Faces Missing from the List

Invisible Stars

Forty Alumni Who Are Bound For Future Glory" [March]. Forty alumni rising stars of Dartmouth College. Future movers and shakers who will impact tire nation and the world, from classes as early as 1930 to a recently graduated '92. Artists, musicians, judges, businessmen and women, athletes and physicians. What a broad assortment of Dartmouth's future finest! What a broad array of talent! What diversity! What a tragedy!

Even with the polite disclaimer acknowledging that the list is incomplete, it is disconcerting and particularly sad to read that of the approximately 1,500 black men and women who have graduated Dartmouth over many decades, that the only one worthy of mention in your cover article is among the most recent of graduates.

This comes on the heels of the May '92 Black Alumni of Dartmouth Association's 20th-year anniversary celebration. It brought a record number of approximately 300 black alumni back to Hanover. Yet, to our knowledge, the conference did not even receive mention in the Alumni magazine. Nor are we aware that the Alumni Magazine acknowledged the

25th-year anniversary of the Afro-American Society last year. While we don't think and certainly hope and pray that these oversights are not deliberate, they nevertheless stand out like a sore thumb to black alumni. Is it any wonder why such token representation disheartens black alumni and prompts many of us to think twice about giving money, participating in alumni activities, or otherwise demonstrating their connectedness to Dartmouth? By and large, as a group, we don't feel connected, and Dartmouth, by virtue of omission and oversight, does not include or reach out to its darker sons and daughters. As black people, our alumni experience is often frighteningly similar to that of the protagonist in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

We enjoyed the article very much and thought it was a great idea to cover success in process and know that any attempt like this runs the risk of omission. We just wish that the one black face on the cover wasn't so conspicuous and indicative of a bigger more complicated problem that relates to Dartmouth's true commitment to diversity and community. As your "other" brothers and sisters we are sincerely yours,

For Executive Committee Black Alumni of Dartmouth Association

Irealize thai dartmouth used to be an institution for men only, and that is perhaps why the majority of the featured alums were men. However, for a school that has been desperately trying to improve its image as a sexist, racist institution, there should have been a better effort on the magazine's part to feature the same amount of men and women who are "bound for glory." What does it mean when 32 out of the 40 persons featured were men? It cannot mean that there aren't enough female Dartmouth graduates whose "careers are on an upward trajectory." I can name 12 more women who are just as successful as if not more successful than those men in the article, just to create a balance in numbers. I think the very least the compilers of this article could have done was to reach equity in numbers.

Newton, Pennsylvania

Does the fact that not one of the Fab 40 Alumni Bound for Future Glory comes from one of the fifties classes prove that we were and maybe still are a fairly "blah" bunch doomed to remain so?

Natick, Massachusetts

Think of it this way: the fifties classes have already achieved glory.

I would anree with your "40 Faces" introduction that an article on people who see themselves as failures doesn't sound very interesting.

I would suggest another fascinating alternative population, however, which I suspect is very large among Dartmouth alumni people whose lives and commitments reveal quality and strength of character, but who are not "bound for future glory." The aging man who, with his wife, has devoted 40 years of his life to caring at home for a Downs Syndrome child, rather than having the child institutionalized. The young woman who is beneficiary of a $100,000 education who chooses to work for the Salvation Army administering an inner-city homeless shelter. The person who quietly struggles day in day out with dual-diagnosis problem in order to hold down a job and raise a family. These people are not likely to become famous or powerful or to win awards, but they exemplify the values of conscience and commitment which I remember John Sloan Dickey talking about years ago.

May I suggest that a "quiet conscience and commitment" piece would be a nice companion piece to your article on alumni bound for future glory?

Waterville, Maine

Good Catch

The aprll cover photo is that of my older brother, Brodie, class of '41, taken in the spring of 1939. Brodie was my childhood idol at the time and I had dreams that one day he would pitch for the Red Sox. However, World War II intervened, but more to the point, his better-than-average fastball was rarely found in the vicinity of home plate, which may have scared the opposing batters but invariably gave them a free ticket to first base and beyond. My Red Sox dreams have long since vanished, but I must say I am pleased to see him finally immortalized on the cover and enshrined forever in the College archives.

Centererport, New York

Flawed Genius?

The tribute PRESIDENT Freedman paid to John Kemeny in the April 1993 issue makes me sad. To praise Kemeny as an intellect, as a mathematician, and as a creative genius is both accurate and appropriate. To praise him as a political leader, a man of principle, and fighter for coeducation is to rewrite history.

Kemeny was a leader in the sense that he was adept in figuring out the direction of the crowd and getting out in front of it. He simply did not want to deal with the messy issues of politics, especially unpopular politics.

In the battle for coeducation, Kemeny may have been a hero to President Freedman, who doesn't know or isn't telling the whole story. To me, Kemeny was a goat.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s— before the cause of coeducation was popular—Kemeny made clear his opr position. I enclose a copy of a petition circulated to him in May 1958. The petition, which ultimately was signed by a majority of the fulltime teaching faculty that spring, asked the Trustees and president of the college (1) to adopt the policy that the principle of coeducation at Dartmouth deserves serious study and (2) to appoint a committee to make such a study.

Kemeny was asked to sign for or against the study. He signed against. He opposed even a study.

Yes, that's his signature at the bottom, on the line that says, "I am not in favor of the above petition." The original signatures, for and against, were filed with the Trustees in June of 1958.

If President Freedman is looking for examples of leadership and courage, he should spread some praise in the direction of the early signers. They were the real heroes.

Wheaton, ILLINOIS

John Kemeny was often photographed with a cigarette in hand, and in a Dartmouth Alumni Magazine article a few years ago, his addiction to tobacco was detailed. One wonders whether his unfortunate death was preventable.

Smoking remains a major cause of heart disease, vascular disease, lung disease, and cancer. Readers should be aware that newer, more effective treatments to aid in smoking cessation (such as nicotine patches) are now available. I urge current smokers to seek medical assistance, as it's never too late to stop.

Wayland, MASSACHUSETTS

The Saint in the Loo

The Bartlett Hill stainedgiass window in the April issue ["Dartmouth Undying"] depicts St. John the Baptist, the original "vox clamantis in deserto," and is a memorial to Eleazar Wheelock. The editor seems to have thought it high wit to run a photograph of a toi let bowl beneath it.

Perhaps he will explain why he assumed his readers would share his amusement, and why he never considered that nearly a billion Christians do not consider a saint a suitable toilet ornament. The Alumni Magazine's case for covering the Hovey Grill murals in a gesture of much-publicized political correctness jars with its iconoclasm toward real icons.

According to historical patterns, the degradation of behaving as though manners exhaust the meaning of morals can be pleasant for a short while, but it fast becomes unpleasant and then self-destructs. Any editorial apology would miss the point if it talked merely of tastelessness and not irreverence. The latter is an alien concept in current academia, but it made sense to the College's founder, and will make sense again should Dartmouth reconcile itself to civilization.

New York, New York

The photograph is not a trick; the bathroom has contained the stained-glass window since the 19705.

As a practting CHRISTIAN i was not amused by the juxtaposition of John the Baptist and the 100. But I am glad you printed the photo.

Is the message, unconscious of course, that this is what we think Christianity is worth?

The stained glass must be removed to a more suitable place, say Rollins Chapel, or the room should be converted to a more suitable use. As it stands, the current situation is an offense against practicing Christians of all denominations and against all cultivated people of good will: since when in the College's history do we insult any religious tradition?

It is also an offense against Eleazar Wheelock, and, may I add, President Kemeny, who in the name of Wheelock opened the way to a Dartmouth education for all students who truly want it and are capable both of the work and of the leadership in society afterwards, as voces clamantes in deserto. Have we become so cynical as to heap contempt on our own traditions and our highest ideals? Have we really lost nobility of character?

The photo, and the situation, isn't funny or cute; it is mean.

Pamplona, Spain

The Chief's Class

The aprll issue CONTAINS an inexcusable error in the story devoted to Dartmouth baseball ["One Game of Baseball"]. The reference, featured prominently in the introduction to the story, is to Chief Meyers, and cites his allegiance to the Class of 1907 (sic)!

In these days of hypersensitive handling of any reference to American natives and especially Dartmouth College Native Americans, one would hope that you and your staff might wish to identify properly within the large Dartmouth family the great American athletic hero who matriculated at Dartmouth College in the autumn of 1905 with the class of 1909.

Baltimore, MARYLAND

Getting Intimate with Bob

The timeling on Bob Reich's life (in the May issue) omitted the most significant (for me) event in his entire Dartmouth career: a brief stay in Dick's House in January 1966, my freshman year, about a week before Carnival. I was in there thanks to a broken foot, and was trying to cope with the much bigger hurt of having to break my first Carnival date. I awoke one morning to hear the guy in the next bed utter the ultimate in unnecessary words, "Hi, I'm Bob Reich." He was there for some kind of bladder problem and his graphic description of the route his remedy would have to take created an immediate intimacy between us.

From then on it was a continuing source of pride and pleasure that I "knew" Bob Reich. While we didn't exactly start hanging out together, he would always greet me by name and chat for a while small things, but big in the eyes of a scared freshman (and sophomore and...). Hi Bob, and thanks.

New York, New York

A Great Old Fart

I was delighted to see photograph of Pete Townshend in the April issue. Finally, I thought, we are going to award this man a long-overdue honorary degree!

Needless to say, I was shocked to see that he was there only because Robert Christgau '62 called him an "old fart." OK, I enjoy Christgau's rock-and-roll criticism. And I enjoyed meeting him in your article. But, with all due respect, I could never enjoy any of his criticism as much as a guitar riff, song, poem, short story, rock opera, musical, or film by Pete "Townshend.

Oakland, CALIFORNIA

Dollar Man

We need an Audit of how many one-dollar contributions are recorded to increase the percentage of class and College participation in the Alumni Fund. The 2 January 1992 issue of the Green Line reported a 29-percent drop in participation. Apparently the College has encouraged one-dollar contributions as a way to reverse the embarrassing drop in participation. I just received a thank you for my one-dollar contribution. I resent someone contributing a contribution in my name.

I don't agree with many decisions and actions of the present administration so refuse to support and encourage such actions. As soon as the Freedman agenda changes I'll contribute generously plus add a matching gift. In the meantime don't rig the participation figures.

Vero Beach, Florida

Alumni Fund Director Stan Colla '66 REPLIES:

It is not the policy of the Dartmouth Alumni Fund to solicit one-dollar contributions simply in order to increase alumni/ae participation; in fact, after recording and acknowledging these gifts, there would be little left to use in support of the needs for which Alumni Fund gifts are sought.

However, the Alumni Fund does gratefully accept all appropriate gifts regardless of size (even those made in "protest") because they all support Dartmouth's mission. Even the smallest gift matters, particularly to the student who benefits from it.

In Mr. Hoyt's case, we received a completed pledge card which we believed had come from him. Part of our acknowledgement process is meant to confirm the donor's intentions, and when we learned that our records were in error, we corrected them.

Dartmouth has a long and proud tradition of annual alumni support. This tradition was recently recognized by Moody's Investment Service, who upgraded Dartmouth's bond rating partly because of it. Not only does the College not need to "rig the participation figures," but also, as Mr. Hoyt's letter indicates, her alumni would not stand for it.

Rhetorical Zen

I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED your February '93 essay, "For the Sake of Argument." If you haven't already done so, you might appreciate reading Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Pirsig discusses a theme similar to yours in the context of an enjoyable "novel." He concentrates on the Sophistic-Socratic dialectic and its effect on the place of rhetoric in modern thinking. Enjoy!

Bellevue, WASHINGTON

Welcomed Gleefully

Just in case you fellows are beginning to think you get nothing flak from out here in the bulrushes, the Dartmouth Club of the Western Carolinas wishes to thank both the College and all members and officers of the Glee Club for the superb performance given at Christ School, Arden, North Carolina, on the cold, wet, ragged night of March 26.

This performance, the finale of the spring tour, was indeed a memorable occasion, one which overcame the obvious drawbacks of the worst weather in these parts (at least since the Blizzard of '93) to put Dartmouth's very best foot forward.

We hope to see and hear successor Glee Clubs in the years to come.

Club Secretary Asheville, North Carolina

Traditional Drought

The spring 1993 edition of "Charitable Alternatives," issued by the Dartmouth Bequests & Trusts Office, contains on page two a photograph from an audio-visual presentation, "Dartmouth Remembered," which obviously is a photograph of "wetdown," as it once was. The irony (and hypocrisy) is that "wetdown" is one of the many now-lost Dartmouth traditions, which never would be allowed by the present administration. You'd think that the Campaign Committee on Bequests & Trusts would at least possess the intellectual honesty of not inveighing bequests with forbidden Dartmouth customs.

San Francisco, CALIFORNIA

Schuss Right

I was GREATLY honored to find that you had selected a picture of me skiing down the pre-sculpture mound of snow on the Green with both Baker Library and Webster Hall in the background (in a year in which very little snow fell for the Winter Carnival festivities) ["Winter In Hanover," Winter]. I was involved with the Winter Carnival sculpture all four years I was there, but clearly that year was the most challenging as in order to have any substrate to work with we had to rely on the generosity of the Killington mountain snow-making crews to work through the night to generate the mound pictured in the middle of the green. After class that next day, after spending a fair amount of the preceding night looking over the snow-making operation, etc., (and after enduring a winter devoid of enough snow to make skiing at the Skiway anything less than dangerous), I decided to take a few runs. It was a gloriously sunny day, and although the snow was quite sticky, the runs were quite nice even if they were only a few turns! After I was done, a photographer came up to me and asked me a few innocent questions, including my name, and the next thing I knew, the photograph that you featured was in several papers. The photographer was from the Associated Press and he had made the photograph a satellite telephoto!

Baltimore, MARYLAND

Go Nothings!

lam not a suporter of the right-wing element that has plagued Dartmouth for the last decade, but I must say that the decision by the College to eliminate the clay pipe ceremony as part of graduation is outrageous. This tradition has "only" been in place for 100 years, and a special committee apparently found that this tradition offended some Native American groups. Probably all traditions can be found to offend someone, if one searches hard enough. Although I do not know what it means to be a "Big Green," I presume that environmentalists will request that we change that name in a few years so that we can become the "Big Nothings."

Portland, Maine

The decision was made by the senior class, not the whole College or the administration.

I suspect that over the many years that the clay pipe ceremony was a part of Class Day, few if any of die tens of thousands of Dartmouth seniors who participated ever entertained a negative thought towards Native Americans. Quite die contrary. If the pipe ceremony truly does what some Dartmouth student and administrators now say it does, then two questions come to mind. Why did this not come up long ago, for example when the College decided to drop the Indian symbol? And given that this has been a long standing tradition of the College, one remembered fondly by thousands of Dartmouth graduates, doesn't the College have an obligation to provide a more detailed explanation of how exactly the pipe ceremony "desecrates the religious beliefs and spiritual practices of Native American students"?

There may well be good answers to these questions, but for now, this looks like another example of the "political correctness" and poor communications that in recent years have too often driven a wedge between the College and many of its alumni.

Bethesda, MARYLAND

Baseline of Inhumanity

Last November's "Dr. whelock's Journal" implies that the message of the Orozco murals and the Hovey Grill mural are the same: man's inhumanity to man. However, Orozco's message is overpowered by its art value. Though strong, its inhumanity theme is muted to this viewer by the fact that all members of modern societies worldwide can share in the responsibility of the inhumanity portrayed.

Conversely, although the Hovey mural is a fine illustration, its value is not its art. Rather, it is die power of its message. For me the Hovey mural portrays a special inhumanity distinct to Dartmouth and therefore incapable of being muted.

The nature of the mural whether or not it be currently "out of favor" as Dr. Wheelock reports is like the proverbial barrel: is it half empty or half full? The fact is, of course, that it is both.

Isn't it time that Native American students also recognize the mural for what it can be and demand that it never again be shrouded?

In a "half-full" way, isn't it now also seen, experienced, and understood by an increasing majority of the Dartmouth community as a Dartmouth spot; a spot Macbethian red but positively poised and uniquely directional? It's a spot which forces us to look back at where we were, and perhaps still at times cling, and expresses by comparison the measured distance we have come and continuously points us forward, like an arrow, to the immeasurably long path which we still must travel.

The theologian Thomas Altizer, in the last paragraph of his William Blake and the Role of Myth, states, "Every affirmation of an opposing other sanctifies that Satan who will ultimately be transfigured into Jerusalem." Wherever you have energy, even misdirected energy, there is a potential for good.

Wayne, PENNSYLVANIA

See this month's "Dr. Wheelock's Journal."

Hunger's True Cause

It was with acertain amount of bemusement that I read in last October's issue that the Dartmouth Lawyers Association announced a two-year plan to catalog and analyze the causes of hunger ("Lawyers and Hunger"). I would like to offer to save the participants in the Dartmouth Lawyer's Association Hunger Project some time and effort: the principal cause of hunger is not getting enough to eat.

Certainly, since the advent of modern agriculture and transportation networks, there is no reason for people not to get enough to eat. The answer to the next question is also straightforward: some go hungry when the people in positions of political authority fail to make it a priority to provide enough food for everyone under theijurisdiction. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in this century: Germany in 1918, the Ukraine in the 19205, the Netherlands in the winter of 1944-45, Somalia today.

The current high rate of human reproduction is the root cause for many problems, including hunger and many ecological concerns. Perhaps a more important topic of study for the Dartmouth Lawyer's Association is why more people do not use the more effective means of contraception that are currently available. Unfortunately, for reasons that are obscure to a non-American, this question is politically charged in your country. Continued failure on the part of the United States to take a leadership role in addressing this question will probably lead to the question about hunger becoming more relevant.

ONTARIO, Canada

Stealing a March

ANYONE who saw last fall's homecoming game and commented that they'd like to see the Dartmouth College Marching Band "playing and marching" ["Dr. Wheelock's Journal,"November obviously wasn't paying attention: homecoming is the only time during the year when the bandies do march and play at the same time. Some of us actually go to the football games just to rally around the band. Also, please don't jump on the Daily D's bandwagon and call the DCMB's sense of humor into question. Tastelessness is in the eye of the beholder, gentlemen: I found the bass drummer's "Yuck Fale" sign both tasteful and hilarious. The bandies work hard and get little recognition for their labors, save the occasional slam from people who aren't on campus enough to understand their current and topical humor. Shame on you!

Peabody Conservatory of MUSIC Baltimore, MARYLAND

Vindictive Profile

After the series of smarmy, gushing articles onprofessors at Dartmouth, many of whom are simply second-rate compared to Dr. Jeffrey Hart, I view your decision to run Jim Newton's article on Dr. Hart ["Hart's Last Beat," November] as an act of personal vindictiveness. I respond to only one point made by Mr. Newton and ignore the mass of gossip and insinuation that comes from Mr. Newton's pen. In terms of good prose, Mr. Hart's column is considered by those who seriously examine such things to be among the top three or four in a very crowded field.

Newport Beach, CALIFORNIA

Some of jeffrey hart's students "beat a path for the exits" when he told them "that the vast majority of Dartmouth students are profoundly uneducated sunk, as Alexander Pope would have put it, in the Serbian Bog of ignorance."

Maybe the restive students were on their way to Sanborn House to check the texts. Pope was good, but even he couldn't have forseen the disasters into which Serbia has sunk. Milton, on the other hand, knew hell when he saw it: "all else deep snow and ice,/ A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog/ Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,/ Where armies whole have sunk." Professor Hart's ungracious farewell is profoundly sunk in a lost allusion.

Princeton, New ersey

Gay Issue Is Not Sex

Having "outed" MYSELF in these pages some years ago, I feel compelled to respond to the letter by Charles Courtney '69 in last November's issue. He derides recognizing equal rights for gays and lesbians, stating that such actions are "celebrating sodomy." Equating homosexuality, where a person is emotionally as well as physically attracted to members of the same sex, with the act of sodomy is as over-simplistic and intellectually insulting as equating heterosexuality with missionary-position intercourse.

Furthermore, Mr. Courtney should recognize that, unlike the recently defeated Measure 9 in Oregon, the few remaining sodomy laws in the United States do not make illegal the fact that one is gay per se, but rather prohibit certain acts which are performed in equal measure by gays and straights alike.

If certain people would open their eyes and acknowledge the underlying basis for that last statement that there is as much diversity of emotional and sexual expression in the straight world as in the gay we as a society would take a major step forward. To paraphrase President Clinton, in these troubled economic times we need to allow each American to contribute to the fullest extent possible their knowledge and energy, without the shackles of prejudice and divisive ideologies.

El Cerrito, CALIFORNIA

Closed-Minded Economics

PROFESSOR William L. Baldwin's discussion in the November issue of the situation in Eastern Europe ["Syllabus"] seemed an inadequate treatment of the subject. Professor Baldwin failed adequately to treat a classic debate in economics. With such a handling of facts, how seriously can we regard his conjecture that other economists are unduly rushing the move to a market economy? More critically, why should an article designed to foster thinking be so closed-minded?

The question about what is the best transition is controversial, but the facts about the doctrinal dispute are clear. The initiator was Ludwig von Mises, who asserted in many places, most fully in a massive (still-in-print) tome, Socialism, that socialism was doomed because it had no basis for setting efficient prices. Lange then asserted that planners could acquire enough data to determine efficient prices. Hayek, who studied in von Mises's private seminar, then presented his classic counterattack. He argued in his article, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," that planners could not secure the data. He added that this was a less efficient source of critical knowledge than market forces. Participants in markets benefit from the vast store of knowledge held only by specialists. To get prices right, planners need, but could not efficiently secure, that specialized knowledge. This insight proved far more influential on economics than anything Lange wrote. An anthology containing the essay and Hayek's four book-length elaborations also are in print. Baldwin's failure to include even one book by von Mises or Hayek on his reading list is another indicator of why readers should view the article warily.

State College, PENNSYLVANIA

PROFESSOR Baldwin Replies:

PROFESSOR Gordon takes me to task for failing to treat adequately a classic economic debate. He then goes on, in what seems to me a non sequitur, to conclude that because of this failure it is impossible to take seriously my comments on the nature and speed of the current transition to a market economy in Hungary, and to describe the article as "closedminded."

As to the doctrinal dispute of the 19305, I quite agree with Professor Gordon's description of the facts as far as it goes. I would add, however, that von Mises's argument that socialism has no basis for setting efficient prices had been widely recognized as theoretically incorrect well before Lange's contribution. Hayek, in fact, had conceded the theoretical possibility of a central planning agency setting such prices. But he then shifted the argument to the practical level, questioning whether it would be possible to collect the enormous amount of data and to solve the equally enormous number of equations required to convert the theoretical concept to a feasible prescription for running a constantly and rapidly changing real-world economy. Lange proposed what he thought was such a prescription. Professor Gordon's assertion that Hayek's insight had a greater influence on economics than did all of Lange's work is correct only for mainstream Western economics. Lange's influence on socialist theorists, about whom I was writing, was profound.

Given that I was writing an article on the consequences of the failure of central planning in Hungary rather than on the history of economic thought, and that space in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine is a scarce and rationed good, I did not think it advisable to discuss a 50-yearold and now largely irrelevant theoretical debate. I did decide to describe Lange's model in some detail because of the influence it had exerted on leading contemporary Eastern European writers who have lost a long-held faith in the superior potential of a planned economy over a market one and who now seek to analyze the sources of the obvious failure of central planning the most important of these for both my course and article being Wlodzimierz Brus and Kazimierz Laski. Reasonable people may well disagree with both the omission from my article and my choice of recommendation for further reading. But when Professor Gordon goes on to assert that this decision implies that no one should take seriously my expression of concern over the possible political conseqences of a rapid transition to a free-market economy without a concomitant restoration of social welfare measures now in shambles in Hungary and throughout the former socialist bloc countries, I can only reply that I disagree with him as to which of the two of us is being "closed-minded."

Pleasure and Painkilling

Belated CONGRATULATIONS on a great issue the September "Road Less Traveled." It will be a valued addition to my Frost collection in San Francisco's Main Library, and I'll add a copy to the Frost collection I have given to the Thacher School in Ojai, California, where they are celebrating the school's Centennial with the addition of a new library. (I gave them 100 Frost volumes and items. My son, Mark, born in Hanover in 1949, was a graduate in '67 and will be the curator of the Frost Poetry Corner in this building.)

Having reached the age of 80 this year, and having just completed a fairly successful season in the USTA Eighties nationals in doubles, I got much inspiration from your foreword, and then, too from Mark Lange's outstanding piece. I have come "to believe, right or not, that there is no pleasure without pain." (A couple of Advils before a match helps, I confess.)

Carmel, CALIFORNIA

Was most intrigued with Mark Lange's article, "To an Athlete, Aging" [September].

I am now 79 play golf twice a week and hope I can reduce my everincreasing handicap (I don't, but it's fun!). I also run; entered the Los Angeles marathon in March.

I do take exception to Mark's statement, "Time is still the enemy." Yes, I guess in terms of ability, but not in terms of desire. I'm not wistful and probably not wise, but "Time" does not discourage; it challenges.

Corona Del Mar, CALIFORNIA

Litigious Disaster

In the November '45 Class Notes it was reported, with exclamation-point emphasis, and then repeated in a special box (also with exclamation point) that one of our classmates had obtained for the family he was representing, a settlement of $750 million for the Lockerbie disaster.

From the treatment this item received, one must assume it implied enthusiastic, congratulatory approval. To my mind, however, it is an obscene amount and one more example of milking the system to the point where much of the economy no longer functions on rational grounds but in fear of mind-boggling lawsuits. While one sympathizes with the family's loss, one cannot but wonder if the deceased was really that valuable minus lawyer's fees, of course!

Sooke, Britlsh COLUMBIA

Positive Fraternity Point

I a with Dr .Wheelock's comments (November) about the ruckus around the building of the Dartmouth Night bonfire. Such fraternity acts are disgusting and should never be part of Dartmouth life. They simply add another negative to the existence of fraternities at Dartmouth.

However, on a positive point for fraternities it should be noted that on the same weekend Kappa Kappa Kappa now Kappa Chi Kappa ce lebrated its 150th anniversary on the Dartmouth campus. Tri-Kap is the oldest local fraternity in the country. One hundred fifty brothers plus 75 family members returned for the

weekend because Dartmouth and Tri-Kap means so much to us. As the second-oldest returnee, I was pleased to be associated with the Dartmouth Tri-Kaps who followed me.

Canton, CONNECTICUT