"Steeplejack," Journal of Controversy, Blasts "Dartmouth's Deep Blue Funk"

Editor, Dartmouth Steeplejack

"Down with Dartmouth's Deep Blue Funk!" These words on an obscure handbill printed on sick blue paper, hit the Dartmouth campus at the end of September and aroused curiosity. After "funk" had been discussed, undergraduates began to realize that some supposedly tow-head bunch had an attitude about listlessness at Dartmouth. "Listlessness" is the favorite campus editorial word all over America these days. It is supposed to mean that the campuses have long ago left kid-shouting behind and have found no substitute for it.

It turned out the next day that the handbills were scare advertisements for "Steeplejack," a fortnightly blast printed in newspaper form. The feeling behind the sheet is that the sacred quiet of college life, beneath which active minds are restive in a year of American revolution and federal change, must be supplanted by zealous examination of the college structure. Somebody at Dartmouth had to find out what the falsities of that structure are and to open thereby the way for radical changes that the administration and the undergraduates separately forecast.

Journal of Controversy

"Steeplejack" has not found out what should be done, but in its three issues so far it has achieved a campus following which gives it potential strength. It is frankly a journal of controversy, written by a wide variety of student minds:--football Deke presidents, solitary artists, staff-writers drawn from other publications, resurgent professors,--big-shots, and men left cold by the activities rush. Its headlines try to talk out in local terms, without any coating of whited sepulchre-Sunday magazine titles or vague, pretty wordings.

Representative headlines are "Big-Shot Life Not All Gravy; 'Campus Heat' Gets Too Hot"; "What About Repeal, Will Administration Lead With Its Chin?"; and "Local Sports Critics a Couple of Monday Pool-Room Coaches."

You would think from this that we are out for a gripe or that Mencken has come at last to Hanover to flay dying cats. The impression is not the right one, for the articles are built carefully out of facts presented coolly. "Steeplejack" thinks that an undergraduate's best training for future worth is in taking something be knows, namely the score on college as it is, and examining it with candid vitality and solid control. Constant humorous recriminations in "The Dartmouth," campus daily, suggest that this policy gets under the skin. Or maybe it is not so much our intention as its effect that troubles people.

Rapped, Punctured, Investigated

What have we done so far? Well we have been swaying a little to find our bearings. We have investigated the fraternity set-up in a series of articles, rapped the pyramiding of many large campus positions--upon a few good men, punctured poor sports-writing, listed many local rackets, exhaustively investigated with questionnaires and statistics the alarming off-campus movement of student roomers, examined the financial structure of the publications, gathered information and formulated a platform on Dartmouth drinking after repeal, and sponsored a vigorous scrap over the worth and meaning of Orosco's famous murals now being painted in Baker Library. These things in addition to literary material and lots of small testures like the weekly Gold Star and Weekly Red-Herring, awarded for the best and worst contributions to local intelligence respectively.

"Steeplejack" is attempting to be practical about the whole of undergraduate life. Last spring the senior governing body, Palaeopitus, expressed the prevailing dislike of a phlegmatic campus by reviving Freshman Rules and similar kid stuff, which had formerly been tossed aside with raccoon coats in the days when "College Humor" was starting to slip. Revival was all right, but a lot of Seniors who knew the score, distrusted Palaeopitus's typical means of reviving. Hence "Steeplejack", a spearhead of no deceptive, mature revival of interest. The campus is sick of some of the labels applied in order to clarify our ideas but the need for the ideas seems it stick.