Publications Control?

Trustees to Consider Committee Proposals at October Meeting of Board

WITH A NEW Council on Student Organizations taking over the supervision and development of practically all non-athletic activities at Dartmouth this fall, campus interest at the start of the college year is focusing itself upon the proposal to extend graduate regulation over the undergraduate publications as well. When the Committee on Student Publications submitted its report last May, recommending the appointment of Alumni Trustees with supervisory power over the business and editorial staffs of the publications, the cry of censorship and administration ownership was raised by The Dartmouth, which organized an "evaluating committee" and submitted counter proposals. The Board of Trustees tabled the whole matter at its June meeting, and at the coming October meeting it is expected that the Board will either take definite action on the report or recommend further study of the various proposals.

The controversy, if the difference of opinion may be described as such, centers around The Dartmouth almost entirely. The two main points of contention are the Committee's recommendations that the Alumni Trustee have the authority to remove any member of the editorial and business staffs and that he hold the corporate stock of the publication in trust for the Board of Trustees of the College. The committee which considered the report from the point of view of the publications has submitted the counter proposals that the Alumni Trustee, as a member of a five-man Consulting Council, hold the stock in trusteeship for the current directorate of the publication and that the power of removal by the Council be restricted to cases of dishonesty on the business staff. On other points of the Committee's report there is substantial agreement.

As proposed by the Committee on Student Publications, which submitted a 111- page report to President Hopkins after a year's investigation under the chairmanship of Francis H. Horan 'as of New York City, the Alumni Trustee will have greater authority in connection with the business operations of the publications than with the editorial policies. The Committee felt that the Alumni Trustee would supply the "need for one mature person with a sense of the values of Dartmouth to act as guide, counsellor and friend," and to that end it recommended the appointment of a single adviser in preference to a group of three, as well as in preference to a Council on Student Publications employing a resident graduate director. Such an officer was suggested for The Dartmouth and also for Jack-o-Lantern and The Pictorial jointly, while with only minor exception the present organization and management of the Aegis,Green Book, Dart and Freshman Handbook were approved.

If the recommendations of the Committee are adopted, the Alumni Trustees appointed by the President will have oversight of the accounting of the business affairs of the publications, will approve the schedule of salaries and the distribution of profits, and will hold all or a controlling part of the corporate stock of the publications in trust for the Trustees of the College. In this latter connection, the Committee has recommended that Jack-o-Lantern and The Pictorial become incorporated like The Dartmouth. The advisory officer will serve for a threeyear term, and although he must be a graduate of at least five years' standing, the Committee has recommended that he be a man not too far removed from the students in years. It is also proposed that he have at his disposal annually a drawing account, from the funds of the publication, for his expenses in relation to the trusteeship. In the case of Jack-o-Lantern and The Pictorial the expenses of the Alumni Trustee would be prorated according to the respective gross revenues of the two publications.

NOT ABSOLUTE CONTROL

In a brief introduction to its suggestions with regard to an Alumni Trustee for TheDartmouth, the Committee's report states that "because of the de facto responsibility that the College must assume for TheDartmouth we have concluded that the Administration ought to have more guaranty than it now has that the paper will be carried on responsibly. Any modusoperandi which results in the frictions and irritations that have existed for several years should be changed TheDartmouth has not gained, from the patient sufferance of the Administration in recent years, any right to unregulated freedom which other undergraduate activities do not have.

"We think it would be better for undergraduate life if the College Administration were to experiment with something less than the absolute control of the undergraduate paper which is in effect at nearly all institutions, save those few with whose general principles and standards Dartmouth is most nearly in sympathy. Recent experience has been unfortunate and trying, but unless there has been a profound change in the nature of the undergraduates (which we do not pass upon) there is promise enough that the situation will accommodate itself again."

The special committee of nine members which submitted the publications report to President Hopkins was composed, with only two exceptions, of young alumni who had served as editors and business managers of the publications when they were Dartmouth undergraduates. Francis H. Horan '22, the New York attorney who served as chairman of the Committee, as an undergraduate was editor-in-chief of both The Dartmouth and the Aegis. Albert I. Dickerson '30, representative of the administration, was formerly associate editor of The Dartmouth; while the five other alumni members of the Committee were Robert R. Bottome '30, former editor-in-chief of Jack-o-Lantern and business manager of The Dartmouth; John French '3O, former editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth; David H. Callaway '34, former business manager of Jack-o-Lantern; Jerry A. Danzig '34, former editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth; and Richard F. Treadway '36, former business manager of TheDartmouth. The faculty was represented on the Committee by Prof. Leslie F. Murch, then chairman of the Council on Student Organizations and chairman of the special committee which last spring brought in a report on non-athletic organizations; and the undergraduate body was represented by Robert E. Archibald '3B, president of Palaeopitus.

The Committee was appointed by President Hopkins in accordance with the vote of the Board of Trustees in June, 1937, at which time the reasons for the investigation were stated to be the lack of any requirement for the publications to recognize a responsibility to College interests, the failure of the publications to safeguard against the impinging of their work upon the college work of the board members and heelers, and the skepticism existing in the College with regard to the internal administration of the publications.

CONFEREES WITH COMMITTEE

Before presenting its report the Committee held four meetings in New York and two in Hanover, at which latter meetings it interviewed present officers of the publications and others connected with their operation. Among those who met with the Committee were President Hopkins, Dean Neidlinger, Dean Strong, William H. McCarter '19, Prof. Sidney Cox, Prof. Stearns Morse, Prof. George L. Frost '21, Prof. Harry R. Wellman 'O7, Charles E. Widmayer '30, six undergraduate representatives of The Dartmouth, four undergraduate representatives of Jack-o-Lantern, three undergraduate representatives of The Pictorial, two undergraduate representatives of the Aegis, three undergraduate representatives of the Green Book, one undergraduate representative of the Freshman Handbook, and a committee of four from Palaeopitus. The Committee also sent questionnaires to alumni who held publications offices from 1927 through 1936, and made a survey of publication practices at Harvard, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Yale and Princeton.

To the recommendations of this committee The Dartmouth made a complete reply in its issue of May 27, 1938. "We disagree not at all with the results the report says it wants to achieve," the undergraduate daily declared. "We disagree violently with how it wants to go after them." After concurring with the general objectives set forth by the Committee and with the recommendation that the business supervision of the publication be a one-man job, The Dartmouth declared "There we stop. We say that the Alumni Trustee proposed would be inadequate for the advisory aid which the report declares The Dartmouth editorial board needs and which The Dartmouth would welcome. And we say that the Alumni Trustee, vested with ownership rights and specifically with removal power, would be a tremendously dangerous intermediary. He would be ultimately as dangerous to the 'freedom of the responsible press' as the most extreme control that could be recommended for The Dartmouth, and his threat in the present issue is all the greater because his immediate threat seems so slight, it seems hardly worth 'clattering' about. In this sane-toned and sprightly report, the grafting of the ownership clause into the Alumni Trustee device is like castor oil camouflaged in a glass of orange juice and whiskey."

"THREAT OF REMOVAL"

The Dartmouth went on to charge the Alumni Trustee with being inadequate as an adviser because of his absence from Hanover, and dangerous because, being subject constantly to a ring of pressures, "he might easily be forced into laying down absolute general dicta backed up by the threat, tacit at least, of removal." The danger of College ownership, the daily asserted, "is that it provides machinery for a gradual increase of pressure by the College, with the result that the paper will gradually attract a more stultified type of man. Ownership and whatever control devices accompany it will permit the College heads to gently repress a man from expression they would not dare kick him out for. They would not be Machiavellian in doing this. They would simply interpret as a regrettable exception something an independent editor would see as an important truth. If they could direct editorial policy, they would like to have it express their sincere beliefs. Yet if there is anything Dartmouth does not need, it is unanimous approval of what we have now."

To evaluate the Committee's report from the point of view of The Dartmouth and the other publications concerned, the daily paper organized a special committee made up of Prof. Stearns Morse; Kenneth A. Mac Donald '39, member of Palaeopitus: John R. Vincens '39, editor-in-chief of Jack-o-Lantern; and O'Brien Boldt '39, editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth. This committee, submitting its report shortly before the June meeting of the Board of Trustees, recommended to President Hopkins that the proposed Alumni Trustee have supervision of business policies and that he hold the publication's stock in trusteeship for the current directorate. In addition, it recommended that a fiveman Consulting Council be set up with purely advisory powers to aid The Dartmouth in editorial expression.

The Consulting Council would be made up of an Alumni Trustee appointed by the President for a term of three years, a representative of the faculty chosen by the directorate of The Dartmouth with the (approval of the President, a representative of the administration chosen by the President, a non-publications member of Palaeopitus chosen by the directorate of The Dartmouth, and the editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth. In general, the function of the Council would be to keep TheDartmouth in close contact with information and opinion from all elements of the College. It would meet frequently enough to provide active maintenance of this contact on all important issues, and would meet during each visit to Hanover of the Alumni Trustee, who at that time might take up with the Council any questions of business policy. The evaluating committee recommended that the Alumni Trustee have full status as a member of the Council to discuss editorial policy, and also recommended that the editor of The Dartmouth should take the initiative in keeping the Council alive and for that reason might best serve as chairman of the Council. Under these counter proposals it is suggested that the editor of the daily paper consult regularly with the administration representative to check on matters having to do with general College policy, and with the representatives of the faculty and Palaeopitus to check on matters of particular concern to their respective groups.

AGREEMENT ON GENERAL AIMS

While a sharp difference of opinion exists between the Committee on Student Publications and the evaluating committee as to how the aims of the publications report should be achieved, there seems to be unanimous agreement about the section of the report which deals with general objectives for all Dartmouth publications. In this portion of the Committee's unusually sprightly and readable document the investigating group declares that it is opposed to the frustration of any minority group desirous of expressing itself, but that it also recognizes that "ahead of the interest of any one group. .. .comes the interest of the College and of the student body of any period."

"For clearly the premise is correct," the report declares, "that all publications must be of concern to those administering the College. The outside world regards the publications as official or quasi-official. Though at Dartmouth this is not true, it would be idle to try to establish any other point of view whenever the Administration would wish to dissociate the College from an incident. For better or worse the College has to accept responsibility in the eyes of the world for what student residents in Hanover may do, journalistically or otherwise. The reputation of the College is worth more than all its buildings and all its moneys It is of first importance that there shall be as little likelihood as possible of a misunderstanding among the friends of Dartmouth and among the public at large as to what kind of institution is being carried on at Hanover. This being so, the relationship of the publications to the College is dependent.

"The Administration of the College has adhered to a hands-off policy and often has been held accountable for what it did not do because the world well knows that any collegiate institution can pretty much control its publications and it assumes, what seems to be true almost everywhere except at Dartmouth and a few kindred institutions, that there is such control."

With this general attitude, the Committee stated that the directorate of any publication holds a trusteeship whereunder it has a duty to conduct its business and editorial management in the best fashion possible, with due regard to the interests of the College and the community. In the area of external relationships with the public and other institutions, the Committee felt that no "twentyone-year-old student should be allowed to roam about at will kicking over carefully fostered plans merely because' his heart is pure. Freedom of expression has never gone so far as that." The editor should acquaint himself with the nature of the outside interests of the College, the report declared, as well as with attitudes and opinions that have prevailed and with policies that may be maturing.

On the score of politics and economic theory the Committee called upon the editor of The Dartmouth not to be didactic. "Now when tempers are drawn fine the student editor is in a position to irritate and alarm by too didactic an attitude toward views held by a large majority of the College constituency, alumni and undergraduates alike," the report stated. "Granted that the editor should be interested in the world he lives in and will live in, and granted his right and his duty to be so interested. This interest has grown too slowly among the educated of the country and it should be encouraged and neither ridiculed nor repressed. In this setting we think the editor should be reasonable, not brash; persuasive and not didactic; curious and not doctrinaire; courteous and not rude. Pulling whiskers is tempting play for the young and the general impulse to do so will always be a characteristic of young men. We know that and do not deplore it. Yet we may reasonably wish that the editor will not callously outrage the attitude of many of the alumni on their social beliefs and may reasonably hope the increasingly frequent forays of the editor into the outside world will be those of the student eager to learn and not those of the zealot hellbent on evangelizing. And having said this we lay down this caveat: We would not want the editor year in and year out to be a smug little conservative.

"We think it worthwhile to add here that the editor should not take himself too seriously. Within the limits described above the editor is engaged in an amateur undertaking and he can talk more clearly if he does not set his teeth."