Dartmouth in New York
AFTER THROWING OPEN its doors a month . ago, the new Dartmouth Club of New York, at 30 East Thirty-seventh Street, has got off to a most promising start. The Club was officially opened on February 23d, and during the next few days there were a series of open houses which provided opportunity for all the local alumni to drop in and investigate the Clubhouse and its well-appointed facilities. A drive for new members was undertaken immediately, with a Membership Organization force of 140 men working under the general chairmanship of Josh Davis '27. This organization was broken down to divisions and groups for the purpose of contacting all the Dartmouth men around the metropolitan area, and the results turned out so well that, at last reports, the membership of the Dartmouth Club had increased almost one hundred per cent. The goal had been 400 new members. Four hundred and forty-eight were brought in, swelling the total membership to more than one thousand. This seems a good number for any New York club and everyone is quite pleased, but Josh Davis points out that there are more than 3,000 Dartmouth men in the metropolitan territory, and he says the membership should go still higher, with a little more time. The main prize given at the last meeting of the Organiztion force on March 14th (a case of White Horse) went to the group led by Charlie Stern '36. Other prizes were given to Ernest H. Earley '18, who won the high division score, and Terry McGaughan '25, who set the highest individual record for bringing in new members.
The expenses of keeping up the new Club are, of course, going to be higher than those which were needed to run the less pretentious quarters on Thirty-eighth Street, but the dues have been scaled at a reasonable enough level. For those who live and work in New York City and who have been out of school two years or more the annual dues will be $25. For those who work in the city and live in the suburbs, it will be J 25 for graduates out ten years or more, and $23 for those out from two to ten years. Dues for men who live and work in the suburbs will be only $14, and for all the young men out less than two years a "Junior" membership of $12 is available. Non-resident memberships, for men who live away from the city, may be had for $12. The facilities of the Club, it should be added, are going to be available only to those who are bona-fide members. Brown, the colored doorman, has been having a tough time with new faces the past few weeks, but he's now worked out a peg-board system just inside the front door by which he's learning to recognize all members, and it's going to be difficult to get past him unless one has signed up.
Club activities have naturally been greatly accelerated during the past month. President Knibbs reports that fifty or sixty lunches are now being served every day, and for the coming month there are some fifteen class dinners already scheduled. On Saturday afternoon, March 19th, there was an open house for members, their wives, and friends, and on the following Saturday evening the first formal dance was held.
For alumni athletic news of the month there's a major item to report in Chick Harrison's victory in the Metropolitan Class B Squash Racquets Championship. Harrison won the Class C title two years ago, and now by taking the Class B Championship he automatically moves into Class A, a ranking which identifies him as one of the better squash players of the country.
Two other bits of news also have to do with recent graduates. Bill Fitzhugh, who has been studying at Cambridge, England, skiing at St. Moritz, and riding motorcycles through India since he finished at Hanover three years ago, has recently reappeared in New York with a long beard and tall tales of the Near East. He hardly seems ready to settle down yet, however, for he's just got word that he's receiving a Carnegie Educational Foundation scholarship which will give him a year's study in the various European capitals. Fitzhugh expects to leave within a month, if the capitals are still where they are at the present writing.
Bob Sellmer '35, whose departure for Norway I reported several months back, is still up near the Arctic Circle, sending back articles to The New Yorker and Stage magazines. His latest adventure was participating in a sea rescue off one of the Norwegian fjords, for which he was duly written up in the Norwegian press as a sort of visiting hero.
