THE FRESHMAN CLASS

Five hundred and eighty eager young faces were seen on the Campus for the first time this fall. They belonged to the members of the class of 1925. Accompanying them as henchmen were twentyfive "dropbacks," as we call them officially,—"campus sophomores", as they call themselves,—so that the class of 1925 started six hundred and five strong. Two hundred and eleven of these men have signified that they think they are taking the A. B. course, three hundred and ninety-three the B. S. course, and one man said he was prepared to take the B. C. course. As he entered without modern languages—no longer possible, incidentally,—he probably was. We shall be concerned in the remainder of this article only with the five hundred and seventy-eight new Freshmen who thought they could live in Hanover more than the first couple of days.

The most striking asset brought to the College by this class is its enormous geographical distribution. Probably no college in the country possesses a wider clientele. Every state in the Union is represented with the exception of several southern districts and the states of Idaho, Nevada, Utah, West Virginia and Oregon, and now that the Georgia game is past history and Tennessee has seen Balch Hill on a gorgeous October day, we fear for next year's southern applications. New England has two hundred and fifty men in the class, the middle states (Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York) one hundred and seventy-seven, the southern states eleven, the central states eighty-four, the western states thirty-seven, and the Rocky Mountain states nineteen. Of course Massachusetts has sent one hundred and sixty-eight boys away from Boston, New York one hundred and nine, New Hampshire forty-seven, Illinois thirty-eight, New Jersey thirty-seven, Pennsylvania thirty; Ohio twenty-four, Michigan seventeen, Connecticut sixteen, Minnesota fifteen and Vermont thirteen. Rather striking figures (mathematical, not physical) are the fifteen men from Minnesota, eight from the state of Washington and thirty from Pennsylvania, a state which has usually been satisfied with colleges nearer home. It is hard to ponder on these figures and not become convinced of the wisdom of the geographical distribution element in the policy of admission.

The President—or should he be called "Hop" in an article meant for alumni-often talks of the desirability of the College representing not only a geographical cross-section of the country, but also a social cross-section. Well, the class of 1925 gives it. Three hundred and ninety-one boys are sons of men who eke out a living by all sorts and conditions of business, forty-two have been fed by the law, and twenty-five have done chores on the farm. Forty-three are alive in spite of the fact that their fathers are doctors, fifteen are sons of engineers, and eighteen were brought up on mental arithmetic by their educator sires. Authors, architects, artists and scientists account in toto for six members of the class, and the ambitions of the civil service are centered in thirteen boys. Perhaps the most unexpected result is that only eight clergymen have dared entrust their sons to our guidance. This may mean that there are fewer clergymen or that clergymen are having fewer sons; but we are sorry to have so few here, because statistics do not uphold the old "ministers' sons" adagewe have no way of checking up the "deacons' daughters."

Speaking of clergymen, church preferences show that the class is typically American, about every sect known to the imagination having devotees, with the possible exception of Seventh Day Alventists, Shriners and Mormons. We have one hundred and forty-nine Congregationalists, (to the glory of Eleazar Wheelock!) and one hundred and nine are worshipers in the American offspring of the established Church of England. There are seventy-two Presbyterians, fifty-three Methodists and forty-seven Roman Catholics. Thirty-seven men are Baptists, twenty Unitarians, and nineteen are followers of Mrs. Eddy. Ten are Universalists, seven Lutherans, and ten believe that they should have their cuts excused on Jewish holidays. Then there are two Reformed Jewish, one United Brethren, (or Brother) three Christians, one Unity, one Church of Divine Science, and two Evangelical Protestants. There are twenty-one heathen (no church preference), six are Reformed, and eleven are "Protestants", the latter probably thinking that the query "Church Preference" referred to their political faith.

The alumni will be glad to know that thirty-four of their boys succeeded in getting into the class of 1925. Perhaps this is because first choice is given to sons of alumni. A much more striking figure and one showing the hold Dartmouth has throughout the country is that one hundred and twenty-two graduates of other colleges decided that their boys should have a better chance than their fathers had, and have sent their boys in with 1925. Moreover, the theory that college-bred mothers do not have children, I mean, college-bred women are childless, receives a jolt from the fact that fifty-three boys have mothers who are college graduates, many of whom would have attended Dartmouth, no doubt, had that been possible. Thirty-eight boys have the unusual luxury of being sired and mothered both by college graduates. The repentant fathers of the one hundred and twenty-two boys mentioned above come from eighty-one colleges and universities. Boston University graduates account for eight boys, Yale six, Massachusetts Institute of Technology five, Michigan five, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Minnesota and Pennsylvania three each, and among those sending two boys each may be mentioned Beloit, Brown, Harvard, McGill, Vermont and West Point. Fifty-nine colleges were unfortunate enough to have only one graduate each who had realized the immaturity of their own choice of Alma Mater, and among these may be named Amherst, Centre (probably this father attended the game at Cambridge last year), Colby, Colgate, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Chicago, Tennessee, Williams, and the foreign universities, Acadia, Montreal, Oxford and Queens. The value of Junior Prom, and Winter Carnival is shown by the fact that of the fifty-three mothers mentioned above whose sex alone kept them out of Dartmouth, seven were Smith girls, six Wellesley, and five Mount Holyoke.

Every known means of obtaining entrance to college has been used by members of the class. Four hundred and sixty-two entered by certificates from approved schools, that is, they have succeeded in fooling their principals into accepting the responsibility of certifying that they are ready for an encounter with the faculty of Dartmouth College. Eighty-four found they could only partially fool their principals and entered by a combination of certificate and examination, and thirty-two* had no luck whatever, and had to undergo the strain of cramming for examinations in everything. The number of boys entering with clean records, that is, without entrance conditions, was three hundred and thirty-four, leaving two hundred and forty-four entering with some conditions, of whom thirty-two had the maximum amount,—two units. Probably many an alumnus reading this will say—with so many trying to get in why not refuse to accept these men with entrance conditions. The answer is simple. First, boys with conditions may actually be better prepared for college work, and possess the attributes of leadership and good citizenship to a finer degree than those without conditions. Secondly, Dartmouth does not believe in trying to dominate secondary school curricula to the last hair-splitting detail. Finally, boys, and they may be the most earnest boys, may decide to go to college too late in their school course to be able to pick up all the details; but who shall say they are a priori less qualified for Dartmouth College than some boys who enter with ten units to spare or.who spent the summer in a tutoring school and entered crammed to the jowls?

The remarkably resonant quality of the voice crying in the wilderness is illustrated most strikingly by the fact that no less than 'three hundred and fifteen different schools—of which two hundred and forty-one are public and seventy-four private schools—have sent boys into the present Freshman class. In aggregate, four hundred and ten boys come from the two hundred and forty-one public schools and one hundred and sixty-eight from the seventy-four private schools. Can &ny other institution in the country approximate this evidence of an attempt to make the whole country safe for democracy ? It seems to me that great significance may be attached to the fact that no less than one hundred and ninety-four schools have sent one boy each this year. Fifty-six have sent two, and thirty-two have sent three; four boys came from each of fourteen schools, five from each of eight, .six from each of four, and seven from each of four. Twelve is the largest number from any single school, one other school sending ten and another nine.

Last year in an attempt to attract and make entrance easy and to obstruct it with the minimum of red tape, the faculty decided that any boy who had graduated from an approved high school in the upper quarter of his class, no matter what course he had taken provided only that he had four years of English and two and one-half years of mathematics, could enter without conditions. This action has resulted in the surprisingly large number of one hundred and twelve men entering from the upper quarter of their classes. These men are an interesting group and have possibilities for leadership from which the College is bound to profit. Seventeen of them led their graduating classes. Incidentally four hundred and twenty-one men entered from high schools and one hundred and fifty-two from private schools, a very good proportion for us to try to maintain.

We are glad to announce that the class has many boys who have never sat in the lap of luxury. In fact, one hundred and sixty-four have put themselves in line for the presidency of the United States by certifying their desire to work part of their way through college. The College has recognized its opportunities of getting in well with these prospective chief executives by granting scholarship aid to one hundred and six men.

The oldest man of the class was close to twenty-six years upon matriculation, and the youngest had been receiving nourishment fifteen years, six months and fourteen days when he was led up to the registration desk. The average age is eighteen. Strange as we get older, how young they look in their little pea-green caps!

Now that we have these representatives of all parts of the country, of every rung in the social ladder, with college mothers and religions galore, what are we going to do to keep them? Are we as usual going to get rid of about one hundred the first year?

The President has felt for some time that the problems); confronting Freshmen, problems due to' the sudden transition from home and school to the freedom of college life, demands a more detailed and personal supervision than could be given in the long-established routine of the College. As a result, the Trustees last spring created the office of Dean of Freshmen, thereby making an absolutely separate unit of the Freshman class from an administrative standpoint. The Dean of Freshmen has the same relations and powers pertaining to Freshmen as the Dean of the College has to the three upper classes. The Dean of Freshmen is also Director of Admissions, and therefore has an obvious point of contact with the incoming classes which is of great value in administering them.

We have never believed that all men who flunk out of College during Freshman year are mental derelicts. We do not want to pamper them, and we want graduates of Dartmouth to be as rugged and to have as much granite in their brains as they had in Hovey's time. But we want to be sure when a boy flunks out for good and aye (after a recent faculty vote) that it is not our fault. To be sure of this it is above all necessary that those who follow and study the class as a whole should have rather complete and detailed information at all times as to what possible flunkers are doing in their courses. Mere grades are not sufficient to enable one to advise wisely, and, moreover, the faculty is touchy about handing in grades more than once or twice a semester. To solve the problem suggested above, the Dean of Freshmen has assisting him a Freshman Faculty Council. This consists of seven or eight men representing each department of the faculty, and chosen with a special regard to their known ability to "get next" to students, to meet them informally, and to advise them with reasonable hope of their advice being accepted as unprejudiced. The first main duty of this council is to obtain at frequent intervals, every two or three weeks, informal reports from members of the instructional corps as to the work and attitude of low men. These reports are obtained by members of the Council talking over with members of their department the condition of these low men, and jotting down the instructor's opinions as to causes of failure. These informal reports are then used as a basis for personal help to students by members of the Council, and moreover, are grouped and tabulated on cards in the office of the Dean of Freshmen, furnishing first-hand information which he can use when talking with the men concerned. Mere low grades do not give any indication as to causes of failure and give one no suggestions as to how to effect a cure, but such notations as "lacks confidence", "immature in writing", "needs encouragement, not sternness", and "clever", "lazy," "superficial", "cuts" give one a basis for constructive advice. When advice based on facts is not heeded, we know that when the boy finally flunks out he is of a type we do not wish to list as having graduated from Dartmouth. The whole system is designed to have an effective follow-up. After members of the Council receive their informal reports, interview and advise the students concerned in the most friendly manner, they go to each instructor at the end of two or three weeks and find out by personal conference whether their advice or that of the Dean of Freshmen is being followed up, whether the loafers are still loafing and the cutters still cutting, whether the "wicked have ceased from troubling, and the weary are at rest". With such a system it is hoped we will not lose many men that we want to keep, and will get rid of all those we do not want to keep.

As in society in general, the largest percentage of the time and effort of those in authority is devoted to the low hangers, but we have an ambition to put more and more time on the good men, the real leaders. At mid-semester the faculty are asked for an informal report of men of "outstanding promise" in their respective courses. Remarks and not marks are asked for. Thus a man possibly standing low in his class may impress his instructor as having "outstanding promise" nevertheless. These men are seen at once, their parents are notified by personal letter, and the boys are kept in intimate contact with the Dean of Freshmen during the entire year. They are the boys who make life worth living. We have an old-fashioned idea that "outstanding promise" means brains and that brains are the one absolute prerequisite for effective leadership and service. May we not hope that with the seventy or eighty boys in the class showing "outstanding promise" in their first semester, good scholarship will be recognized, as one of the "activities" of the College that counts along with the sweeping of the gymnasium and making that jackass laugh on the slide trombone, as an aid to recognition and preferment among their fellows ?

The Geographical Distribution of the Freshman Class

E. GOKDON BILL, Dean of Freshmen.