Pardon Our Sarongs

The wrap on presidential partying.

Lei It On

Especially in light of President Clinton's recent misadventures, the photo in "Dartmouth Undying" [September] cries out for explication. What was the event recorded here? Who are the sarong-clad young wom en? Why is President Dickey holding the hand of one of them? Why is the woman to his left (Mrs. Dickey?) so visibly cast down? America wants to know!

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

By 1964 I had attended ten consecutive dinners for Dartmouth alumni. I recall that they were all equally bland and predictable. In 1964 I was president of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of South Florida and I decided that we would present our annual meeting in a manner more typical of South Florida. Hence the dinner at the Mai Tai Polynesian restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale. I believe that President Dickey thoroughly enjoyed himself though I can- not comment about Mrs. Dickey. Several days after the event, I received two telephone calls from local alumni criticizing the event as not being suitably dignified for the president of Dartmouth College. I am glad to see, though it took 34 years, that we can now recognize the presidency as being multifaceted and dinner at a Polynesian restaurant acceptable. Pictured with the Dickeys are my wife, Nancy, and me with five sarong-clad waitresses whose names and phone numbers I have long forgotten.

CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA

Teaching and Research

It is a joy to be part of an alumni body- where undergraduate education is so highly valued. Paul Wenger '51 and John D. Goode '43 ["Letters," October] vent their worries about the "research university " I want to reassure them. No, Mr. Goode, the worthies you mention wouldn't "make the faculty" today at Dartmouth. The one best known to me had, by my time, become a performer whose lectures were by then mere repetitions of what they had been a decade or two earlier. He was engaging without being himself engaged and consequently not, in those latter days, a great teacher.

For more than 30 years, I have taught at a research university and during that time I have published extensively and directed nearly a hundred doctoral dissertations. Most of my teaching, however-all ever—all of it this directed to undergraduates in small groups where, as in my best classes at Dartmouth, we have intense, engaged, and personal discussion. Our graduate student instructors are carefully chosen, very smart, and very good in the classroom. My colleagues and I mentor them closely, and they have the youthful energy that makes for great teaching. Above all, they are busy about the business of learning (as John Dickey annually urged us during his presidency), and our students see them at work and do, most of them, likewise. Perhaps somewhere undergraduates are treated as secondclass citizens (as Mr. Wenger fears). Not at Dartmouth, I'd bet. Not here for sure. RICHARD W. BAILEY '61 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN RWBAILEY@UMICH.EDU

Paul Wenger '51 expressed concern about a possible increased emphasis upon "research and "university" due to new President Wright's use of those terms following his appointment. I, too, was concerned as I believe the vast majority of alumni do not wish to have the quality of teaching diminished by excessive attention to research at the expense of everyday teaching. At our 55 th Reunion in June we met with President Wright. This issue was obviously on the minds of many present and was voiced also in private conversations among classmates. We stayed with a friend recently retired from the College staff who explained, as did President Wright, that it is not possible today to attract top faculty without offering research opportunities. As Jim Wells '43 stated in his October class notes, "the trick is to accomplish this without sacrificing student accessibility to senior faculty. Dartmouth has done this—a tough balancing act." President Wright assured us in his remarks that teaching would remain the top priority but that research could not be ignored. He further assured us that, although the College is already a small university, there are no plans for change. This was reassuring. Let's hope it plays out that way.

CRCUSACK@TRANSPORT.COM

For more on the subject, see this month's "PresidentialRange " on page 22.—Ed.

Affirming Action

California State Senator Quentin Kopp '49's letter calling for President Freedman "to denounce present-day quotas and preferences in education..." [October] merits a rebuttal.

The Prop. 209 campaign was a mean-spirited and socially regressive anti-affir-mative action ballot initiative intended to quench the ambitions of California's minorities and to maintain the political and economic balance of power. It had nothing to do with eliminating "quotas"; there were no quotas in place in any of the affected organization ganizations and institutions. Senator Kopp's position is particularly offensive to me as a Jew. Jews are taught that a society is only as good—as "God-like"—as its most disadvantaged members. We are taught that every Jew is obligated to do what he or she can to help those who need help to raise their level of education and their standard of living. Eliminating those social programs, including affirmative action in education, that have for 30 years helped the disadvantaged improve the quality of their lives and become more productive members of society, is antithetical to Jewish tradition. Senator Kopp should be ashamed, not proud, of his support for Prop. 209.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA

Traditional Change

The September issue brought another re-minder of how much the College belongs to the present. "Dr. Wheelock's Journal" mentioned in passing, "the former Webster Hall (now the Rauner Special Collections Library) ... The sacrifice of this sturdy building's moniker evokes a small twinge for the passing of old traditions and raises a small question concerning the permanence of names. One hopes Dartmouth will not obliterate all her old memorials: a former Leverone Field House, a former Hopkins Center? Institutions must evolve or fade. Fortunately Dartmouth continues to be a wonderful place full of lively people and active ideas. Change itself is an old tradition, after all.

DOVER-FOXCROFT, MAINE

For the record, Webster still lives. The newRauner Library will be housed in Webster Hall.What the students will call the building, time willtell -ed

Big Moosestake

I had the distinct pleasure of attending a wedding of a fellow Dartmouth alum on the Saturday of Dartmouth's game against Penn on September 19. Naturally, after the wedding, we managed to see a bit of the game's third quarter—and what alum wouldn't jump at the chance? Unfortunately this experience was marred by a plastic aberration which moved about like a cartoonish villain from a B-rated horror movie—de-flating and inflating repeatedly in the course of several minutes. Judging by my unscientific poll of numerous alumni and a few students I'd have to suggest the Moose may be best used as a punching bag for frustrated football players rather than a replacement cheerleader. I believe it would be more satisfying for the crowd in this role as well. Must we have such an absurd thing as a wannabe mascot?

LAKE OSWEGO, OREGON TED@CYBERSIGHT.COM

More Treasures

Brock Brower's "Lost in the Treasure Room," [October] brought back many memories. I came to Dartmouth as a freshman from the University of Chicago and was greatly impressed by Baker Library. Baker had the advantage of "open stacks" where I spent much time from 1942-44 and on returning from the Pacific from 1947-48.

Two professors who became very good friends contributed to the rare book collection Comparative literature professor Herbert Faulkner West got me seriously interested in literature and recognized the importance of Henry Miller and Anais Nin. Professor Joel Egerer of the English Department helped to bring the 1786 Kilmarnock Edition of Robert Burns's poems to Baker. One day soon I will have to visit the Rauner Library.

SAINT CLAIR SHORES, MICHIGAN

In my creeping antiquity (a year older than Brock Brower), I supposed that few would still remember the stir resulting from Charles Jackson's ground-breaking alcoholic confessional The Lost Weekend. But since it appears that there are probably more than two of us left, it may be time to float to a wider audience the story of Jackson's remarkable encounter with the Austrian playwright Carl Zuckmayer who lived for some years in Vermont.

It is said that Jackson threw a big party at his house on "The Ridge" at Orford and Zuckmayer was chief among the invited guests. When he arrived, Jackson greeted him warmly, and after some pleasantries said, "Come, let me show you my garden room." All alacrity, Zuckmayer followed his host to a room with a splendid antique wallpaper mural entitled "Voyage en Amerique which Jackson's decorator had purchased intact from a dealer.

Zuckmayer nearly collapsed. He recognized the unique pre-war mural from his favorite coffee house in Vienna, now miraculously transported intact to rural America.

He could recognize stains and worn spots and identify the people who had made them. This New Hampshire garden room sud- denly became a living symbol of the great age of early twentieth-century Viennese arts. So animated was the playwright by this bizarre discovery that he held forth for the rest of the evening to a delighted audience of admirers, leaving his host alone, upstaged, and once again, unhappy. •

PELHAM, MASSACHUSETTS TM@GEO.UMASS.EDU

Wiiining Team

I was very disappointed to pick up the September issue and look at the list of all the sporting activities for Homecoming weekend '98 and not see our home horse show listed. We have held our home horse show Homecoming Weekend for the past six years.

In the same issue, the equestrian team is also excluded in "Sporting Eye: The Final Standings." Our team finished second in the 1998 Ivy Championships and sent two riders to the Zone Championships last April.

SALLY BOILLOTAT EQUESTRIAN COACH HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Go Team

I have to assume that you are pleased that Dartmouth, with 51 percent of alumni contributors, was second only to Princeton's 58.8 percent ["On the Hill,"June]. If memory doesn't deceive me, we used to reach 70 percent and competed mainly with Williams College. Perhaps we should find out why Princeton alumni are so loyal- could it be their fantastic basketball team that is the class of the Ivy League, or their three-time NCAA championship lacrosse team, or their title-winning crew?

I suggest that Dartmouth alumni increase their support of the Sponsor's Program and maybe we can win this loyalty contest.

MURRAY HILL, NEW JERSEY

The Bard's English

Your "beleaguered and dubiously talented editor" might well be desperate and seek help from others. Re: October's "Dr. Whee- lock's Journal: A Thankless Job (Because You Didn't Know Who To Thank)," the title should read (...WHOM To Thank) Someone should proofread these learned folks lest the English language continue to embarrass Shakespeare.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA DHR@MINDSPRING.COM

High Cost and Diversity

Let me offer a different perspective on two subjects in Charles Wheelan's article "What Comes Next" [June],

On the Cost of Higher Education: Elite institutions have been particularly remiss in coming to grips with this issue. Even now, it is the growing number of public universities-not those self-appointed trustees of our elite private institutions such as Dartmouth-who are beginning to assault ruinous cost inflation. It seemed at one time, not many years after Freedman took office, that Dartmouth's Trustees were coming seriously to grips with a real cost and tuition inflation that has not been below three percent per annum in recent memory. But what happened?

Delusion and, if it exists, collusion, are deeply troubling; and Joe Mathewson's observation quoted by Wheelan related to the labor intensiveness of higher education-though not untrue—is a form of escapism. Cost containment is particularly difficult in higher education, but not impossible surely not when, for decades, the greatest inflation has not been in valued teachers but in expendable administrators, often working on the very programs higher education should be slashing.

On Diversity: "Diversity" has never been given a clear definition by anyone at Dartmouth that I have read or heard. And, of course, without defining it, it is impossible to determine how best to pursue it—and to what ends, in terms of net benefits or costs. There is next to no discussion of alternate means—some of which have been demonstrably superior to the use of preferences in admissions and faculty appointments. Finally buried in all this vagueness and dissimulation is the seldom discussed issue of whether Dartmouth, in its bucolic setting, can have any hope of pursuing the same diversity profile that comes much more automatically to our great city universities. A recent report by Bill Bowen and Derek Bok does not refute my contentions. What it does is put, perhaps fairly and accurately, a more favorable light on the benefits of the currently applied affirmative action policies cies; they are mum on costs—and, more important, on the comparative benefits of other means toward the same ends.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS