The Chicago Pow Wow which
this number of the MAGAZINE reports in some detail more than justified its name. It was a supremely successful reunion of all the classes but perhaps its greatest value lay in the broad presentation of the present state of the college. Men who had never found it possible to return to Hanover could buttonhole, president, dean, or trustee, football coach, or member of Alumni Council, and obtain information or a point of view that had been elusive for vears.
For two days the program conveyed to the gathering, through carefully selected speakers, the present Dartmouth situation. It does not appear that any important interest was overlooked. President Hopkins spoke twice, the address at the banquet being broadcast to a large radio audience. The trustees were represented by Mr. DuBis, and official representatives discussed the activities of the Alumni Council, the Secretaries, The Alumni Fund, Athletics, and Non-athletic organizations. A representative of the faculty told of opinion in recent changes in that body and the Dean of Freshmen removed many misapprehensions in his clear statement of the operation of the Selective Process.
As an opportunity for the alumni at large to meet friends not seen since college days and to gain accurate knowledge of the present-day Dartmouth, this occasion has never been equaled. The results must of necessity be intangible but it cannot be doubted that any one who attended, returned with new interest and added enthusiasm. To the Chicago As sociation, and particularly those officers who, with Mr. Hilton, originator of the idea, labored tirelessly in carrying it through, are due the thanks of all Dartmouth men.
This winter's addresses by President Hopkins before the various alumni meetings have seemed to stress the idea that there is pending a more definite demarcation between colleges and universities, involving the gradual abandonment of the idea that a university should also do collegiate work. The common conception of a university is still that of a college which has added to itself various graduate schools. The president believes that there is already to be found among the leaders of university thought a tendency to exalt the importance of the purely graduate work and to minimize, with the probability of abandoning altogether, the work leading to the A.B. and B.S. degrees. In that event it is obvious that the preliminary education of such as would seek the specialized graduate schools would have to be done elsewhere —to wit, in the colleges which had elected to remain colleges.
Opinions will doubtless differ as to the probability that any of us now living will see this change come to pass, because it is obvious that in the case of every university there will be extreme reluctance on the part of its alumni to see the collegiate functions abandoned. It is difficult, for example, to conceive of a Harvard composed exclusively of graduate schools and forcing" the Harvard men of the future to be first educated elsewhere. The sentiment of the alumni body is likely to be heavily against that situation. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the trend is in that direction and that the possibilities include the ultimate establishment of an exclusive university status for those institutions which offer to fit men specially for research in the Arts and Sciences, for the law, the medical profession, or the ministry, for engineering, for teaching, for business administration, for dentistry and what-not.
The tendency of alumni of such a university as Harvard is at present (and very properly) to regard as "Harvard men" only those who have received their bachelors' degrees there, as against such as have only degrees from the graduate schools, so far at least as concerns relationships chiefly social in their nature. The custom breaks down of course (and also very properly) when it is a case of enumerating the actual products of the university as a whole—as, for example, in accumulating an endowment fund. It is also hardly to be questioned that the alumnus of another college, who goes to Harvard for his law or medical degree, never thinks of himself as a '"Harvard man" save as his possession of such degree entitles him to coveted privilegessuch as that of applying for seats at the major games. Before Harvard and the other great universities succeed in sloughing oft the undergraduate departments, a considerable change in the situation seems to be required from the psychological standpoint, not only in the universities, but in the colleges as well. What would constitute a "Harvard man", once the change were made? Would there be room for both loyalties—that of the college graduate to his college, coincident with his loyalty to his university—both making considerable demands ?
We are far from challenging President Hopkins's idea. The one serious question relates to the speed of its realization. It involves such a rearrangement of traditional things that its dawning may be delayed. Meantime the obvious intention is to remind us, as Dartmouth men, that pur alma mater's function is collegiate and that temptations toward university features may well, in these circumstances, be resisted. To keep Dartmouth a college and make her the best possible college, without striving to add thereto the specializing departments which constitute a university, may well be the ideal. Whatever happens, the function of the colleges will continue; but if the universities eventually elect to be purely graduate institutions the demand upon the colleges will be infinitely increased. To build with that contingency in mind may be the part of far-seeing wisdom.
A further word as to the Alumni Fund. We may dismiss as needless all argument as to the necessity of the fund. Of course it is necessary. Every year's deficit is real and must be met. The only way to prevent it from arising would be to dispense with something like 21 professors and try to make the remainder serve the same number of undergraduates as now. It may therefore be admitted as a starter that this year we have somehow or other to raise a sum totalling $80,000. The only question left open is, who is to raise it ?
Out of the total alumni body of something over 6000, there are 4000 who regularly give something. There are about 2000 who in past years have not assisted. A canvass of these has revealed that somewhere between 800 and 900 are entirely ready to give toward this fund. In short, if every one who has intimated a readiness to help responds this time, the proportion of contributors will reach fivesixths, which is far more creditable than two-thirds. We believe it to be chimerical to talk of enrolling the full 100 per cent, but if we can enroll five-sixths of the living alumni it will be a great advance. No effort will be spared to come as close to that as is possible. Various interesting things have developed from the pre-campaign investigation. One is the apparent feeling of some men that unless they can give notably large sums it is not fitting for them to assist at all. This feeling we think should be deplored and dispelled. Circumstances vary so with us all that one cannot set any positive standard. It is merely desirable that each assist to the reasonable extent of his ability. More than mere money is the feeling that the college can count on the loyalty of every man, and does not count in vain. Others are known to fail of contributing through sheer forgetfulness. This is a difficult thing to combat. It is probably the experience of us all that the appeal of the class agent is made a thing to put in a pigeonhole until a more convenient season, thus inviting oblivion and necessitating a great deal of extra work on the part of class agents, whose letters evoke no immediate response.
Well, the upshot of it is that we've got about $80,000 to raise and the sooner we do it the less it will bother us. Putting off doesn't do any good. The task remains to do. It is hoped this spring to make a great part of the alumni field productive which has not been productive hitherto, assuming that the already productive part will remain so. We woulsoberly renew our urgence that the individual reader "have a heart" and not make his class agent write him too many letters. If one is to answer at all, the first letter should be as easy to answer as the third. And who would not answer at all?
A reference by former-President Meiklejohn in his Phi Beta Kappa address in Hanover last February, in which he spoke of the initiates before him as "these young thinkers", appears to have provoked some sarcasm, mainly of undergraduate origin, based on the contention that the wearer of a Phi Beta Kappa key is not always and necessarily a thinker, but may be merely a facile student whose worship of high marks accompanies a very inferior apparatus for sustained and practical independent thought. This contention it may be rash to deny, but it also appears to be one which lacks the merit of novelty as well as the merit of suggestiveness leading to better things. When all is said and done, such matters as membership in the Phi Beta Kappa have to depend on some sort of tangible evidence and thus far a substitute for marks fails to suggest itself.
It is occasionally true that the man who shines as Valedictorian or as an orator at Commencement with some brand of "laude" appended to his name, turns out to be rather a fizzle in after life—although experience convinces us that this belittling estimate applies much less often than smart cynics affect to believe. All too commonly the assertion that real virtue dwells only with scholastic mediocrity comes from the mediocre and looks rather like a salve to the conscience. The high-stand man may be in all else a dullard and a dunce, but on the whole the chances are against it. In any case it is hard to see what other basis than the scholastic record can be taken as the criterion of fitness for enrollment in the Phi Beta Kappa. Whether or not it is fitting to refer to that society's initiates as "these young thinkers," it is probable, in our judgment, that the designation is merited by most of them with sufficient clearness to splinter the shafts of jealousy.
As a matter of fact the hard-headed business world is prone to see in the little gold key better prima facie evidence of mental capacity than is afforded by a mantel-shelf full of silver cups, despite the fact that derisive comment has been heard to designate the society as the "I Am Smart Club." This evidence is not invariably borne out by subsequent performances, to be sure; but for a guess it justifies prima facie presumptions much more often than is done in the case of the man who barely gets his degree and is therefore (by the more skeptical theory) a probable world beater.
Nothing is easier than to be smartly cynical in such matters as this and the cynicism is by no means confined to outsiders. Phi Beta men have as a rule no delusions about themselves or their fellows and make, also as a rule, no ex- cessive and certainly no exclusive claims. Nevertheless it is extremely desirable that those to whom future membership in this ancient and still distinctly honorable society is possible should avoid the unwarrantable conclusion that the badge of membership has no worth beyond selfflattery—and most certainly should reject the ridiculous conclusion that the wearer of such a badge is presumptively a mere dub at everything but obtaining high marks. That last is sometimes the case, of course; but not always, or even often. To attain this incidental distinction of the gold key may well be the ambition even of a student who prides himself on being a "thinker" rather than a shark in the class-room.
Suggestions multiply in various quarters that the time has come to extend greater privileges in the matter of classroom work to upper classmen. This movement, which has come to be regarded as a part of that "new freedom" of which so much is heard as the divine right of youth, has led to a partial trial in some colleges with what is claimed to be reassuring success. The general idea is that students who have done excellent work and given convincing evidence of a sincere purpose to make a good use of their time while in college should, in the latter two years of their course, be relieved of many specific duties and allowed to pursue their studies in their own way, assuming personal responsibility for their fate and being directed solely by 'their own wisdom in the matter of attending classes, or lectures, as well as in the matter of general study. The contention is that such as are worthy of this freedom will do their work fully as well as now, if not better, and will not permit their personal pleasures to encroach any more harmfully upon their scholastic work than is true at present.
The experiment seems to us one which, if made, should be made charily and with appropriate caution. There is bound to be some difference of estimate between student and adult concerning the former's capacity to put away outside allurements in the absence of compulsion and oversight. This capacity will probably be overestimated by the student himself, and unduly minimized by his elders. Nevertheless there is certainly much truth in the statement that some men, if relieved of onerous routine requirements, would do fully as satisfactory work and would fit themselves for their degrees quite as efficiently, although consulting their own convenience as to the times and places for doing it. Proponents of the plan, as quoted recently in Harvard publications, graciously admit that "probably" care should be taken to bestow the new freedom only on such as have demonstrated a readiness to use it without abusing it. That much one may say is obvious. There are men in every class who will slight their work unless held strictly to it down to the last day of their final senior examinations—and such would much better forego the delights of an unsupervised existence for their own good. There are also men in every class who would probably do good work if given this latitude on the first day of their freshman year. It all depends on the man, and the men appropriately to be favored in this way should be fairly well known by the opening of their first junior term.
Naturally those trained in different conditions will look on this experiment with a skeptical eye and will expect little of it but regret. It is probable, however, that some such thing will ultimately become the rule in all major colleges and will be adhered to if it is found to work reasonably well in practice. Forecasts as to its probable working may be sagely omitted. Those who object to trusting immature youths too much are quite capable of trusting them too little. The student himself is likely to be overconfident in his own powers of self-restraint and application, where underconfidence is the sin of his elders. But from all indications the thing will be tried and its fruits, as usual, will be the proper thing by which to judge it.
Figures published by the College in February may afford a line, although not a very clear one, on the development of the selective system of admissions as it affects subsequent scholarship. If the system makes the desired improvement by insuring a better intellectual capacity among the men admitted to college, it should be true with the progress of time that the numbers dropped from the various classes will show a decrease. As a matter of fact some decrease is already reported, but reference to the appended table indicates that the decline is chiefly in the number of outright separations, the figures as to the men put on probation seeming to show an increase. The table is as follows:
1924 1923 1922 Sep. Pro. Sep. Pro. Sep. Pro. Freshmen 28 70 30 48 32 48 Sophomores 16 50 29 53 16 24 Juniors 1 15 7 10 9 9 Seniors 1 8 0 4 0 5
As would naturally be expected, the mortality is greatest among the freshmen and least among those who have successfully weathered three years. But taking the list as a whole it is impossible to say that very much of a startling nature is as yet revealed to indicate a very notable improvement, although the trend seems clearly to be in the right direction. It is probable that greatly increased vigilance, designed to shield students from their own propensities, accounts for the probation figures, many men being given this warning because their standing, while sufficient to keep them in college, warrants extreme care against farther depletion.
More or less misinformation is forever getting into print concerning what happens in the colleges of the country and it is probable that by this time sensible readers have learned to make due allowances for the excessive zeal of headline writers in search of the picturesque. Because the president of a college takes advanced ground in holding that whatever stimulates the students to intellectual activity and an alert interest in the thought of their day is proper to be set before them, it is hardly justified to rush to the assumption that "a Dartmouth professorship awaits" such as Lenine and Trotzky—the rather rash interpretation put by some ultra-fervent journalists on the remarks of President Hopkins at Chicago in February.
If we understand the present policy of the College, it is to sail a proper middle course between the excesses of radicalism and the excesses of reaction, accepting nothing off-hand merely because it is new and shocking, but at the same time avoiding the equally unwise extreme of rejecting everything that is not established of old, merely for its lack of age. There is an acknowledged danger of misconception on the part of such as base all judgments on dangerous abstractions, but it is to be hoped that such misconceptions will be few.
The greatest of all obstacles at present in the path of those who profess to be seekers after truth is the headlong intolerance of both sides—the Radical and the Conservative—for each other. As a general thing one who professes to be a Liberal dismisses with withering contempt every idea that is not both novel and disturbing; and one who professes to be a Conservative waves aside with scorn whatever is not familiar and reassuring. That each is guilty of the same sin, neither admits. It is fashionable for the Radical to impute virtue to himself and his breed on the abstract ground of radicalism alone, and for the Conservative to impute vice on the same abstract ground. No one has any patience, or any disposition to examine particular postulates for their intrinsic merits. This thing is advocated by a Radical—therefore it must be false; that thing is advocated by a Conservativetherefore it must be virtuous! Mutatis mutandis, ad libitum.
. To assume that all truth is possessed by either the one or the other wing is ridiculous, and it is precisely that which the administration at Dartmouth has in mind. The idea is not to reject, and not to accept, anything merely because of a liking for, or a loathing of, its source, without bothering any further about it. The hope is to get at whatever is demonstrably true," admitting the chance that sometimes a helpful idea will crop out in decidedly unlikely places and trusting always to the certainty that falsehood will reveal and defeat itself. Meantime there- appears to be a tendency in both camps, while loudly declaiming that "Truth is mighty and will prevail", to reveal a distressing fear lest truth be puny and be overwhelmed by error. Lots of good new ideas are having hard sledding at present merely because people hesitate to believe that any good thing can come out of some particular Nazareth; and many a good old idea is by way of being questioned, not because of any indicated vice, but because those who question it cordially detest those who hold to it.
It often seems that there is little to choose between the two opposing schools of thought in this regard. They have learned cordially to despise each other on purely general principles and to dismiss with a disdainful snort every postulate from the other side without a hearing. The open mind is about as rare an article in the Radical fold as it is in the Conservative. Every one is so terribly afraid—afraid that truth cannot take care of itself. The comfortable conviction is that the truth has an abundant capacity to triumph and that it knows neither old nor young, neither visionary nor reactionary, but is, always has been, and always will be, truth, ordained from everlasting unto everlasting.
There is no worth, surely, in careering wildly about in search of wildly improbable novelties for the sake of shocking the elders—and the great defect among the professional Radicals is that this is precisely what so many of them do. There is equally little worth in shutting the eyes of the mind to everything that wasn't fully established at least as long ago as the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes. The propensity of each opposing clan to do these things makes it decidedly uncomfortable all around for such as do not care whether the truth come from Radicals or Reactionaries, so long as it can be shown to be true. There are plenty of things that it is manifestly futile to waste any time upon, yet the Radical loudly demands that they be soberly considered and waxes bitterly sarcastic over the notion that there is any abiding virtue in "the Gods of the Copybook Maxims." The temptation is to cry "a plague o' both your houses." Mercutio, when he lay dying of his all-sufficient wound, could see the silliness of the rivalry in support of which a moment before he drew his blade. With us, hopefully still vigorous for some years to come, it remains a case of making faces and biting thumbs at each other in derision because either we are devoted to chasing horrific delusions, or devoted to standing pat on what we think we know already. It is a sort of Age of Mutual Contempt—and whoever seeks truth in ways that are not our pet particular ways is likely to be sneered out of court, whichever side he is on.
The conclusion of the whole matter is that at Dartmouth one looks for whatsoever things are true—and not solely at the paternity of ideas, whether they be new or old, as if that were .all that mattered. The idea's the thing, rather than the idealist.
At Chicago, President Hopkins flatly put forth his idea that the College should encourage, whatever tended to stimulate the undergraduate mind to an intelligent search for truth. We fail to see how that can be denied. Opinions will certainly differ now and again in matters of detail, as to what is and what is not a stimulus to intelligent seeking after verity, but such differences are of extremely little importance unless we stand ready to assume that truth is impotent against falsehood. Meantime we believe that the surest of all ways to endow the wilder brands of radicalism with extra powers is to cloak them in mystery and make it appear as if they were things to dread. We also believe that the surest way to sicken clean-minded youth with the nauseating excesses of our intellectual addlepates is to let them have an occasional sample thereof, full strength. The "hush, hush" school of philosophy is too likely to arouse a boyish curiosity. Dartmouth is in no danger whatever of becoming a seminary of intellectual tommyrot—a sort of northern outpost of Greenwich Village, or a collection of cocksure young bolshevists egged on by visionary propagandists.
Opinions will 'probably differ somewhat as to the necessity of employing certain means of arousing the intellectual interest of undergraduates, and the question may be suggested whether it is especially important that they be given opportunities to hear the advocates of questionable economic and social doctrine. It does not always follow that it is important because the exponents of such doctrines claim that it is. In any event we have much more doubt of the importance of such contacts that we can have of the contention that they will do no harm. It is very unlikely that they will do any harm at all, and in some cases it seems to us equally unlikely that they will do any good. But all the time one has to remember that the appearance of dread lest harm be done invests the rapscallion doctrinaire with a panoply of •sympathetic interest often transcending his deserts—and that is what leads to an
extreme reluctance to appear repressive. Listening to such speakers as William Z. Foster and Oswald Garrison Villard seems to us not greatly to add to the undergraduate wisdom, despite the fond assurance of those who believe in them that it will do so. By a parity of reasoning one might urge that the enthusiastic welcome of cubist art would tend to improve the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
A great deal of nonsense is daily talked and written in the world, and one is often told that no wise man can well ignore what other people may be saying. That depends, of course, on whether what they are saying has any value. It is safest, no doubt, to avoid categorical prejudgments and draw as few lines as possible, being in no wise fearful that nonsense, or a lack of patriotism, or an overplus of communistic fervor, will unhinge a body of sensible youth, but being sanely conscious that a seeming disposition to hedge such youth from contamination will only make their curiosity more avid. We can have no quarrel with the College policy in this regard. It seems to us sensible and far-seeing. An occasional firebrand, an occasional pacifist an amiable lunatic or two, will work no injury compared with what might be worked by a frantic effort to prohibit every such thing from coming to undergraduate notice until after the final Commencement exercises.
The one danger that we can see as having a sort of reality is that hasty commentators may read into the tolerance thus exhibited a positive sympathy with rabid social or industrial doctrine, which certainly does not exist, to the unsettlement of alumni loyalty and the diminishing of alumni support. To avoid that, the administration must bespeak the good sense and calm judgment of its own alumni to recognize that the very last thing the College would dream of doing would be to disrupt its own foundations by any espousal of novelties of thought which could not be squared with sense and reason. The tolerance of free speech on the part of such as have little of worth to say does not indicate a furtive sympathy with the twaddle, but merely the salutary desire that whatever is twaddle shall stand forth and be judged for what it is—instead of dressed up in bogey garments to impress plastic youth far beyond its merits.
