Class Note 1983

Our class includes a surprising number of prolific authors! Following the publication of her fifth book, Gender, Nation and Popular Film in India, Sikata Banerjee, professor of gender studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, spent 2018 on sabbatical. Among the many highlights of her year were a series of lectures and seminars she gave across Scandinavia at the University of Helsinki, the University of Lapland, and the University of Copenhagen. Sikata writes that she is very grateful for the education she received at Dartmouth, although as a female student of color, at times she had hoped for a more welcoming student body. According to Sikata, students today are much more fluent with respect to issues of race and gender than they were in the early 1980s. Alan Eagle, director of communications at Google, also recently coauthored a book, available in April: Trillion Dollar Coach, The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell. According to Alan, Eric Schmidt, and Jonathan Rosenberg, the trio of Google leaders behind The New York Times’ bestseller How Google Works, Bill Campbell was instrumental in the growth and success of Silicon Valley’s Google, Apple, and Intuit. Author and photographer Lisa Ballard’s 11th book will be released in January. Gasparilla, A Pirate’s Tale, is Lisa’s first children’s book and tells the story of the legendary pirate, Gasparilla, who controlled (terrorized?) the west coast of Florida during the 1800s. Lisa began her writing career in 1991 and has won numerous Excellence in Craft awards from the Outdoor Writers Association of America and other media organizations. Lisa lives in Montana but has spent part of every year in Florida, initially visiting her grandmother as a child and later taking her own family to visit her parents and other relatives there.

Other classmates have written to us (admittedly not with a book) about what surprised them at Dartmouth and their favorite Dartmouth traditions. Beth Wagshul Besen writes that she was surprised how much she enjoyed the mandatory summer term, although she was also surprised to find that the D-Plan at the time—her primary reason for choosing Dartmouth because of the flexibility and independence it provided—could make the undergraduate experience less cohesive. The current D-Plan includes more structure and on-campus requirements, which provides students with a more cohesive undergraduate experience. Finally, Jennie Norman writes that her favorite Dartmouth tradition since graduation is an annual gathering of a group of Sigma Kappa friends: Loren Batchelder Wright, Lolly Jewett, Heather Roulston Ettinger, Beth Winnick Falcone, Martha Sundberg Hartfiel, Peggy Gilges, and Kathy Bachelder Coster. According to Jennie, the group spends a long weekend together in one of their homes sharing stories, laughter, and sometimes tears. Jennie’s non-Dartmouth friends are impressed by and envious of her enduring Dartmouth friendships and the commitment she and her friends have made to nurturing those relationships. Thank you, Dartmouth!

—Elliot Stultz, 421 West Melrose St., #8A, Chicago, IL 60657; elliotstultz@yahoo.com; Shanta Sullivan, 1541 North Sierra Bonita Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046; shantaesullivan@gmail.com