The Great Class of 1965

A Webpage Becomes Website & Cause

WELCOME TO OUR SITE

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Lyrics to "Eleazer Wheelock" are below text
To replay tune, click on "refresh button" or
re-enter the page.

 Who let the dog out? 
Uh, I guess that I did!
 
Mike Gonnerman
 
In the last publication of this website I mentioned that Sottile '64, my compatriot in this site,"needled" that I had to keep the content fresh. So, like a parent whisking a child out to play, I challenged him to "go play with the mascot issue." It drives him crazy to witness an Ivy League college -- "the builders of leaders" as he likes to say in an lowered, important voice -- that can't come to grips with a decision which is over 30 years in the making. So, I knew that this would "get him fetching."  And well it did! 
 
Sottile retrieved lay-it-on-the-line observations... and recommendations, based upon a criteria of equality which was the underlying reason for dropping the Indian symbol. What started as a one page update for The Great Class of '65 site turned into his tour-de-force all embodied in HIS site www.mydartmouthmascot.com.  
 
And while he was at it, Sottile launched HIS core site  www.mydartmouth.com, something which he had planned to do five years ago.  "My Dartmouth" as you will read, if you visit the site, is each of our unique perceptions about The College.
 
I don't expect that everyone will agree with Sottile. (He's out there!) In truth, Sottile doesn't either.  (He loves a good debate.) In fact, it is the diversity of perceptions that he is seeking, especially from a segment of all classes that are considered "disenfranchised," about which he rails in his site.  
 
Regardless how you regard Sottile's views about The College, I believe that you will find www.mydartmouthmascot.com to be a serious effort to understand the mascot issue and suggest alternative mascots. He retrieves bones on which all can chew; The College, the students, alumni especially female, the Dartmouth Review, the Moose, Keggy... and even the Hanover merchants which he includes in the Dartmouth Community and Experience.  Sottile needles... cajoles... questions... and even empathizes in an effort, which as he admittedly states, to PROVOKE a College decision.  
 
Nowhere does Sottile question The College's descision to discontinue the Indian symbol and lore. 
 
And finally, I know of his continuing, one-on-one efforts to move this issue forward to a conclusion... which needs not to be one of his recommendations... BUT A FINAL DECISION BY THE COLLEGE TO REPLACE A SYMBOL & CULTURE WHICH WAS TERMINATED IN THE EARLY '70s AND WHICH HAS BEEN MISSED (as witnessed by the continual efforts of many groups to restore a symbol/culture) FOR OVER A GENERATION.
 
Send your love or hate mail to SOTTILE '64
 
 

We're Still In The Wilderness
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Over A Symbol Or Mascot

 

Eleazar Wheelock may still be a very pious man. 
But this song about him is no longer revered.

"Eleazar Wheelock"
 
by the
Dartmouth Glee Club
Paul Zeller, Director
 
from the album  
REFLECTIONS of DARTMOUTH
Of The Early Sixties

Oh, Eleazar Wheelock was a very pious man;
He went into the wilderness to teach the Indian,
With a gradus and a Parnassum, a Bible, and a drum,
And five hundred gallons of New England rum.

(Chorus)

Fill the bowl up! Fill the bowl up!
Drink to Eleazar and his primitive Alcazar
Where he mixed drinks for the heathen...
In the goodness of his soul.


The big chief that met him was the sachem of the Wah-hoo-wahs.
If he was not the big chief, there was never one you saw who was;
He had tobacco by the cord, ten squaws, and more to come,
But he never yet had tasted of New England rum.

(Chorus)

Eleazar and the chief harangued and gesticulated;
They founded Dartmouth College and the big chief matriculated.
Eleazar was the faculty and the whole curriculum
Was five hundred gallons of New England rum.

(Chorus)