BACK TO YOUR TEPEE

Dartmouth has been doing it for many, many years, so there must be something to it. Ever since 1895 to be exact, the fraternity houses have been completely deserted one cold March night, and everyone whose heart beats in the rhythm of "Wahoo" is a part of the congregation in Webster Hall, which, with a sort of religious exaltation, is celebrating the rites of Dartmouth Night.

It would seem incredible or unique to the outsider, for it is a huge pep meeting without any reason for being. The boys just get together--in the words of the founder back in 1895--to experience the "rebirth of the College spirit," or to "pledge their loyalty to the College." They listen to a few speeches, and applaud telegrams which have been sent by Dartmouth clubs which meet simultaneously all over the nation in a sort of mystical unity; they cheer a bit and sing "Dartmouth Undying" or "Men of Dartmouth"; then perhaps they go straight to bed like the adolescent who has just been converted in a camp meeting.

This is what Dartmouth Night should be like, according to its concept. But it isn't actually, at least of late. For Dartmouth men have begun to fidget in their seats when the telegrams are read, and they no longer join so heartily in the singing. They have begun to think of Dartmouth Night as mawkish and maudlin, and they are all for washing it out of the pretty green picture.

This fits in with a new Idea which Dartmouth has about itself, an Idea which has been bruited and bruised about controversially within the columns of the "Daily Dartmouth." The men from Hanover are a peculiarly introspective lot, and when embarked on the sort of soul-searching which tries to define the Dartmouth Man, they can hold forth indefinitely.

In brief, the Idea maintains that Dartmouth must turn "suburban." Meaning by this, probably, that Dartmouth men must become urban and suave. Away from the pastoral life, the bucolic point of view, the simple and earthy existence 'midst the pine trees and the birds. No more of the violent college spirit, the "small college" attitude. For Dartmouth men come from the mad whirl of city life and know what the bright lights look like. "Let's have a new Dartmouth tradition, a cosmopolitan, tweed dressed, and smartly polished one." Harvard, once a "small college," has turned suburban without that sense of shame from selling out! May Dartmouth, too.

Harvard is probably completely unaware of this process of her evolution. Be that as it may, Harvard is most certainly not a peppy and spiritous land like the hills of Hanover; it is rather a lotus-land, the private domain of Indifference. Cantabridgians would shy in dismay from any public demonstration of simple school spirit. But secretly most of them admit that all is not well here, that there might be a more ideal attitude. And certainly they would not wish to see Dartmouth hide its spontaneous war-whoops under a hypocritical cloak of assumed indifference. It is not for Harvard men, but they see something vital and healthy in the rah-rah spirit which pervades most of the nation's campuses. So back to the tepees of your fathers, young bucks.