THIRTY YEARS
The coming Commencement of the College will mark the completion of thirty years of service as a member of the Board of Trust by Mr. Frank S. Streeter. Elected to that Board in 1892 on the nomination of the alumni, and chosen by the Board as a life member in 1900 he has become by tenure of office the ranking member of the Board. In the long list of trustees from the beginning of the College only ten have equaled or surpassed him in length of service.
Mr. Streeter's nomination by the alumni as their representative on the Board was the recognition not merely of .his fitness for the place, but of the important part which he had taken in bringing about the association of the alumni in the government of the College. In the general desire of the alumni and in the activities of many to secure that result, he was one of a very small number to whose judgment, recognition of the position of others, conciliatory spirit, and ability to harmonize conflicting views was due the success of the movement.
His term of office, beginning in the year's interval between two presidents, has covered two entire administrations and the part of the third that is now administering the College. In all of them he has been an active force, helpful in counsel and effective in carrying out policies that have been determined. But this article is not intended as a eulogy upon Mr. Streeter. It will be time enough to write that eulogy when in the future, hopefully far distant, he shall have completed his work and it can be examined as a finished whole. Now, the rounding out of thirty years is taken only as an occasion to recall the great changes in the College which, coincident with his trusteeship, are still continuing, and of which he could say, as did Aeneas of old, quorum magna pars fui.
A change in an institution like a college is naturally indicated at first by the physical condition of its plant. A decline appears in the deterioration of its buildings and equipment, and perhaps in diminished attendance. An advance is shown by the improvement and increase of its plant and an enlargement of its numbers. The change that has occurred in Dartmouth during the thirty years in question has been too often described to need extensive comment, yet it cannot be passed by entirely, for though it may not indicate a better quality of work than in the earlier day of smaller means, it does show a wider range. And apart from any question of values a consideration of the physical development of the plant in the thirty years, and of the corresponding growth in numbers, reveals the greater complexity of administration at the present.
To the small plant of 1892 there have been added fifteen dormitories with a housing capacity between 1000 and 1100, and the character of the accommodations has changed almost as much as the amount. Comfort, cleanliness and health have been considered in the new construction. Perfect sanitation, abundant water supply, abundant bath rooms, often for individual rooms, electric light, steam heat, and care of the buildings and rooms by janitors form a striking contrast with earlier conditions.
Besides the dormitories, eleven other buildings for specific or general use have given value and effectiveness to the plant. These include a large auditorium, yet insufficient in view of increasing numbers, four laboratories for biology, physics, chemistry, and bacteriology (each in its own building except biology which, while waiting for its own abode, is housed in the Butterfield Museum building), an administration building, a large gymnasium and swimming pool, a lecture and recitation hall for the Tuck School, a building for all student organizations except athletic, a commons in College Hall, a central heating and lighting plant, and an extensive storehouse and carpenter shop. To these may be added three apartment houses for the use of the faculty, besides many individual houses for the same purpose.
These additions, large as they are, have not kept pace with the increasing demands made by the increase of students and instruction. The small classes of the early nineties have been surpassed almost tenfold by those actually entering, without regard to the numbers who, in these days, apply for admission to such an extent that a "selective process" has become necessary in order to restrict the classes to the capabilities of the College. The records of the annual catalogues show the change in numerical form. The registration of 431 in 1892 became 2011 in 1921, a resident faculty of twenty-seven enlarged to one hundred and seventy-three, administrative officers, which in 1892 consisted of the president, the treasurer, the librarian, and the dean of the Medical School, now number twenty-two, while the staff assistants, which in the earlier year consisted of a few students working part time in the library, have become thirty-seven men and women who give all their time to their work.
These are the things which strike the eye of one coming to Hanover with a knowledge of the past that enables him to compare it with the present, or of one who examines the records of the College, but there are things' that lie behind the outer changes which indicate a policy of administration that has brought the changes about. That policy, inaugurated by President Tucker and heartily endorsed by the trustees, after its full significance was understood, and from the beginning in particular by Mr. Streeter, looked toward the most effective organization of all the resources of the College and their expansion and application to meet the widening demands of education.
The first and vital step was taken in the consolidation of the Chandler School with the "old" college, by which duplication and consequent waste were prevented, jealousies were averted and re- sources were made effective to their utmost. Without that step, secured by the concurrence of the Visitors under Mr. Chandler's will, the later development would have been impossible. It was accompanied by a revision of the curriculum and the establishment of several new departments of instruction that not only enriched the course of study, but alligned it with the widening courses of the schools.
This enlargement of the faculty was not made through new endowments given for that purpose, but in the belief that it would so justify itself in the greater value of the College and of the service which it would render, that resources would come to uphold it, a belief that time has justified. In order to assure the constituency of the College that judgment in business administration was combined with foresight in educational matters, its finances were reorganized and made more effective by the employment of such parts as could so be used in the construction of dormitories, which thereby served the double purpose of producing a satisfactory income and of housing an additional number of students.
The work of administration, too, by both trustees and faculty was more exactly denned and organized, and carried out through appropriate committees. This became the more necessary with the growth of the College and the complexity of business interests connected with the dormitories, the Commons and the heating plant. With the enlargement of the faculty and its consequent less intimate relation with the student body, and with the increase of records incident to more students and more courses, as well as with the "greater necessity for an officer who should stand at the door of discipline and advice, first a dean and then a registrar were appointed. Discipline, which before had been handled with reasonable ease by a small faculty, was passed over to a committee, of which the dean, an ex-officio member, was the liaison officer with the students, while, with the extension of elective courses and the establishment of the group system of studies, the registrar's office steadily gained in importance both to the students and the faculty, an importance that was due in no small degree to the organizing ability and efficiency of its first occupant, Howard Murray Tibbetts, whose untimely death in April last was an irreparable loss.
The merging of the Chandler School, the increase in departments of instruction and the revision of the curriculum brought the work of the College into closer relation to that of the preparatory schools, especially of the high schools, as was evidenced by the greater number of students who came from them, particularly as candidates for the degree of B.S. A difficulty was found in making the requirements for admission to this course equivalent in quantity and quality to those for the A.B. course, which retained Greek or Latin as an essential, but it was met, at least partially, by requiring units of work in preparation for college, which, to some degree, represented more continuous and intensive work than had previously been secured.
The policy of the College during these years, after first giving attention to the improvement of its facilities for instruction, looked, on the side of education, toward making its four years of training more valuable as a preparation for subsequent life, and in correlating them more closely with the schools, and, on the side of administration toward a closer bond with the alumni. Graduate courses and fellowships were established to stimulate and develop an interest in teaching. The Tuck School became an important element in training for business, while the combination of the work of senior year and of the first year of the Medical, Thayer, or Tuck School, with the opportunity or necessity of taking courses in the earlier college years, preparatory to those schools, aided the College in shortening the time of professional training.
The attempt to articulate more exactly the requirements for admission with the courses of the schools through the increase of subjects accepted for admission, while accompanied by an increasing strictness in enforcing standards of admission, especially in safeguards thrown around the validity of certificates, was supplemented by measures to acquaint the schools with the work and purposes of the College. • This was done largely by the President of the College, who in his visits to gatherings of the alumni took advantage of invitations, constantly given, to visit and address the schools.
The interest of the alumni, which had secured representation on the Board of Trust, was not allowed to die out. Under the lead of President Tucker the trustees declared that representation entailed responsibility, which was not discharged merely by an annual ballot. The presence of the alumni was urged at the festivities of the College in Hanover, for which special provision was made, and elsewhere. They were desired to acquaint themselves with the plans as well as with the needs of the College, and that they might have information upon both, occasional announcements were sent to them, and once a year the President laid before the alumni in their various associations definite statements about the College and the plans of the trustees, so that when special emergencies arose, as on the burning of Dartmouth Hall in 1904, the alumni met their responsibility without hesitation in substantial contributions, sufficient in that year to reconstruct Dartmouth Hall and to build Wheeler and Webster Halls, and in 1910 to erect the new gymnasium that bears their name, and still later to take up the work of enlarging and equipping the athletic field.
As the years have passed, the alumni have become still more closely identified with the conduct of the college. An Alumni Council, in whose organization Mr. Streeter had much to do, has arisen. It has important and varied functions, having, besides other engagements, the oversight of the annual collection of the Tucker fund, which has been an invaluable help to the college, and also having, through its right of nomination, the practical dictation of alumni trustees. The work of the Alumni Council in keeping alive the interest of the alumni in the College is ably seconded by the Association of Class Secretaries through their individual work during the year and their annual meeting in Hanover.
Such changes as those above mentioned could not fail to be reflected in the inner life of the College. The larger equipment and the greater numbers would inevitably lead to a somewhat different expression of that life. Thus, there have arisen many organizations expressing the varied interests of the students. Of these the most prominent are naturally those of an athletic character, inasmuch as in different forms such interests appeal to almost all, but others of a special character, literary, musical, dramatic, artistic, have become numerous.
Perhaps the most noteworthy of all is that which has capitalized the climate and the country for the benefit of free and healthful life — the Outing Club, which, mainly through the generosity of the Rev. John E. Johnson of the class of 1866, has extended its allurement to outdoor life by many cabins in the neighborhood of Hanover, and onward in a chain to the White Mountains. These hospitable cabins, inviting to the use of snowshoes and skiis and to the inspiration of "frosty air, have made the winter an asset instead of an obstacle in student life, and in more than a physical sense have stirred the blood to healthful activity. The social side of the club has been developed in the freedom and good comradeship of the cabins, where, at the end of a long tramp, all artificial restraints are relaxed in the comfort of healthful surroundings and the enjoyment of a common interest, but, in addition to this, the club has developed the winter carnival, which, while expanding the ordinary sports of the club into a general competition, to which other colleges are invited, has become the prominent undergraduate social event of the year, when days of outdoor sport are followed by evening dances in which the feminine visitors to the sports of the afternoon are attractive participants.
College life does not change from generation to generation in its essentials - its purposes, its work, its ambitions, its rivalries, its friendships, its outlook toward the future, but it is modified from time to time by various influences rising within itself, or brought to bear by strong personalities who guide it, or by the pervasive life of the times. A great change in the physical life of the College, such as these thirty years have witnessed at Dartmouth, could hardly fail to have an effect upon its social life, as exhibited in customs and manners. The wider constituency of the College, indicated by the fact that in the freshman class of 1921 there were represented three hundred and fifteen schools from all parts of the country, could not fail of an effect in the enlarging of interests and in the modification of the social tone.
Dartmouth has been noted for, perhaps has boasted of, its self-reliance, which has amounted at times to self-assertion and has tended toward a turbulent undergraduate life. The forces that have led to the later growth of the College, and the growth itself, have tended to give selfcontrol. No formal system of student government has been established, but the fact has practically been attained through an organization that without legal authority directs the spirit of the College. This is the Palaeopitus, originally a secret body, whose object was declared to be to conserve the best traditions of the College, but now an open organization in which membership, partly ex-officio in the managers of various college organizations, and partly elective, is a coveted honor, and which, with no authorized association in college discipline, is very influential in directing undergraduate movements and in settling controversies, and thereby rendering unnecessary action by the faculty.
As would be imagined, this "self-reliance, becoming self-control, has introduced a self-respect which manifests itself in a more orderly college life. Activities abound, but some of the former roughnesses, both in dress and manner, have disappeared. Students have their fads, perhaps their follies, and sometimes their sins, for they are human and they are advancing with hope rather than experience as their pilot, but on the whole the prevailing sentiment of college life has become more wholesome, more healthful, more open to reason than it was. Scholarship, the happy acquaintance with the wisdom and knowledge of men as recorded in books, may or may not have increased, but the stringent regulations recently adopted by the faculty relating to college standing would Seem to ensure a rising standard.
"Thirty years are .long in prospect, promising great things, short in retrospect, often disappointing in results, but these past thirty years of the College are full of movements that usually cover a much longer time. The great leadership of President Tucker, still maintained in the present administration of the college, was supported by trustees who rightly estimated its power and, as far as in them lay, gave it scope. The sympathy, judgment and support of Mr. Streeter were always actively enlisted in its behalf, and he has doubtless many an hour of quiet and" contented communion with himself as he reflects upon the gains that have come to the College during the administrations whose right hand counselor he has been.
Mr. Streeter's thought for the College has been as an alumnus as well as a trustee. He has taken part in the yearly support of the Tucker fund, he has taken a share in the new development of the athletic field, and he has enriched the service of the chapel and contributed to the musical advancement of the College and the community by the gift of a large and richly voiced organ, which, compelling attention by its sweetness and power, gives attractiveness and dignity to the musical exercises of the chapel, and which in the years to come will be a memorial of one who for a time, in his college course, was himself the organist at the chapel service, and who, remembering the humble organ of his time, has now given for the benefit of later generations of students a better and nobler instrument. In comparison with the equipment of his time this organ is a fitting exponent of the growth of the College and of his part in it.
By PROFESSOR JOHN KING LORD '68 Clerk of The Board of Trustees of the College
