Carnival formal makes comeback
The Winter Carnival Formal will return to the Collis Center tomorrow night after a one-year absence from Winter Carnival events.
The Winter Carnival Formal will return to the Collis Center tomorrow night after a one-year absence from Winter Carnival events.
As times change, traditions change. And the biggest change in the Dartmouth community in the last 50 years - co-education - has invariably changed perhaps the biggest tradition at the College -Winter Carnival. But some things about the weekend remain unchanged. It still is a weekend to let loose. "There seems to be some sort of a need in the middle of winter for people to have some sort of a break, to be festive," Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco said. The outdoor aspect of the weekend didn't change much after the College went coed in 1972. "It's an organized way of bringing people to campus and celebrating the winter and the cold," Winter Carnival Council chair Tim Chow '96 said. But one aspect of Carnival had no choice but to change. Coeducation, and the arrival of mass quantities of women on campus for the entire year shifted Carnival's focus away from the one weekend in the winter time when men could actually find a date on campus. "Coeducation changed Carnival because Carnival was the time when lots of women came to campus," Turco said.
The 30 students on the Winter Carnival Committee are dedicated to much more than choosing a theme for the weekend.
David Stack '96, artist of this year's Winter Carnival poster and t-shirt, said he was inspired to study at the College by the words of another Dartmouth cartoonist, Theodore Geisel '25. "I decided to apply here because of the Dr. Seuss quote.
In a gathering that resembled a political convention more than a birthday bash, about 35 people convened to celebrate former President Ronald Reagan's 83rd birthday Saturday night. It was the Conservative Union at Dartmouth's third annual celebration of the event. "We wanted to have a social event that would be good fun and good humor," CUaD's Co-Vice- President Judd Serotta '94 said. CUaD also wanted the party to make a political statement to the campus, Bill Hall '96, CUaD's other co-vice-president, said. "It just makes a very good point to the campus," Hall said.
When one first meets David McCullough, current Montgomery Fellow at the College, he doesn't sound like a historian and best-selling author. He is more eager to talk about his hobby. "Painting is wonderful because you don't have to work with words," McCullough says.
Forty students sent out a revised "Open Letter to the Administration about the [Coed Fraternity Sorority] System" yesterday to various students, with stronger demands than the rough draft which circulated prematurely last Saturday. The revised letter calls on several key administrators "to issue an order abolishing the CFS system effective in the Fall of 1994." The original letter asked for the banning of all-male Greek houses and an investigation of coed fraternities and sororities. David Cohen '94, Sari Cohen '94, Sean Donahue '96 and Lynn Webster '94 - all members of the Panarchy undergraduate society - signed the letter and said they represent the group called the Dartmouth Alliance for Social Change. The letter asks students who receive it to add their signatures to the harsh indictment of key administrators' failure to deal with the CFS system. "The CFS system represents the institutionalization of degradation in the forms of the objectification of women, the subordination of pledges, and the subjection of the individual to a constructed 'group ideal'," the letter said. The letter's main target are all-male fraternities, but it also attacks co-ed fraternities and sororities for remaining within the CFS system. "Sororities and coeds are guilty as well because of their structural similarities to fraternities," the letter said. "However, we acknowledge the need for all-female and coed spaces (including those houses that already exist), but believe that such spaces can and must exist outside the CFS system," it said. Early next week, the group said it will go public with the letter and submit it to College President James Freedman, Dean of the College Lee Pelton, Dean of Residential Life Dean Mary Turco and Assistant Dean of Residential Life Deborah Reinders. "We want to see the entire CFS system eliminated," Donahue said yesterday, speaking on behalf of the group. "We want to see the entire CFS system eliminated," Donahue said yesterday, speaking on behalf of the group. But Sunday, Donahue said the group did not expect the letter to bring about the end of the CFS system.
David McCullough, award-winning author of "Truman" and a Montgomery Fellow at the College discussed his works and the inspirations behind them with almost 100 people in Cook Auditorium last night. "If I have done my work, if I have brought an art to the writing of history, it means you will feel what happened - and I don't think we really know anything until we feel it," McCullough said. McCullough said when he writes a book he is "trying to bring the past to life and to recover what is slowly being lost." He said he explores themes like courage, leadership and innovation in his works. This outlook played an important part in his latest work, "Truman," which he researched for 10 years.
When construction begins this summer to convert Webster Hall into a Special Collections library, the College will lose a major venue for large public events on campus. The renovation of Webster, which can hold about 800 people, could leave the College unable to hold medium-sized events, like musical acts, comedians and speakers, Programming Board Co-Chair Bob Bordone '94 said. The Collis Student Center was designed to increase the programming space for the students, according to Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia. "Our primary concern was restoring it to a programming space," Sateia said. But due to Webster's planned closing, actual programming space will decline, Bordone said.
The Student Assembly's boycott of Dartmouth Dining Services will go ahead despite recent meetings between Assembly members and administrators in which DDS claimed they cannnot meet the Assembly's demands. A motion passed at last week's Assembly meeting called for a one-day boycott to protest what the Assembly described as "insufficient flexibility on the part of DDS." The Assembly has been lobbying DDS for two and a half years to change its meal plan policies.
Dr. Naim Akbar, a nationally-renowned clinical psychologist, delivered a motivational speech Saturday in the first Afro-American Society-sponsored event in the College's celebration of Black History Month. The lecture, which focused on the psychology of self-determination in the African American community, drew a crowd of about 75 people to 105 Dartmouth Hall. Abkar said the obstacles to African American self-determination are based on the European community, which considers other races inferior, and the re-socialization and subordination of the black community during slavery times. "Slavery was not just an economic, political or power arrangement.
The completion of this year's snow sculpture, an abominable snowman breaking out of a pile of books, will mark the end of nearly six weeks of packing and sculpting for a small, dedicated group of students on the Winter Carnival Council. Although the sculpture now resembles little more than a giant snow pyramid, the 15 members of the Winter Carnival Council began chipping away at the massive pile of snow yesterday to shape it into its final form. The sculpture, which is 33-foot by 25-foot at the base, is made of five tiers, each between four and five feet high, which get progressively smaller toward the top, Tim Chow '96, chair of the Carnival committee, said. A six-foot-high protrusion from the top of the pile will become the snowman's upraised arm, giving the sculpture a height of 25 feet Artie Zweil '94, chair of the sculpture committee, said. The crew will work day and night to complete the sculpture by Thursday evening's opening ceremonies, Chow said. Last year's sculpture, a penguin wearing sunglasses and reclining in a beach chair, was only 12 feet tall because of the lack of snow, few workers and frozen water pipes. The council members, who started working on the sculpture after the first snowfall of the term, are counting on more help from other students in the remaining time before Carnival. Most of the snow used has come from the Green but Facilities, Operations and Management workers had to bring in two truckloads of snow from Occom Pond to help. As the weekend grows closer, more people are volunteering to help build the snow sculpture. "Usually that's the way it goes," Zweil said.
Karen Wetterhahn's six-month stint as dean of the faculty next year will not be the first time she has paved the way for women to follow in her footsteps. Four years ago, Wetterhahn became the first associate dean of the sciences - a position from which she will retire this June. In 1976, just three years after the College became coeducational, Wetterhahn became the first female professor in the chemistry department, a position in which she has worked to forge new paths for her fellow female scientists. Wetterhahn, who is currently in the last few months of her four-year tenure as associate dean, will fill in for Dean of the Faculty Jim Wright when he becomes acting College president during James Freedman's six-month sabbatical starting next January. She not only brings to the position her perspectives as a professor and a dean, but also her experiences as a female scientist and a co-founder of the Women in Science Project, a program designed to support female students in math, engineering and the sciences. Wright, who recommended Wetterhahn to Freedman, said he is excited the president appointed her to take over his duties. "I think she's an exceptional scientist, colleague and administrator.
Dean of Faculty will serve as president for six months
A Student Assembly that has looked like a punching bag the last 48 hours shrugged off a potential knockout blow last night to emerge staggering, but still standing. And now the Assembly's 43 members face the daunting task of trying to forget their biggest controversy of the last few years and return to business. An attempted coup by seven members of the Assembly's Executive Committee failed to even make it to the discussion stage because they did not adequately explain to the general Assembly or the student body why Artzer should be impeached. Assembly Vice President Steve Costalas '94, one of the co-signers of a letter calling for Artzer's resignation, accepted the defeat of the coup, and tried to pull the divided Assembly together at the end of the meeting. "It's been a tough week for me personally.
Doctors at the College Health Service are prescribing Prozac, what some have termed as the anti-depressant "wonder drug," for many of the students suffering from clinical depression. Approximately one-quarter of College students go to Dick's House for counseling for depression, according to Dr. Mark Reed, assistant profesor of psychiatry at Dick's House. Prozac is one of three drugs which Dick's House doctors prescribe for extreme cases of depression, Reed said.
College President James Freedman officially announced yesterday that he will take a six-month sabbatical starting January 1, 1995. The College's Board of Trustees approved the sabbatical at its winter meeting in Washington, D.C.
Hanover Police arrested Marshall Bass '94 on Sunday for allegedly shooting Clark Khayat '93 with a pellet gun outside of Alpha Delta fraternity in the early morning of Sunday, Jan.