Dr. Wheelock's Journal

Divers Notes & Observations

WEATHER REPORT THIS month: a Yankee Magazine feature, "Unchanging New England," quotes the late critic Joseph Wood Krutch: "The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February."

Weather may be of no concern in three forthcoming campus celebrations. First, the commemoration of a quarter-century of Dartmouth coeducation in 1997 is already more than a gleam in the eye of Women's Resource Center's new director, Giavanna Munafo. An even more penetrating celebration is the 100th anniversary of the first medical use of the X-ray (by Mary Hitchcock's Dr. Gilman Frost in 1896, to assist in setting the broken arm of teenager Eddie McCarthy, who had fallen skating on the Connecticut). Then there is the 200th anniversary of the Med School itself, fourth oldest in the nation, established in 1797 by the Trustees at the urging of the persistent and. gifted young Dr. Nathan Smith.

On far closer horizons will be the appearance in April of John Kenneth Galbraith, to speak on the occasion of the first Bernard D. Nossiter '47 journalism award. Nossiter was a veteran reporter for The New York Times and The Washington Post. The annual award, established by his family, is for $1,000, to go to the best article by an undergraduate, "on any substantive topic, approached from a reporter's perspective and using journalistic techniques."

Still another most important event to take place in April will require your participation—the election of a trustee to replace the retiring Ann Fritz Hackett '76. The Alumni Council has nominated attorney Roger Aaron '64, theater executive Herbert "Barry" Grove '73, and publishing executive Jonathan Newcomb '68, all of whom seem to have distinguished records of participation in Dartmouth affairs. You will receive your ballot in March, with bios of the three, and as has become the practice, vote for any one, two, or all three. The sole criterion is how you think the candidate will fill the exacting job of trustee. Need we say once more that your participation indicates your concern for the well-being and good management of the College?

THEN, COMMENCEMENT will be here before you know it. The Friends of Hopkins Center are offering "Friendly Hosts," a new idea (at Dartmouth, though not some other New England colleges) for families and friends of graduates, as well as for reuners, who amid the crunch for hotel and motel accommodations often look in vain for a pleasant place to stay. The Friends offer the homes of their members, at most reasonable rates. Proceeds from this effort will go to support the Center's many activities. We imagine that if you play your cards right, breakfast may be included. One Friends number to call: Ellen Barrett (603/795-4737).

Both prime health and the hair on his head rapidly returning, President Freedman has embarked on his sabbatical to the hush of a Harvard Law School office to read, write, and relax. One more item hard to believe: with the retirement of President Rhodes of Cornell, Freedman has the longest tenure of any current Ivy President.

After waiting nearly as long as Warner Bentley did for his promised Hopkins Center (from the twenties dirough the fifties) in two years the Psychology Department will finally end its Diaspora in its very own building, opposite what is now the shell of the old hospital. During these last two decades, faculty and staff have almost doubled, as has the number of students taking the subject. To keep them sane, the steam tunnel will shortly be extended to the site, around the SAE house and through the parking lot in back of the White Church. Our sidewalk superintendent shoes are already in an expectancy mode.

You may be surprised, as we were, to learn that a lodge, a ridge, a pond, and even a life-income trust bear the name of a man who never set foot in Hanover—the Mohegan Indian Samson Occom. The College's original fundraiser returned to America in 1768 with Lord Dartmouth's 10,000 pounds, only to find that Eleazar had changed signals and planned to educate young whites as well as natives. Occom sent the money, but in bitterness broke with his mentor. Last month, however, Assistant Special Gifts Director Lenore O'Jibway, herself of Sioux ancestry, visited the present Mohegan tribe in Connecticut, extended an invitation to the chief and some elders to renew their historic interest in the College, and met with friendship and reconciliation. In general, it looks as if another ancient hatchet has been buried.

IN HIS ENTHUSIASM, THE DAILY D's sportswriter grammatically overran himself when he wrote at the start of the season that basketball's "Sea Lonergan '97 has proved he is a force not to be reckoned with." Last year's Ivy rookie of the year and his talented young teammates soundly trounced Princeton 64-56 last week for the first time since 1989—and then came back the next night to play the game of their lives against nationally ranked Penn. To this observer, the 70-85 score was practically a moral victory, and freshman guard Jay Lanzi's three-pointer at the buzzer a bright harbinger for next year. (Lanzi was the same '98 whom we saw hit a wedge for an ace on the 155-yard 17th hole last September—so, to date, we have not seen him miss a single shot of any kind.) The men's hockey team, energized by a couple of weeks of training in Switzerland against teams both amateur and pro, started out as if once again they would fulfill our optimistic predictions. The women could use a little of that Swiss ozone, as they seem to be struggling a bit to defend their Ivy supremacy, and ditto the women basketeers, perhaps with insufficient time to recover from their tough early schedule against some of the Midwest's better teams. The women swimmers, breaking records left and right, chalked up a first-ever victory at Cornell.

But perhaps the most spectacular achievement of an athlete is that of ski team and crew member Diana Sabot '95, Rufus Choate Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa, chosen as one of this year's 32 Rhodes Scholars.

Occom's tribe pays avisit; one U.S.women earns a Rhodes.