On chemistry, Cuba, and other radical elments on the campus.
Discerning readers (of whom we know you are one) will notice a change in the writing style of much of this column. The beleaguered and dubiously talented editor who until recently was the Journal's sole writer has sought help from othersincluding our alumnus friend, whom we'll call "Clamantis." His reports follow.
As of early 1992, the Chemistry Department will crate up its beakers, alembics, and retorts (but no Bunsen burners) and move them from Steele afewyards north to a shiny new, 80,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility, yet unnamed, which should be the first major construction to arise in the Freedman administration.
The new chemistry building thus takes the torch from Steele, built in 1922 when there were but five members of the chemistry faculty, including the redoubtable "Cheerless" Richardson, Andy Scarlett, and, a bit later, John Amsden (whose widow Edith, tireless Mary Hitchcock volunteer, just died last month, aged 90). The faculty now numbers 39. Steele is both overcrowded and, if there is such a word, under-coded. Its six-inchthick concrete floors have been staunchly unyielding to the demands of modern standards of plumbing, ventilation, safety, and health, and even to minimum modification to meet new requirements of student and faculty research into new chemical processes and compounds of unknown properties and hazards.
Since Steele has thus also proven resistant to utter demolition, it is scheduled to house Environmental Science, a high priority on President Freedman's new curricular agenda. Not so fortunate will be Nathan Smith, the building named for the founder, in 1797, of Dartmouth's Med School, fourth oldest in the nation. Nathan Smith, which stands right about where some of the 21 new four-person research laboratories will be situated, will be torn down, and its occupants, Math and Computer Science, will be translated to new digs at the Faculty Clubwhich, following a decision that may give way to a last-minute reprieve, will serve its last soup-and-sandwich on June 30.
The name of another historic Nathan—not Damon Runyon's "good old reliable" Nathan Detroit, but the sixth president in the Wheelock Succession, the energetic Reverend Nathan Lord—enjoyed a thankfully brief stay on the front pages last month. Dr. Lord, better known for his condoning of slavery and his refusal in 1864 to grant an honorary degree to Abraham Lincoln, was nevertheless responsible for a goodly number of innovations, including the appointment of Dartmouth's first full professor of modern languages. It is therefore logical that his home, moved from site to site like many on the campus, would wind up on North Park Street as headquarters of the International Students Association. But it was somewhat ironic when that august body, under the sway of a Latin American graduate student, and following an arcane electoral system—which, for example, entitled one to vote only if he or she had attended the last three meetingsvoted to rip off its historical plaque and change the name of Nathan Lord House, you'd never believe, to Fidel Castro House, "in recognition of all the Cuban leader had done to help third-world nations." Fortunately, cooler heads quickly prevailed, the plaque went back up, and the graduate student has gone to parts unknown.
Not so hard to find is Andrew Baker '93, a freshman who was given a deanly reprieve after serving part of a two term suspension for failure to cite academic sources, a violation of the Academic Honor Principle. "If a student obtains information or ideas from an outside source," the code states, "that source must be acknowledged." In early December, Mr. Baker wrote a paper on the famous Alan Bakke reverse-discrimination case for his philosophy class. The paper discusses the pros and cons of racial quotas. We obtained a copy, and it seems an even-handed and fairly well-written summary of the arguments. The problem is, it fails to cite any sources at all.
A month after the student submitted his paper, his professor, Sally Sedgwick, lodged a complaint with the College's standing disciplinary board, the Committee on Standards, that Mr. Baker had violated the honor principle. She suspected that the student had had help in writing the paper, and she noted that the paper liography This is a serious omission at the College, where even the president footnotes his speeches. Committee members—composed of students, faculty, and administrators—say they have found 25 students guilty of honor code violations in the past three years. All of them were suspended—most for a whole year.
In mid-January, the committee held a two-hour hearing and found Mr. Baker guilty of having violated the honor principle. The finding, which we have not read, seems to have said nothing about the question of authorship; the charge would have been difficult to prove in any case. Mr. Baker was suspended for the rest of the winter term and for the spring term as well. He protested the finding, arguing that nothing in his paper required a citation. And, in fact, to the (decidedly non-academic) writers of this journal, much of his paper seems to havedealt with facts and ideas that had been widely reported in the national press. But he refers to "independent studies," "case studies," a "personal admission" by a law school dean, and the Bakke decision by the Supreme Court—all of which would seem to deserve citation in an academic paper.
Mr. Baker thought otherwise, and there was published talk of a possible lawsuit. But Dean of the College Edward Shanahan, mentioning "personal decided to readmit him for the spring term. Mr. Baker's father claimed that the admission was a quid pro quo for signing a form agreeing not to sue the College, and The Daily Dartmouth criticized the dean for caving in on the issue.
The case is complicated by Mr. Baker's appearance on the masthead of the Dartmouth Review, which promptly claimed that a conservative was being punished for being a conservative. But Mr. Baker's byline has hardly been prominent in the newsp aper—few people on campus even seemed to be aware of his politicsand his paper on quotas leans, if it leans in any direction, toward support for minority admissions. Predictably, the Review and its eminence grise, the columnist William F. Buckley Jr., exonerated the student and condemned the College's disciplinary body. By now—a fact testified to by Hanover alumni who have received tear-stained clippings of Buckley's column from hand-wringing classmates every- where—the story has been widely circulated. Unfortunately for the College, Buckley beat the Committee on Standards to the rhetorical punch. An official baccount of the case wasn't released for several weeks.
Recalling the old 7th Avenue rejoinder, "DoesMacy's tell Gimbel's?" No, of course, but in this and in several other recent dust-ups, it might occasionally be in the best interest of the Gimbel's community for Gimbel's to tell Gimbel's—promptly.
We have just heard that the women's basketball team, which acquired a 233 record this past season, has failed to get a bid either from the NCAAs or the National Invitational Tournament. The women won 20 games in a row before their streak (not to mention a heart or two) was broken in a one-point loss to Harvard.
We wonder what it will take, next to a perfect record, for the women to get a tournament bid. In their failure to recognize the achievement of a school that does not grant athletic scholarships, the tournaments have lost at least as much as Dartmouth has. One just hopes that Jacqueline Hullah doesn't become discouraged and take her .675 won-loss record to a school that gets more respect.
The alumni forum held last month in New York City was a splendid af fair, if you consider frank talk splendid. The purpose was to air opinion of the report of the Committee on Board Organization which suggested ways to choose alumni Trustees. We will try to find space for a more detailed account next month.
For the smooth conduct of the meeting, and the only occasional flares more generated by heat than by light, considerable credit went to Alumni Council president and moderator (and former All-Ivy linebacker) Murry Bowden '71. Conferees may have been mindful of the statement reputed to have been made by Cornell's great Ed Marinaro. When asked by a sportswriter who, in college or pro ball, hit him the hardest, Marinaro answered without hesitation, "Murry Bowden of Dartmouth."
If you think adventurism is dead at the College, read this. A quarter-century dents earned a layout in National Geographic after they canoed down the Danube from Ulm, West Germany, to the Black Sea. (The trip is mentioned in the cover story of this issue.) One of the participants was Slade Backer '64; this month his son, Andrew '9O, plans to restage the adventure along with seven other canoeists. The region they will pass through—comprising West Germany, Austria, Czechoslova kia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union—has, needless to say, vastly changed since the last trip, politically, if not otherwise.
For lodging, the students will rely on campsites, local canoe clubs, youth hostels, and the hospitality of friends. They say they could use some foreign contacts, financial support, and advice—especially regarding Rumania and Bulgaria. If you'd like to help, call Andrew Bac1ker at (603) 643-3878.
Besides the new Chemistry building, the College needs space in which to ensconce Math and Psychology. Plus major repairs and renewals (and an entirely new annex as well) to Baker Library. Plus reconstruction or replacement in the Hospital area, on which all avid eyes are being castand maps of which currently are as plentiful on campus as there were of Terra Novum in the days of Amerigo Vespucci (and about as readable). Bricks, mortar, pipe, wire, utilities, and the wages of those to install them, are estimated at about $100 million. Anyone wish to bet what will be a topic of the next capital campaign?
Next month, we will publish an essay about the campus and the plans that are being made for the area north of Baker.
Last month we reported wrongly that Dartmouth now ties Harvard for the most junior-varsity sports in the Ivy League. Actually because of recent budget cuts, Dartmouth now ranks fourth with 14 junior-level sports—just behind Harvard, which has 16.
