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From: asente@Cascade.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.misc,net.motss
Subject: Re: Corrupting youth: Conservative [sic.] Campus Tabloids
Message-ID: <885@Cascade.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 26-Oct-84 21:24:20 EST
Article-I.D.: Cascade.885
Posted: Fri Oct 26 21:24:20 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Oct-84 06:46:57 EST
References: <1748@burdvax.UUCP> <1061@bbncca.ARPA>
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 45

> Any takers
> (even better, Dartmouth students, alumni) out there?
> 
> 				Trick or treat?
> 				Ron Rizzo

I graduated from Dartmouth in 1979, just before the Review raised its
ugly head.  At that time, I can state that:

1)  The proportion of students favoring a return of the Indian symbol was
very small.  Most of them were from the reactionary "Old Dartmouth"
group:  everything used to be better before they let women in, etc.
etc.  I used to think that the fact that Dartmouth used to have the
reputation of being a bastion of raw male lust, of horny men out in the
middle of the woods, was the principal cause of this reactionism.  Now
that similar papers are showing up more or less everywhere, I'm being
forced to review that opinion.  Perhaps this is what let it get a
foothold at Dartmouth and thus gain legitimacy elsewhere?  But I
digress.  The Indian symbol was pretty much a dead issue.

2)  John Kemeny, the president of the college at the time, was
practically idolized by the students.  He only had to start out a talk
with his traditional opening, "Men and Women of Dartmouth," and he
would get an immediate standing ovation.  At our commencement address,
he altered this for the first time to "Women and Men of Dartmouth" and
got, if anything, a more enthusiastic response than usual.

3)  Dartmouth at the time did not have a policy of sex-blind
admissions.  There was a quota for women in the entering class.  This
was extremely unpopular among the students; during my senior year the
trustees once again rejected equal access for women and there was
practically a student riot.  (It was finally passed the next year.)

I think that taking these things into account, any claim that the
Dartmouth Review is merely reflecting student opinion can easily be
seen as the bald-faced lie that it is.  They're not reflecting it,
they're forming it.  The Review's crucifixion of Kemeny as a
bleeding-heart wimp that castrated the true "Dartmouth spirit"
(whatever that is) is nothing less than vicious libelling of the man
who pretty much single-handedly brought the college into the twentieth
century.

	-paul asente

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."