Alongwith resolutions, champagne and college bowl games, awards presentations are a New Year's fixture. The Man of the Year, the Kennedy Center Honors, and on and on. Unfortunately, Dartmouth launches the year without any tribute to the great events of the past 12 months. Until now. With the help of a number of corporate and government sponsors, I present the 1995 Daily D Awards, recognizing the year's highlights and lowlights at Dartmouth and across the nation. The envelope please ...
Starting off close to home, the American Pepper Growers' Association presented its prestigious Golden Pepper to the Collis Cafe for creative overuse of red, green and yellow peppers in meals ranging from casserole to oatmeal. Though some claim outright malice toward its patrons is the motivation behind the Cafe's choice of vegetables, an APGA spokesman hailed Collis for reviving the previously moribund pepper industry.
The site selection committee at the College is the recipient of a citation for Excellence in Storm Drainage from the Republic of Bangladesh for placing the Green on the only flat piece of land in northern New England, making it virtually undrainable during the spring melt. "Despite the steep hills surrounding Hanover, which tend to draw water away from campus," the awards committee wrote in its announcement, "Dartmouth has designed an effective water retention system for the Green, creating Grafton County's only seasonal wetland."
Some student organizations are also honored this year. The Marion Barry Award for Political Resurrection goes to the Student Assembly, which since September has done ... well, no one really knows what it has done -- a marked improvement over last year's performance. Though the SA is currently in that awkward neutral phase, no longer a reliable source of amusement for its soap opera politics, but not yet a driving force on campus, 1996 holds out the potential for more progress.
In its first year on campus, the Dartmouth Class of 1999 took home the Coalition for the Prevention of Fire Safety's coveted Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Pyromania in recognition of this year's Homecoming bonfire. Shirking a long-standing tradition of only burning the wood, this year's freshman class managed to set the grass on fire as well after class president Frode Eilertsen invoked the Norse god of wind to draw the flames sideways.
Dartmouth's off-campus conservative weekly is also a winner, receiving accolades for Innovation in Statistical Inference from the National Society of Mathematicians for its survey on the political leanings of Dartmouth professors. Extrapolating from the responses of only two philosophy professors, the Review managed to conclude that every one of the department's members is a Democrat. Review staffers were pleased, but some wondered why the NSM had not recognized them before, since, as one explained, "we usually extrapolate based on no evidence at all."
Anther prominent and slightly flaky right-wing institution, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, walks home with the Dan Quayle Lifetime Achievement Award in Public Locution. In the past year alone, Sen. Helms has suggested that North Carolinians will assassinate the President, referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong II successively as "Kim Jong Two" and "Kim Jong Three," and introduced India's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the Senate floor as the President of India.
Helms was one reason cited by the Clinton Administration's personnel search committee in bestowed their Lani Guinier Award for Acumen in Political Appointment to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, recognizing his deft selection of committee chairs. The committee noted that "Helms possesses a unique combination of rabid isolationism, senility, and Southern provincialism that make him the perfect choice for the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee."
Another Republican, New York Mayor Rudolph Guliani, earned the La Guardia-Koch Award for Mayoral Interference in Foreign Affairs when, after rolling out the city's welcome mat in anticipation of the U.N.'s 50th birthday gala, had PLO leader and Nobel laureate Yassir Arafat forcibly removed from his seat at a Lincoln Center dinner. In naming Guliani Good Housekeeping's Host of the Year, Martha Stewart suggested that, in order to avoid an embarrassing faux pas, one should wait until after the first course before beginning to evict guests with armed guards. Guliani hopes improved manners will earn him a repeat in '96.
