The Uncovered Murals

Hovey Roused

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD A FOOT note to the item on the uncovering of the Hovey Murals ["Dr. Wheelock's journal," Summer], That action was just the latest of a series of ironic twists in that drama.

When the Orozco murals were completed, President Hopkins was deluged with letters from irate alumni. Many complaints were part of a campaign orchestrated by Walter Beach Humphrey '14 who demanded that the College remove the work. Humphrey cited the example of the removal of the Diego Rivera murals from Rockefeller Center which had been denounced as communistinspired.

Hoppy defended the murals successfully, but the experience made him wary and he was quoted as advising other college presidents to stay away from murals.

But the class of 1914 was not discouraged and mounted plan B. They proposed that their classmate, Walter Beach Humphrey, be allowed to paint some politically correct (although the term had not been invented then) murals on the walls of the Rathskeller in the new Thayer Dining Hall. Humphrey was a successful magazine iillustrator whose friend and neighbor, Norman Rockwell, had just finished a mural for Princeton based on the song "Yankee Doodle Dandy." The class of 1914 committee suggested that the theme be Hovey's song about Eleazar's founding of Dartmouth. Humphrey would do the murals for free and the class would bear any expense for their installation. Hoppy concluded that the project would be popular, win back some alumni, and was obviously non-controversial.

Little did either Hoppy or Humphrey dream that time would prove them wrong. Humphrey must have spun in his grave and even gnashed his teeth when his murals were covered in 1979 except for brief periods during Commencement.

Humphrey also tried to dissuade the College from building the Hopkins Center in a "modern" style. I am sure that, wherever he is, he feels vindicated by the tolerant action of the Native American Council. And I hope the success of the Hopkins Center program in promoting the arts at Dartmouth has softened his opinion of its architecture.

EAST THETFORD, VERMONT

The "PCs" really got carried away when it came to the Hovey murals and then said nothing about the anti-Christ, anti-everything Orozco works in the library. It has been hard for many of us to understand that for years.

If I were to follow the thinking of the PCs, I would be asking that anything British be thrown out, as they forced my ancestors out of Scotland and then out of Ireland in the early 1700s—not to say anything about 1776 and the War of 1812.

Three cheers on the Hovey Murals. Some sanity has returned.

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA

AS A FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE Native Americans at Dartmouth and a former member of the Native American Council, I can only ask in bewilderment, in response to the recent statement issued by the current council: Have They Lost Their Collective Minds? What is the composition of this current council? Certainly not those students of 20 years ago who sacrificed more than just good grades and risked disciplinary action and the threat of arrest to lead the struggle against the manifestations of racism that were present in the institution then, and apparently still are today.

If the Hovey "murals" can be loosely construed as depictions of how Native Americans were viewed in the past, then stick them with other "period pieces" of the 19305, such as the artwork of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Certainly, Humphrey's work is more a fanatical mischaracterization of the Dartmouth scene than anything Orozco depicted.

The Council's rationalization that we must now face the past is too subtle for Dartmouth. You need a sledge- hammer to crack through granite.

I understand how tiresome it is to be consistently bombarded with the stupidity and insensitivity of a college where the student body, administration, and alumni, for the most part, really don't want you there in the first place. However, you owe a measure of sacrifice to those who come afterward. You cannot in good conscience recruit Native American students, and not ensure that there are some safeguards in place for their spiritual and emotional well-being.

The council's decision detracts from those protections already in place, such as they are, and adds fuel to the incessant demands for the restoration of that historical lie first perpetuated on the Earl of Dartmouth and Samson Occom in 1769.

To the Native American Council, I say: rescind your statement, rethink your reasoning. You owe it to your past, your future, and yourselves.

MASTIC, NEW YORK

Sea Worthies

WILL LANGE'S "TRIP TO THE Sea" article in the Summer issue recounted a 1921 canoe trip down the Connecticut River which began an annual reenactment of John Ledyard's journey.

An earlier canoe trip following the same "watery path" took place in 1917. My dad, Harold Ruggles '17, was one of the group.

In the spring of 1917, two professors from the Thayer School, Robert Fletcher and C.A. Holden, were commissioned to engage several students to survey the state line between New Hampshire and Vermont. According to J.E. Cassin '94, who described himself as "transporting agent and rear rodman," the survey was to establish the low-water line on the Vermont side. The trip's purpose was different from the Ledyard re-enactment, but interesting nonetheless.

MOYOCK, NORTH CAROLINA

MY BROTHER, GEORGE MCCOL- lom, age 22 or 23, came up to Dartmouth to film the trip of the John Ledyard Canoe Club from Hanover to Long Island Sound in 1922. George was a moving-picture Sinister. He got throat cancer and died the day I graduated from Dartmouth. I never have been able to find the films he took.

George's employers, the Cohn brothers, went out to Hollywood to form Columbia Pictures. Perhaps there are a few alumni who are still alive and remember that trip. If so, I wish they would contact me.

SARASOTA, FLORIDA

Spy Scandal

I WONDER WHOSE IDEA IT WAS TO pass off a 31-year-old writer as a Dartmouth freshman so he could get the "unblemished experience" of the freshman trip. Unblemished? Greeting an incoming class with a two-day lie puts a horrid stain on these young kids' introduction to Dartmouth College life.

CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS

The notion was the editor's.

Stooge Artistes

IN AMY LAWRENCE'S COLUMN ON college in the movies ("Syllabus," September), she neglected one of my favorite Three Stooges shorts in which Moe, Larry, and Curly are mistaken for famous Russian scientists on the college lecture circuit. Curly teaches physics class the alphabet with his rendition of the classic "B-A-Bay, B-E-Bee, B-I-Bickie-Bie, B-O-Bo."

Has Professor Lawrence no appreciation for fine art?

LYME, NEW HAMPSHIRE

DAM Origin

SOME OF YOUR READERS MAY NOT realize that the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine got its original start from monies provided as a class project in 1906. loday, it continues to be supported mainly by contributions from each class. These funds are raised by each Class Treasurer via their annual dues notice to their classmates, issued every year at this time.

The rationale for funding the DAM from class dues was to ensure the independence of the magazine's content from College views. Under the guidance of its alumni Editorial Board and through this unique funding arrangement, the editors continue to publish an informative and independent-minded piece that provides us all with a way to stay current with the College.

We are also pleased that the DAM has established itself as the most successful publication in the circle of college alumni magazines as its many awards will testify. My fellow Treasurers and I applaud the magazine's outstanding contribution to Dartmouth College with a round of "Dartmouth Snaps." We also encourage all alumni to vote their appreciation by paying their 1993-94 class dues as soon as possible.

PRESIDENT CLASS TREASURERS ASSOCIATION HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Gone to Pot

REGARDING THE SUMMER "ON the Hill" item on marijuana:

"Your business here Is learning," Dear John Dickey spoke, of yore. S. Donoghue's most callow bleating Urges facts be known, defeating Cant: nonsense of facts ignored.

Cerebral atrophy, dysfunction Pot can cause, despite Sean's unction That cannabis is innocuous. Unconfused by data, facts In med journals in Dartmouth's stacks, The frosh's contention's preposterous!

Seriously, even a member of the flower-child generation accepts diverse reports that all passed stringent peer review documenting the anatomical, radiographic, and histopathologic evidence that the weed produces deleterious change. Debate on this tired perennial topic demands familiarity with what is known. I enclose a current bibliography. Will the pot advocacy group's faculty advisor and the undergraduate move from slogan to primary source by graduation day?

CREVE COEUR, MISSOURI

Radio Rave

THANK YOU FOR THE DOUBLE- shot of WDCR in the Summer issue ("Familiar Face" and "Dartmouth Undying"). As a graduate for whom Dartmouth broadcasting and the "Dartmouth experience" were often synonymous, it was heartening to see the magazine remind the world of our unique radio heritage.

Your timeline, however, omitted a significant event in the evolution of radio at Dartmouth. The legacy that began more than 70 years ago with one voice crying in the wilderness continues doubly strong today: in 1976 WFRD-FM took to the airwaves, and in doing so made Dartmouth the only school in the country with two student-run commercial radio stations. Today, this combination provides students with the best of both broadcasting worlds: students wishing to express their creativity are free to do so on the College-oriented WDCR, while those desiring a more commercial experience have at their disposal the mike of the Upper Valley's numberone radio station, "99 Rock" WFRD-FM.

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

Kemeny as Coeducator

PRESIDENT FREEDMAN'S ADMIRAtion for the late President Kemeny is shared by many of us.

The fact that he was not ready to support a study of coeducation in 1958 ["Letters," Summer] is no proof that he was not a leader for the cause in the early 19705.

As regional director of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, it was my duty to convey to him the position of the federal government—no women, no grants!

President Kemeny was the architect of a smooth transition. I invited him to serve as chairman of our New England Advisory Committee, and Secretary Richardson in Washington liked the idea so well that he ordered the other nine regions to adopt it.

It was a privilege to know him. It was a blessing to Dartmouth that he served as our president.

VERO BEACH, FLORIDA

The Details

I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED THE story of John Ledyard [Summer]. What a life! We had all heard of his trip down the Connecticut and something of his travels in our undergraduate days. Now, at long last, we know the details of Ledyard's life and adventures. Jerold Wikoff is to be congratulated for this marvelous contribution and you for publishing it. I flat loved it!

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

President Hopkins thought the HoveyMurals would, be innocuous.