Dr. Wheelock's Journal

Divers Notes & Observations

TOWARD THE SPRING OF OUR freshman year, when we wondered what went on here during the summer, the response was "nothing." The president of the College felt that to stuff a full year of liberal education into a student should take no more than nine months. Time off was required to let it properly sink in. (The faculty, of course, couldn't agree more). The luxury of allowing an expensive facility such as Dartmouth to lie fallow for so long a period ended temporarily, of course, with World War 11, though it took another three decades for women, and the need for year-round operation, to arrive. Not that it happened all of a sudden. In the late sixties, girlfriends began to accept invitations to Hanover not just for Carnival, or a weekend, but sometimes for days and weeks at a time. The students didn't know what to do with them during the day, and usually took them to class. John Dickey was asked at a small alumni gathering in New York when he thought Dartmouth would admit women. He replied with his familiar hearty laugh, "Do you mean when do I think they'll start paying for the education they're now getting for nothing?"

Well, all this is by way of reminding you how once-idle summers have become a hive of activity. In addition to sophomore summer, Alumni College is celebrating its 30th year. More than 200 alumni, spouses, friends—led by a gaggle of facultydiscussed the ethnic, religious, nationalistic conflicts that have replaced the Cold War in the concerns of inquiring minds. In July the Dartmouth Institute, sort of an Aspen of the East, completed its 21st annual session. The Institute also held a week-long seminar, nar, "Understanding Japanese Business and Culture." With the help of grants from The New York Times and the Gould Foundation, the inimitable John Rassias led a group of eighth graders from Harlem's Frederick Douglass Academy on an "academic and cultural adventure," most of it in French. The Tuck School's unique course, MBA: Update 2000, has now attracted 100 pre-1980 MBAs to refresh their management skills. Tuck's 14-year-old Minority Business Executive Program counted a record 143 African-, Asian-, Hispanic-, and Native American CEOs and managers of minorityowned firms, including 53 sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Finally, inner-city secondaryschool teachers from all over the country have just completed Professor Dwight Lahr's intensive computer course called CLIPP (Computer Learning and Information Processing Program). The tasks were performed using Macintosh's System 7. Some of Lahr's students had trouble with a function entitled "Balloon Help." Relaxing at their class picnic, they incredulously saw a real hot-air balloon hovering over them. They suspected a put-up job when the balloonist landed nearby, joined the picnic, and then took some of them up for a spin.

By the time the 1,069 members of the class of '97 arrive, the environs of Baker Library should appear as pristine—for a time, anyway—as they did to the arriving class of '94. The steam tunnel and the many utility conduits branching out from it are expected to be in the ground and operational. Taking their place in the daily rounds of this subway superintendent is the creation of a pedestrian mall in front of the three Massachusetts Row dorms, planned eventually to be closed to parking and through traffic. Other sights: the handsome new Sudikoff Computer Science Laboratory, supplanting the former mental health center, diagonally across from the old hospital; and of course, the renovation and combination of Collis and College Hall to complete the new Student Centerby next spring, it is hoped. We lost count of the dumpster loads of debris removed from 92-year-old College Hall, as we watched carefully one day to see if anyone had found the resonator of the tenor banjo we left there some eons ago. Also, real-estatewise, the College has acquired the Occom Inn on North Main Street (would you care that in 1850 it started life as a candy factory?)—and also a 140-acre plot near the new Medical Center. And on your next visit to Hanover, you may be both surprised and pleased to see the name Campion on Main Street once more. Jim Ill's widow, Dorothy Campion Corcoran, and husband Marty Corcoran opened Campion's Women's Shop this summer, in the bank building at South Main and Lebanon streets.

Once again you have the privilege and the responsibility of suggesting candidates from the alumni body with the background and experience to serve as a Dartmouth Trustee. Bob Danziger '56 will complete his second term next June, and the Nominating and Alumni Trustee Search Committee is seeking his replacement. You are asked not only for names of those you believe are qualified at present, but also those of "more recent alumni whom you think would be effective Trustees sometime in the future." The committee meets first on September 11; between then and November 1, please mail your suggestions to its chair, Susan Finegan '85, 518 Lowell Avenue, Apartment 2, Newton, Massachusetts 02160.

We noted that an enterprising '94 has just started sort of a Diner's Club in town. He has convinced eight local restaurants, so far, to accept his Hanover Green Card—for which students must open their accounts with a $l5O minimum. When via the grapevine we got the news that this would be this publication's Freshman Issue, we pondered how, in our own pea-green days, we would have made out on this system—and that led us to look up a talk by a late classmate at one of our reunions, on "how we suffered in those days." "Go ahead," our classmate said. "Wallow in self-pity as you wonder how we could have afforded those meal tickets at the Wigwam and the Campus Cafe, $5.50 worth of gourmet meals for $5. And what did that buy? Only ten lunches and dinners at 55 cents each.... Ten cents still bought a 'chocolate milk' at Allen's, and that meant two tall glasses' worth, because there was a whole glassful left over in the container. It was two scoops of ice cream, rich syrup, and real milk."

We can't help quoting further: "Life in those dorms was primitive, wasn't it? A white-haired janitor made the beds every day, took a few swipes at the desk and other objetsd'art with a dust rag, brought in a vacuum cleaner with its long hose hooked up to a compressor in the basement.... We were denied the luxury of individual mail-boxes—just mail slots in our own dormitory doors through which the postman himself dropped our letters and magazines, twice a day.... Oh yes, we had a lot to gripe about, but I have a question. If those four years were such a [expletive deleted] waste of time, then why the [inaudible] did we come back for this reunion? You know what I think—we had a ball!"

It was a busy summer.above ground and, to alesser extent, below.