Article

Elevator Going Up, AstroTurf Going Down

SEPTEMBER 1997 "E. Wheelock."
Article
Elevator Going Up, AstroTurf Going Down
SEPTEMBER 1997 "E. Wheelock."

Divers Notes and Observations

IN VIOLATION of the respected maxim, the soon-to-be new Ledyard Bridge just changed contractors in the middle of a stream of alleged non-progress. But the new outfit has already positioned four mighty plate girders edging off the Vermont side of the river, and it looks as if the pier in the middle of the Connecticut and the abutment on the New Hampshire side are ready to receive four more each.

Elsewhere in our sidewalk superintendency, the elevator in the center of the site of the Moore psychology building is well, simply, going up. Dignified old Sherman House, the adjacent its structure, is getting a complete facelift, as though its future function will be as chaperone to the new arrival. Two old elms had to make way for what seems to be an underground passage from the east corner of Baker to a gutted Webster, the future climatecontroled home of the library's countless archives and special collections and following the transfer of which will begin the construction of the new Berry Library.

Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations Stan Colla '64 hailed Dartmouth's biggest Alumni Fund year ever, just above $l6 million, roughly a 16-percent gain over 1996. Colla especially noted the leadership of the fund's new director, Jenny Williams '85 (ah! youth) and of its chairman, Steve Mandel '52. Two more of those 16-percent years would surpass the goal of $20 million by the year 2000, and would gendy transport Colla to Green heaven.

Athletic Director Dickjaeger '59 is also in a celebratory mood with the pledges from Don Scully '49 and Peter Fahey '68, and their families, of the necessary $2.5 to $3 million for a long-time goal of the athletic department, an artificial turf facility. The 86,400-square-foot expanse will serve field hockey and men's and women's lacrosse as a home field, and be an invaluable practice site for football, baseball, Softball, and men's and women's soccer. In the wings, we understand, are also indoor tennis facilities and major improvements to the Skiway. The rugby team, too, has plans for a completely equipped clubhouse. One drawback: its location, opposite a residential area, which may lead to a bit of a scrum.

This year's Commencement speaker was an alumnus who had spent considerable time at work in the Thayer Hall kitchen, the personable and eloquent Ilk Finnish Prime Minister, Paavo Lipponen '64, who studied journalism and philosophy, performed on the swimming team, and had to work to finance nance his stay as an exchange student in 1960-61. It seems to take longer every year to announce our Commencement

speakers and our honorary-degree recipients, but perhaps this year the sticking point was which of two potential valedictorians would be chosen, when their GPA averages differed by 00026455 of a point. (How the problem was solved you will see on page 16.) And speaking of measurements, Adam Nelson '97 breathlessly donned his cap and gown at the last minute, having just returned from Indiana University, where with a shot put of 64 feet, four- and-a-half inches, he was the first Dartmouth athlete to win a track and field NCAA title in nearly 60 years.

Professor Mary Kelley's lecture as the first occupant of the new Mary Brinsmead Wheelock chair was "Female Learning in the Nineteenth Century." Beginning with Lord Byron's quote, "If the stockings are blue, the petticoats must be long," Kelley listed European models for intellectual achievement, such as Madame DeStael and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; introduced us to controversial Margaret Fuller and prolific Lydia Child; and in general made us wonder why it had taken so long for gender equality to arrive at all.

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education, Dean of the Faculty Ed Berger, himself a biological scientist and ethicist, called for the immediate assembly of a U.S. commission to study a) whether new techniques of cloning are safe and ethically allowable for humans (as they were for ovine Dolly) and if so, b) under what circumstances would certain misuses of cloning technology ever outweigh its scientific benefits.

Nobelist and theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann took over the Montgomery Fellowship late in July, and in his first appearance before a crowded 105 Dartmouth gave us his version of cosmology in "From Simplicity to Complexity." Complex problems, lems, he suggested, cannot be solved by breaking them down into parts while relegating the big picture to cocktail party talk but they will, possibly, yield to what he calls "adaptive systems."

The campus was saddened indeed by the death on June 8 of chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn of the rare disease of mercury toxicity. Wetterhahn, 48, had been developing a new curriculum in life sciences, structural biology, and she was a co-founder of Dartmouth's Women in Science Project, which has resulted in a significant increase in the numbers of women majoring in science courses. And the flag on the Green flew at half-staff for emeritus geology professor Charles L. Drake, honored in his profession for countless discoveries and theories, the most publicized (but hardly the most significant) of which was the recent squabble with the physicist Luis Alvarez over what,millions of years ago, killed the dinosaurs.

A competing occasion kept us from attending the memorial services for the legendary Orton H. Hicks '21. If we had been able to contribute to the anecdotes which filled the air in Rollins Chapel, this would have been our offering: at his and Lois's 70th wedding anniversary at Kendal last year, Ort was surrounded by the press, brandishing pens, pads, questions. When they finally had had enough, Hal Ripley '29 asked Ort, "How did you handle all that?" In his wonderful self-deprecatory manner, the 95-year-old Ort replied, "With my usual feigned modesty."