Buildings Spring Up and Athletes Get Down

Divers Notes and Observations

In the spring a young sidewalk superintendent's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of cranes and bulldozers. Two of the Pizzigalli Company's finest are currently poised a good 40 feet up on the edge of the foundation of the Moore psychology building, while a bucket loader on the floor seems to be returning, via a parade of dump trucks, all the dirt that we thought we remembered they dumped into those depths last winter. The foundation looks wide and deep enough for a much bigger building—but we recall that it will also accommodate a northern terminal of the steam tunnel, which already has made a sharp right turn and is under the lawn of Winifred Raven House.

Down by the river, two concrete piers seem to have hardened, one with the sheet piling yet to be pulled out. On the Vermont side there's an agitator—not a disgruntled sandhog, but an underwater device to keep the Connecticut from freezing up around the far side's coffer dam, and also, we imagine, to re-direct any ice floes that normally cruise along beneath the Ledyard Bridge this time of year. Everyone was reassured that West Wheelock Street was not going to be widened too much, but it still seems to us that Sunday drivers waiting for the Main Street traffic light to turn green will be close enough to St. Thomas church to be able to join the congregation in the more resonant hymns.

Outside of our supervisory range, we hear that the pace has been quickened to move archives and special collections from Baker basement to their new home in Webster—to enable head librarian Margaret Otto and her several committees to get cracking on plans and decisions that will affect the new library. The siding on the Roth Center for Jewish Life has just had its first coat of white paint, making the Center begin to look more stately, like many of its neighbors along Occom Ridge. Now that the building is on site, parking doesn't seem to be the problem that caused earlier concern, but with the various supplier vehicles all around, it wasn't easy for us to make an estimate.

Thanks to the energy of Professor Barry Scherr, the new Program in Jewish Studies, replacing a more informal minor, will now more closely resemble the established array of interdisciplinary studies in the curriculum's regular academic departments, and include courses in religion, history, philosophy, language and literature, sociology, and political science. News of academe also includes the appointment of government professor Michael Mastanduno as director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. Mastanduno, on the faculty since 1987, succeeds Professors Gene Lyons and Leonard Rieser '44, who have been sharing the acting directorship of the Center's three institutes, on the United Nations, on Canada and the United States, and on Arctic Studies. We attended the inaugural lecture of the new appointee to another honor named for John Dickey, the Third Century Professorship of the Social Sciences—that of ethno-historian Colin Calloway. His subtitle was "Why American History and Dartmouth College Both Need the Indian." Calloway described an event of 1779-1783 that in its ownwaywas as critical a historical landmark as the American Revolution itself—namely, the smallpox that originated in Mexico, spread across the Rio Grande, and killed literally millions of Native Americans, destroying entire villages in the process. Calling for new attention to the scope of the epidemic and the profound effects it had on the history of the continent, Calloway explained that without such understandings, American history is, very simply, incomplete.

You may recall reading in "I Have Come This Far," in last month's issue of this magazine, that Professor Calloway looked for approval to Robert Bennett '93, a Lakota Indian, every time he mentioned a Sioux or a Lakota reference in Native American Studies class. If you have any friends in Huntsville, Alabama, you might ask them if Bob Bennett has their approval. At this stage in Bennett's career, the Huntsville Stars, a class AA farm team of the Oakland A's, are the beneficiaries of the 90 mph fastball that he developed here on Red Rolfe Field. This also looks like the year when another of Coach Bob Whalen's stars will permanently make a regular line-up, the Pittsburgh Pirates' Mark Johnson and Mark was class of '90. It takes time to earn the major leagues. Mike Remlinger '88 is still doggedly at it; and we hope that the personable Bennett doesn't take that long. We're rooting, too, for quarterback Jay Fiedler '94, who spent two years holding the clipboard for a couple of Eagles coaches who had little confidence in his ability to do anything else. According to the Valley News, the Ivy record-holder for touchdown passes has a good chance to break in with Tampa Bay.

As the spring sports contingents leave their snowless training grounds for still snow-clad Hanover—with varying success against teams that have been competing all year round—there are other individual post-winter-season achievements. Adam Nelson '97 hurled the shot 5 8 feet 6 inches to win his fourth IC4A title. Courtney duBois '98 became the first woman diver in Dartmouth history to make the NCAA championships. The women's ice hockey team made the ECACs, only to lose in the first round to the eventual winner, Northeastern; defenseman Amy Coelho '97 was all-Ivy; and the Green's all-time high scorer Gretchen Ulion '94, along with outstanding goalie Sarah Tueting '98, have been chosen for the U.S. national women's team.

It only remains to recognize the Dartmouth senior whose name is practically synonymous with "scholarathlete." Basketball's Sea Lonergan '97, whose 3.85 in chemistry is practically synonymous with 1,651 points over four years, was named second team GTE academic All-America (he was first team last year). Lonergan is the Green's second leading all-time scorer, and the first and only threetime all-Ivy selection since the League was christened in 1956.

A reader sends us a relevant clipping from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, about the speaker of the Florida House, who, "a steadfast religious conservative, has risen to his post within the Republican party by promising not to turn his personal convictions into the House's agenda....He has promised that every House member, Republican or Democrat, will have an opportunity to have his or her bills heard....He says that in his new system, his is but one of 120 votes."

The name of this politically pureprincipled paragon? Daniel Webster.