Winter Carnival

Here follows a series of e-mails discussing Dartmouth Winter Carnival and its ice sculptures of olde:

Big D-ers,
This coming Friday starts Winter Carnival and this morning the “Boston Globe” published a photo of the 1935 center-campus ice sculpture “Odin”. This has inspired me to this request for your input for the blog site “Dartmouth Traditions”. What I am asking for is your memories of past ice sculptures … both center campus and in front of fraternities/dorms … or, better yet, included JPEG pictures of same. The one I remember most was the center-campus standing Indian with his drawn bow … how this was done in ice still baffles me.) I’ll assemble them into a blog entry that should highlight one of Dartmouth’s most enduring traditions. (I even helped design and build the Sigma Nu ice sculpture in 1959, yet I can’t recall what it was.)
George Potts ‘60

George,The Sigma Nu statue in 1958 was a rocket with features of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles titled "Dull Ice". A picture appeared in Time Magazine and we received letters from upset Republican ladies even though most of us approved of and liked Dulles at the time.John Bousum

George...I remember clearly the Sigma Nu ice sculpture you designed for our Senior year (you say 1959, but technically it was 1960, I believe). I believe the theme for that Winter Carnival was the Gay 90's or some such. We came up with an image of an old carriage with a couple of drivers and we called it "The Good Ol' Drays." Weren't we clever? You did most of the work, I recall, and worked well into the cold nighttime hours in an attempt to complete the statue for the 'judges' who were scheduled to come by fairly early the next morning.
It really was very well done, but I don't recall that we won any prizes.Bob Caulfield

George --
Thanks for including me in your mailing after all these years. I'm not much help. I think somewhere I have a picture of the Wheeler Hall statue we made for freshman year. Usual pun of a mouse on a wedge of holey cheese -- Swiss Skis -- if I recall it, but that's about it. I'm not good at JPEG, but I can send you the picture if that's something you want. Anyway, nice to hear from you.
Wah-hoo-wah --
Bob


Why the hell did somebody not take a picture of that? does the college have a archivist or some body like that who might have take one? I wimped out and stayed inside because it was too
cold. It was a good statue.
Mike

John: Ah, you have stirred the memory. Dimling and I were tasked with the project and, as you will recall this was the era of Sputnik and the beginning of the ICBM race with Russia. John Foster Dulles was the quintessential hawk and the project turned out pretty well----we got 2nd or 3rd place. I sent the picture and a letter of explanation and, as your correctly recall, we got some very interesting replies ranging from completely off the wall to coeds looking for an invite to Winter Carnival. I think it was the next year that a major TV network did a special on Winter Carnival. Hard to believe that we looking back at this from the perspective of half a century...!!Earle

Earle, et al --A great memory. But I think your recollection of the mail you received -- and it was you, and not "we" who received it, since it was you who sent the letter to Time -- has been a little dulled by the passage of time. I seem to recall that some of the letters from females were offering more than just to come to winter carnival. Of course I was young and impressionable then, so perhaps any suggestion from a young female had more impact than it deserved.John

I'm digging through boxes of old photos to find something for you. Your idea is great . . . my memory less so. Ergo, I'm searching. I'll let you know if and when I find something. Axel

All,
Thanks for all your e-mails. I am assembling them into the "Dartmouth Traditions" blog entry which I will publish shortly. Today starts the 100th anniversary of Winter Carnival and it has met with a minor catastrophe. See http://www.dartblog.com/data/2009/02/008551.php I guess this might be thought of as representative given the state of the college, our nation and the world. But all is not lost if I can interpret the spirit of tradition that seems to be exhibited by the response to this setback.

Studernts come to save the day -- http://thedartmouth.com/2009/02/13/mirror/collapse/

George Potts '60

References:
http://thedartmouth.com/2007/02/09/news/ninetyseven/
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-104671637.html
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Dartmouth-College-traditions#Winter_Carnival
http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/travel/view.bg?articleid=1148476
http://www.rare-posters.com/dartmouthski.html
http://www.dartmouthimages.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28_257&products_id=323&ponv=7&matte=&metal=&wood=

Interfraternity Play Contest

I am not sure when the Interfraternity Play Contest become a late winter ritual at Dartmouth, or, for that matter, when it ended. I do know that the IPC was going strong as least as early as the late ‘40’s right after WW II.

The Contest worked like this. Each year all fraternities were encouraged to put on a one act play. In the late ‘50’s when I was at Dartmouth, I would say about 10 or 12 fraternities, roughly half of all houses, participated in any given year. The plays presented ranged from original one acts written by one of the fraternity members, short plays written by well known playwrights, or excerpts of traditional length plays presented in abbreviated form. In all, each participating fraternity was allowed up to one half hour to present its production.

It was required that only members of the fraternity could participate in the production. No ringers! And that all the tasks necessary to put on the play had to be performed by those members. The only exception to this rule was that a fraternity could uses actresses as the casting needs of the play dictated. Since Dartmouth was not co-ed in the late ‘50’s, faculty wives, townies and nurses from Mary Hitchcock Hospital would often be involved. (Thank heavens we did not have to wear drag as is the custom at certain other Ivy institutions!) Fraternity members were the actors, directors, stage managers, lighting directors, and set designers for these productions, although in most cases whoever opted to be the play’s director usually wore several other hats. Each participating fraternity would be assigned a faculty advisor from the ‘theater’ department who would hold one or two preliminary rehearsals with the cast. Then we were given time for one ‘dress’ rehearsal, complete with lights, set and props, in the Little Theater, located on the second floor of Robinson Hall.

When I say ‘Little’ Theater, I mean just that; this space was tiny! It sat perhaps 150 people on the world’s most uncomfortable wooden chairs. Actually, there was no formal theater department at Dartmouth in the late ‘50’s even though there was a very active, and I like to think, successful theater program. Each year the Dartmouth Players mounted four or five major productions under the guidance of Warner Bentley, Henry Williams and George Schoenhut. We did some very challenging plays: “Waiting for Godot” was a particular success in Hanover and won huge praise at the annual Yale Drama Festival in 1958. Warner Bentley oversaw the construction of the Hopkins Center, opened in 1962 I believe. The Hop has had a most positive effect on all the arts at Dartmouth.

The IPC ran over the course of three or four nights depending on the number of entrants and we performed in front of an audience. Not many people came as I remember, but there was always an audience of some size. A panel of judges (usually Warner, Henry and George) would then select a ‘winner,’ as well as ‘best actor’ and each participating house got ‘points.’ I am not sure what these points counted towards, but I know we got points for doing lots of activities” such as ‘Hums,’ interfraternity sports, the house’s academic ranking, and so forth.

The Interfraternity Play Contest was great fun. It was always interesting for me to see how much creativity would come forth each year from fraternities where one least expected to find it.

Bob Caulfield
San Francisco
December 22, 2008

Paper-Bag-On-The-Head Time

Dartmouth 2008:
No Rhodes scholars
#54 in U.S. News's list of best worldwide colleges and universities
Alums disenfranchised themselves
0-10 in football
Students going gaga over Obama's election
In growing financial difficulty

President Wright can't leave soon enough.

U.S. Snooze and World Report Rankings

As I remember it, Dartmouth and Princeton were once peers. Well, at least we're better than Northwestern!! See -- U.S. Snooze

Dartmouth Dead

Here are a few of the Class of 1960 who did the old girl in:

James Adler, Tom Andrews, Charlie Butler, Elliott Carr, Steve Carroll, Dick Chase, Jonathan Cohen, William A. Colton, Jr., Walter E. Daniels. Dick Davidson, Robert M. Derderian, Howard Frankel, Walter Freedman, William Gould, William E. Gundy, John T. Guy, Robert Hager, J. Roger Hanlon, John Hannon, Michael Heitner, Russ Ingersoll, Chuck Kaufman, Kenneth E. Johansen, Eugene Kohn, Phil Kron, Richard Levy, Marty Lower, Barry MacLean, Spencer Morgan, Richard Ossen, James M. Pollard, Rick Roesch, Tony Roisman, Dan Rosen, David Sammons, Peter Schwartz, Dudley Smith, I. Thomas Stone, Allen Stowe, Mickey Straus, Seth Strickland, David Vaules, Tom Wahman, and Roger L. Zissu

Please no flowers.

Our Next Prexy

What qualities would I like to see in Dartmouth’s next President? (Not that anyone is holding their breath waiting for my input.) I would like our next Prexy to trim our obvious administrative bloat ... to reinstall a rigorous set of academic minimums to insure that undergraduates get a true liberal arts education ... to create diversity in a Dartmouth student's every-day social and political interactions rather than just in the student-body demographics ... to create well-rounded graduates with a solid physical, logical, spiritual and intellectual grounding ... to push undergraduates (and faculty) toward distinction with a stated goal of winning more national and international academic awards ... to move Dartmouth back into the forefront of a cyber-science (as well as in other meaningful academic areas) … and to pay more attention toward preserving Dartmouth traditions? Enough? I guess that this might be too much to expect from Dartmouth’s current power structure.

George Potts '60

DARTMOUTH DYING?

One of the oldest traditions at Dartmouth is that the Alumni(ae), since 1891, have been able to elect half of the College’s Board of Trustees. This, to me, is an essential check and balance that has kept Dartmouth from charting its administrative and pedagogical course independent of the leavening element of the collective wisdom of its graduates. Now this prerogative is being threatened and it is time for those graduates who cherish this tradition to make a stand against this portent. The Dartmouth administration has attempted to pack the Board of Trustees with additional acolytes who believe that this and all future administrations are infallible and can perpetuate themselves without independent input and oversight.

This administration stratagem has been thwarted by a lawsuit by the Dartmouth Association of Alumni which has so far been successful in the New Hampshire courts. But unfortunately, authorization for this suit was voted for by a paper-thin margin -- six out of the eleven in the Executive Committee of our Association of Alumni. Now, the administration’s tact is to overturn this decision by changing this Association’s Executive Committee membership to a group that would likely rescind this lawsuit. Thus, there is an upcoming election (April 28th through June 5th) that pits a group of independent petition candidates to the Executive Committee of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni against the administration’s hand-picks. This therefore is a critical election that cannot be ignored by any alum who believes that Dartmouth will only remain strong with a modicum of independent oversight. To get more details about this kafuffle and find out what you can do to keep Dartmouth stalwart go to Association of Alumni ... and vote FOR the petition candidates to the Executive Committee of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni (see Dartmouth Parity).

If, on the other hand, you believe that a self-perpetuating group of elite alums should now and forever have a hammerlock on the future course of Dartmouth by disenfranchising their fellow classmates, go to Dartmouth Undying

Shucking and Jiving

May I here list a set of Dartmouth traditions as candidates to be shucked by the growing list of those jive nihilists who are charter members of the Here and Now Society:

- Graduation ceremonies (with caps and gowns, proud parents, and boring speeches)
- Memorial Field and its football games … particularly the Homecoming Weekend one.
- And while we are at it … Homecoming Weekend itself (and the Dartmouth Night bonfire)
- The Hanover Inn (to be replaced by a fancy Hilton Hotel)
- Old dead white-man majors such as History, Philosophy, English Lit, Religion, etc. *
- Dartmouth Row and Baker Library (to be razed and replaced by high-rise dorms)
- “Dartmouth Undying”
- The Greek system of fraternities and sororities (this time for sure)
- Winter Carnival and Green Key weekends (including ice sculptures and golf course trysts)
- Chubbing and the Dartmouth Outing Club
- “The Dartmouth” and the “Jack-o-Lantern” (oops, already gone)
- The Hopkins Center and Hood Museum
- Membership in the Ivy League
- The Hovey “Indian Maiden” murals (another oops)
- The Dartmouth Skiway
- The freshman trip to Moosilauke lodge
- The Dartmouth Glee Club and the Aires choral group
- The graduate schools … Tuck, Thayer, and Dartmouth Medical School
- The Orozco murals
- Dick’s House (and while we’re at it, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center too)
- The Ledyard Canoe Club and its Spring canoe trip to Long Island Sound
- Hard science majors such as: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Geology, etc. *
- Alumni(ae) reunions
- The school color, green … let’s make it fuchsia
- The Rollins chapel (“Gothic dropped from a great height”)
- Senior secret societies (C&G, Sphinx, F&S, Dragon, Phrygian, etc.)
- Any reference to Samson Occom, Daniel Webster or Eleazer Wheelock
- Vox Clamantis in Deserto

* From a recent Dartblog "[Trustees] indicated that Dartmouth is hesitent to hire new professors in departments that were not popular five or ten years ago because in six years, professors are eligible to become tenured faculty. Dartmouth could then have too many professors for an unpopular department." QED

Are you pissed off yet?

MORE ON TRADITIONS

A Dartmouth classmate (and fraternity brother) of mine recently sent me the following observation about traditions and their fleeting permanence:

The "old traditions" move with the times. If you go back and read either The Dartmouth or other written sources about D you'll find that every generation of alumni bewailed the passing of the "old traditions," totally forgetting in the process that they themselves ended a few "old traditions" while they were students. The passing of "old traditions" is the way of human progress. It doesn't mean, of course, that we shouldn't bewail their passing . . . wailing feels good. But let's keep in mind that traditions must change if we want to progress. And when you look at and talk to today's undergraduates, there is no question that Dartmouth has progressed.

Although, emotionally, I agree with these thoughts, I cannot bring my intellect into full concordance. Clearly traditions add color and texture to our life’s experiences and there is surely some value to their persistence. Witness that British jurists still wear their powdered wigs to court. Bavarians still sport lederhosen and slap each other around in their touristy dance. The Japanese spend enormous emotional energy with their tea ceremonies. The examples go on and on. Even at Dartmouth a few traditions still survive – Winter Carnival, the Homecoming bonfire, and the Greek system (despite numerous efforts to kill it). The question then becomes – which traditions deserve to persist? I offer that, if the rationales for a tradition have not been maintained (such as why Dartmouth seniors smoked and then broke their clay pipes at the Bema), then this tradition deserves to die. However, I also conclude that the maintenance of the reasons for such traditions is not the responsibility of the students but of the overseers of these institutions. And, if these powers have not continued to educate and explain the backing for any tradition, then they are culpable of lassitude or PC thinking aimed at killing such traditions. And as a consequence they are also guilty of devaluing the transcendental worth of said institutions.

If, as my classmate opines, traditions are will o’ the wisp and come and go with the passing of generations of students, then I suggest that they are not traditions but merely fads. Traditions have been tested with time and deserve to have some lasting power. They need not die to achieve progress. Yes, they may be replaced by traditions of greater worth or meaning, but they should not be sacrificed in an orgy of nihilism. Many traditions will in fact compliment institutional progress such as those that promote social benefits … group cohesion or critical thought or the dispelling of prejudice. They should be encouraged and cherished like an elegant antique.

One last thought about people holding onto the past. It seems strange to me that those who are so ready to throw over old traditions (generally, liberals) are most often the ones who wring their hands when one obscure species of plant or animal may go extinct. Many of these lefties would move heaven and Earth to preserve the snail darter but not lift a finger to hold onto our National Anthem.

ROLLIN’ ON THE RIVER

The Ledyard Canoe Club has an annual tradition of sponsoring a four day, 218 mile canoe trip from Hanover down the Connecticut River to Long Island Sound (even unto this day). In the spring of my junior year at Dartmouth (1959), I had just taken my midterm exams and was feeling pretty feisty. Propitiously, Axel Grabowsky, the next-president of my fraternity, Sigma Nu, (and president of the canoe club) announced in the fraternity bar that very night (after I had downed a few too many frosties), “A bunch of us a going on a canoe trip down the Connecticut river. Who wants to go along?” I said, “Sure, why not.” Another brother, sophomore Bill Figilis, also rashly stepped forward. We were both quite foolish as we were canoeing tyros.

But there is no stopping callowed youth. So the next morning Bill and I packed a few changes of clothes, grabbed our sleeping bags (I also wore a straw boater hat and Bill brought a bottle of Beefeaters Gin) and took our place at the end of a queue of eight canoes pushing off from the Ledyard Canoe Club dock. After floundering around for the first few miles, Bill and I began to get the hang of the “J” stroke and how to steer this accursed Indian craft. That first evening in the canoe, as it started to get dark, a stiff headwind came up while we were in the middle of the river. This produced quite a bit of chop in the river and I knew, if we were dumped in the water, hypothermia would set in after only a few minutes and we would be goners. So, with a few bladder crises and even fewer paddling skills, we did manage to manhandle the canoe over to the river bank without mishap.

We slept under our canoe that night and most others … although Axel, our trip organizer, did arrange for us to sleep one night in a jail in Windsor, Connecticut (fortunately, for it rained like for Noah that night). The rest of the four day trip was a blur of portages (Wilder Dam, Turners Falls, and Windsor Locks among many others), bridges (Bill would always call out, “Bridges mean progress”), blisters, sore knees, and swigs of Beefeater Gin. We ate what we could scavenge at rest stops along the way and, I think, some stale cheese sandwiches at that jail. We were shadowed through the whole trip by a photographer from Life Magazine (see the May 18, 1959 issue) who wrote a small feature on this sojourn. (Neither Axel nor Bill made it into the article/pictures but I did appear as a boater-hatted background speck.)

This odyssey all ended a little ignominiously … a few canoes (including Bill’s and mine) had to be towed the last few miles because the tide had changed and we were going backwards whilst paddling a full speed. But this was quickly forgotten at a very lush barbeque thrown by an alumnus at his beautiful seaside house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Then the boats were loaded onto a truck and all involved piled into cars to sleep their way back to Hanover … all, that is, except myself. Instead, I opted (much to Axel’s chagrin) to hitchhike over to Connecticut College for Women (then-so-named) to visit a coed that I had been seeing. I did stumble back the next day to resume my studies and the brew swilling that I had interrupted only six days prior.

Thank you Axel for these fond memories and have a very happy 70th birthday.

George and Bill

Wright’s Replacement

To see my surprising recommendation for (my ever-so hopeful) replacement for Prexy Wright’s see: Fletcher's Castoria

SHAKESPEARE

From Joe Malchow’s Dartblog: “Does anyone happen to have an update on the continuing search of the Dartmouth English Faculty for a Shakespeare professor?”

My Answer (tongue firmly in cheek): I understand that Dartmouth has had multiple candidates for this Professor of English position specializing in Shakespeare. However, all of these candidates have a very limited repertoire of Shakespeare’s plays on which they can pedagogically pontificate. These include Othello’s Moorish instincts in “Othello” and Kate’s internal gender conflicts in “The Taming of the Shrew”. These wantings in turn stem from the (unfortunate) limited range of literature classes that all these candidates took in college and graduate school. They were all constrained by their specialization in African-American and Feminine & Gender Studies programs.

(Talk about looking through the wrong end of the telescope.)

Billet Doux

Dartmouth administration to Dartmouth alums, "F**k you!"

Logical Course

I recently wrote a blog that discussed the dearth of critical thinking in our society. See: logical thinking This continues a blogging trend of mine – questioning the modern U.S. ethos -- our children are encouraged these days to decide things based only upon feelings and not on logical thought. TV shows like “The Daily Show” seem to make their stripes based upon making illogic thought popular (and sometimes even funny). I even wonder whether the audience laughs because they agree with these political barbs (usually against the right) or because they somehow sense that these barbs are inherently illogical.

As a consequence I went to the Dartmouth college website to see what kind of emphasis Dartmouth currently places on the study of Logic (remember Logic used to be a major course of study among our not-too-distant ancestors). See: Dartmouth course list What I discovered there was somewhat disturbing. Dartmouth, a supposed premier liberal arts college, offers only seven undergraduate courses in logic – three in the Mathematics department and four in the Philosophy department. (The three courses in the Mathematics department are only offered on alternate years!) To contrast with this, there are 46 courses offered in the African Studies department, 25 courses offered in the Native American Studies department, and 32 courses offered in the Women’s and Gender Studies. I guess I now understand why Jon Stewart is greeted with a chorus of “whoop, whoop”s when he makes an inane and illogical comment about our current governance.

Not that feelings have absolutely no place in our decision making process. Onetime, I got a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant that read: “When your head and your heart agree, you are seldom wrong.” If we could only hope to achieve this paltry norm?

Bounce

A good friend/fraternity brother of mine, Judge Haley Fromholtz, Dartmouth '60, recently presided over the Catholic Church’s $660 million settlement from the Los Angeles Archdiocese to its victims of priestly sexual abuse. Read more of the detail and my thoughts on this development in another of my blogs, Fletcher’s Castoria -- see this

“The Chair Recognizes …”

Dartmouth has deep-sixed another tradition. Instead of a homo sapiens, it has elected a piece of furniture to head its Board of Trustees.

From 6/8/07 “Speaking of Dartmouth”: “THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES ELECTS CHARLES "ED" HALDEMAN '70 AS ITS NEW CHAIR. HALDEMAN SENDS HIS BEST WISHES TO SPEAKING OF DARTMOUTH READERS AND TO THE ENTIRE CAMPUS COMMUNITY. Haldeman is CEO of Putnam Investments. He replaces William H. Neukom '64, who completed his term on the Board after 11 years of service.”

Is it a Morris chair, an armchair, a Hitchcock chair, a beach chair, a swivel chair, an Eames chair, a Chippendale side chair, a recliner, a barrel chair, a Windsor chair, a throne, a rocking chair, a wheelchair, a bean bag chair, or what?

My money is on a high chair.

GREEN WITH ENVY

I know that I may be veering off message here but excellence has been a tradition at Dartmouth and certainly should be in our newly-published mission statement. (It unfortunately isn’t … the recent Wright-written mission statement is the sickly pabulum “Dartmouth educates the most promising students of this generation to be leaders of the next generation with a faculty of scholars dedicated to teaching and the creation of new knowledge.”) I have published before (see “Booby Prize” at Fletchers Castoria) how poorly Dartmouth seems to perform when it comes to national scholarship awards. (For the sake of full disclosure, I too did not win any national scholarship award when I was in Hanover … not even close.)

Now, there is another award announcement wherein Dartmouth is sucking wind – the 2007 Goldwater scholarship awards for excellence in science. Yes, we did have one winner Laura Myers '08 (and my congratulations to her!) and two honorable mentions (Meghan Feely '08 and Kristen Lurie '08), but Harvard had four top winners (maximum number allowed), Cornell, four winners, MIT, three winners, and Yale, three winners. Even Mass Bay Community College had two winners for heaven’s sake. Next class reunion, I think I’ll wear a paper bag over my head.

DARTMOUTH’S LEGACY

President Wright recently solicited input on Dartmouth’s mission and its legacy. The following are the words he chose to describe Dartmouth’s legacy:

“Since its founding in 1769, Dartmouth has provided an intimate and inspirational setting for distinguished faculty and talented students to come together in one of the finest academic communities in the world. Dartmouth faculty contribute [sic] substantially to the expansion of human understanding around critical issues. Dartmouth is committed to providing the best undergraduate liberal arts experience in the world and is enriched by excellent, historic professional programs in the Dartmouth Medical School (founded 1797), the Thayer School of Engineering (1867), the Tuck School of Business (1900) and the graduate programs in the Arts and Sciences. Together they sustain an exceptional learning environment that emphasizes independent thought, academic excellence, and the lifelong pursuit of learning.
Pioneering programs and continuing leadership in computation and international education are hallmarks of Dartmouth. The College provides a comprehensive out of classroom experience, including service opportunities, engagement in the arts, and strong athletic, recreational, and outdoor programs. Dartmouth graduates are marked by an understanding of the importance of teamwork, a capacity for leadership, and their keen enjoyment of a vibrant community. Alumni/ae loyalty to Dartmouth is legendary and their engagement is a defining and sustaining quality of the College.”

I have a few comments on President Wright’s notion of Dartmouth’s heritage (other than noticing the pedestrian prose that this statement exhibits):

!) How can Dartmouth’s traditions be enumerated with nary a mention of the primary purpose for which it was created (and to which it still somewhat aspires), that is, to educate Indians?

2) Dartmouth was an all-male institution until 1973. To me it is very strange, and perhaps telling, that President Wright seems to sweep this obvious legacy under the rug. Even though Dartmouth is now fully co-educational, clearly its roots and much of its alumni/ae body are males.

3) Dartmouth is therein boasted as having “continuing leadership in computation and international education” This may once have been the case, but I seriously question whether it still is. My profession has been in computers and I have not noticed much that Dartmouth has contributed to this field in the last twenty years. Also to my continued disappointment, Dartmouth is becoming famous for its dearth of students that are selected for international honors programs. Therefore President Wright’s braggadocio seems a little misplaced.

Q and A

Question (from: http://www.dartblog.com/):
"Suggest one radically innovative change-or one innovative policy or program-that would make Dartmouth a better college and which, to the best of your knowledge, no competitor college is doing."

My answer:
Eliminate our college's de facto segregation based on race, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. In other words shuffle the student body (in dorms, social organizations, cafeterias, cultural events, classrooms, etc.) so that the cultural diversity that is so professed in most college communiqués becomes a societal benefit and not a liability ... and the ethereal good claimed to accrue from such diversity can indeed evolve and prosper. Dispose of all faculty titles, pseudo "departments", college-sponsored events, and accredited courses that encourage this de facto segregation and, instead, create a monopole college culture that understands and champions cross-cultural interactions and character building such as described in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream.

Notice, in my dream, I do not include gender or religion (and disabilities too) as de facto segregations. These are exempted because, if all religions are melded, there is no religion. And if both genders are undifferentiated, then society gets the natural benefits from neither. These two special communities can and have provided great comfort and havens to students in the past (fraternities, sororities, churches, etc.). Now, our inability to make such simple and obvious distinctions as these forces today's society to insist that all sectors (including religion, gender and disabilities) are absolutely equivalent. As a consequence we get such ludicrous scenes as wheel-chair bound individuals "climbing" Mt. Everest, apologies during Christmas Eve services at the Wellesley College chapel for using the word "Christ" in carols, and the requiring of separate restrooms for cross-gender individuals. (I drive my liberal friends crazy when I take my Down syndrome brother-in-law into the voting booth to cast his vote. They say that I get two votes as a consequence. This is true and my brother-in-law should not be given the vote, but in order to show how ludicrous this societal "equivalence" is, I keep having him vote.).

PINING AWAY

“With the old pine above her,
And the loyal ones who love her.”

One of the deepest rooted of Dartmouth symbols is the Old (or Lone) Pine. It exists on the Dartmouth flag and college insignia … towering above a silhouetted depiction of Eliazer Wheelock, sitting on a barrel of rum, teaching to (or preaching to), one assumes, Samson Occum.
Rather than relate the history of the Old Pine myself, I quote from the Alumni Relations website (The Old Pine) talking about the Hill Winds Society, a student effort to keep alive Dartmouth College traditions by giving docented tours of the campus (see also the February, 2007 issue of “DartmouthLife”):

Mike Amico [of the Hill Winds Society] made a surprising discovery while researching the story of the Old Pine, perhaps the oldest in Dartmouth lore. One of the few pines not felled in 1769, when the College founders razed the woods in the area to build Dartmouth Hall, the Old Pine long stood the test of time on the rocky hill now named Observatory Hill. Eventually, after a lightning strike and other storm damage, the tree weakened, and in 1895 it was cut to a stump. In 1967, with the stump decomposed, the Class of 1927 decided to plant a New Pine nearby, in the Bema. Amico discovered that his own class, the Class of 2007, is to inherit the stewardship of the tree. When it planted the New Pine, the Class of 1927 placed its care in the hands of the Class of 1967, who promised to pass it on in another forty years to the Class of 2007.

The Hill Winds traditions tour begins at Robinson Hall, progresses down North Main Street to Webster Avenue, turns toward Baker Library, heads up Observatory Hill, and winds back down to Dartmouth Hall and the Green.

To arrange a tour by the Hill Winds Society contact Abby Drevs in the Office of Alumni Relations. You can call her at 603/646-2337 or send an e-mail to her at: abigail.e.drevs@dartmouth.edu

You can see a picture from a postcard of the stump of the Old Pine ... found at the “Dartmouth Review” website: (Dartmouth Review)

According to Peter Carini of the college, the Old Pine was a white pine (as are its replacements). For those who don’t know about white pines, they are the stateliest of pines. They can live for more than 200 years and grow 100 feet high or higher. They generally retain their limbs only for about the top half of their height. See Eastern White Pine

Unfortunately, white pines are susceptible to blister rust and, until control measures were taken, was the cause of the loss of many of these beauties. The primary control measure was (and is) to outlaw the cultivation of gooseberries and currents which are a vector for blister rust. Today, you cannot cultivate these berries in some eastern states. (I know something about white pines as I once had huge beauty growing in my Massachuttes back yard.)