Skeptics Proved Wrong

What do men on the moon, an underwater tunnel linking two countries, a less-than-four-minute mile, an artificial heart, and coeducation at Dartmouth have in common? All were considered impossible before they were done, and all were topics of the spring term's week long 1996 Senior Symposium titled "They Said It Couldn't Be Done."

Keynote speaker was NASA chief historian Roger Launius. "Fifty percent of Americans in 1949 believed nothing would ever be sent to space during their lifetimes," he said.

Peter Behr, former manager/ consultant for the Channel Tunnel project, noted that there had been several unsuccessful attempts to dig between England and France before the Chunnel was comleted in 1994. It now receives 45 percent of the traffic between Dover and Calais.

Roger Bannister, who broke a world record in 1954 by running the mile in under four minutes, said thathe "in a small way, changed the way people perceive human limits. " Now a medical doctor, Bannister claimed that "there is no physical record that cannot be broken; the real limit is not physical but mental."

The panel "Stand as Sister Stands by Brother" got five alumnae Karen Turner '76, Deborah Wedgeworth '76, Donna Bascom '73, Mary Donovan '74, and Christine Nicholson '74 to talk about another impossibility achieved: Dartmouth coeducation during its formative years.