Trustee Named
The board named Harvard law and history professor Annette Gordon-Reed ’81 as its newest member in early November. Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family and a 2010 MacArthur Fellowship winner, Gordon-Reed says “it is quite important” for the trustees to include another academician on the board. “I hope my experiences will be helpful,” she says. She joins John A. Rich ’80, chair of Drexel University’s department of health management and policy (and a 2006 MacArthur Fellowship winner), and Stephen F. Smith ’88, a professor at Notre Dame law school, as Dartmouth trustees with an academic background. For her first meeting in February Gordon-Reed says she wants to study up on the College’s “overall financial state” and the budget. Of the appointment, President Jim Kim said he and the board “didn’t have to deliberate for long. She’s one of the really superstar scholars in the United States.” Gordon-Reed replaces Al Mulley ’70 on the board. He has resigned his position to serve as the first director of the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, a post he assumed in mid-November. Mulley has also resigned from the Medical School’s board of overseers and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center board.

Maneuvers
This fall the softball team received good news twice. First, University of Dallas head coach Rachel Hanson was hired to lead the team. Then athletic director Harry Sheehy announced plans to build the team a new playing facility by 2012 on a corner of the Chase Field complex. Although a final design and cost have yet to be determined, the new field will be “comparable to Dartmouth’s beautifully renovated baseball facility,” Sheehy said. Preliminary plans call for seating for 400, batting cages, bullpens, sunken dugouts, a press box and artificial turf.

Yearbook Honors
The Aegis has won recognition as Best in Category in the most recent Premier Print Awards. It’s only the third time a college yearbook has won the honor two years in a row. “I think what distinguishes us is the artistic part,” said Aegis co-president Elena Mustatea ’11.

Pumpkinfest
Forget Ivy League competition: On October 2 the crew teams faced an unusual opponent—pumpkins. Heavy rains and the ensuing flooding of the Connecticut River sent more than an estimated 60,000 pumpkins from Gladstone Farm, located upriver in Fairlee, Vermont, rushing into the torrent. “We hadn’t heard about the pumpkins before practice,” says women’s crew coach Wendy Levash. “We showed up for our Saturday morning row to find them floating everywhere.” Because of their soft exteriors, the would-be jack-o’-lanterns posed few problems. The current, on the other hand, was more of an issue. “Our eights took nearly twice as long to go upstream as down,” said lightweight coach Don Roock. “We hit a few pumpkins, but they just bobbed or rolled away from the shells.” Added men’s heavyweight coach Topher Bordeau: “It was an enjoyable reminder that the river is a force of nature, and those sorts of things don’t happen in many other places.” This was not the first time rowers heard the call “pumpkin to port!” Gladstone Farm lost a crop of pumpkins to the river in 2005.

Sun Shines At Night
On most moonlit Hanover nights Johnathan Recor Adv’15 can be seen performing around campus in an elaborate and somewhat frightening costume. Appropriately nicknamed the “Sun God” by Dartmouth students for the painted Venetian mask he dons, Recor has grabbed the attention of passersby and inspired plenty of bewildered looks. The student rounds out his look with black pants, shirt and cape. His self-described “interpretive mime” and martial-art-inspired performances consist of him posing, strutting and resting to the accompaniment of soundtracks such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “The Return of the King,” which he blasts from mini speakers attached to his belt. It’s all part of Recor’s “Theater-on-the-Walk” project (his master’s thesis) and his quest to “find love,” he says. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, that’s me,” Recor told the Valley News in October.

Rugby Team Rolls On
For the 11th time in 14 years the men’s rugby team finished with an undefeated record and won the Ivy League championship. A 31-0 thrashing of Harvard in a blustery wind on October 23 capped the season to give the Big Green its fourth consecutive title. “The guys work really hard,” said coach Alex Magleby ’00. “This senior class will graduate having won all four years. That’s pretty rare.” On March 5 the team begins play in the new 32-team USA Rugby Premier League with a match against the University of Delaware.

A Healthy Gift
Another anonymous donor has struck, providing a $9 million gift to support the newly named Zimmerman Fitness Center on the top floor of Alumni Gym. The money will help alleviate debt incurred in opening the center in 2006 and make possible the purchase and repair of fitness equipment on a regular basis.

A New CIO
New chief investment officer (CIO) Pamela Peedin ’89, Tu’98, starts managing Dartmouth’s $3 billion endowment in February. First she wraps up her work as CIO of Boston University, a job she’s held since May 2007. Under her leadership BU’s $1 billion endowment saw a return of 12.7 percent last fiscal year. (Dartmouth produced a 10-percent return during the same period.) Peedin, a psych major, was once a teacher and administrator at Oldfields School in Maryland. She went on to direct financial aid at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts before spending nine years with Cambridge Associates. “I had no intention of leaving [BU],” Peedin said, adding that she couldn’t resist the lure of a Dartmouth homecoming. Peedin will report to President Jim Kim.

Let It Snow!
Think you had a tough winter when you were in school? Here’s a list of the Upper Valley’s 10 greatest accumulated snowfall amounts, from October through April, of the past 80 years:

1957-58          117.7 inches

1947-48          109.5 inches

1970-71          108.8 inches

1951-52          108.6 inches

1961-62            98.8 inches

1968-69            98.2 inches

1977-78            95.4 inches

1962-63            93.7 inches

2007-08            92.1 inches

1933-34            91.7 inches