Changing Student Attitudes
New Trends Are Noted Especially in Religion In Survey of Senior Customs and Beliefs
[During the first semester Mr. Goodman,a major student in sociology, distributedquestionnaires to a sampling of the seniorclass and received ninety replies. Heworked with his faculty adviser, ProfessorAndrew J. Truxal, in the sociology thesiscourse, 101. Questionnaire replies weretabulated and the following brief abstractsfrom his thesis are based on questionnairereplies by seniors and the author's opinions. The author plans to return to Hanover next fall to interview about 150 freshmen and to follow this group in the classof 1943 through college, studying their attitudes at intervals of one year and eventually publishing the results of the studyafter graduation of the class of 1943.-ED.]
THE AUTOMOBILE CHANGED Dartmouth from a local institution to one which was much more metropolitan. The college can no longer hold the self-sufficient position which it formerly had, for pee-rades are no longer longplanned and rare occasions, but more than ever spur of the moment and everyday occurrences. Few are the undergraduates, who have not left for Smith or Colby on a moment's notice, returning the same evening.
Social intercourse for the undergraduate has undergone a complete change; Bennington, Smith, and Wellesley are today taking the place of Lebanon, White River, and Claremont; and no longer does the undergraduate boast of his trip to the "sticks" for local talent is no longer the fad.
Despite the definite attempts on the part of the faculty and the administration to maintain the virility of Dartmouth, to keep it a man's college, the Social Survey (1936) showed an increasing desire on the part of the undergraduate body for more extensive social activities. The College is trying to maintain its position, that Dartmouth is to be a place where men are to be with men; but it has found it necessary to meet the undergraduate to a certain extent, and the football dance between convocation and fall houseparties, and the Hitchcock Hospital benefit, between Carnival and Easter, have added two more week-ends to the Dartmouth "girl" calendar.
But social events and social doings are no longer top-heavy in the minds of most undergraduates. A new realization growing out of the depression is generally making itself felt; the realization that money is not the only means to happiness. The Dartmouth man, and probably for that matter, most young men, has found new values, leading to new outlooks and ideals. There seems to be considerably less of an interest in big business, as such. The increased interest in the social sciences has developed a healthy critical attitude toward both business and politics; and more men than ever today are going into teaching and politics, looking for creative rather than money-making jobs.
The freshmen of late have developed a tremendous moral seriousness, they seem to have dropped the wide cultural attitude in favor of a more bourgeois-victorian outlook on life, success seems to be a soberer affair for them, and at present we seem to be swinging back to the right after taking a generally left turn. There are more average, and less interesting students in the college today than there were around 1934 and 1935; but this group is still a group of workers, men who have come to college to prepare themselves, and not men who are here to enjoy four years in a country club. One of the greatest changes seems to be in a returning interest in religion. More and more students seem to be attending the Sunday religious services, more and more are taking courses concerned with religion, religion is becoming once again a more important topic for discussion. But the religion is one of a new type, not so much institutional as it is inspirational. Men are not looking for the answers to problems in their religion, they are merely looking for a little peace, and a few ideas.
Much of the thinking at Dartmouth has been guided by a hand-picked faculty, a faculty picked through the genius of President Hopkins; not one of old men, interested solely in research, but men who have something to say and who know how to teach. Dartmouth at one time had the youngest average faculty age of any similar institution in the country, and this was not through mere chance, it was the result of a definite policy on the part of the Administration to inject young and interesting blood into the faculty.
More and more is the undergraduate becoming cognizant of current affairs. In the past the exceptional and the wealthy were the only ones to come to college. Now more of a varied group is here, and the result is considerably varied interests. At first this interest was carried on through a determined effort to understand the political and social experiments in Europe, but more recently the student has turned his thoughts back to America, realizing that in his own country too, there were problems to solve.
The alumni interest of and for the College has changed considerably during the past decade, and from a passive loosely knit group, we find the Dartmouth alumni body becoming an integral part of the College: making itself useful in the selection of undergraduates, and making itself felt increasingly through not only financial aid, but general support. Dartmouth has been able to get from its alumni group a loyalty that has been seldom matched in the history of collegiate institutions.
SENIOR LOOKS AT RELIGION
For more than twenty-five years the students of Dartmouth revolted against the idea of daily compulsory chapel. At first the College abandoned the requirement for regular Sunday Church attendance, other concessions were made, and finally, in 1925, the chapel service was made voluntary. Since that time there has been absolutely no compulsion in regard to religious activities for the Dartmouth man.
There is still a daily chapel period, moved from eight to ten o'clock, and there are generally fifteen or twenty men in attendance at this service, but rarely more.
The religious activities of the group are conditioned entirely by the interest developed through the three churches in Hanover, and with the exception of the Catholic Church, neither of the others has wielded any considerable interest.
During the past year, with the induction of a new minister at the White Church, there seems to have developed an increased interest, as shown by the increasing number of students attending the Sunday services. It is a question as to whether this increase is due to an increasing feeling of religion among the group, or whether it is due to the fact that the new preacher is giving the undergraduates the religion that they have been looking for.
Despite the seeming disinterest in religion, as evidenced by the younger generation, this group is probably more religious than its immediate predecessor. Religious disinterest was begun by the younger generations because religions prevented, because of their historic encumbrances, the religious quality of experience from coming to consciousness and finding the appropriate expression for the intellectual and moral conditioning of the college group. At first men, although religious, were repelled from religion because of its intellectual and moral implication. This disillusionment led to a careless irresponsible tolerance. Then the realistic, war-graduated generation began to mock religion, refused to be subject to its propaganda, and with the upsurge of prosperity, and the increase in material properties, this irreligiousness took a firm hold on the pseudo-sophisticated younger group. Between 1925 and 1935 the Lynds1 found the average church going age rising ten years, one complete generation was forsaking the church.
But the depression and the rise of the totalitarian states seemed to bring a change in the religious interest of the group. The younger generation was beginning to realize that there was more to religion than the institutional scaffolding of dogma, and they realized that it met a need that they were missing.
Most of the men in the present senior class do not believe in an orthodox religion, nevertheless they felt that their religious interest had changed during their four years in Hanover. After having reviewed all the reasons why they should not believe in a God, they are now looking for reasons why they should. But they are not approaching the church with the blind idolatry of perfect believers, they will never become fundamentalists, "they are interested in viewing Christianity critically, looking for its place in modern life."2 Many of the group received a definite distaste for religion due to its compulsion in either home or preparatory school life, and coming to Dartmouth, revelled in their new religious freedom—a freedom which took its form in absolute abstinence from church activity, "making up for the six years of compulsion."3
Religious teachers still seem to deplore the apparent religious disinterest of the younger group, but if the answers of ninety seniors are indicative of the group feeling —it is the teachers who need teaching, and not the students. This younger generation does not have to be entertained from the pulpit, it too seeks help, help in its problems; but so long as the church continues to deliver weekly platitudes based on theology that has become stale with age, so long will the college group find their religion through their own devices.
The church today could serve a great purpose if it would meet the needs of the younger generation which has "changed its belief from orthodox religion to a personal religion fitting a more individual need."4 The church, realizing its new responsibility, could well serve the man who says, "I have cause to have less regard for the institutional church, but have a higher regard for religion itself."
But it is possible that the church as an institution is on its way out, for it is hard to envision the aged institution satisfying a more critical group without destroying its basic structure. When the College develops the attitude that, "Religion of the orthodox variety ceases to claim any of my belief or attention. The study of sociology and the methods of myth and symbol construction have naturally destroyed any unquestioning and blind faith. Now religion is, for me, more important as a personal thinking; my own code is one of ethics rather than one of belief,"5 it helps to break down the old power of the institution.
The Dartmouth man today is not irreligious. He is more religious than were his immediate predecessors; but his religion is not one that can fall into the lines of the old institutional type. The church has become a stereotype for the modern youth, a stereotype representing the idea of the necessity for blind adoration and acceptance. Until the church can tear down this stereotype, until it can make this generation see, as the new minister in the White Church seems to be doing, that religion in the church can easily satisfy one's personal needs, so long will it suffer from an apparent indifference from a group that is searching for its religion, that is today looking for its reasons to believe in God.
1 Lynd, "Middletown in Transition," p. 295. 2 Senior questionnaire. 3 Ibid.4 Ibid.5 Ibid.
