Room for Evie? As a cycling enthusiast, I was immediately taken by your article featuring Evie Stevens ’05 [“Breaking Away,” Jan/Feb], especially when I saw the inset picture of her on Sunset Road in Redlands, California, leading the women’s race of the Bicycle Classic. I live very close to where this picture was taken and have been an avid supporter of the event each year for many years. In fact, I enjoy housing cycling team members in my home just as your article describes. I will enjoy following Evie’s successes on the riding circuit, as I have done with many of the riders who have bunked in at my home.

Alan Leach ’66 Redlands, California

I was inspired by your story about Evie Stevens ’05 and her rise to the top ranks of the Women’s Pro Cycling Tour. I first read about Stevens’ exploits in a late 2010 issue of Bicycling magazine. As a serious cyclist, amateur racer, and cycling industry entrepreneur, I first rolled my eyes as I read the gushing Bicycling article, which portrayed her as Cycling Cinderella. Then I noticed in the article that she played varsity tennis at Dartmouth. Well, no wonder she is such a good cyclist! You cannot be a student-athlete at Dartmouth without being competitive, and you cannot play Dartmouth varsity tennis without a strong work ethic, personal drive and good genes (the lucky part), which are exactly the traits required to succeed in bike racing. What Bicycling portrayed as Stevens’ surprising success as a bike racer comes as no surprise to me. I suspect her friends from Dartmouth feel the same way.

William L. “Bill” Robbins ’83 Los Angeles

Oh, the Humanities! Professor Paul Christesen ’88 [“Happiness and the Classics,” Jan/Feb] makes an unsupported claim that the humanities promote critical reasoning better than the hard or social sciences. As a physician I know that “epistemological humility” is quite easily learned in the operating room or about anywhere else in medicine. Also: Where is the evidence that by “simply opening a book” we can greatly increase our chances of being happy? More likely, educated people are happier. Finally, the remarks about cultural equivalence are not true unless you think stoning is okay as a form of punishment. I share Christesen’s belief that the humanities have intrinsic merit, but their value is not enhanced by devaluing other disciplines.

Richard A. Saunders ’69 Charleston, South Carolina

Christesen believes that genetics “does not determine our fate” with regard to happiness. As a pediatrician I believe that a child with Down syndrome or a fatal genetic disease such as Tay-Sachs would probably disagree—as would the child’s parents.

Ted Tapper ’61, DMS’62 Merion, Pennsylvania

I congratulate Christesen on an inspiring presentation of the importance of teaching the humanities. As an architect I am regularly confronted in (literally) concrete terms with the visceral consequences of neglecting humanism in favor of pragmatism. In matters of human intellect and education, the results are not nearly so apparent and the failures are more insidiously destructive.

Michael Poloukhine ’86 Pacific Palisades, California

As someone who spent more than 30 years teaching literature and humanities I found it easy to agree with Christesen’s premise that “we need to study the humanities now more than ever.” However, on closer reading, I found myself disagreeing with some of his key arguments. It shouldn’t be necessary to promote teaching the humanities by disparaging the teaching that goes on in the hard sciences and social sciences. Even though I majored in comparative literature, my experience in chemistry and biology classes taught me to observe closely, record data accurately, think critically about it, and present conclusions drawn from my observations concisely and persuasively to an audience. I would hope that is still the case in the hard sciences at Dartmouth. All teaching should, and in my experience good teaching in any discipline does, “emphasize skills rather than information.” The evidence of history and the extent to which people have been able to thrive in some cultures and not others would indicate that some cultures are, in fact, better than others. Christesen seems to agree when he ends his essay by arguing, persuasively, that a society that exists in a cultural milieu of “ethics and belief in the necessity of community” is better than one that exists in a cultural milieu of “individualism that has been taken to an almost pathological extreme.”

Peter Jaffe-Notier ’69 Oak Park, Illinois

Christesen says “no one culture is better than any other” and that this fact is a “revelation to a significant number of my students.” Well, it comes as a revelation to me, too.

James White ’61 St. Cloud, Minnesota

Money Ball One of the dilemmas of living in the South and having Ivy League values is that the “most powerful man in college sports,” Mike Slive ’62 [“A League of His Own,” Jan/Feb], is associated with the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Daily I must endure the inane ramblings of sportswriters and university coaches and administrators who defend an industry that has become virtually dissociated from what Slive apparently believes he is defending: “You have to keep in mind this is higher education. If you lose that, you’ve lost your soul.” Although there are obvious exceptions, the SEC does not meet this value. Academic standards went out the window years ago, and we now focus on the few athletes who maintain that standard. Against examples such as Greg McElroy at Alabama, I could list innumerable athletes who fail to meet academic standards and others who attend college (usually truncated to a year or two) only in the hope of a professional contract. How can an institution of higher education defend paying coaches the exorbitant sums they now dole out? [Former Dartmouth football coaches] Bob Blackman and Doggie Julian must look down on the current state of affairs with tears in their eyes. My idealistic hope is that college athletics will return to an idyllic state that can identify its participants as student-athletes. If offered the opportunity to revamp the infrastructure of college athletics, I would opt for formidable admission standards consistent with potential to meet standards of higher education and for a hockey model with developmental teams for those whose intent is to pursue a sport professionally. The very integrity of higher education is at risk if higher education is not isolated from professional sports and if the funding of college athletics is not an integral part of institutional funding.

F.J. Eicke ’61 Ocean Springs, Mississippi

I quote: “Thanks to contracts Slive negotiated with ESPN and CBS, SEC schools received on average $17.4 million from the conference last year.” “Slive’s current contract, which pays him a little more than $2 million in base salary and bonuses….” “ ‘I felt that no matter how successful the league was we would not be viewed as successful if we had compliance issues,’ Slive says. ‘We’re talking about athletics here, but you always have to keep in mind this is higher education. If you lose that, you lose your soul.’ ” I am laughing out loud!

John Chamberlin ’70 Falls Church, Virginia

Taking Offense So was the use of the picture with the F word [“Greek Chic,” Jan/Feb] considered by the editors to be really awesome? Edgy? Cool? Neat? Artistic freedom of expression? How about unnecessary, unwarranted and unappreciated? Too bad the plural ending did not use the letter “z.”

Martin Cain ’72 Gaithersburg, Maryland

Out of Sight I was disheartened by the need to use a magnifying glass to find the word “alumni” in President Kim’s word cloud in the Jan/Feb issue.

Bill White ’70 Watch Hill, Rhode Island

Pillar Points I resent the time I took to read “Dissenting Opinion” by Matthew Mosk ’92 about Paul Pillar ’69 [Jan/Feb]. It reviewed only a part Pillar’s life—interesting as that may be—period. It is just one more article stating what, in Pillar’s opinion, was and is wrong with the Iraq and Afghanistan policies. It does not state what would or could happen if the United States had stayed out of both countries. What would Mr. Pillar suggest the United States do?

C.M. Farley ’44 Damariscotta, Maine

The Nov/Dec 2010 issue was exceptional! I especially enjoyed “Date of Infamy,” the story about the Great Wall researcher, the faculty opinion, the Pillar profile and the Winter Carnival posters. Thank you!

Sam G. Cabot ’91 Hamilton, Massachusetts

The Sept/Oct 2010 issue featured a socialist professor who fought as a guerilla for the African National Congress in apartheid South Africa [“Emphasis Mine: The Italicized Life of Frank B. Wilderson III ’78”]; Nov/Dec 2010 featured an ex-CIA analyst and professor who vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq and now urges the United States to wind down the war in Afghanistan [“Dissenting Opinion”]. Wow! Maybe my alma mater is more interesting than I had thought. In any case, if we civilians had done our part—along with Pillar’s analytical work in the CIA—and opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, perhaps we could have averted: approximately 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed, 2.7 million Iraqi refugees spawned, 4,426 U.S. military personnel dead and $753 billion in direct costs down the drain. Moreover, today our country’s international standing would be incalculably higher.

Christopher C. Schons ’88 Arlington, Virginia