Dr. Wheelock's Journal

Divers Notes & Observations

YOUTH IS A FEAT OF MEMORY," recited one of our more literary associates at table the other morning. After several barren Februaries, a couple of real old-time snowfalls enabled us with very little mnemonic effort to relive Carnival of bygone days. This year's sculpture on the Green, a penguin languishing in a beach chair, was completed, as in the past, only hours before the opening ceremony; a fireworks display lent a northern-lights sheen to the proceedings; a virtual parade of students of both genders leaped in and hastily climbed out of Occom Pond in the polar bear swim, a new tradition which we recounted with chattering teeth in last March's column; outdoors, the men skiers almost pulled an upset over perennial winner Vermont; indoors, women's hockey took two, from McGill and Cornell; the men lost to RPI by their too-usual one-goal margin, but beat Union handily; and men's basketball topped Brown but lost in overtime to a determined Yale.

Carnival arrived a week too soon for the campus and the fraternity basements to celebrate the long-awaited resumption of kegs—and test the new alcohol policy which has been hammered out over the past several months by Dean Lee Pelton. The new regulations are only slightly more complicated than those applicable to legally hiring and paying Social Security for your babysitter but they emphasize, we were pleased to note, more selfmonitoring of social events. One feature struck us particularly: the requirement that non-salty foods be served throughout the duration of any party, presumably to reduce the craving to quench with beer the parched condition brought upon by the saltier snacks. Discussing this with one of the more perspicacious Hanover select- persons we agreed that if instead brownies and cookies were served, we would be forced to rewrite the ancient anthem: "Like every honest fellow, and others of our ilk I'm a student at old Dartmouth and a son-of-a-gun for milk."

THE FRONT PAGES OF YOUR newspaper may by now be carrying news of the second trial of the Los Angeles policemen in the Rodney King case. A Los Angeles item you may not see, however, will concern the Tuck School's well-timed two-day workshop for minority entrepreneurs being held at the L.A. offices of the workshop's co-sponsor, ARCO. We assume that among the attendees will be some of those business people who suffered from the riots of last April, and the instructors will be some of the same faculty who teach at each summer's Tuck Minority Business Executive Program a highly acclaimed effort which now boasts of more than 500 successful alumni.

Back here in Hanover, the past weeks have seen an impressive array of distinguished African Americans, in celebration of Martin Luther King/Civil Rights Day (as we Live-Free-or-Die folks know it in New Hampshire) and of Black History Month. Mae C. Jemison, engineer, physician, and NASA astronaut, has been the current Montgomery Fellow, participating in a space-age technology seminar. H. Carl McCall '58, president of New York City's Board of Education, took time out from the Big Apple's recent donnybrook over its superintendent of schools to keynote the MLK opening proceedings in 105 Dartmouth. A candlelight march preceded an evening service to the memory of Dr. King, featuring a ringing address, Race, Class, and Conscience" by Charles E. Booth, pastor of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio. Older listeners in the Rollins audience recalled that King himself had spoken here in 1961, six years before his death.

Needless to say, the term "role models," as it pertains to the African-American students on campus, has veered perilously close to overuse over the past few weeks. Role-model-wise, perhaps it would be fitting for someone to research the life of one who during his 20 years as executive director of the National Urban League was awarded the Presidential Medal for his work during WW II that became the model lor desegregation efforts in all branches of the military the late Lester Granger, Dartmouth class of '18.

Will studentssuccumb to the milk ofdeanly kindness?