Roger Lott: On the lost traditions at an Ivy League School

My son Roger discusses the impact of political correctness on traditions at Dartmouth College. His piece starts this way:

While listening to a ’62 reminisce over Christmas dinner about the spirited traditions and rustic lifestyle he had known at Dartmouth, I couldn’t help but share in some of his nostalgia. It was saddening to appreciate that while Dartmouth has made great strides, it has also thrown away much of what made it special.

In 1993, Dartmouth ended a more than century-old tradition in which graduating seniors would smash long clay pipes on the stump of the old pine tree in the BEMA. The custom, based on the smokers’ habit of breaking off part of the pipe’s stem after it had become befouled through use, symbolized students’ “clean break” from the College. However, Native American students complained that the tradition was disrespectful of Native American rituals involving sacred pipes, and in ’93 mugs were substituted, only to later be done away with after seniors incurred minor injuries from clay shards.

The demise of the pipe-breaking tradition is a reflection of a broader over-vigilance for anything potentially offensive to Native Americans, and the undebatable nature of Dartmouth’s Indian mascot propagates a false notion that all indigenous peoples are offended by it and similar symbols. In fact, nothing is further from the truth. . . .