Letters
QUOTE/UNQUOTE "According to whose authority is it that life span, freedom from suffering, and cultural and intellectual greatness are the litmus test of a superior human soul?" —WILLIAM H. LANDMESSER '74
Highest Bid Wins
LAUREN ZERANSKI '02 ["THE Numbers Game," Mar/Apr] writes of frustrated students who can't get into courses they want or need and who must then go and plead their cases to the professors in charge of the courses, hoping to get in.
Colorado College is also a small, private, liberal arts institution with limited enrollments and small class sizes that had the same problem Zeranski describes—up until the year 1970. At that time the college instituted a system, the brainchild of an economics professor and based on the laws of supply and demand, which effectively took care of the problem.
At pre-registration time a student is given 80 points to bid with. The student then assigns points to each of his course selections based on how much he wants to get in and on how much competition he thinks there will be from other students. If the class limit is 25 students, the registrar will pick the 25 students who turned in the highest bids, and the others will be waitlisted. Thus, if a student must get in a certain course or wants very badly to do so, he might assign 50 of his 80 points to that one course. If there is a course he wants to get in that is unlikely to be full, he will put very few points on it or none. The courses go to the highest bidders, and those students who lost out will know better what to do the next year.
If there is a much greater than anticipated demand for a particular course, the college must try to hire extra faculty, as Dartmouth does. But the level of discontent among students and faculty over this issue has remained astonishingly low for nearly 40 years. Dartmouth could do worse than emulate this system.
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Master Vance
HOW PROFOUNDLY GRATIFYING IT was to read the homage to professor Thomas Vance ["Sage on Stage," Mar/ Apr], I never had the privilege and pleasure of hearing him lecture on poetry, but I did study and practice writing with him, as I also did with Robert Frost, class of 1896, and Stearns Morse. Since then I have had occasion to do a bit of writing, and whenever I attempt to construe the marrow of a word or parse the rhythm of a phrase I am indebted to Vance and the others. Like another of my masters at Dartmouth, Ramon Guthrie, Tom Vance was also a fine poet and needs more recognition as such.
Fortunate were we to have had such wise tutors and good men to guide us through the tangle of later words and thoughts. I miss them very much.
New York City
The Human Element
AS A BIOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGY Major in the 1970s I assented to the hot belief that human behavior is biologically based. Aggression, territoriality, even smiling and love are explained by genetic mechanisms. As a Christian for the past 28 years I still agree that humankinds behavior is deeply encoded. However, that encoding happens at a place far beyond DNA molecules.
Professor Ronald M. Green ["Designer Genes," Mar/Apr] apparently believes that we are merely material beings whose concern for proper perfection is solely—no pun intended—material, both physiologically and culturally. According to whose authority is it that life span, freedom from suffering, and cultural and intellectual greatness are the litmus test for a superior human soul? Such thinking supports C.K. Chesterton's contention that the best evidence for the veracity of Christianity is man himself.
The encoding of behavior is spiritual, happening in the soul. It is here that Adams original sin is revealed in all humankind, and here that God transforms and one day will perfect those who call upon Him. On that day I wonder whether we will even care about designer jeans.
Stockton Springs, Maine
Stop Recruiting?
THE CAMPAIGN OF RUTGERS Professor William Dowling '66 to put academics ahead of athletics ["The Spoilsport," Mar/Apr] will not spoil sport. It will bring intercollegiate play to where it can thrive as an educational experience.
Here's how we might accomplish this goal: Simply stop recruiting across the board. Stop recruiting future Nobel Prizewinners as well as athletes who appear to show promise for winning games. Take basketball as an example. Admissions would select students on a basketballblind basis. A non-recruited team of walk ons, well coached, would provide the spirit and talent to compete in the Ivy League against bought-and-paid-for jocks. There are plenty of talented but unknown high school basketball players who would blossom once given the walkon opportunity. And once word got out that Dartmouth does not recruit, a lot of great athletes would be eager to attend. To see the result of playing at a high level just for the fun of it, look at the Dartmouth rugby club.
Healdsburg, California
I WONDER HOW MANY READERS OF the story about Dowling's campaign connected the article to Michelle Hernandez's statement in "Continuing Ed" that, "It's ridiculous that the Ivies take in athletes as 17 to 20 percent of a class." Despite Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's genuine interest in and generous support for higher edu- cation, as a profesor at that institution I am ready to join Dowling's club—or the movement that would throw away the NCAA rulebook and make big-time college sports fully professional.
But no, I will have to endure all the way up to my retirement the blackout on half of the fall academic calendar for conferences and symposia since hotel rooms on home-game weekends have been fully booked by an army of tailgaters. (I'm not making this up: The first question asked when a date for such a project is proposed is, "That's not a football weekend, is it?")
Worse still, I will have to endure the mantra that "sports builds character," to which I have never heard anyone add my own belief—that intellectual inquiry does so as well.
And which, pray tell, will preserve United States leadership in the world in the 21st century? Athletic prowess, perhaps? Or creativity and knowledge nurtured (sometimes) in our institutions in those rare moments they can take their minds off sports.
University Park, Pennsylvania
Cutting Edge
I WAS SURPRISED AND DISAPPOINTED to read ["Campus," Mar/Apr] that Dartmouth, like so many corporations, is dropping coverage for retiree health care, and disturbed that it is being done abruptly in away that will no doubt create financial hardship for people who are far less able to pay for it than Dartmouth. It was not that long ago that employers considered their employees assets and provided benefits, including retiree coverage, both as a way of protecting those assets and as a way of contributing to the community at large. Now it seems most consider employees as simply another expense to be controlled or cut, with little apparent regard for the consequences to the employees or the surrounding community. I hope this isn't the kind of strategy now being taught at Tuck.
With leaders in business and medicine and many supporting fields I would far rather have seen Dartmouth take a different path—understanding and addressing the reasons for the skyrocketing costs and becoming a leader in developing and promoting solutions instead of simply dumping the problem on others.
DeKalb, Illinois
Editor's Note: The College has since adopted a counter-proposal put forth by a faculty committee that greatly expands retiree coverage beyond its original plan.
The Partisan Curve
AS A CLASSMATE OF PAUL "NICK" Tschetter '57 at both Dartmouth and Dartmouth Medical School and as a Rocky Mountain conservative, I am obliged to respond to the letter penned by David Straus '67 ["Letters," Mar/Apr] in which he takes issue with Nick's opinion ["Letters," Jan/Feb].
Straus notes that college students tend to be more liberal than their parents and implies that this is good. My question is this: Could it be that sometimes one can't be a conservative until one has acquired something to conserve?
Straus then suggests that admission of conservative students will lower the average SAT score at Dartmouth. If I understand his contention correctly and chart it on a bell curve I see increased conservatives equating to "moron" and increased liberals to "genius." If this is how Straus sees it, perhaps what Tschetter is suggesting is affirmative action for conservative students. Certainly they are a minority, and certainly affirmative action and diversity are in the Dartmouth and liberal canon.
Think of the redeeming value of such an approach! The conservatives can kneel at the feet of liberals and gather up as many pearls and chestnuts as possible.
There is one problem for me and that is that Tschetter graduated with a Phi Beta Kappa award—one of 27 granted to our class—before the grade-inflation era.
Have I envisioned my bell curve chart incorrectly?
Mount Desert, Maine
At His Peak
AFTER READING JEFFREY HART'S tribute to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ["Christian Existentialist," Nov/Dec 2007] I was reminded of my own experience with Rosenstock-Huessy. Just after World War 11, when I was helping run the DOC, he strolled into my office, telling me that he had joined the Canadian Alpine Club and was going on a mountain climbing trip in the Canadian Rockies that summer. He knew nothing about climbing, so asked if I would help him in exchange for his instructing me in riding on his horses. I agreed, but after falling off twice stopped learning to ride. He caught on well in learning climbing technologies and enjoyed his trip to the Canadian Rockies that summer.
Bethesda, Maryland
No Mere Visitor
IN "MUTUAL TRANSFORMATION" [Mar/Apr 2007] Joanne Herman '75 wrote, "Mine was the last all-male under graduate class in Dartmouth's history. During my freshman year the only female undergraduates on campus were visitors."
I have never heard us called visitors. We were active in all areas"of the campus. I wrote reviews for the Dartmouth Film Society, paddled down the Connecticut River in the weeklong Ledyard canoe trip to Old Saybrook, Connecticut, swept the ski trails with the ski patrol and did my senior art history thesis with professor John Wilmerding. I felt like a fully involved student at Dartmouth College.
Herman suggests that she had a positive experience at Smith College while participating in the Twelve College Exchange. I have every reason to believe that Herman was a highly regarded addition to Smith, and I hope she felt like a deeply involved student there and not a visitor.
On November 9-11 the College hosted "Celebrating 35 Years of Women at Dartmouth," whose stated mission was to "salute the daughters of Dartmouth and discuss their legacy to the College and the world." I hope we never forget the three immediately preceding years that women were admitted to Dartmouth for one- or two-year terms. We were students at Dartmouth, not visitors.
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
The Continuing Crisis...
AFTER READING THE FULL-PAGE AD on page 16 of Mar/Apr, I'd like to ask the group called Dartmouth Undying what its beef is. The ad run by the Association of Alumni that appeared on page 1 contained names and an address. Why should these guys tell you if others are footing their bills if you won't name yourselves and reveal where you hang out?
After plowing through everything the trustee governance committee had to say about the "desirability" of loading the board with hand-picked appointed trustees I am content to be a party to the lawsuit it is hoped will thwart that goal.
For more than a century a "balanced" board has served the College well. There's no reason it can't do so for another 100 years. It's a tradition we ought not let fail.
Exeter, New Hampshire
CORPORATE BOARDS ARE STACKED with sycophants of management to ensure control of the corporation. Now Dartmouth College has followed this reprehensible ractice: relegated her alumni to a perpetual minority in decision making.
Yet who cares more about a college than its alumni? The president is often a non-alum. He has a job. Self-interest often trumps all other interests.
For me, this is the final blow. Having counseled my children to attend other schools I now reduce my already much diminished financial support to zero.
New York City
I CONGRATULATE THE BOARD FOR taking the bold actions needed. It is wrong for the alumni, who make up just one constituency and not the most important one, to control the board.
Secondly, the recent series of elections seem to have been organized behind the scenes by a group that is not transparent but looks a lot like the cabal of Dartmouth and non-Dartmouth affiliated conservatives who have been targeting the College since the involvement of William F. Buckleyjr. in Dartmouth affairs began. The country at large has had quite enough experience with the ways that power is used by conservatives these days to know that we need a lot less of it, not more.
The cry of "democracy" by the insurgent group is patently phony. As we all know, alumni voting is very much like primary election voting: Only the truly committed and involved vote. That makes it easy for a radical fringe to control primaries, which, as we have learned, is why we have such an ideologically divided Congress these days—to the great misfortune of the country. Let us not bring that sort of governance to Dartmouth.
I sense there are some legitimate issues with the current governance: too much reliance on growth for the sake of growth, not enough small classes, possibly a tilting too much in favor of "political correctness" in curriculum and speech policy. If these are indeed problems the challenge of the board is to address them forthrightly. They certainly are not substantive enough to trust the future of the College to a group of individuals who may be well financed and influenced by conservatives who have no personal affiliation with Dartmouth.
Crested Butte, Colorado
AS A RESULT OF THE RECENT Decision sion by the trustees to increase their own number, some alums have threatened to withhold future contributions to the College. It appears to be happening already.
Add to that the senior survey results ["Campus," July/Aug 2007] that show 38 percent of the class of 2007 saying they will not contribute regularly to the College and one wonders about Dartmouth's financial future.
Grantham, New Hampshire
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