LETTERS

Tsongas Tstory

On the same day that I received the October issue featuring the excellent article on Paul Tsongas '62 ["Running on Ideas"], he spoke to a hundred students at the South Portland Maine, High School. His presentation was stimulating, challenging, and encouraging. I may yet be able to silence my Bowdoin colleagues who continuously ask why Dartmouth alumni can never win the Presidency. As if Franklin Pierce is something to brag about!

Portland, Maine

Paul Tsongas jokes, "I want to prove that Dartmouth can produce Democrats."

I agree. It's a joke. It has long been my belief that, given their druthers, the administration and the great majority of Dartmouth professors would produce only Democrats.

Denver, Colorado

Paul Tsongas claims that Reagan and Bush have squandered the economic legacy of our ancestors. Since Tsongas never tells us what particular policies these Presidents enacted which have squandered our inheritance I will assume that his statement is usual political hot air.

However, Lyndon Baines Johnson's version of national health insurance Medicare and Medicaid has indeed squandered our economic inheritance while wreaking havoc with federal and state budgets.

Should Tsongas become President it will be amusing to see how Lester "Less Thorough" Thurow, his economic advisor, will deal with our constant healthcare crises.

Riverside, Illinois

Diverse Views

I was disappointed by President Freedman's essay "Honest to God Accommodation" in the October issue. Cutting through his well-polished rhetoric, I discovered stock liberal justifications for university racial-preference programs. Let me offer a brief rebuttal.

Brown v. Board of Education provides no support for President Freedman's position. Quite to the contrary, in mandating an end to the South's dual system of public education, the Supreme Court held that an educational opportunity, "where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." What's more, I firmly believe that the attainment of student-body diversity can no more serve as a rationale to favor underrepresented minority groups such as blacks or Hispanics-than it can serve as a basis to disfavor overrepresented ones such as Asians or Jews. Nor do assertions of a historically disadvantaged status change the story. Even if one were willing to hold today's individuals accountable for the sins of prior generations, how would preferences for the children of Hispanic or Asian immigrants be explained? Both groups were included in the Bakke quota system. And if, as his essay suggests, President Freedman wishes to question the fairness of Dartmouth's legacy-admissions policy, is he so bold as to suggest that two wrongs would make a right?

Before President Freedman sacrifices Dartmouth on the altar of diversity, I bid him to consider the conclusion reached by Professor Alexander Bickel of the Yale Law School nearly two decades ago. "The lesson of the great decisions of the Supreme Court and the lesson of contemporary history have been the same for at least a generation: discrimination on the basis of race is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, inherently wrong, and destructive of democratic society."

Fresno, California

Freedman's essay is the most insightful and intelligent statement on affirmative action on college campuses that I have seen. At UCLA where I am on the faculty, issues of diversity in the student body are very much a topic of attention. The essay was inspirational to me personally as it rekindled my commitment to seeking diversity at all levels of society. It reminded me of the defensible principles upon which affirmative action rests and it resolved for me some of the sticky issues that come up over and over again in trying to seek diversity.

I was enrolled at Dartmouth as an exchange student in 1972-73, the first year of coeducation. As the article by "The Masked Stork" (also in the October issue) reminds us, Dartmouth was somewhat provincial at that time, at least in the attitudes toward women and mi- norities held by some individuals. The negative press attention Dartmouth received in recent years has not improved a widespread stereotype of the College as conservative, racist, sexist, and indeed, unscholarly. I have never accepted this image of Dartmouth as accurate, nor does it match the sum total of my experiences there.

I was proud of Dartmouth when I read President Freedman's essay, and I had not felt proud of it for a long time. I think die College is fortunate to have a leader such as he in these times of change in our nation's demographics.

Los Angeles, California

Pyrotechnically Correct

Would someone please politically correctify an old alum?

The October "On the Hill" column informs us some students see the homecoming bonfire as "a reminder of traditions and values that exclude much of the Dartmouth community."

As one who helped stack timbers on the Green in the '50s, I can assure you that this activity was sweaty but otherwise quite benign. The final effect was little more than a son et lumiere in the chill autumn nights before the game.

What we were burning, by and large, were old railroad ties. It's not as though they were crosses!

I don't know of any traditions true to the College that even today should make one feel excluded. What was and should still be the beauty of Dartmouth is that everyone can feel included.

Port Washington, New York

Split Minds

Schizophrenia is a chronic psychotic disorder that waxes and wanes in severity. It is characterized by various types of symptoms, including hallucinations, delusions, apathy, and social withdrawal, as well as ambivalence. This ambivalence characteristically manifests itself in the following way: a patient with schizophrenia can accept that both sides of an argument are true without any degree of anxiety. It is this ambivalence which led early psychiatrists to name as schizophrenia (literally "split mind") what had previously been called dementia praecox (or "precocious dementia"). The term schizophrenia does not mean split personality, as anyone who takes care of patients with this disease can attest to.

Your use of the term in the latter way in the "On the Hill" section is inaccurate, as it does not take into account the many other aspects of schizophrenia as a syndrome. Otherwise, I enjoy the magazine very much.

Baltimore, Maryland

We certainly didn't mean to associate ourselves with a chronic disorder. On the otherhand, while writing the "Editor Agonistes"column we frequently find ourselves of twominds about many issues. On the other hand,this condition doesn't bother us in the least.On the other hand, our use of the term mayhave confused some readers, in which casewe're sorry. On the other hand, the etymology of the term suits our use precisely, as Dr.Roskes shows, in which case we have nothing to be sony about.

Creativity in the Air

I have experienced first-hand the chemistry department's creativity as described in the article by Heather Killebrew '89 ["Like Walking Along an Arrete," October].

In the organic chemistry lab I received as my first "unknown" a substance I was supposed to identify—a compound newly synthesized by the department and not described in the literature. For three weeks, as the rest of the class sailed into their third and fourth unknowns I continued to struggle with my first. The crisis came when I asked the instructor for a rarely used compound to make a derivative that I thought might cinch it. He looked at me dubiously and asked, "Are you sure you need it?" I replied firmly that I did.

Fifteen minutes later he shouted at me through a lab filled with green smoke, "You, what are you doing?" Tear gas was pouring out of my retort above my head and floating down on the rest of the class.

Amid my choking classmates in the hall, the instructor gave me a new unknown which I nailed in about 15 minutes. He gave me another; I nailed it before the end of the lab. By the next week, I had caught up with the class.

What, in the context of the current president's policy slant on the role of research, is the lesson? I think that the experience forced me for the first time out of a claustrophobic premedical mind frame into a much wider, airier (forget the tear gas), hazardous (remember the tear gas) climate. It changed me from an archivist needing only a good library to an explorer.

I think the current president, as a lawyer, knows first-hand that archival work organizes, illuminates, but does not increase our civilization; the great leaps for our country come when utterly new poems are written and organic molecules synthesized, when teachers stand like stout Balboa silent on a peak in Darien." For students and parents paying their tuition, the payoff is the explorer's palpable excitement when he lectures.

Walla Walla, Washington

Destructive Ideologies

The message in President Freedman's September "Presidential Range" column ["The Sense of Place"] is indeed a valuable one. I am pleased with the president's reverence for nature; however, I am greatly displeased with his choice of expertise on the subject. The interpretation of nature he chooses is immersed in ideologies that historically prove to be destructive to indigenous peoples and nature.

Nineteenth-century American writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman eloquently wrote of nature as something that provoked creative thought. The respect for nature was often fleeting and quickly replaced with Western ideologies of manifest destiny, eminent domain, and progress. How could Whitman's America be "the country [that] was one with nature" while native peoples were being desecrated and the land was being bought, sold, and misused like a replaceable piece of merchandise?

A true "sense of place" comes from a Blackfoot chief who declared to U.S. delegates that "our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever." Nature is beautiful, not wild, wherever it exists, said Luther Standing Bear, chief of the Oglala Sioux. "We do not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as 'wild.' Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the land 'infested' with 'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it was tame."

Native American wisdom should receive the credit it deserves, especially at an institution that prides itself on promoting the welfare of Native American people. Their consistently passionate views towards nature are more pure, and thus they will be more meaningful to Dartmouth students.

"May everything be in harmony. May we walk in beauty. Hozho Nahasdlii."

Navajo Nation, Arizona

Latin Lover

I can keep silent no longer. Yet again, in the September issue, I find that the study of Latin has been singled out as the exemplary power-tool behavior of the stereotypical geeky undergraduate at one of those research universities to which no self-respecting Dartmouth undergraduate would ever have considered going: "But Carl Thum reports that Dartmouth's particular image tends to draw the kind of person who does everything, 'a more active, people-oriented student' than the scholar at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton 'who can't wait to get into the lab and mix chemicals and translate Latin.'" First it was the "lonely student translating Catullus" of James Freedman's inaugural address. Having just finished a master's thesis on Catullus and Martial, I thought to myself, "Wow. If I had just been a little younger, I could have been the poster child for the new era at Dartmouth." The image, I believe, was meant to summon the vision of a student who studies a subject for its intrinsic value rather than its usefulness.

Then Latin 9: Catullus headed the list of defunct courses in the March 1990 issue under the rubric "Rest in Peace." Two other courses in the list of 16 fell into the category of classical studies, emphasizing the magazine's portrayal of the study of classics as irrelevant.

Now, in the current issue, the director of the Academic Skills Center cites the study of Latin as a convenient shorthand for "pathetic intellectual with no social life who should have gone to Harvard."

As one of the few, the proud classics majors in the class of 1985, I must tell you that there were and are more of us than you think. I'll let you in on our little secret. The Classics Department at Dartmouth is one of the finest in the country, at the undergraduate or graduate level. Because it is such an uncommon course of study, we actually know each other and all the professors in the department, not just one trusted mentor. The food and drink at the departmental parties is better because we don't have to feed 300 people. Classics majors get to go to places like Italy and Greece and even the south of France, if Edward Bradley is leading the FSP warm, laid-back, friendly countries noted for cheap wine and fine cuisine as well as centuries of cultural history.

In my own graduating year, and the years following mine, a significant proportion of undergraduate classical languages and classical archaeology majors have gone on to graduate study in the field (many here at Bryn Mawr, but that's another story). It seems to me that it may be the largest percentage of majors going on for advanced degrees in any field offered at Dartmouth, but that's just a guess. At the same time, some of us played rugby, rowed, worked at Collis belonged to the "other" Greek organizations on campus, and participated in all die aspects of Dartmouth life that a recent reader of the Alumni Magazine would suspect were unknown to us. We even fell in love. I married another classics major, Sterg Lazos '84.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

As we always say, Ut quod ali cibus estaliis fuat acre venerium.

Getting Physical

With regard to September's "Spot Poll," here is my angle on phys ed at Dartmouth:

Sometimes I used to dread facing the hot gym, or, klutz that I am, the cold snow (literally). But without the physed requirement, I am sure I would never have been able to accept an invitation to gaze at the moon from a golf course carpeted in white at midnight because I would not have learned to ski. Nor would I have known what it is like to belong to a sort of rhythm section pumping its glissade downriver, because I would not have tried out for crew. It doesn't matter that I didn't make the team or that I had to dog-paddle across a pool. The point is that these activities, together with the freshman trip which is already optional, built my confidence and widened my world. Perhaps JV and varsity athletes should be exempted from the requirement. I do not believe that it should be abolished.

North Miami, Florida

Neither, apparently, does the faculty,which voted to retain the requirement.

Some Complaint

I would like to lodge a complaint! Most of the college magazines I receive live a short life from my mail pile to the recycling container. However, I got stuck on your September issue for close to an hour. Every page, from George Bush to Nelson Ham, was more interesting than the last. I even found myself reading the Class Notes. I'm already behind at work, and your magazine isn't helping matters. Besides, you're making mine look bad.

Hoping you can help, I am

Washington, D.C.

Mr. Feinstein is editor of GeorgetownUniversity's magazine.

More Baudy Language

I thoroughly enjoyed your article on "Electronic Body Language" [September], Another facet of the electronicommunications-era jewel that is getting more polished is the publication of periodicals. Of course the pioneer is Dartmouth's own paperless environmental newsletter, Sense of Place. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently announced a new journal on clinical trials results that will enjoy quick review because of e-mail and quick publication because the publisher will not have to take time to cut trees and lick stamps.

Still, I like to poke the fire, settle back in my chair, and relive my undergraduate memories, stimulated by the nostalgic photos and the words of Eleazar Wheelock, printed with ink on paper (a mature medium) and delivered to me by Cedric, my postman.

Washington, D.C. Sherman C:od1:nih

I have stumbled upon another Dartmouth alum who uses e-mail in his job. There was a discussion raging on about P.C. and Illiberal Education on EDPOLYAN (Educational Policy Analysis) listserv and of course Dinesh D'Souza '83 came up, and thus we found that there were at least two of us on the listserv from Dartmouth. It is nice to know that the people you communicate with on listserv groups aren't really that anonymous after all and that you have something in common.

University of Missouri bioslb@umcvmb

Etherized Magazine

Here where I work at Interleaf, Inc., we are all very fond of and dependent on our extensive e-mail exchanges, both within and outside the company. I, too, appreciate the renewed emphasis on written communication. But I must warn you, I have a feeling that this period will be very short-lived I imagine you've heard the buzzword "multimedia e-mail"? For better or for worse, many of us out here are working on making it easy to e-mail not only text, but also images, video, and audio. Talk about disembodied communications!

I really enjoy the magazine. When will the electronic version be available? :-)

Waltham, Massachusetts Chick@sparky.hq.ileaf.com

As soon as Kiewit has access to the editor'sdead body.

Turn Major '87 (right, with Dartmouthhopefuls Michael Cut ran and Kristin Pierce)prefers Paul Tsongas to Franklin Pierce.