Dr. Wheelock's Journal
Divers Notes & Observations
When asked by a prospective colleague about the Hanover climate, former economics professor Daniel Marx was reputed to have said, "Hanover doesn't have any climate; it just has weather." Last year more than six feet of snow gave the area its best skiing in a decade. But now, harvest moon time, when the turkeys of the region are only hours from the platter, not a wisp of snow has appeared amid 60 and 70 degree temperatures; and the Skiway's newly improved four-person lift: and snow-making apparatus look down on barren terrain. Weather, indeed.
Innovations in the new Moore (for merly Center) Theater were done just in time to host the striking musical fantasy "Gaudeamus" by the Maly Theatre Company of St. Petersburg, about a pre-glasnost Soviet construction battalion. We won't tell you what they were constructing but on the Moore's vast new stage, their acrobatic entrances and exits were through a field of manholes. The play's 19 scenes recalled to us, at one time or another, Saturday Night Live, Abbott and Costello, and Hellzapoppin' in Russian, of course, but with English subtitles flashed above a haunting Tchaikovsky ballet, the depravity of Cabaret, and the hymnlike grandeur of the Red Army Chorus. As testimony to the theater's new technical capabilities, not only was a grand piano lowered 50 feet down from the flies in a sling but it was then borne back up with two of the cast dancing on it.
A tough act to follow, followed almost at once by the first American concert of the Turkina sisters from the Moscow Conservatory. The pianists gave a joyous Spaulding audience a passionate performance "in the tradition of Rubinstein and Horowitz," according to music professor Jon Appleton, their host in Hanover.
To this observer, it is no news that alcohol abuse is a major contributor to health and social problems among the young; that it is more prevalent on college campuses than their administrators would prefer; or that on the subject of alcohol and college life, Dartmouth has enjoyed a singular home in the hearts of the media, particularly when there is no other major item on the wires on which they can pontificate. Given at least these three absolutes, however, the equation has lately been stirred up by several new developments. It's now a far cry from Prohibition days, when, so goes the legend, President Hopkins called the Norwich bootlegger into his office and suggested that he purvey only good stuff, no rotgut, or he would turn him over to the Feds. No longer can the College be a comparatively safe haven from the law. The New Hampshire drinking age is now not 18 but 21. The Hanover police have decided that "internal possession" of alcohol is the same as "illegal possession." The ACLU has announced that it will challenge this interpretation. The College has received several grants to aid in further study, and many statistics have been accumulated, none of them too surprising. Two original departures: College health educator Gabrielle Lucke has said that her role is "not to tell people not to drink, but to teach them how to make lower-alcohol-risk decisions"; and also to center her efforts on expanding that 37 percent of the student body who have only one or fewer drinks per week.
Well, we thought you would want to know.
A few alumni who emerged victors in the recent election: Charlie Bass '74, who follows in the footsteps of his father Perkins '34 as one of New Hampshire's two representatives in Congress; H. Carl McCall '58, New York's first black statewide elected official after a bruising battle for controller of New York; Slade Gorton '49, re-elected U.S. Senator from Washington; and Angus King '66, the people's choice (and the fifth Dartmouth alumnus) to be governor of Maine. And right after election, Nelson Armstrong '71 was announced as director of alumni relations at the College, to succeed the 17-year veteran Mike Choukas '51. Nelson was director of alumni and parent relations and, more recently, director of university alumni affairs, at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland.
One very important alumni affair: the Will to Excel campaign has just fallen from 87 percent complete to 78.5 per cent. Not true that certain big contributors have asked for their gifts back! but that, thanks to the campaign's momentum, and its two years to run, the Trustees have increased the $425 million goal to $500 million. Although certain objectives of the campaign are already achieved, a number of efforts in the areas of endowment and Arts and sciences remain a challenge, which we have little doubt will have been met by the time the campaign ends in 1996.
And you may be reading more encouraging words about football as well. Season-ending injuries at almost every key position made it necessary for Coach John Lyons to use players who were at least a year or two away from varsity calibre. The Green ended this year a lowly 2 and 5 in the Ivies, losing a 14-27 blowout to Brown and just missing a duplicate of last year's miracle at Princeton, 13-20. Captain Josh Bloom '95 was one of 15 seniors in the nation to win the National Football Foundation's $l8,000 Scholar Athlete award. Winners also were both men's and women's cross-country in the Heptagonals and men's hockey began the season like gangbusters. The skaters edged Boston College and Colgate, and were beating Cornell until the last ten seconds when the Big Red tied it up. Then came a thriller over Vermont, 6-5, before the first packed house in Thompson Arena within the memory of man.(The roof collapsed in Burlington, however, the next night, 1-10)..
Mention of hockey brings up women's three-time Ivy League All-Star, 9 Sanders '86. According to Alaska Magazine, 9 is now practicing medicine in Anchorage and playing amateur hockey, but "had to drop out late in her seventh month of pregnancy to have her first baby, whom she had decided before its birth to name 5." The magazine didn't say whether 5 is a boy or a girl.
A flying pianoand two saoringeross-coimtry teams.
