The Dean Hopes for Sober Places

Divers Notes and Observations

Several miserable weeks away from the first day of spring, the Dartmouth Wind Symphony played "Music From Warm Places," colorful and comforting selections from Italy, Spain, and Mexico. It was billed as a "cabinfever reliever," and was a home-and-home arrangement with an equally gifted ensemble from the Boston Conservatory, where we imagine the weather has been equally rotten. The music and particularly the performances of Salvatore Spataro and Bridget Canniff, two talented '96 soloists lifted our spirits considerably, only to be dropped back into the dumps by the late news that Princeton had handed the Green not just one but three setbacks, two of them close, in hockey and both men's and women's basketball. Pandemonium reigned in Leede Arena when earlier this year Dartmouth broke Penn's record of 48 consecutive Ivy basketball victories. But the statisticians tell us that at Princeton, Dartmouth has won just once in 26 years; at Penn, the same.

Fortunately, since we have begun this column in the not-always-wonderful world of sport, we do have encouraging news from other arenas of athletic endeavor. Though their foreign legions helped perpetuate UVM's too-long tradition of triumph at Dartmouth's Winter Carnival, the Green skiers broke into the winners' circle last month at Williams, and with a little more depth could give a good account of themselves at the forthcomingNCAAs in Bozeman, Montana. Alpine prodigyjen Collins '99 is winning everything in sight.

The summer Olympics will again see Bob Kempainen '88 in the marathon. He won the 1996 Olympic Trials and a cash prize of $100,000 in Charlotte, North Carolina, last month. Like all Dartmouth track and cross-country competitors, Kempainen trained on the golf course's Freshman Hill and the East Wheelock Street hill. There can't be any nastier uphill grind in Atlanta to keep him from a medal. It was Leverone's turn to host the Heptagonals this winter, and the Green women, dominating in the distances and the weights, copped a strong second place.

Just after Rockefeller Center's final Dartmouth/WMUR opinion poll forecast the final primary results almost on the nose, the Valley News's cartoon showed a crowded van speeding south past a sign, "Will the last Presidential candidate to leave New Hampshire please turn off the TV." The best comic relief from the not-always-exemplary campaign, however, was provided at a packed-house Spaulding by the Capitol Steps, five irresistible Beltway comics and one continuous laugh. Only days later, we were enchanted by the voices of the 12-man group Chanticleer, and their astonishing arrangements of numbers from fourteenth-century plainsong through Renaissance and modern folksongs to rousing present-day Gospel. If either of these groups is ever traveling within 100 miles of where you are, don't fail to catch them. In a more serious vein, we took in a discussion on the nation's media, entitled "Just the Facts: Journalism and the Public Interest." Are publications and newscasts "watchdogs" or "lap dogs?" Is there a difference between objectivity and detachment? Are editors far more concerned about politics than their readers are? One of the participants observed that "journalists are generally dull if they try to get serious about their profession," and we agreed.

A few more reasonably significant news items. Amid zero weather, there was a ceremony down by the Connecticut to break ground for the new Ledyard Bridge, completion date announced for October 1998. A Mohegan Indian, Sara Harris, has been accepted early decision in the class of 2000, first in her tribe since Samson Occom helped get the place started. Sarah was one of upwards of 11,000 applications for the millennial class, a new record. The lowest tuition increase in 30 years, 4.42 percent, was announced by the Trustees at their last meeting. A hundred volunteers, manning and womanning this year's student Alumni Fund Telethon, signed up more than 5,300 pledges for a record total of $518,246. Funding for the new Center for Jewish Life is complete, and building is expected to start later this spring. And the members of seven campus minority organizations formed a new student group, Colors, to nurture respect in a diverse community.

It is only our humble opinion, but we have to hand it to at least one individual in the administration who refuses to be set back by setbacks. Dean Lee Pelton's target has been an elusive one: social life on campus. This has been dominated for years by the fraternity system, source of many great Dartmouth traditions but also, inevitably, of a host of behavioral ills, the major one of which is alcohol abuse. Committees, task forces, surveys, experts have achieved little but confirm the inexorable evidence that there is alcohol abuse at Dartmouth and that it arises in what to our prehistoric ears is now called the "Greek" system. Whatever it s called, it is not doing either the students well-being or the College's reputation any good.

We think that sooner or later the Dean had to conclude that he was not going to remove fraternities utterly from campus social life. His most earnest and well-intentioned attempts to provide a non-alcohol-dominated alternative, in a small community like Hanover, have proven inadequate. There seemed to be no way to engineer a 180-degree change in character of youthful male and female humanity other than some sky-shaking event on their own personal roads to Damascus. But now, after three years of study and planning, the Trustees have approved a test of his suggestion of how to reorganize residential life at Dartmouth. Beginning this fall, one cluster of dormitories will be set aside to accommodate some 250 students of all classes, plus an in-residence senior faculty member a dean to assist and advise students with course work, academic planning, and personal counseling; several dining, seminar, study, and meeting rooms; and its own budget. Linking social and intellectual and residential life, with outside-of-the-classroom experiences relating more closely to those inside, will "enrich and enliven the defining experiences of college life: student/faculty interaction and student/student, interaction. And possibly give many students a graspable concern with more to do and think about than the next weekend's beer blasts. The cluster opposite the Berry Gym and the tennis courts has been selected for the experiment, and it is fair to assume that the distinguished alumni for whom these dorms are named—Bill Andres '29, Bill Morton '32, and Charlie Zimmerman '23 all former Trustees, would have enthusiastically seconded the current Board's hopes for its success.