Dr. Wheelock's Journal
Divers Notes & Observations
ONE OF THE STRANGEST reunions in the College's history will shortly be taking place—not of a class but of the remaining living members of the Dartmouth Eye Institute, which shone like a nova in the twenties, thirties, and early forties, then vanished, leaving scarcely a trace, even in the memories of older alumni. Early in September, ophthalmologist David Bisno MALS '94 will bring back for a three-day symposium those optical scientists and researchers, many world-renowned, who still survive and who participated in the work of the Institute, which for a time challenged Dartmouth itself for national recognition. (Eventually, however, the Institute was deemed not to fit into the academic scope of what was basically a College dedicated primarily to undergraduate learning.)
many professional articles. The course promises to be lively and controversial; despite the prominence of his position at Michigan, Bollinger admits that he had opposed the university's speech code when it was enacted, and was modest in his approval when a year later it was struck down by a federal court. One of Bollinger's first appearances on this campus was before a visiting parents group, where he displayed admirable courage to share a platform with the redoubtable John Rassias.
One student who could put the lie to that view is six-one, 235-pound Adam Nelson '97, varsity linebacker who has just won the world junior shot-put title in Lisbon, Portugal, with a heave of 60 feet, two inches. Another might be Melissa McBean '97, last season's Ivy rookie of the year, at this moment in San Diego trying out for a place on the American women's national soccer team. Incidentally, you will have a chance to follow the fortunes of these and other Big Green sports figures in Sports Weekly, a new four-page, tabloid-sized student paper scheduled to debut on Monday, September 26. Editor is Brad Parks '96, and $10 will get you a nine-issue term subscription. Address for this first-ever Dartmouth publication: 5096 Collis, Hanover, NH 03755.
On other newsfronts: Physics prof Delo Mook, winner of this year's Distinguished Teaching Award, announced that out of his own pocket he was hiring not his best but his poorest students in Physics 13 and 14 to help him revise the course and make it less forbidding to budding science majors. Mook was quoted as believing that "many poor grades should be blamed on the teacher." And at the Med School, two professors made news with their finding that among 10,000 British 16-year-olds (the age when 95 percent of them enter the labor market) their low wages at 23 can be blamed on obesity in young women and shortness of stature in young men. Those of five feet three inches were considerably less successful financially than those a foot taller. Professors, meet Trustee Rosenwald, Labor Secretary Reich, and (to a somewhat lesser economic degree)...
A free-sapeech-friendly provost arrives; a reunion of eye doce is also sighted.
