The Undergraduate Chair
Dartmouth Students Have New Conception of Desirable Life After Graduation
IF IT IS possible that Dartmouth students have changed their ideas as to what sort of a life they have in mind for themselves when they get out of College—what sort of a change is it?
This question is somewhat like trying to find out the difference in aspirations between an African gazelle and the horny armadillo—yet there is probably an answer to it. For as diverse as are Dartmouth men's bents both during the College career and after graduation, today's desires may nevertheless be said to fit into a pattern. What's more, this pattern markedly contrasts itself with that of students fifteen years ago.
Lest we be accused of trying to look for something that isn't there, we hurry to admit that there are elements that won't fit into our 1939 mold. Misfits. . . like students whose chief concern is how much money they're going to pile up from the time they graduate until the time they're forty. Or the student who rides up and down Main Street in his car, the biggest on campus. Or the Senior who having been here four years, is still obsessed with the idea that his June parchment is merely a socially necessary transfer slip to Business. These types and these men are present but they don't count. What does, as far as our question about after-college values is concerned, is the fact that there are fewer of them than there were 15 years ago.
EARNING POWER GOAL
Fifteen years ago in the middle of the twenties' spurt, Dartmouth men, like the rest of the country, were tending to measure their after-graduation success in terms of executives' chairs, telephones, profits, secretaries. If they were average graduates they were spending their days figuring ways to somehow earn and conspicuously spend more than their neighbors. Each day was a strain, and no one had heard of "The Enjoyment of Living." Dartmouth was one of thousands of colleges turning out degrees like rivet machines. Unfortunately enough, not every graduate could be an executive.
But to show the disillusionment, the discontent, the drifting that resulted from the less capable college-degreed of that generation, who had figured they could exhibit their parchment like rubbing Aladdin's lamp and automatically land $10,000 a year—is not our purpose here. To suggest that this faulty American emphasis on the strictly material phase of life has been dying out in Dartmouth and probably in other colleges—is.
Today the emphasis is directed more acutely toward athletics, or the German Club, or photography, or the discussion of politics, or writing, or dramatics, or a lot of faculty and student acquaintances. . . . the point being, that having the biggest car interests the Dartmouth man hardly at all, and the mention of a cool million is apt to elicit merely "So What?"
Lots of things caused the change. Among them, the Depression of '30 followed the big spree of the 20's (as some alumni will recall) and Dartmouth students who might have come in racoon coats and Packards, came up on the train in tweeds. This was "a signal that the period—during which Dartmouth graduates, in fact the energy of the entire nation, had devoted itself to merely the physical expansion of the country with its over-emphasized by-product of individual wealth—was waning. That was good for everybody, including Dartmouth students and Dartmouth principles. And so was the fact that the respect, even if not participation in, activities alien to the 100% business or lifetrade outlook, had begun to assume a greater importance in the student's philosophy of life. That respect has had continually greater importance as time has gone on. Reading books, discussing life, writing for recreation—these things have experienced an upswing in importance. Yet their place in the favor of the Dartmouth man's sense of values doesn't mean he doesn't want to go places, establish his mark in the world.
Their importance means his values are realigning themselves so that the graduate of 1939 will be able much better to recapture, in a fuller and broader after-college life, the various fields of appreciation he has experienced at Dartmouth.
—ON CAMPUS—
Class elections, the German Club play, the refugee-student drive for funds, the Administrative statement to students and councils on the drinking problem, the appearance of the new magazine for Northeastern skiers, Ski-Week, the election of a new Dartmouth directorate, and two undergraduate feature items: the appearance in Life magazine, January 16, of Dartmouth's snow sculpture, and an undergraduate attempt to get Olivia De Havilland up here to Carnival—stood out this month in the various fields of undergraduate activity.
Coming approximately at the time the January issue of this section went to press, the first of this year's German Club plays, Flachsmann als Erzieher, a three-act satirical comedy about some professors, went over in great style before a capacity Robinson Hall audience. Meanwhile the undergraduate plan to provide funds to bring one or two German refugees to Dartmouth gathered impetus, so that at the time this was written over half of the $600 judged necessary to match the free tuition promised by the "College had been collected among the faculty and students.
The Administration severely objected, in letters sent to students and dormitory and fraternity council organizations, to increasingly dynamic displays of undergraduate drinking, and the resultant effects upon College property. Unless the students took it upon themselves to provide their own policing, the Administration pointed out, it would have to step in. Dormitory and fraternity councils have taken the remedy upon themselves, and in the near future a very concrete and workable plan is expected to cut down conditions which have led to hose fights, broken windows and splintered balustrades.
Hanover, perhaps the most ski-minded town in the country, is the focal center of a new tabloid on skiing activity everywhere, called Ski-Week. Its fourth issue incorporating features on, for and by skiers from beginners to experts, has already been published and its editors, Dan Hull '39 of Watertown, Conn., Lynn Callaway '39 of Brooklyn, N. Y., and Alan Bodge '39 of Fall River, Mass., report that the weekly has hit a circulation of 7,000. The paper is to be published throughout the ski-season.
Dartmouth broke into print in Life magazine, January 16, with three pictures of its 1938 Carnival snow sculptures. Life called Dartmouth .students "among the best snow sculptors in the U. S." Statue manufacturers were Delta Tau Delta, Beta Theta Pi, and Alpha Delta Phi.
Extremely unusual this month was the near success two undergraduates had in decoying Olivia De Havilland, pretty screen actress, to Carnival. They guaranteed she would be "Carnival Duchess," but her press agents smelled a rat, scouted around Hollywood, found out from some Dartmouth graduates that Carnival Duchess was a fiction, and refused the invitation after much telegraphic correspondence.
MILESTONES
1939 Class Officers: President, Walter B. Magee Jr., Passaic, N. J.; Vice President, Rodger S. Harrison, New York, N. Y.; Secretary, Robert W. Gibson, Stamford, Conn.; Treasurer, Herbert Mattlage, Douglaston, N. Y. Executive Committee: John A. Bovnton, Red Bank, N. J.; Loren J. Dilkes, Plainfield, N. J.; George O. Mudge, Amesbury, Mass.; Lloyd U. Noland, Newport News, Va.; James M. Parks, Washington, D. C.; Joseph J. Urban, Fall River, Mass.; Robert B. Whitcomb, Brockton, Mass. Class Marshals: James A. Feeley Jr., Cambridge, Mass.; Judson E. Foster, Leominster, Mass.; George R. Hanna, West Swanzey, N. H.
1940 Class Officers: President, Charles W. Miller, Seattle, Wash.; Vice President, Roy R. Merchant, West Newton, Mass.; Secretary, Philander L. Dostal, Glencoe, Ill.; Treasurer, David W. Davenport, Cleveland, Ohio.
1941 Class Officers: President, Louis A. Young Jr., Narberth, Pa.; Vice President, Stacy H. Hill, Cincinnati, Ohio; Secretary, Esmond Crowley Jr., Danvers, Mass.; Treasurer, Richard J. Spillane, Bloomfield, Conn.
Dartmouth Directorate, 1939-40: Editorin-Chief, Thomas W. Braden, Dubuque, Iowa; Managing Editor, Theodore R. Gates, Milwaukee, Wis.; Editorial Chairmen, Richard E. Glendinning, Ridgefield, Conn, and Richard Krolik, Scarsdale, N. Y.; Technical Editor, Stephen W. Graydon, New York, N. Y.; Sports Editor, Melvin S. Wax, Newton Center, Mass.; Sports Manager, Theodore R. Ellsworth, Dubuque, Iowa; Contributing Editor, Chalmer J. Carothers, Macedonia, Ohio.
COMMITTEE IN CHARGE OF 29TH WINTER CARNIVALKneeling, left to right: Richard L. Brooks '39, Gloucester, Mass.; Henry W. Merrill Jr.'39, Newtonville, Mass.; Chester A. Emerson Jr. '39, Intervale, N. H.; James O. Sampson'39,Mt. Vernon, N. Y., chairman; David C. Schilling '39, Leavenworth, Kan.; and GeorgeE. Patterson Jr. '39, St. Simons Island, Ga. Standing: Robert D. Funkhouser Jr. '27, Hanover; John J. English '40, Washington, D. C.; Prof. Andrew H. McNair, Hanover; FredFuld Jr. '40, New York City; Elmer T. Browne '40, Shaker Heights, Ohio; Gene G. King'39, Bound Brook, N. J.; Benjamin K. Ayers Jr. '39, Concord, N. H.; and Kenneth A.MacDonald '39, Quincy, Mass.
