Divers Notes & Observations

NO SWALLOWS EVER GOT A warmer or more colorful welcome back to Capistrano than did everyone here last month, particularly the fledgling '98s Beautiful fall weather emblazoned A a bustling atmosphere of posters, balloons, ubiquitous Green Key members guiding freshpersons to outrageously named-and-deco- rated dorms (Camelot, Candyland, Alice's Wonderland), and friendly signs and directions. A typical one, on the door of Hitchcock, said "There is NO! valet." All quite a contrast to our own memory of what more than a few decades back was called Hell Week, hauling desks and chairs up or down three flights of stairs for the upper- classmen, dodging the approach of a sophomore if we weren't wearing our freshman beanie, and that ridiculous costume peerade at halftime as the football team was routinely routing a hapless Norwich 78-0.

("As far as student conduct was concerned, the institution, after more than a hundred years of immaturity, had begun to grow up." That was the College's unofficial historian, chemistry professor Leon B. "Cheerless" Richardson, writing what campus life was becoming in the year 1889.)

The College's 225th and President Freedman's eighth Convocation almost filled Leede Arena to the last aisle. It was also the president's birthday, as Provost Lee Bollinger announced. After the standing ovation had died down, Freedman said, "After six months of chemotherapy, I feel as good as on any birthday I've ever had." He suggested to the students that amid the din of radio, TV, and parties, they sometimes try to make room for "that resounding silence that the human condition often requires"—and rec- ommended the essays of George Orwell and Edmund Wilson as the kind of thinking and writing that can best be relished in contemplation.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, no stranger to academe, allowed that the only time she had received such loud approbation from a student audience as Freedman just had was at Wisconsin when she, as chancellor herself, fired the football coach. Not at all loath to recount the goals and achievements of her current boss and his administration, she challenged her listeners to ignore the media's overemphasis on the "horse races" of the news, who's ahead and who's behind, and instead try to focus on the issues.

We always try to adjust ourselves to the revised words of the Dartmouth Alma Mater, as we did at the end of the joyful event. That reminded us, however, to inform you that although it's a little late in the game, Harvard has finally recognized, too, that "Fair Harvard, thy sons to thy jubilee throng" could go for some genderneutral revision. The Harvard alumni magazine's counterpart to this column has received all kinds of letters, helpful, mocking, indignant, grudging, on the issue, but seems to have arrived at a sensible solution. "No official decree is needed to update 'Fair Harvard': a similar joyful noise would result from a mixture of thy sons and we now, with no one the wiser."

CLOSER TO HOME, A FEW months ago, occurred a crisis of at least equal consequence, at least to 400 students who would have no place to live when they returned to Hanover for the fall term. With a little creative real-estate sleight-of-hand, the College reduced the housing crunch to zero just in the nick of time, but a committee of administration heavy hitters will now work on the problem, the second successive year it has happened. The vagaries of the Dartmouth Plan, fraternity and sorority rush, or maybe just the desirability of a fall spent in Hanover over one in Paris, Rome, or even Moscow, are deemed largely responsible.

You may recall the bit of apocrypha about the time when students were permitted to participate in town meetings for that one year only, because they had overwhelmingly voted to build a sidewalk from Hanover to Lebanon. This year the town fathers seem to have picked up the idea, as Main Street's spanking new sidewalks, granite hitching posts and all, have now already made it from Wheelock Street past the Co-op, past Allen Street, past Town Hall, and are on their way south toward the bank. Among more cultural construction efforts, when you return for your mini-reunion this fall you may also see a newly-renovated Center Theatre at the entrance of the Hop, to be named for its donor, the late widow of Lansing Moore '37, Florence Bennett Moore. Mrs. Moore's generous gift—to the Will to Excel campaign—is also providing a facelift to the Top of the Hop. The campaign, incidentally, stood at 87 percent of its $425 million goal at the end of August, and still has two of its projected five years to run.

On the subject of money, the highest-paid member of the class of '94 is almost surely Philadelphia Eagle third- string quarterback Jay Fiedler, at a publicized $108,000 yearly. Jay's NFL statistics are non-existent to this date, but those of his successor at the Big Green, Ren Riley '96, looked good at the team's opener, a 20-16 loss to Colgate. In fact, Dartmouth led the Raiders by a good margin on every statistic except the score. Guarded optimism is our prediction for the season, but if you want to make us a liar, and we hope you do, the Cornell game, on October 22, will be televised on the Prime cable network in upstate New York, and many Dartmouth clubs plan to downlink the game by satellite.

AT CONVOCATION, PRESIDENT Freedman, on the subject of solitude, also ventured the possibility that "left alone with our feelings, we may unfortunately discover that we don't have any." This brought to mind a moment that we might leave you with, from the seat of one of America's leading institutions of higher learning. At church last week, during the children's sermon, our minister was trying to make a point. "When I put my hands over my eyes, what happens," she asked. "You can't see," came the reply. "Well, when I put my hands over my ears?" "You can't hear," said another small voice. "And when I think I know everything?" Piped up still another: "You don't."

The president getsConvocation applauseand counsels silence.