Gradus Ad Parnassum

A COMMITTEE headed by Francis H. Horan '22, a thoroughly able L group, representative of the alumni, student body, faculty and administration, made a careful study of the undergraduate publications of the College last year. The committee's findings were reported to President Hopkins at the end of the College year. The nine members of the committee labored, and in our opinion very successfully, to submit something more to the President than a fact-finding survey or a collection of alternative proposals for possible improvements in the student publications.

Our compliments to the committee for its exceedingly readable, informative, and stimulating report. And our gratitude, in behalf of all friends of the College, to the committee for the report's incisive exposition of the good and faulty points of the student publications; and for its candid and very lucid advice to guide those who will be associated with the publications in any capacity from now on.

LET A CHEER be given for all those who are publishing the papers, the magazines, and year books for the student body. It is largely a thankless task. There is financial remuneration in some but not all cases. Campus prestige for the work is practically nil. We admire the resourcefulness and energy and spirit of the undergraduates who labor to produce the finished product. Having had experience in the field, this is an entirely sincere statement of appreciation of the hard work and trials and tribulations endured by the editorial and business staffs of student publications.

THE POINT was clearly made in the committee's report that the student publication is not the property of the editors; it is rather held by them in "a kind of trusteeship," and that ownership will pass on at the end of a year to another group selected in some fashion from the undergraduate body. The Dartmouth is a cooperative community enterprise and it is futile to claim that the paper (or any other student publication) is entirely independent of the College: the paper bears the name of the College; the report correctly states "the outside world regards thepublications as official or quasi-official."

It would be a mistake to take the student publications too seriously. Granting that lapses in editorial and business management on The Dartmouth should not be regarded as matters of life and death, it is no reassurance to have the editor taking himself so seriously that perspective and judg- ment are lost. The committee report succinctly states: "the editor is engaged in anamateur undertaking and he can talk moreclearly if he does trot set his teeth."

The report strongly recommends that care be taken to have the amateur flavor of the publications preserved. The point seems sound enough providing certain improvements in the situation can be made.

THE COMMITTEE itself has recommended the appointment of an Alumni Trustee for The Dartmouth stating that "the need is really forone mature person with a sense of thevalues of Dartmouth to act as guide, counselor, and friend." The Alumni Trustee would, under the committee's plan, hold all or a controlling part of the corporate stock of the paper in trust for the Trustees of the College. On another page of this issue of the MAGAZINE his proposed duties are outlined in greater detail. He would be given power of removal of any member of the editorial or business boards.

It is the degree of authority placed in the hands of the Alumni Trustee that has called forth unfavorable opinion of the plan. Critics feel that the freedom of the press is in danger by the power of removal given to the Alumni Trustee. It is our opinion that the publications committee fully proved its desire to have The Dartmouth retain its traditional freedom from absolute control by the College.

The effectiveness of a non-resident Trustee for The Dartmouth, and for the other publications, in accomplishing the highly desirable purposes of guiding and helping the publications (and not censoring or hindering them) does not, however, appear very promising. In principle, we are completely in agreement with the Horan committee report—trusteeships in some form need to be established. The proposed plan may offer the correct solution to difficulties with the student publications which all who are familiar with them recognize. It is a question of finding the best and wisest plan.

For their own good the publications would do well to secure publishers for themselves. The usual organization of the average publication is for control to be vested in the owners and publishers; the editor and business manager are responsible to the publisher. The situation with the student publications in the College is now that the editor and business manager are responsible to no one and this in spite of agreement that the enterprises are clearly of a community nature. Although the publications committee did not feel that a group of trustees would be as likely to succeed as would a single Alumni Trustee, we are inclined to feel that a small committee would be preferable, with most, if not all, of the members resident in Hanover.

INTEREST IN the report of the publications committee has been widespread. One comment that has frequently been heard, often made by alumni who have themselves spent many hours toiling in the publications' offices in Robinson Hall, has been to the effect that steps should be taken to teach and train heelers for editorial and business board positions earlier than junior or senior year. It is apparently felt that men chosen to the editorial and business positions of greatest responsibility should have had a better opportunity to acquire background for their jobs than is usually the case.

It should be said that efforts have been made in the past to interest editorial board candidates for The Dartmouth in courses concerned with writing about the general objectives and activities of the College. The courses have been abandoned but a revival of the plan, which operated with some success over a period of years, might be helpful in the present situation.

BECAUSE The Dartmouth is recognized as the most important of the student publications not so much attention has- been attracted to recommendations of the committee for other publications—Jacko, Dart, Pictorial, Aegis, and Green Book. They also' have their problems. Each was thoroughly studied by the committee and recommendations were made of plans that appear feasible for satisfactory and improved operation of these valued student activities.

THE IMPORTANT points are that in principle, and in practice, the publications are College and community enterprises; the men who are going to be editors and business managers, and all associated with the publications, should be taught as much as possible about their jobs early in their experience; the Publications Report should be the bible of every heeler for a news or business board competition; and the Alumni Trustee, or a small committee of Directors (or some other form of publishing responsibility placed in experienced hands), is a highly desirable step.

And finally, let it be admitted all around that Dartmouth College, in its one hundred and seventieth year as a liberal institution, is not interested in suppressing anybody or anything. The College is interested, and must always be, in improving its relationships both within and outside the Hanover community.

THE FINAL results of the 1938 Alumni Fund campaign were superlatively good. $108,668.01 was the total of gifts received, representing 99% of the objective of $110,000. The number of contributors was 8,780, or 76% which is 3% of contributors better than the previous record established 12 years ago, since which time the body of living alumni has increased over 50%. That the Alumni Council's annual campaign to provide the College with a very substantial sum for unrestricted current uses, was so successful in a year when there was much doubt of the Fund's success, is a tribute to the great loyalty and keen interest of the alumni.

Again, and in the face of unfavorable conditions, Dartmouth men provided the College with funds that were of the greatest value in financial operations of the year. The annual financial report to the Trustees, submitted by Mr. Edgerton, treasurer, and Mr. Norton, bursar, clearly shows the dependence of the College on gifts received through the Alumni Fund.

Sigurd S. Larmon 'l4 retires from the chairmanship of the Alumni Fund Committee of the Alumni Council, after two years in the job. No man could give better service to the College than Mr. Larmon has given in the vital role he has played in safeguarding the financial security of the institution. He and the executive secretary of his Fund Committee, Albert I. Dickerson '30, and that devoted band of selfsacrificing workers for the Fund, the class agents—all have collaborated to the great good of the College.

COACH EARL BLAIK has come out with a remarkably optimistic statement about prospects for football success this fall. He says: "The1938 Dartmouth team will be a hard-hitting, interesting group... .in some wayscapable of being a good team."

Football coaches, and our able and widely respected Mr. Blaik is no exception, are not by nature optimistic. Their philosophy is along the line of the corner store keeper who always figured that "when business is good it is never as good as it seems, and when it is bad it is going to be worse." That the prospects are for a fair, or even good, team this year is taken calmly by the alumni. They are all, of course, confident that the team will be undefeated.

How do we get that way? One year ago the squad was dismissed by all the experts as inexperienced, lacking the necessary key veterans, facing a suicide schedule, etc. When the shooting was all over the Big Green hadn't been beaten—the first time since 1925. Now, as the season gets under way, the cards have all been shuffled again and an entirely new set of situations face the team and coaches on Saturday afternoons from now until the sun sets behind Palo Alto and the Golden Gate on November 26.

Little wonder that coaches of teams that are expected to win get the heebie-jeebies, or something. Let's take the games as they come—win, lose or draw—just as the team is so skillfully taught to take all the breaks, in stride, good and bad, and make the best of them.

The curtain has gone up for the drama of college football. The spotlight is on a few teams in the country and Dartmouth is one of them. With no lowering of standards (in fact admissions and academic standards are constantly higher) the alumni may be proud of the team: it is made up of representative undergraduates, many of them true leaders among their fellows; and no team in the country will have better coaching. The signing of five-year contracts with Earl Blaik, Andy Gustafson, and Harry Ellinger is indeed fine news from the Athletic Council.

IT IS SUGGESTED that alumni count at least to 10, slowly, before writing indignant letters of protest to sportseditors of the metropolitan press. For a variety of reasons, some good, and many not so good and entirely misinformed, there has apparently been an open season on certain sports writers who have had the temerity to comment, or to fail to comment, on Dartmouth teams. The present college year is declared to be a closedseason. A lot of poor shots have almost ruined the gunning and it will be several years before the sport to be derived therefrom will even be worth mentioning.

THROUGH THE kindness of our most assiduous clipper and quoter of interesting bits here and there, Mr. C. C. Hills '05, Baron of Norwich, Vt.,. we have lately come into possession of a stirring tribute to the spirit of the alumni of Dartmouth. The following comment appears in the summer number of the Cushing Academy Bulletin:

"All who have seen the Dartmouth ALUMNI MAGAZINE must have been impressed by the fullness with which alumni information is conveyed there: graduate studies, marriages and births of children, death of parents, educational history of children, church, civic, business, literary and professional activities of the graduates, and many other items of alumni interest. Not a little of the solidarity of the Dartmouth alumni as a body and the remarkable unity of the separate classes, an esprit de corps not such as every college likes to idealize itself as possessing but one so nearly unique as to be acknowleded by graduates of other institutions, must have been fostered and strengthened through the years by the completeness with which Dartmouth graduates are kept informed of the doings of their fellow alumni."

Since the DARTMOUTH MAGAZINE has reached only about 50% of the alumni in past years and is thus credited with making the College what it is will happen when the current plan for boosting the circulation to 100% achieves full success? The prospect of twice as much Dartmouth Spirit, a doubled Alumni Fund, and a 100% increase in alumni interest is a thought we are unable to cope with for the moment. But, anyway, thank you Cushing.

THE "Eleazar Murals" by Walter B. Humphrey 'l4, with their Parisian squaws and the genial Dr. Wheelock, have appeared on the walls of the Richard Hovey Room in Thayer Hall. Three of the four panels are nearly completed. The artist spent much of his time last year and the entire summer working at the project, the magnitude of which is not generally appreciated. The chorus panel is eight feet square; the first and third verse panels are 37 feet three inches long by seven feet eight inches deep; the second verse panel is the same depth and 28 feet long. About 700 square feet of canvas is involved in the entire mural and all of the painting is done in oils. Mr. Humphrey conceived the idea of a

"true Dartmouth mural" in the course of expressing cordial disapproval of the Orozco frescoes in Baker Library. He suggested, as a suitable subject, the illustration in a light vein of Richard Hovey's great song, "Eleazar Wheelock." There is now something more than short orders of steaks and chops to attract students and alumni to the attractive grill room in the new dining center. The evolution of Dartmouth College from the arrival of Dr. Wheelock in the howling wilderness through three verses and chorus of various adventures is handsomely and masterfully illustrated for all time. With a full quota of' handsome Indian maidens and benevolent braves in attendance upon the flowing bowl the artist has truly caught the spirit of the Hovey poem.

The editors are happy to present a section of the mural as the cover illustration for this issue. Dartmouth men are going to enjoy becoming acquainted with Walter Humphrey's masterful portrayal of Hovey's joyful conception of the founding of the College.

LOSSES BY DEATH in the ranks of the alumni and faculty have been heavy since publication of the last issue of the MAGAZINE of the past College year. An emeritus officer of the College, and one beloved by a host of former students, whose sudden passing is recorded with the keenest regret is Prof. Charles Darwin Adams, of the class of '77. Prof. Shirley Gale Patterson, Amherst 1906, teacher of French for 23 years, was exceedingly loyal to the College. He maintained regular contact with the late Edward Tuck '62 and in other ways was closely associated with Dartmouth affairs.

The tragedy that was the end of the life of Max Waldsmith '33 is a stunning blow. One of the most personable of the younger graduates, widely known among his fellows, president of the alumni club in St. Louis, his loss is hard to take And other good men are gone. In the conclusion to his excellent description of the College Prof. L. B. Richardson writes: "But while the institution is eternal, itlives through the activities of successivegenerations of men. They rise, they dotheir work, they pass from the scene, andthe College has its being and advances togreater spheres of service through theirefforts."

PRESIDENT HOPKINS has announced that he will take a leave of absence of a sort, during this college year. The Trustees have urged him in past years to take a real vacation. Apparently the Board has exercised its authority and instructed the President to absent himself from his duties for as much of the year as may be possible. His present plans do not call for any protracted absence. He says he will be in Hanover at intervals but will depend for the most part upon associates in the Administration to carry the burden of his work.

For the first time in the 22 years since his inauguration October 6, 1916, Mr. Hopkins will be relieved of many of the multitudinous duties that he has carried in every one of those years. Beginning at the very start of his administration the President has followed a policy of meeting with as many alumni clubs and associations as could possibly be worked into his annual schedule of traveling and speaking. In no small degree are the alumni groups "spoiled." Who does each and every Dartmouth man want to hear at the alumni dinners throughout the country?—there is only one answer—"Hoppy." Pinch-hitters will need to appear for him this year, and in connection with numerous other duties also.

This leave of absence of the President's is long overdue. May he and Mrs. Hopkins enjoy their leisure with abundant satisfaction and happiness.

The Editor.