"NO QUOTA"
FRANK realism and understanding mark the "No Quota" campaign of the Alumni Fund Committee announced to the alumni in a mailing piece sent out during the past week. This approach for the Alumni Fund, as suggested in the March issue of the MAGAZINE, not only contemplates circumstances understandingly—and will in subsequent years reap the benefits of this consideration from appreciative alumni—but will also no doubt elicit all available support in the distraught and exigent present.
That the Fund Committee proposes no importuning must be good news for those generous supporters whose incomes have been reduced to small fractions of their former proportions and whose Fund contributions must consequently be small compared to previous amounts. That the Fund Committee is understanding of these circumstances will naturally enhance the satisfaction with which these alumni will make the contributions which they are able to make this year.
For the rest of us, it remains an individual question to determine whether last year's gift can be maintained, whether it must be decreased, or whether by stretching a bit it could be increased somewhat to make up for the inevitable decreases in many quarters. It does not seem, on the other hand, that in many cases there can be any real question of omitting a gift altogether. Those who have perfect records of participation year by year will not willingly see these broken when they may be sustained by gifts of even the smallest proportions, and those whose participation has been less regular will surely take particular satisfaction in being listed among the College's supporters during a year when continued support is doubly and triply valuable.
The primary aim of the Alumni Fund this year is conceived by the committee to be the preservation of the morale which has made Dartmouth preeminent among the colleges in unanimity of participation in support of the College, avoiding the impairment of this spirit by urgent pressure even for urgently needed funds, and enhancing it by an understanding approach in a year difficult for many and really tragic for some. With this primary aim in mind, the Committee has expressed its hope to give to the College the greatest possible financial support in one of the most trying years of its financial history.
By explaining to the faculty their desire and intention to keep the College finances in a position of sound solvency at the cost of salary revisions and other reluctant curtailing of the program which they have tried so earnestly to protect through the depression, the President and Trustees have gone on record with regard to their policies for the coming year. By the applause which resounded in the faculty room at the end of the President's announcement of this, the faculty have shown their own cooperative spirit. Meanwhile, for the present year, there is the deficit of almost $200,000, to be diminished by whatever amount may be contributed by the alumni. What this shall be, the Alumni Fund committee is leaving to the individual alumnus to determine.
