Dr. Wheelock's Journal
Divers Notes & Observations
TOWARD THE END OF THIS YEAR'S Senior Symposium, the alwaysapt theme of which was "Tradition," history professor Jere Daniell '55 said about Dartmouth, "There is a long-standing tradition of complaining about the lack of tradition." The latest one being bemoaned, specifically by the grand old seniors, is the ageold (42 years') custom of celebrating Commencement on the Baker lawn. Just as Eisenhower's visit to the campus in 1953 caused the ceremonies to be moved there from the traditional Bema, President Clinton's arrival this month will require that the next step be Memorial Field. The '95s ultimately did not march on Parkhurst, or observe any of the traditional beefs other than indignant letters to The Dartmouth. They were eventually persuaded by cooler heads who pointed out the obvious difficulties to their friends and families of seeing and hearing the goings-on in front of Baker from an uncomfortable folding chair halfway back to the Inn porch.
Parenthetically, we note that Commencement couldn't possibly have been returned to the Bema. You may recall that a year ago last March, this column noted that "in his latest physical exam, the President's doctors reported that he was allergic to pine trees." In her recent bestseller, On the Edge, author Elizabeth Drew wrote, on page 410, "Asked why Clinton was worried about New Hampshire at that point, the aide replied, 'You always have to be worried about New Hampshire.'"
The honorary-degree committee has outdone itself this year, including two Nobel winners, the Poet Laureate of the United States, the president of Duke University, and the president of the United Negro College Fund.
Those in charge of the appearances of the distinguished in recent weeks haven't stinted either. This term's Montgomery Fellow is Mexican professor and novelist Jorge Castenada, who spoke amusingly and lucidly to a full house at Cook Auditorium on "Mexican Meltdown," the pre- and post-NAFTA economic, political, and social crises that have beset Mexico in both the Salinas and Zedillo administrations. The keynoter at a pair of overlapping conferences, one on Environmental Ethics in the Twenty-First Century, and the other on women's political involvement since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (in the year she was born) was former Congresswoman Bella Abzug, known to us old New Yorkers for her fiery presentations and her assortment of audacious hats. Speakers at the first conference included Geraldine Ferraro, the first major-party woman vice-presidential candidate, and Jamie Gorelick, U.S. deputy attorney-general—and at the second, the environmental warhorse Barry Commoner. Lest we neglect the arts, let us also mention a talk by Boston University professor of art Keith Morgan, to introduce the Hood's beautifully mounted exhibition, "Shaping An American Landscape," the paintings, etchings, architectural drawings, and landscape designs of the American genius Charles A. Piatt and the appearance, to receive a Dartmouth Film Award, of James Ivory, director of Howard's End, A Room witha View, and many other films, at a preview of his new Jefferson in Paris. The capacity crowd at Spaulding for that preview will be the largest in Hanover, we are sure, until the 16,000 expected to fill the football stadium for Bill Clinton—unless Economist John Galbraith, who will be here in early May to speak and to award the first Bernard D. Nossiter '47 Prize in Journalism, is himself awarded a larger milieu than Cook Auditorium, at which his audience of a couple of years ago practically spilled out onto Tuck Drive.
We repeat ourselves, but on the subject of journalism, we can't help again applauding The Dartmouth for its excellent columns of late—on finding a common ground between diversity and unity; on the futility of Harvard-bashing; on the non-eventness of the arrival of Playboy's cameras; on free speech; on fraternities; and particularly on the editors' recent review of Dartmouth's political history.
We would like to offer an observation of our own. In an unusually large turnout, the students chose the number-one men's tennis player for president of the Student Assembly. The young man seems to have appeal as a person with leadership qualities of other than the policy-wonk variety. The College we attended some eons ago had the same name as Dartmouth, but the members of its leadership—then called Paleopituswere generally those whose personalities stood out for their observed prominence on the trail or on the playing field. The campus might use more of such men and women in Assembly office these days, if they could keep their studies up along with the rigors of practice and travel. These people could relieve the campus of a lot of the internecine wrangling and cat-fighting, the purpose of which seems mainly to fill up the letters columns of The D.
Never was Casey Stengel's hallowed adage—"Good pitching can always beat good hitting, and vice versa"—more true than at two recent Ivy League double-headers on successive days. Bob Whalen's Big Green freshman and sophomore pitching staff took three out of four from Brown, but that one loss was nearer a football score, 014. None of the Ancient Eight baseballers is running away with the league, except possibly Yale, with whom Dartmouth split a weekend pair and barely kept in the running. All we could think of was A Leagueof Their Own when we went over to Sachem Field to watch the women soft-ballers take a pair from Colby-Sawyer—but since then, they beat Penn twice and Cornell once, to stand 4-5 in the Ivies.
Both lacrosse teams started the season like gangbusters, the men undefeated until they ran into a determined Cornell and ninth-ranked Brown—and the women, who after topping first-ranked Princeton, let down against Penn State (eighthranked) for their only loss to this date. Led by five spirited seniors, including Hanover's own all-everything Lauren Holleran, the women have a way of blasting up the score in the first half, then letting opponents threaten to catch up—until the very final minutes of the second half when the Green puts the game away. Bryan Kim '95 shot a 78 and back-to-back 75s to take the Ivy League golf championship. Both tennis teams are still in their Ivy races as this is written, and squash's Sascha Greatrex '95, first team All-America, was also honored as a scholar-athlete by the Women's Intercollegiate Squash Racquets Association.
Coach Ron Keenhold, whose license plate reads "DIVE," recently asked our editor why this column doesn't carry more news about a sport in which he has tutored many champions, since its heading begins with "Divers notes..." Reminds us of the hoariest of four-liners: "Why does a duck go under water?" "For divers reasons." "Why does he come back up?" "For sundry reasons."
