fund in Harry's name to provide scholarships to graduates of Hanover High who are furthering their education. Checks can be made out to Hanover High School, care of the Harry Tanzi Scholarship Fund, Hanover, NH 03755.

In quest of more Marie Curies and Lisa Meitners for this increasingly science-bent world, the Women in Science project has embarked on a program of enabling first-year female students to join with senior science majors and faculty members in research projects in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, earth sciences, engineering sciences, math and computer sciences, and physics. Nearly one-fourth of '94's women have signed up for the program, which the College has funded for the fall term, and for which it will be seeking grants for its continuation. Women in Science is headed by Carol Muller '77, assistant dean of the Thayer School and a class columnist for this magazine.

We remember a crisp autumn afternoon in 193 8, when we were sitting with our classmates at the Yale Bowl. Suddenly, Coach Red Blaik sent a blocking back into the game who at once electrified the crowd as he upended Eli tackier after tackier to make a path for All-American-to-be Bob Macleod '39. We scanned our programs in vain to see who was number 73. Then like wildfire the word went around that it was the already-legendary Harry Gates '39, who earlier had left the College to rejoin a religious movement north of Hanover, The Kingdom, only to be urged back by friends and teammates.

D-24, Y-6—but immediately after-wards, Gates left football forever, to a flood of publicity of the "Star Athlete Gives Up Dartmouth For Religious Life" variety. Few alumni except his classmates and closest friends know what happened to Harry, who by then had been given the nickname "Heavenly." His just-published book, MoreThan a Prophet, tells what did happen. An effort to relate his association with the charismatic F.W. Sand ford, an unusual man of God, the book is far more the personal and spiritual recollections of an unusual man of Dartmouth, in whom unselfish, unwavering attachment to scripture led down one of Robert Frost's roads "less traveled-by."

This isn't a book review section, but we can't resist calling one more just-published volume to your attention, especially as a Christmas gift. It is TheDartmouth Story, subtided, A NarrativeHistory of the College Buildings, People, andLegends, by Bob Graham '40. Graham, retired director of the College News Service and summer inhabitant of the information booth on the Green, offers a walking tour of the campus, accompanied by delightful anecdotes and unusual facts about each building's history.

At the opposite end of the campus from the Orozco murals, in the Hood's Bedford Courtyard, internationally famous sculptor Joel Shapiro's untitled(Hood Museum of Art) five massive, solid, welded rectangles of bronze-now rises 21 feet into the air. A leader in the Minimalist movement, Shapiro is represented in major museums and collections around the world. Minimalism, we learned, is art to stimulate the viewer's personal reactions rather than to ponder the artist's technique. So, walking around untitled, we could see a gyrating dancer landing precariously on one foot; a headless monster threatening to topple over onto an unsuspecting passer-by; or a helpful citizen pointing out the direction to the Hood.

The Hopkins Center, for its part, hosted a celebrity early in November and presented him with the 1990 Dartmouth Film Award: Ken Burns, film-maker, historian, and producer of "The Civil War," the epic nine-hour TV documentary which appeared on PBS this past September. No stranger to the College, he did much of his research at Baker Library. The Walpole resident is the second New Hampshirite to have achieved Hanover-related fame in the past few months—Weare's Justice David Souter served from 1981 to 1987 on the Board of Directors of the Hitchcock Medical Center.