Dartmouth-in-Dixie

FOR THE FIRST TIME since it was founded, the ALUMNI MAGAZINE is, with this issue, devoting a few of its columns especially to the somewhat nebulous region that is known as the Fifth Alumni Council District of Dartmouth College. More exactly, although Maryland and the District of Columbia are also in District V but haven't the same problems because of their big city centers, the space is being given and will continue to be given in subsequent issues to a chronicling of alumni activities in general, and of some in particular, in just a portion of the region—to those of us who live in the section that runs from the Potomac River to the Key West tip of Florida and from there clear over to El Paso, Texas.

Probably it will come as news to most alumni, just as it may to some of us in the territory concerned, that, even without Maryland and the District of Columbia, what remains is by all odds the largest in area and population of all the alumni districts. It comprises practically all of the terrain more or less looked upon as the "South" and takes in fourteen states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. They cover an area of more than 866,000 square miles, with a population of more than 35,500,000.

In this huge sector, which has slightly more than 29% of the domain that makes up continental United States and which has slightly less than 29% of the country's people, the total Dartmouth population approximates only 650—less than 5% of the living alumni of the College. There is just one alumnus to about every square miles. Moreover, of the present undergraduate enrollment at Hanover, less than 3% come from these states and in the current Freshman Class of 651 boys only sixteen (less than 21/4%) are from the South.

The figures tell in part at least the reasons for this Dartraouth-in-Dixie corner, which, it is to be hoped, will be of interest not only to Southern alumni but to the alumni body as a whole—for the South needs the helpful thought of all alumni if what is widely accepted as one of President Hopkins' ambitions is to be realized. That ambition is understood to aim at having undergraduate thought in Hanover more thoroughly representative of every section of the country through a greatly increased enrollment of worthwhile boys from the South.

There are other reasons than those presented by the mere figures. For one thing, because of the dearth of big city centers, there is no really sizeable grouping of alumni in the South. For another, because of the considerable distances that separate even such comparatively small groups as are to be found, there is little opportunity for them to keep in touch with each other. For still another, because so many of the alumni live in remote communities, the chance comes all too infrequently to renew acquaintance with that intangible, and yet vital, something that all of us know as the Dartmouth spirit.

It seems not too much to believe that the ALUMNI MAGAZINE may change all this. Going as it now does under the 100% subscription plan to the full membership of nearly all the classes, it is reaching into parts of the South where it never went before. And if, through it, all Dartmouth men in Dixie may come to know, if only in a general way, of other Dartmouth men in this section—who they are, where they are, where and when groups of them might be meeting, what they are doing—the lines of communication with a certain College that we all love might be at least strengthened a little and the distance bridged in some degree between Virginia and Texas, between Florida and Oklahoma.

It can be said without hesitation, even when one has known them but a short time, there is no more loyal alumni group than that to be found in the South, and none whose members crave more eagerly a means of bringing into effective union their now widely scattered strength. Excellent demonstration of this was provided a little more than two years ago by the Dartmouth Club of Georgia when, with less than forty members in the whole state and about a score of these living in Atlanta, the group staged a Pow-Wow that, in its comprehensiveness and in the enthusiasm it engendered, compared favorably with similar affairs put on in centers blessed with far greater alumni numbers. No one who attended the Atlanta Pow-Wow could help seeing that it had advanced tremendously the cause of Dartmouth-in-the-South—ancl the loyalty and devotion of only a small group made it possible.

This thought of and for the College is further shown by such organizations as the Dartmouth Club of Virginia which, with only sixteen alumni living in the state's largest city, nevertheless had an average attendance of better than eight at its weekly luncheons in Richmond last year and is, this year, continuing to hold weekly—yes, WEEKLY—luncheon meetings. And it is worth while noting what can be and is being done by such groups as the recently organized Southeastern Florida Alumni Club which was brought together in spite of its two main centers, Miami and Lake Worth, being more than sixty miles apart and which will definitely surmount the barriers of distance by staging at least two "get-togethers" during the present academic year.

So it is that Dartmouth-in-Dixie has here, in these pages, its rallying place that may make it possible to overcome something of the handicaps imposed by sprinkling 650 alumni over 866,000 square miles. Perhaps, through the narratives of what is being done Dartmouth-wards in various parts of the South and through the presentation of varying viewpoints (to say nothing of mere Dartmouth-in-Dixie gossip from Louisiana and Texas and Kentucky and all the others), ideas and collective action may be achieved which may, in a few years, double or triple the number of Southern undergraduates at Hanover. Aside from what the brethren in the South may do for themselves with their meetings and their interchanging of ideas and, mayhap, there joint efforts in bringing this about, it is certain that the understanding interest of the alumni of other sections could be made to count for much.

One very simple way of helping is available to all alumni. It involves merely getting in touch with and meeting with Dartmouth men in the South when visits are made there. The fellows who live in the several states in this district are, nearly all of them, fairly hungry for association with fellow Dartmouth men. Suppose, for example, you are going to the East Coast of Florida at some time during the winter; you could easily communicate with Roger Branch '24, at 909 Lake Avenue, Lake Worth, or with Don Bunting '34, at 2145 S. W. 14th Terrace, Miami, or at Pan-American Airways in that city, and you'd encourage them 110 end if you could meet with their new Southeastern Florida Association.

In a normal year, about 600 Princeton undergraduates (and no one has ever complained of the quality of the undergraduates in the New Jersey institution) hail from the South. Currently, there are just 67 undergraduates at Hanover from our Southern states. What's wrong with Dartmouth in that part of the world?

Even when the War between the States was about to break, the South was still sending men to Hanover; there were three in the Class of '59, two in '6O and three in '6l. And the men who come to Dartmouth today from that corner of the world surrender to it almost as soon as they arrive in Hanover. Here, as evidence, are a few lines from a letter received early in October from a Southern Freshman:

"I can never thank you enough for arranging my entrance into Dartmouth. It is really a wonderful place and immediately upon my arrival I caught the spirit of the place. As far as my happiness is concerned, I couldn't be any happier. Am kidded quite a great deal amout my decided Southern accent but am getting quite a kick out of the Yankee boys' enthusiasm over the word 'you-all,' which is my old standby."