DR. WHEELOCK'S JOURNAL

Alumni talk about trusteeship, and debate ownership.

Immediately after writing last month's Journal, in which we brashly promised to report the details of the March alumni forum on Trustee elections, we received a letter from Joe Boldt '32 Joe is a writer of vast experience, the kind of journalist who would know that Alumni Council President Murry Bowden '71 was an Ail-American defensive safety at Dartmouth (and not, as we forgetfully reported, a linebacker). Joe attended the forum in New York—along with some 75 other alumni, including five Trustees. On the podium were members of the Trustee Committee on Board Organization (C.B.O.), consisting of Chairman Norman McCulloch '50, Thaddeus Seymour '49A, Susan Dentzer '77, and Trustees Robert Reich '68 and Robert Henderson '53. They were gathered to hear feedback on their interim report, which included a suggestion that the full alumni body be allowed to elect alumni trustees from a multiple-slate ballot. (The committee's final report was presented to the Trustees early last month.) Joe told us in his letter that the forum "turned out to be a colorful, even dramatic demonstration of alumni thinking and attitudes on the broad subject of trusteeship, with much of interest worth reporting." Okay, Joe, we said. You convinced us. We have extracted highlights from his letter; the condensed account follows.

Ralph Maynard, '31 class secretary, led off with a bang, a proposal to do away with Charter Trustees and to enable any alumnus or alumna to nominate him or herself for one of 15 seats. Among the other formal statements a number, not all, essentially supported the committee's thinking-multiple-choice voting with the Alumni Council nominating three to five candidates, and with the privilege of nomination by petition retainedbut with varied qualifications. Some speakers expressed a critical attitude, mild or not so mild, toward present board procedures. Among the formal statements there was indication of some sense—more than I expectedthat we should essentially stick with the present system. I liked the "joke" that Leon Wilson '59 played on us. He said: "I would prefer to see a contested election for what we might call the electoral college...Let us select our representatives and let them in turn select our alumni trustees. Well, strangely enough, we have it and it's called the Alumni Council—which does draw, more or less faithfully, from all the constituencies that are interested in Dartmouth."

The formal statement that seemed to command the greatest interest was a proposal by Eugene Kohn '60. He called for a radically new structure that would have a small number of Trustees serving ten-year terms and concentrating on policy and decisionmaking. They would be supported by 35 to 40 members of a Board of Overseers charged with research, committee work, and the concomitant processes of deliberation, development of alternatives, and taking responsibility for making deliberation open to others. "Let's assign the overseers to do the bulk of the committee work and save the Board itself for the policy decisions," he said. (It wasn't mentioned, but this scheme comes close to Harvard's unique system of seven trustees called "fellows"—five of whom can serve life terms—and a slew of overseers to do a lot of their work.) The committee members on the podium were queried as to whether they had given consideration to any such plan. They had not—it was beyond the scope of their charge. By the end of the afternoon a considerable sentiment had developed that the Trustees' charge to the committee had not been broad enough. I have a strong hunch that we shall be hearing more about the "Kohn proposal."

In a table-turning ploy, committee member Susan Dentzer challenged the audience with two questions. First she asked, "Where is it written, and I'm asking this quite honestly, that alumni should govern Dartmouth College?" That elicited a variety of viewpoints, more or less leading to Dentzer's second query: "To whom does Dartmouth College belong?" An alumnus sitting behind me asked his companions sotto voce, as though in disbelief and with some asperity, "Is that a question, is that really a question?" Then he was handed a mike and he repeated his query to the podium. Yes, he was told, it was a question, and who did he think owned the College? "The alumni!" he answered in an anybody-knows-that tone. There were a couple more floor comments I don't recall, then Orton Hicks '21 was on his feet and saying with emotion, "All institutions of higher learning belong to society!" That drew a cheer. It also drew Ave Raube '30 leaping to his feet and out into the aisle, crying, "But I don't want the society of this country electing the people who govern [the College]." Another alumnus calmed things down by citing Daniel Webster's declaration that "the College belongs to a compact between the present, the past, and the future."

My own comment? I heard very little, if anything, that told me how with multiple candidates I am going to manage voting more intelligently than would the members of the nominating committee, who know so much more about them than I do or ever will. In any case, the committee must soon make its report to the Trustees. They will then be faced with a decision of major import to the entire College community.

The debate over Dartmouth's "ownership" recalls an old Ivy League fight song, like many of those of Dartmouth, rarely performed:

Oh, who owns New York, oh, who ownsNew York, oh, who owns New York, thepeople say—/Why we own New York, saywe own New York—Who? C-o-L-U-M-B-I-A!

On the subject of fading musical occasions, that old every-spring contest known as Hums continues (though in a grotesquely satirical manifestation). A more popular talent competition among the students, however, is the Dry Bands, in which the groups of contestants dance or act in concert while "lip-synching" the words of a favorite rock tune. For the past two years, the Coed Fraternity-Sorority Council has sponsored a Dry Bands Competition for the benefit of Students Against Multiple Sclerosis (SAMS). Not only did ten groups compete this year—seven fraternities and sororities and three non-affiliated groups—but through tickets sold, plus student donations, they raised better than $4,000. The winners traveled to Daytona Beach during spring break, where they placed third in the SAMS Dry Bands competition nationally televised over MTV

Somewhat harder to accept is this Ivy League item, from the Daily Penn-sylvanian, on the old question of how undergraduates feel about the food at their local dining establishments. "Students at Dartmouth College were the most consistent among Ivy League undergraduates in saying that they like their school's food," the story claimed, although the editors added this hardly enthusiastic but characteristically Big Green comment, '"lt compares unfavorably to home cooking, but it's not that much worse,' said freshman Mark Zohn."

Foodwise, the Presidential pronun-ciamento on broccoli had barely penetrated the media when syndicated humorist Art Buchwald appeared at Webster to deliver the annual Frederick S. Beebe '35 lecture on competent student writing (and participated in the dedication of the Beebe Chair, of which English Professor Peter Bien will be the occupant). Buchwald's contribution was, "From now on, Mrs. Bush will serve him a thousand points of asparagus." Not a bad title for your next book, Mr. Buchwald. You heard the suggestion here first. No lawsuits, please.

As you know, the campus-wide planning process is going at a furious rate. The Planning Steering Committee, which is, well, steering the planning, says that it has received interim reports from task forces looking into the arts, student life, continuing education, and "external environment." If you want to see any of the reports, drop a note to Provost John Strohbehn, 102 Parkhurst Hall, Hanover, NH 03755. He says the committee welcomes your comments.

The new dean of the Dartmouth Medical School is Andrew Grover Wallace. Dr. Wallace, 55, currently vice president for health services at Duke University, will succeed Robert W. McCollum, dean since 1982, who will resume his career in teaching, writing, and research as a member of the Med School faculty.

Dr. Wallace has spent almost all of his medical life at Duke, as undergraduate, med student, professor, researcher, and director of the Duke Hospital and the university's health affairs. Because of the Dartmouth Medical School's long-standing reputation for teaching, it is most fitting that in 1985 Dr. Wallace was given the Distinguished Teaching Award by Duke alumni. But it may be even more apt that as a nationally known cardiologist he will be guiding the nearly 200-year-old Med School through what may be some heart-arresting moments in its two-mile journey into the vast new Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center that has arisen out of the trackless forests behind Stinson's General Store on Route 120. (Now the biggest single building on the straight line between Boston and Montreal, it is said.)

Sidewalk superintendents never had much of a chance to gawk during the excavation and construction of Dr. Wallace's headquarters-to-be, the new Medical Center. It was a half-mile into the woods over non-negotiable ruts, and an off-limits hard-hat area when you got there.

And you really missed it when a giant crane picked up X-Delta, sculptor Mark di Suvero's peripatetic three-ton abstract collection of I-beams, from its berth in front of Sphinx, hoisted it over the Hood Museum of Art, and deposited it in the museum's back courtyard.

X-Delta appeared in 1978 in front of Sanborn, where it was greeted with only slightly less animadversion than had the Orozco murals four decades before. Members of Sphinx, traditionally silent as their counterparts at Yale's Skull & Bones, did not outwardly object when in 1984 it was moved next to their tomb, but the Hood's new director, James Cuno, though not known to be a member, came to their rescue. As quoted in the Valley News, Cuno decreed that "within the museum's artistic embrace, the sculpture is finally in its proper element."

Not all reunion activities will take place under the class tents next month. Alcoholics Anonymous will meet Monday through Saturday of Reunion Week from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Dick's House library. "Keep it Green and keep coming back," says the alumnus who submitted this reminder. Reunion AA events seem especially fitting at Dartmouth, which graduated one of the co-founders of the organization, Robert "Dr. Bob" Holbrook, in 1902. a