Coverage of Dartmouth Was Elitist

When I was a student at Dartmouth College, I used to joke with other student leaders about how bad our newspaper (the Daily Dartmouth) was about getting its quotes straight. Your newspaper, The Crimson, seems to have a bigger problem: getting its facts straight.

In his recent article ("Gridders Will Face Hurting Big Green," Sports, Oct. 28, 1994) writer W. Stephen Venerable asserts that Dartmouth students will have a bonfire and pep rally to prepare for the Harvard game. Wrong. The bonfire and rally happened before the Yale game.

He also says that Harvard students neither knows or care whether Dartmouth is. An isolated case of pretentious ignorance... or so I thought. In his column, however, Sean D. Wissman describes Dartmouth students as 'obnoxious, drunken laggards' who show up in drunken stupors for Head of the Charles weekend ("Words of Wissman, Sports, Nov. 1, 1994). Wissman unfairly mentions the worst and most untrue stereotypes of Dartmouth students.

It may have been helpful had he researched his facts first. Would you call former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop an 'obnoxious drunken laggard?" How about IBM Chief Executive Officer Lewis Gerstner? Nationally acclaimed prize-winning author Louise Erdrich? How about former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas (D-Mass.) or Secretary of Labor and former Kennedy School Professor Robert S. Reich? Maybe U.S. News and World Report Economics Editor Susan Dentzer or Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) are 'drunken laggards.' If not, then surely John Guare, playwright and author of "Six Degrees of Separation" or Tonyaward winning Broadway director Jerry Zaks are looses!

It may surprise you that all of these people are alumni of Dartmouth College, home of 'drunken laggards.' The fact is that the women and men of Dartmouth are extremely talented and accomplished persons--in many cases as talented as Harvard students. Your paper's disparaging impressions of Dartmouth have no basis in truth.

When I was a student at Dartmouth I used to joke about the cocky pretension and narrow-minded egoism of Harvard students. I always thought of those images as inaccurate stereotypes. Maybe I was wrong. --Robert C. Bordone   Dartmouth College, Class of 1994   Harvard Law School, Class of 1997