FENG SHUI COMES TO DARTMOUTH

A surreality check on campus design

While you've probably heard about feng shuithe ancient Chinese art of maximizing harmony and balance in one's environment—few Westerners really understand it, fewer still apply it and almost no one pronounces it properly (fung shway). Is feng shui simply Asian mysticism with little application in our world—or should we try to understand it better?

Clearly, feng shui has not yet washed over the United States with the power and sweep of, say, a tsunami, but there is a steadily building wave of interest. The Dartmouth Bookstore, for example, lists 157 feng shui titles at last count, and Amazon.com had 407. Although most are dead serious, titles range from Feng Shui for Dummies to Feng Shui for Dogs. The College has sponsored several lunchtime talks on the subject, and Baker-Berry Library has more than 46 feng shui titles in its stacks. Search for "feng shui" on the Web and be prepared for something considerably more extensive than the menu at your local Chinese take-out. Check the classifieds in your newspaper and you'll probably find someone advertising feng shui services for home or office.

Because of this heightened interest, the College might be wise to attend to any serious feng shui shortcomings that exist on campus. You can not be complacent in the competitive world of higher education.

Granted, there is some good news for the College. Surf through the recommendations of published experts and you'll find this feng shui tenet: "The northeast is geographically the sector that signifies educational attainment." Well, Dartmouth is in the Northeast, so we don't have to worry about relocating the institution. Thank goodness—imagine a capital campaign to support that effort.

Conversely, "the place of the patriarch is in the northwest." So President Wright s office in Parkhurst, on the northwest corner of the Green, is ideally located.

Dartmouth is also optimally located to meet yet another feng shui dictum: "Educational attainment falls primarily to those who live with a view of three summits in the distance." On a clear day you can see Ascutney, Moose and Cube mountains from Baker Tower. Certainly Smarts. Maybe Moosilauke. How many summits can you see at Columbia or Penn or Brown or Yale or Harvard or Princeton?

There are, however, a few specific areas in which the College does come up a bit short when measured against widely accepted guidelines promulgated by feng shui practitioners. Thankfully they are not insurmountable problems. The illustration on the previous page shows the necessary fixes, all of which can be accomplished quite reasonably—certainly within the parameters of the forthcoming capital campaign.

• Every feng shui practitioner will tell you that your main door must never open directly to a staircase. That, unfortunately, is the case in Parkhurst, but moving either the entry or the staircase could be prohibitive. Luckily, the guidelines suggest that if you cannot reposition your door, you may install a bright light just outside it to strengthen the yang energy—the good stuff or you can paint your door a bright red. We recommend both.

• "Get the main door right, make it auspicious, and 80 percent of your feng shui is assured," says one expert. Well, the main door in the middle of Dartmouth Hall's facade has been sealed shut for 30 years. That can't be good.

• Sometime in the recent past a prescient College administrator or architectural consultant probably came across this feng shui warning: "Exposed structural beams create massive shar chi" (the bad stuff). Kiewit was doomed from the start. We assume all Dartmouth architects have taken notice.

• It is written that "Yappy little dogs symbolize yang activity." So, we need to replace all of the campus's laid-back Labs and gregarious goldens with clamorous chihuahuas and Type-A terriers.

• Places that look run down harbor bad feng shui. "This corrupt energy damages the luck of the residents, accelerating a downward spiral," the experts say. The College is, of course, already moving to correct this problem with the student life initiative and the acquisition of those dilapidated student pads downtown.

• Experts agree that long corridors create really bad shar chi. We can only hope that the casual talk about a north campus corridor anchored at the new Berry Library is just talk and that, in the event, any corridor will be artfully interrupted.

• "A large, smoking chimney will lead to financial loss," dictates the feng shui practitioner. The power plant will have to be replaced.

• Considering Dartmouth's assorted feng shui shortcomings, we were happy to read that "a clump of trees is an excellent feng shui cure." A bunch of Robert Frost birches ought to do the trick, and we recommend they be planted near the center of the Green.

• Feng shui frowns on decorative columns, although round ones such as those in front of Webster/Rauner are marginally less hazardous than square ones. Experts recommend as a cure the placing of a potted plants-how about a cactus?—at the base of each column.

• "To enhance the standing, prestige and wealth of the patriarch, keep the northwest alive with yang energy, metal bells and wind chimes," advises one expert. Baker already has bells, but that open space between Parkhurst and Blunt Alumni Center could use some wind chimes.

• Feng shui experts insist that fences matter, too. "Solid fences are better than see-through fences. Those on the west should be made of steel or other metal," they say. Too bad, but our quaint old senior fence will have to be replaced.

• Symbolism permeates feng shui, and Dartmouth has been dealing with a symbol problem for some time. Eastern principles believe the pine tree stands for longevity, so Dartmouth had it right with The Old Pine. Even more opportune for today's Dartmouth, feng shui principles hold that a green dragon is particularly auspicious. Make that a Big Green Dragon.

ROBERT NUTT '49 lives northwest of Hanover in Thetford, Vermont.