Casting the Net

Eternal Flames

I SHOULD LIKE TO ROUNDLY EX-coriate you for your absurd trashing of Internet ["A Night Out on the Net," Winter]. It doesn't take a genius or an adolescent to find rapidly the many worthwhile informative portions which greatly enhance the knowledge of any literate person. I know because I live in a remote section of Washington state and it is both expensive and time consuming to travel to the libraries of Seattle and the University of Washington.

Cost is not an issue. People buy computers mostldy for word processing and record keeping. Internet is just a bonus, and since even I, at age 77, have more or less mastered the simple maneuvers to use the system, there's no use discouraging others should they be so inclined.

You get what you look for. You do not read the graffiti on the public lavatory walls. Why spend your time on the Net reading the sort of remarks that have spoiled Citizens Band radio?

You are probably too young to remember how the print media reacted to news broadcasts on radio in the early 1920s and the same with TV in the early post World War II days, but they learned about the more rapid spread of information, and you'll learn it all over again because you know better than I that computers won't go away but will be our main information dispensers for a long time to come.

CHOLMAN@OLYMPUS.NET

YOUR ARTICLE ON SPENDING THE night out on the information superhighway was most interesting, especially in light of the editorial on Kiewit's fundraising attempts and Terrance R. Brady's letter on the lack of Internet connectivity for alumni. While Dartmouth has a home page on the World Wide Web which is accessible using Mosaic or other WWW browsers, it isn't enough.Why isn't there an alumni home page from the Dartmouth page? Why stop at just an alumni home page?

With more and more secondaryschools around the world gaining access to the Internet, the opportunities for recruiting future generations of students and alums will only increase. A recruiting home page from the main Dartmouth home page would be beneficial. Adding recruitment and alumni home pages would be a good first step toward better communication with Dartmouth's global family.

In terms of content for these pages, how about on line applications for admission or status reports on fundraising efforts? Fill in your own content.

Who knows, it could lead to an online version of the DAM (with or without the ads.) If the Alumni Relations office needs volunteers, count me in (virtually, of course).

72417.157@COMPUSERVE.COM

The address for theDartmouth home page ishttp://www.dartmouth.edu/DartmouthHome.htm.ExpectAlumni Relations andAlumni Magazine pagesin the near future.

YOU MENTIONED the University of Minnesota's Gopher but omitted Dartmouth's own contribution, Fetch. This neat program really makes it easy for Mac users to grab a file of useful (or worthless) information on someone else's machine somewhere out there on the Internet and effortlessly transport it onto one's own hard disk. Fetch was written byjim Matthews and is licensed by the Trustees of Dartmouth.

Were it my decision, on opening Fetch it would play a few bars of "Dear Old Dartmouth" or "Dartmouth Undying."

LIBERMAN@RIDGEFIELD.SDR.SLB.COM

AFTER A 15 YEAR CAREER AS A firefighter, among other things, I'm going to law school at the University of Illinois. I discovered the Internet in January 1994. It wasn't long before I came across the Internet Relay Chat line, and, quite by accident, a channel of people from Slovakia and the Czech Republic. A few of them speak English. One, a 23 year old woman named Dagmar, works at the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic as a computer research and information specialist. She talks on IRC during her work time, which I was amused to discover a great many Europeans do.

Because of my new contacts, I spent six weeks in Slovakia last summer. In Kosice, the second largest city, I helped a Constitutional Court judge edit an article he was working on for a law journal, and even edited the country's constitution (unofficially, but Dagmar will use my version to send out to other countries). I worked with a few Slovakians on their English, helped cut through some legal red tape for an American guy and a Slovak woman who were wanting to get married, and even played matchmaker for another Slovak couple. A few of those people will be my friends for life, and I have no doubt that my visit (and of course all the conversations on IRC) contributed in some small way to the sum total of international understanding and good will.

BWASON@UXA.CSO.UIUC.EDU

THANKS FOR THE KIND WORDS IN the editorial ["Could Dartmouth Lose Its Computer Dominance?", Winter] .You're right on target about the need for major capital spending to increase network speed; let's hope the administration sees it that way too.

It's probably churlish to quibble with an editorial that says how brilliant and underpaid we are, but I have one minor correction. The article says that Blitz Mail is maxed out with 90,000 messages a day; that's old news by now. Blitz first reached the 100,000 message mark on October 25, and reached 111,000 messages a day by the end of fall term. Blitz traffic has been increasing by 40 to 50 percent a year, and the growth shows no signs of slowing. I have no doubt that a year from now 100,000 messages will be considered a quiet day.

KIEWIT WIZARD DAVID.GELHAR@DARTMOUTH.EDU

Heavenly Booth

IF Plato'S "Heaven OF Forms" exists, "Tales from the Info Booth" [October] reflects what has to be the Idea of the Fully Developed Dartmouth Mentality.

It was a joy to watch Everett Wood '38 in his first five Tales tread back and forth so lovingly along the Old Dartmouth/New Dartmouth axis. These first five create the mood for the realization of the Sixth Tale. Although Everett Wood states he had "not heard before, or since," that "Dartmouth is a sacred place," I'm sure he and most of us have felt that it is.

Despite th e ongoing loss of old traditions and the emergence of new diversities, perhaps the reason for Dartmouth's endurance and continuing unique appeal lies in its sacredness.

My sources in Hanover, both from the left and the right, report that "Tales" so beautifully reflects the Dartmouth spirit and soul and so effectively dissolves the old polarities that it has been chosen to be included in the diverse Parkhurst Canon and the structured Canon of the Hopkins Institute.

And, as Winston Churchill and Everett Wood stated, "It's all true, or it ought to be!"

WAYNE, PENNSYLVANIA

The Military Minority

PERHAPS I'M ONE OF THE FEW readers who managed to stick with Mr.Frommer's disjointed article on the ROTC at Dartmouth, all the way to the end ["You Thought ROTC Was Dead?",November].

One thing that stood out as I read the piece was the fact that 25 Dartmouth students are currently involved in the ROTC program. Out of curiosity, I asked the registrar's office what the current enrollment at Dartmouth is. The answer I got was 4,850. Assuming that the sexual preferences of the student body are reflective of that of the rest of society, that would put the number of homosexual students at Dartmouth at about 145.

The point, obviously, is that those who choose (maybe it's not a choice who could say?) a military lifestyle are clearly in the minority at Dartmouth. It seems to me that it is intellectually insupportable on the part of the faculty and Trustees (although the Trustees seem to go both ways on the issue) to want to abolish ROTC at Dartmouth and thereby discriminate against the military lifestyle. The same people who vociferously demand protections for homosexuals appear callously indifferent to the sensitivities of those in the military.

Unless there is some higher cosmic virtue in being a homosexual than being a soldier, it is clear that both groups deserve the same protections. Or perhaps neither group deserves any protection. I confess to some confusion on this point.

BELTON, MINNESOTA

DARTMOUTH HAS WAFFLED ON the issue of "whether or not ROTC" for just about long enough. The vacillation regarding its presence makes it clear that the College and the Trustees are not genuinely committed to the non discrimination policy.

As a recently "out" gay person, I cannot support this policy. The Clinton administration's lame "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue" policy has already caused an increase in the number of witch hunts to locate and discharge suspected homosexuals. It should be understood that even under that policy, an individual who is reasonably suspected of being a homosexual can be questioned by a superior and is subject to discharge.

As a former Marine Corps officer, I was appalled (and embarrassed for the army) at the lax atmosphere that passes for military training in Dartmouth ROTC. It is unfortunate that First Sergeant Damm teaches his cadets from the perspective that they're only students whom he "can't teach...in the same way as people who have been in the military for years." Ironically, when these students are commissioned after their senior year, their troops and peers will expect them to perform as though they had been in the military for years.

I thoroughly enjoyed my military service and would not trade those years any more than I would trade my years in Hanover. Having discovered my own homosexuality after leaving active service, I have since resigned my commission specifically because I do not believe one can argue for change while living a lie. That is precisely what the College and the Trustees are doing by retaining a discriminatory (and rather slack) program while waiting for tolerance to prevail in society.

WALTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS

I WAS SOMEWHAT SURPRISED TO SEE a Dartmouth ROTC student describe the program so honestly: "cowboys and Indians for adults." This quote demonstrates my point that the military has no place in a college better than I could have myself. It shows pretty clearly the racist world view of the military "(the good guys are white, the enemies are Indians). I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I think about the weekly current events discussions led by the sergeant. It also shows that this student, at least, still thinks about war as a game of conquest and missions, eerily echoing the video game bombing footage of the Persian Gulf War. Finally, it represents the kind of machismo malebonding of the military that having openly gay individuals in the army threatens so much.

As a teacher in a Los Angeles middle school, I am angry that my students are being told in seventh and eighth grades by their Junior ROTC instructor that the best way to get an education is through the armed forces. I am not angry at him for telling the students this; I am angry because it is true. Why does the military have $250,000 a year to spend on Dartmouth tuition for 25 students while my public school with 1,300 students has leaking roofs, no air-conditioning (or heating), near unusable bathrooms, boarded over windows, and insufficient textbooks?

If Dartmouth has any aspiration of reaching its lofty goals it should not allow the American armed forces and its ROTC program access to its facilities.

Los Angeles, Caljfornia

The Baseball Picture

I WOULD LIKE TO REFINE THE Location of the photographer of the picture printed on page 26 of the November 1994 issue. In his extended caption, Ken Burns says in part, "I imagine the photographer sticking his bulky machine out the window of a college building to record this moment..."

It records a moment in the 1882 Dartmouth Harvard game. From the internal evidence it was taken from the southwest balcony window of the Congregational Church which stood near the corner of Main and Wentworth Streets on what is now the lawn in front of Sanborn House. It was built in 1795. Although spiritually associated with the College for many years, by 1882 it was not a College building. It survived two or three renovations and the erection of Baker Library but burned to the ground in 1931. The congregation built a new edifice on North College Street just beyond the SAE House in 1934. Both the 1795 and the 1934 buildings have long been referred to as "The White Church," perhaps because it has gone through five name changes. When Fannie Lou Hamer came to Hanover during the peak of the Civil Rights movement she was momentarily disconcerted when informed she would be speaking in the "White" church. In 1882 its official name was The Congregational Church at Dartmouth College. Its present home on North College Street is The Church of Christ at Dartmouth College.

EAST THETFORD, VERMONT

KEN Burns's Marvelous 1882 photograph of baseball on the Green was not taken "out the window of a College building" as he writes, but, rather, I believe, from the old White Church that stood on the corner behind the backstop. From the elevated perspective, maybe the photographer even lugged his "bulky machine" up to the steeple.

Hillsboroogh, California

Leave Salinger Alone

I AM VERY CONCERNED THAT THE Alumni Magazine made a serious mistake in printing Jane Hodges's wellwritten but misguided article, "Our Search for J.D. Salinger" [Summer], which is little more than Hard Copy journalism with a literary bent. How many articles about dogging Salinger are going to be written, I wonder, in the flimsy, facile guise of a search for self? This sort of article might have had merit 20 years ago, but not any longer. Salinger's whereabouts is not a matter of national concern; he is not a governmental official; there is no public interest in the man as opposed to his published work that would justify intruding on his life; idle public curiosity is not by itself sufficient.

If Mr. Salinger chooses to live his life in solitude, in what way is it Ms. Hodges's or anyone else's business to disturb him?

I think the magazine owes Salinger an apology.My guess is that will never happen.

New York, New York

Dickey as Prophet

RE: President Freedman's ARTICLE on Dartmouth's Great Issues ["Presidential Range," October]: After four years at Amherst, two at Tuck, and three at the University of Colorado, the MOST meaningful course I have ever taken is Dartmouth's Great Issues. It specifically opened doors on international issues years before the subjects appeared in academia. President Dickey surely was a prophet!

I particularly remember the presence and presentations of Charles Malik (Lebanese ambassador to the UN) and Alexander Kerensky. I am now a professor of international business because of Great Issues.

Denver, Colorado

Creation as Fabrication

EVALYN BENNETT SAYS SHE IS "astounded" that the Creationist theory of evolution is not taught at Dartmouth ["Letters," October], Anything else "must be myth," she says.

I am astounded that anyone could graduate from Dartmouth believing in Creationism. The Bible was written by men who believed the earth was flat, that it was the center of the entire universe, and that the sun (and stars!) revolved around it every 24 hours.

It was heresy not to believe this. As late as 1633, Galileo was forced to kneel in the Vatican and deny his claim that it was the earth that went around the sun, not vice versa. Should we ask Dartmouth students to learn things they will have to unlearn later to become educated adults?

All religions are based on faith. But faith need not require believing what your God-given intelligence tells you cannot be true.

The stories in the Bible are an inspiration to mankind. The teachings of Jesus Christ are so sound, they do not need any supernatural embellishments.

Virginia Beach, Virginia

Either Evalyn P. Bennett '83 never took a course taught by faculty in the Religion Department or Professors Berthold, Penner, and company have been replaced by a crew of fund amentalistic panderers (which seems unlikely, even for the "new" Dartmouth). How else is this narrowminded religion tract masking as a letter to the editor to be explained?

Creationism is not a topic to be treated lightly, much less dismissed as the stuff of unlettered fools. Bennett's cry from the wilderness of Idaho makes it appear so.It ignores the complex theological, scientific, historical, and literary issues which for decades have informed serious discussion of this topic by mainstream believers and others who wish to think about what they believe. Apparently Bennett does not, preferring faith swallowed whole and unseasoned by reason.

Bennett is right, but for the wrong reasons. The role of a Creator (whether Yahweh, Brahma, Allah, the African Bumba, the Polynesian Hainuwalie, the Egyptian Khnum, or Whoever) is the most profound "riddle of creation." It is hard to imagine that it does not receive attention in the Alumni College program albeit probably not the kind of attention Bennett would wish.

BILLINGS, MONTANA

Wrong Bates

HARRY BATES MAY HAVE BEEN IN the class of 1879 but Harry Bates Thayer certainly was, and I don't think he went to Thayer School. Herm Hollerith (Columbia School of Mines 1879) certainly was the one who put the Census Bureau onto punched card accounting.

Right class, wrong reference.

WEEKSJ@AOL.COM

Supporting DisabledStudents

THE NOVEMBER LETTER FROM President Freedman thanking Dartmouth friends for their demostrations of caring during his illness was a reminder to me of the tendencies of this society to demonstrate greater generosity toward those who have already "made it." Most persons who experience disability or chronic illness are unable to experience the outpouring of concern often accorded to wellknown figures such as President Freedman.

I am one of only two donors who have given non token sums to the student disability programs. Contributions to these programs go for several important purposes: (1) to purchase assistive technology, such as laptop computers for deaf students; (2) to provide a fund to pay note takers, typists, signlanguage interpreters, and other directassistance providers; and (3) to provide various mobility and accessibility aids and improvements. The class of '98 has 11 students with disabilities already identified, but the funds to support their needs are tight.

Who will join in directing their con tributions to the programs that support students with disabilities?

ERA@UCAR.EDU

White Male Views

WHILE I RESPECT MR. BARCHILON'S right to his own views ("I wonder how much more of this crap you expect white male alumni to put up with"), he should speak only for himself.

As a member of that white male alumni group and of approximately the same age as Mr. Barchilon I want to go on record as having strongly favored and supported the admission of women, the initiation of black studies, the passing of the Indian symbol, and other forward thinking and enlightened steps Dartmouth has taken.

Boston, Massachusetts

Stupid Ha If time

Last October 14-15,I Returned to Hanover for a class of '42 mini reunion and the Yale game. It was my first visit since my 30th reunion in 1972. It was an exciting time and enjoyable experience with one big exception for me personally and possibly for a few hundred other alumni attending the game. Of course the Dartmouth band played (and I sang) the familiar songs such as "Men of Dartmouth" and "As the Backs Go Tearing By," and it played them in the old tradition. Yale did not send its band, so a great share of the celebration consisted of a drum major in a Scottish costume who couldn't even spin a baton and a lambast of Yale by some nitwit on a microphone listing ten insults to the Yale alumni who came up for the game. With each lambast, only a snicker or two could be heard. Nobody thought it was funny and I was totally embarrassed by this stupid performance.

Because my weekend was otherwise so enjoyable, I plan to come back next season (Cornell weekend) all die way from Alexandria, Minnesota.

I hope Cornell brings the band so I won't suffer anymore of this year's halftime nonsense.

ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA

The Phantom Knows

Tyler Stableford'les Artic on buildering around campus [Winter] is an excellent reminder of all the fun to be had on the Plain when one is not tied down by more earthly pursuits.

wall, we got on our boards and had the ran of the year down the mountain.

Since I was on the ski patrol, I had to be at the top of the mountain the next morning at eight. I laughed as everyone tried to figure out who my alter ego was.

Lest the old traditions fail, I am always

RELATED TO YOUR BUILDERING article (interesting story), you could recall a rescue by Dick Durrance '37 (and others, I believe) of a parachutist. Shortly after WW II, the parachutist as a stunt landed atop Devil's Tower in Wyoming and couldn't climb down.

New York, New York

Bestselling Obits

I REALIZE THIS IS A LATE LETTER to respond to the September issue but having re-read an article in that issue the other day, I just wanted to thank Suzanne Leonard '96 for writing the interesting and excellently written article "Knowing the Dead" ["On the Hill"].

Good writing is a gift that is not widely held, but I would have to think that Suzanne was right in front to receive it. Obituaries are not generally front-page news, but with her ability, I believe a book of them would make the bestseller list no matter how many apparently empty lives there might be. So many writers and commentators today think they have to be cute to get the public's attention that it was gratifying to read her straightforward, factual, and flowing article.

Never mind any full folder, Suzanne, you stick around and continue writing. With your talent, it will not be long before you have a large following.

Pottersville, New Jersey

Game of Life

I enjoyed The Trivial Pursuit of following the "Big Green Graduating Game" while relaxing on a beach outside Caracas, Venezuela. However,I nearly choked on my cervezita when I reached the disappointing ending: a glassy eyed Yuppie couple, waving money bags in a semi-Fascist salute above the ultimate goal, "LUCRATIVE JOB OFFERS." Surely for those of us who survived four years of Dartmouth's Chutes and Ladders, the road leads higher than the shallow Candy Land vision presented in the illustration. In a simpler sense, this version omits the many graduates who Go to the Head of the Class with further study following their spin on the Hanover board. In a deeper sense, we all come to recognize (sooner or later) that the Big Green Graduating Game is only a small loop in Milton Bradley's greater scheme of things: The Game of Life.

Westwood, New Jersey

Fred's Signal

Yes, Frederic"Fred" T.Rosen blatt '66 did die on September 22, 1993. I and more people than could fit into the Temple Israel in Minneapolis testified to that. Since the cause of his death is a matter of public record, it is permissible to tell his many Dartmouth friends that Freddie killed himself.

Fred's final message to all of us is that anyone, especially men, can successfully do themselves in. Usually, as was Fred, they are in desperate throes of depression over some loss or even because of mysterious chemical substances unfortunately deficient inside our brains.

I know. I have suffered depression that has threatened my own relationships and career. My only regret is that I never knew things had gotten so bad for Fred. His unfortunate death can serve as a signal to all of us how important it is to listen for the cries in the wilderness of the desperate so we can be there to help them in any way we have the power. Depression is curable yet it kills.

I will miss Fred's happy smile and his caring ways, I was proud he was a Dartmouth graduate from my class.

Minneapolis, Minnesota