To the Editor:
Somber greetings from a Dartmouth alumnus in London who has been following the terrible news of the Zantops' death.
In reading the news stories online, it occurred to me that the Zantops' neighbors Audrey and Robert McCollum were among the few people in a position to discuss what had happened to their friends. While we all understand that some secrecy no doubt helps the ongoing homicide investigation, I must say that, as a concerned former student studying abroad, I am grateful to the McCollums for their remarks, both caring and insightful, which have appeared in the press in recent days. In the face of such awful news, one appreciates the human perspective.
So I wanted to thank them for speaking up as honorably as they have under such trying circumstances.
And whether we were close as neighbors to the Zantops, or as far away as many of their former students now are, there exists a common need to say what we can right now -- even while nobody knows what happened to those two extraordinary people, or what the detectives will uncover.
What a good professor Half Zantop was. Especially striking to me is the observation Mrs. McCollum has made about his generosity of spirit -- of his concern for students.
Indeed, I myself wasn't having an easy time of it at Dartmouth when I took his earth science class to fulfil a distributive requirement, distracted English major that I was at the time. Professor Zantop took notice, in his office hours, of my low morale and did his best to encourage me toward better work.
He didn't care whether I needed to do well in the course or not, or why I had elected it in the first place: he only cared to know why I wasn't meeting my potential. So he just stopped and asked me about myself. He even joked, quite practically I thought, that maybe I didn't want to work hard anymore because I wasn't getting paid yet for all my efforts.
"I remember being your age," he said quite honestly. As an actor-in-training now, I'm still not getting paid for my work, but Professor Half Zantop's counsel and interest were just what I needed at the time to keep plugging away.
He even figured out a way for me to harness what I knew as an English major to make up, in my science writing, for what I lacked in the hard facts. Who would have thought a geology professor would strike such a human chord.
While there is no good thing whatsoever to hope for in the Zantops' deaths, I nevertheless do hope that it really didn't arise, somehow, from Half's magnanimity, as some speculation has run. Dartmouth can be a lonely place, and I would hate for professors now to shy away from counseling troubled students.
While an undergraduate, I did not quite realize how idealistic the Zantops were (and I did not happen to know Susanne); but the reports explain how they believed very much in the virtues of an open and free society, and in the politics attendant on those goals.
Certainly in the context of their idealism, offering help to troubled people was a risk they were willing to take. In that sense, such a risk is heroic before it is foolish.But did it lead to their death?
It would be double the tragedy if that is really what happened.
