Week in Review

Friday, September 27, 2002

The Top 5 Rules of Etiquette for Freshmen

5. Travel in groups of four or fewer (corollary: no Hanover restaurant will take a reservation for 'umm, I dunno, maybe 15 or 20?').

4. If there's a line, spend no more three minutes using a public Blitz computer (addition: opening a web browser for any reason gives anyone in line license to kill you).

3. Ask for a beer. If you're at a fraternity or sorority, remember that you are a guest.

2. Check to see if a Blitzmail nickname is in use before taking it. Worth repeating: check to see if a Blitzmail nickname is in use before taking it.

1. If anyone asks, you were at Phi Tau (practice this before you need to use it: 'This guy in a cape kept bringing me beers.').

Go to MIT for Free On-line

While many colleges and universities have taken advantage of the Internet to offer degrees for a fee, MIT may change this practice, if not end it. MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative will publish materials for all of the institution's courses on the Internet in the next ten years. The first courses—on subjects ranging from anthropology to chemistry—will be available starting September 30. The materials will include transcripts of lectures, as well as video of lectures, experiments and seminars. MIT officials insist that the information will always be free and that their mission is solely educational. 'I genuinely think there was an 'a-ha' moment when they said our mission was actually to enhance education,' said Anne Margulies, Executive Director of OCW. 'Why don't we, instead of trying to sell our knowledge over the Internet, just give it away.'

U.S. News Rankings

Yes, we know Dartmouth has been ranked #9 by the magazine this year. No, it's not news, which is why we are not devoting more space to it. And, yes, we do know that Dartmouth would be #1 were it in the 'Liberal Arts' category and competing against schools that consider the implementation of gender-neutral third-person singular pronouns to be a major campus issue.

Networking at EKT

The most recent issue of Wired magazine praises Dartmouth for its wireless networking. Dartmouth's technology, says the article, provides a glimpse into the future of networking. Most striking, however, is the mention of Epsilon Kappa Theta sorority for its tech-savvy. The excerpt deserves to be quoted in full:

The sisters of Epsilon Kappa Theta are definitely up to something. The wireless cards in the sorority house's computers each move an average of 222 Mbytes of data per day—only one other spot on campus, an administrative building, moves more than 150 Mbytes a day per card. An MP3 server, perhaps? Maybe they're watching streamed video on a big-screen TV—or using high-bandwidth Internet radio to supply the music for all-night parties. They could be trying to corner the market on Diesel jeans via sorority e-shopping excursions, or running a molecular modeling program for a pharmaceutical company. We may never know for sure. Since the college has a strict policy against monitoring student computer use unless investigating complaints, university officials couldn't tell me what's going on. The sisters of EKT did not respond to my prying emails. So for now, their secret remains safe.

While the author's hypotheses are interesting, the sisters are not trying to hide anything. According to one member, members of the house have no idea why they use so much bandwidth. Said one sister: 'It's not that we did no return his e-mails, we didn't know what he was talking about.'

From Poetry to Pastry

In the Spring, Maya Angelou visited Dartmouth as the keynote speaker for the Tucker Foundation's fiftieth anniversary. Angelou, of course, is known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the poem she recited at Bill Clinton's inauguration, her work for Hallmark, and her appearances on Oprah.

Angelou can now add another appearance to her resume. On September 10, Angelou attended the opening of a Greensboro, North Carolina, Krispy Kreme doughnuts franchise. The franchise, located in a predominantly minority area of Greensboro, was built as part of an urban renewal project. Project Homestead, a non-profit organization, is the majority owner of the store.

Angelou recited her poem 'Still I Rise' to celebrate the store's opening. Whether she was referring to yeast called for in doughnut recipes or the sweet success of a minority-run business is unclear.

Sex Rules! 2002

The face was new, but the message was the same. Dartmouth College freshmen were once again privy to a seedy sex presentation during Orientation. The sexpert spoke of masturbation—as a means of learning about oneself—and distributed flavored condoms to freshmen. She also described having sex with her husband—especially in the shower, where she had four showerheads installed.

Bias Part III

One of Dartmouth's own is adding his two-cents to the media bias debate. Following best-sellers by CBS veteran Bernard Goldberg and the omnipresent Ann Coulter, Dartmouth's lone speech professor, Jim Kuypers's Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues will be released by the Greenwood Publishing Group at the end of the month. According to the Cybercast News Service, Kuypers claims the news media ignore far-left, moderate and conservative viewpoints in favor of a 'narrow brand of liberal bias.'

Wah-Hoo-Wah on Cable News

On a September 13 episode of the 'Fox News Watch' program on the Fox News Channel, an anchor wished Sen. George Allen of Virginia 'Wah-Hoo-Wah' at the end of a segment. From the official website of University of Virginia Athletics, here is the school's unofficial alma mater, 'The Good Old Song,' written in 1893 to the tune of 'Auld Lang Syne.'

That good old song of
Wah-hoo-wah
We''l sing it o'er and o'er
It cheers our hearts and
warms our blood
To hear them shout and roar.
We come from Old Virginia,
Where all is bright and gay.
Let's all join hands and give a yell
For the dear old UVa
Wah-hoo-wah,
Wah-hoo-wah.
Uni-v, Virginia,
Hoo-rah-ray,
Hoo-rah-ray,
Ray! Ray! U-V-a

Diversity is Muskets, Rifles, and Pistols

The National Review 's Dave Kopel on The University of Wisconsin's refusal to allow the West Virginia Mountaineer, a sports mascot, to fire his (unloaded) musket:

'[D]iversity' also includes people who do diverse things such as the approximately 50 percent of the American population which participates in America's culture of responsible firearms use and ownership.

Of course, this wouldn't be the issue at Dartmouth. The fledgling Dartmouth Southern Society or some such group would probably protest the whole thing as being insensitive to 'mountain-dwelling peoples' and as promoting 'demeaning regional stereotypes.'

West Up North

Dartmouth will host a two-day 'Race Matters' conference as the inaugural event of the Dartmouth Committee on Race in the Academy. There will be three panels in Collis Common Ground on Oct. 4 and a moderated town hall meeting on Oct. 5 in Alumni Hall. Guest speakers hail from schools including Harvard, Cornell, Brown, Florida International, the University of Kentucky and Trinity College. Most notably, Cornel West, the Class of 1943 University professor of Religion at Princeton (and former Fletcher University Professor at Harvard) will be a participant. The name of the conference, in fact, is the same as one of West's best-selling books. Brother West, as he likes to be called, left Harvard and cried racism after being chastised for producing little scholarship and requesting back-to-back sabbaticals.

Kalb Update

Review staffer and Appalachian Trail hiker John Kalb, whose correspondence we published last Spring, reports that he is well in his last letter. He had reached Andover, Maine, as of last week.

John did bear some sad news—a hiker died on the slopes of Mount Washington:

'Apparently, he was a real hard-luck case. He'd lost his wife last year, and his dog had died in the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Northern Maine. Apparently the day before he died, he fell while climbing Mount Madison. People who talked to him that day said he was bloodied. I wonder if he had a concussion or something that might have clouded his judgment; the next day, he left Madison Springs Hut to climb Mount Washington in the face of an ice storm and hurricane force winds against the advice of the hut croo. Just awful.'

John has set October 12 as his finishing date. He has issued an open invitation to join him on the summit of Katahdin, provided that one supplies the champagne.

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