Public Life

As skeletons go, the admission by Congressional candidate Bill Yellowtail Jr. '69 that he once played the wrong note on a trumpet at a Dartmouth concert didn't even seem worth mentioning. It turned put it wasn't.

Yellowtail, who lost in his bid in the November election to serve as the state's first Native-American member of Congress, told a local newspaper, earlier in the campaign that his "biggest mistake" was screwing up at the concert. That was before voters found out that Yellowtail had done even worse things at Dartmouth than play B flat.

At the end of his sophomore year, Yeilowtail, then 19, met with the dean, who ad-vised him to take a couple of years off from the College because of poor grades. Over the next few days a despondent Yellowtail stole $2,000 worth of Equipment from a camera store in Hanover. He was caught, pleaded guilty, received a year on probation, and was eventually pardoned. Dartmouth suspended him for two years, but he was later readmitted and graduated in 1971. "It was totally contrary to my upbringing," he says of the incident. "Totally out of char this day! cannot I was having a tough time."

Despite his early academicand legal troubles, he says he enjoyed Dartmouth. "My fellow freshmen often challenged me to come up with proof of my name," yellowtail recalls, laughing. "Of course,; there was a general disappointment that I didn't wear moccasins and eagle feathers.' He majored in geography, with an emphasis in environmental studies. He served as a regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before the House race, in which he garnered the percent of the vote (the winner Walked off with 53 percent).

Yellowtail offers himsel fas proof that Dartmouth is fulfilling its original mission to help Americans. "I had a tough time, but Dartmouth stuck with me, and stuck with Dartmouth's opportunity for American Indians."

Yellowtail overcame Dartmouth mistakes.