The Week in Review

Friday, October 21, 2005

Noise Recital at the Hop

The self-styled "band" PSI, made up of the pretentious kind of people who watch "Blade Runner" indoors wearing sunglasses, performed on Wednesday, October 12, in Faulkner Recital Hall. Calling their performance "music" is quite a stretch, though some of the instruments used did appear to be musical in nature. The "concert" consisted of one man playing a single chord on a guitar, another playing a single note on the harmonium, and a third making noises with random pieces of metal that hurt even the most durable of ears. This torture lasted for forty minutes, endured by fifteen audience members who made the 12:30 PM trek � that is, fifteen at the start, before some of the 50-year old hippies left midway through the performance. There did not appear to be a single student in attendance. The terrible noise ended finally, and was followed by three to five minutes of awkward silence during which they seemed to actually expect applause. One "band" member announced that the group had a CD for sale, though they did not appear to garner any sales from the remaining ten listeners. As one audience member put it, "That wasn't just out of the box; there was no box."

Rush Crashers

Dartmouth's Pan-Hellenic Council is currently investigating whether or not rush infractions occurred during the Bid night acceptance party on October 13 at Sigma Delta Sorority. Several upper-class sisters from Kappa Delta Epsilon attended the party to recruit two '08 women who were sinking their bids there. The sisters also supposedly made phone calls to the women after they had accepted bids at Sigma Delta to discuss the possibility of open-bids to KDE. According to Pan-Hell rules, open bids are only to be offered to women who did not receive bids or who did not partake in the rush process. National Pan-Hellenic council is an extremely complicated organization with a plethora of rules, and it will therefore be difficult for Dartmouth's officers to properly handle the situation. Pledges from both Sigma Delta and Kappa Delta Epsilon declined to comment.

A Merciless Life

Braving this week's incessant drizzle, Austin Sarat, a professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, appeared before a Dartmouth audience to deliver a call for mercy for those waiting on death row. Prof. Sarat's October 10 lecture, "Clemency in the Killing State," focused on points brought up in his recent book, Mercy on Trial, for which the academic has received some notoriety. Despite the general reduction in the number of inmate executions in the U.S. since the mid-90s, a trend that has been hailed by activists as the beginning of the end for the practice in the U.S., Prof. Sarat cautioned against pinning hope on what he termed the "innocence revolution." Rather than save individuals of ill-repute by questioning the circumstances of their trial, the professor instead advocated the institution of mercy on the state level. According to Prof. Sarat, the "bitter pill survivors of murder must swallow" (a phrase coined by Illinois Gov. George Ryan after he granted state-wide clemency) is not bitter, but it merely requires a change in political and social thought that would equate the higher call of mercy with strength, not weakness. After all, with the right counseling and a little love, that former rapist could become a model Denny's employee—all made possible by a most merciful state government.

Real Women Are Blonde

Speaking with a distinctive Mexican accent, playwright Josefina Lopez discussed the pressures women with media-related careers face during her October 5th presentation, "Reel Women vs. Real Women." Despite co-authoring the award-winning movie "Real Women Have Curves," most of the voluptuous Latina's speech did not focus on the pressures of being a larger woman. Rather, she discussed both her desire to see "chick fantasies" on screen and her younger years in Los Angeles, including what she described as a "fun" job working in a factory as a sewing machine operator. Lopez also treated her audience to poetry, reading from a profanity-laced compilation of her work, entitled "The Clitoris Chronicles."

Although Lopez urged Latina women to embrace their cultural identity, she appeared to be envious of the blondes in the audience, lamenting her hair's change from blonde to brown as a young child and revealing her criteria for judging the quality of movies: apparently the amount of blonde actresses cast in a film and its merit are inversely proportional. Lopez also spoke of her tendency to be mistaken for a prostitute while waiting for public transportation, and related her desire to be mistaken for a CEO or Nobel Prize winner instead. Perhaps it is the tattoo on her shoulder and the copious amounts of what can only be referred to as "Teen Dream" blue eye shadow, clearly visible from the back row of Rocky 1, which reveal her true occupation to those in search of the pleasure that can only be provided by a "real woman."

Co-Education Celebrated by Quahogs

On October 7, Dartmouth's 1972 Society welcomed Gina Barreca '79 as its keynote speaker for its first annual dinner and discussion, "Celebrating Coeducation." One hundred and fifty students and local alumnae (overwhelmingly female) gathered for the event in hopes of addressing the issues the College has faced since offering admission to women. Barreca's humorous speech primarily highlighted differences between men and women, however, there was little in the way of celebration and even less discussion. Though the seating arrangement was predetermined with the expectation that participants would meet new people, only one table remained seated following the speech. The remainder of the room rose to leave or else obtain signatures of their copies of Barreca's Babes in Boyland (see TDR 4/8/2005).

Suffer or Die

The Symposium on Global Bioethics visited Dartmouth this week to highlight, among other things, the acute need for mercy killing in the Third World to improve their quality of life; or to use the nomenclature of the time, physician assisted suicide.

Margaret Pabst Battin, Professor of Philosophy at University of Utah, having penned the enchanting essay, "Ending Life" and therein having recognized that the "developing world," is found wanting in palliative healthcare, has determined that, by force of logic and dull circumstance, the only expedient way to address the dread surplus of the 'suffering' in developing countries is to move those beaten and inconvenienced with life along their way, with haste, into their eternal reward. Though it seems to occur to many of these death-advocates that another solution to suffering and the encumbrances of life might be to improve palliative care in developing countries, it has not dulled their enthusiasm for a more direct and final solution to the social nuisance of suffering.

Taking as their maxim "resistance to dying causes suffering" the arbiters of death know their enemy and have determined that "physician involvement in healthcare actually increases the suffering of the patient." Given such a dictum, a sensible person may do well to ask whether the bio-ethical community thinks we need doctors at all. Professionally speaking, wouldn't a compassionate executioner be more to the point? Though some in the audience did raise this issue, the panel of bio-"ethicists" stayed on point, more or less dismissing the indelicate question with nervous smiles affixed to the rhetoric of their deadly innovation. This of course runs at cross-purposes with a seemingly opposite and dated dictum that has served health care professionals for millennia. An oath in fact, to "abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous" and moreover to "give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel." Perhaps Hippocrates and his oath—oaths in general, even—are just too "old-school".

Hudak '07's Food Court Travails Continue

When he entered Food Court earlier this week, Dartmouth Review President Kevin "Snacks" Hudak had intended to purchase enough Country Fried Chicken to feed a small African village. Whether at the urging of policy-minded Food Court higher-ups or on account of her own sense of civic duty, the employee he confronted refused to give Hudak the three servings of Country Fried Chicken he requested. Hudak remembers the look of incredulity he received upon his request. Voicing his disdain for the entr�e-limiting policy, Hudak stated: "I thought this kind of discrimination ended years ago, but apparently it continues." Though the employees attempted to appease Hudak's obvious concern with the situation, offering him extra mashed-potatoes and corn in exchange for the restricted chicken, he could not be satisfied, and instead refused the food altogether. After settling for a comparatively unsatisfying ranch-chicken fillet, Hudak left the building determined not to accept his defeat: he returned several hours later to re-attempt the order. Success ensued when Hudak received from the server the three pieces of chicken he had so long desired—this time without protest.

Hufu Cannibalizes Its Own Success

Ever since the seal hunt was outlawed in 1987, connoisseurs of fine pinnipeds have had little to satiate their hunger. However, thanks to the efforts of Hufu, Inc. and its founder, Mark Nuckols Tu'06, they now have an accessible, and legal, alternative in Hufu's latest product: Delicious Baby Seal—The Veal of the Sea (logo southeasterly). This latest addition to Hufu, Inc.'s line of quality products replicates the flavor of a baby seal in the form of tofu, a product that can be enjoyed by carnivores and vegetarians alike. Eskimos may have twenty words for snow, but how many do they have for "lawsuit?"

Trouble in the Hood

The Hood Museum of Art's latest exhibit, clumsily titled "SO MUCH TROUBLE IN THE WORLD-Believe It Or Not," reminds us of why items from the Hood's storage are kept in storage. Fred Wilson, an installation artist of supposed international acclaim, used pieces found in the Hood's permanent collection to create a social statement about both the era in which the pieces were amassed and contemporary society.

The entranceway display case prominently features a pair of Daniel Webster's socks amongst other bric-a-brac masquerading as art. Wilson explained his concept for this piece to be embracing the "obvious" and the "multiple." It would be rather odd if Webster only had one sock, after all. Continuing inward, Wilson displays a row of bronze-colored busts on pedestals from the "University of Man" exhibit from 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Dartmouth obtained the busts in order to teach about the different races. Wilson added his own special messages on the pedestals such as, "Someone knows me—but not you." Adjacent to the busts is a table of casts of plaster hands of various authors and artists. Progressing beyond plaster anatomy, the next room comes closest to being artistically stimulating with its displays of morbid etchings. Unfortunately, it is difficult to grasp their artistic value beneath black shrouds and paper overlay. While the blatant nature of the social commentary is appreciated in this section as opposed to the cryptic message of the socks, even this section of Wilson's exhibit leaves something wanting in terms of artistic value.

Finally, the outside wall of the installation is barely visible beneath a myriad of grim likenesses of Daniel Webster, a backdrop to the Daniel Webster sculptures sprawling across the floor. Only a few lonely portraits of Native Americans punctuate the wall. Despite the overbearing symbolism, clearly intended to illuminate the power of the white man and marginalization of people of color, my fellow museum- goers pondered, "I wonder what those chiefs are doing up there." A Hood museum curator cleared up the confusion, eloquently describing the Daniel Webster section of Wilson's work as, "put[ing] the treasure amongst the not-so-treasure." To degrade the art a little further, Wilson and the curator gave Webster's portraits nicknames such as "Deer in Headlights," "Lurch," and "Bob Newman."

While the installataion might be deemed meaningless at a lesser institution, it has perhaps found a suitable audience here among students who have spent years honing their ability to overanalyze and read meaning into all forms expression devoid of such. After viewing the installation, one student summed up its effect as this: "[It] truly makes the spectator think." If Ivy League students need low-quality artwork to make them think, perhaps there is more trouble in the world than Fred Wilson realizes.

The Cords Are Racist You-Know-Whats

A blitzmail message of 16 Oct from the Dartmouth Cords implored students to "*BRING THE HEAT TO FRAT ROW THIS WEDNESDAY NIGHT*" for a Cords a capella show at Alpha Xi Delta Sorority. While this imperative ostensibly made sense within the context of the blitz, which described the Cords as "THE HOTTEST GROUP ALIVE" singing "THE HOTTEST SONGS EVER," it was also a thinly-veiled reference to this summer's shooting death of Meleia Willis-Starbuck '07.

Willis-Starbuck was gunned down in Berkeley by friend Christopher Hollis after summoning him to break up a dispute with a group of young men and, according to police reports, instructed him to "bring the heat." [see TDR 8/26/05]. At press time, there were no reported casualties at the concert, though the group's inbox is full of angry 7K blitzes to which they will not respond.

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