More Fun at Home
THE COLLEGE CALENDAR was revised slightly this year by omitting the reading periods before mid-year and final examinations and providing a midwinter holiday with the week thus salvaged. The vacation comes early this month, immediately preceding Carnival on February 9 and to. There has been some worry about Carnival being overcrowded in recent years. With a vacation before and during the festive weekend it will be interesting to see how many men stay away from town.
But this change in the calendar was only a remedial gesture. More is coming, or at least more revision is under joint study by the faculty committees on administration and educational policy. The questions are fundamentally based on what are the number of teaching and study hours required, of maximum effectiveness, to establish a standard for each course. In other words, how many weeks per semester (or would three terms in the year be better?) for each course, and how many hours per week for optimum results? After the faculty wrestles with that one and throws, or is thrown by, it comes the question of length of vacations, how many holidays, and when they should come.
THIS QUESTION of the best calendar for the college year raises certain problems not without special interest to alumni:
(1) Five football games away from home are too many, by about three. For some years it has been rumored that any and all teams on Dartmouth's schedule would play an occasional game in Hanover, if they were invited to do so. Except for the financial loss involved in extending this invitation it would of course have been done. Meanwhile the College is torn apart on successive out-of-town football weekends to an extent that must discourage the faculty and dishearten undergraduates. The Cornell-Dartmouth home and home arrangement is fine, playing a major opponent in the respective back yards every other year. If there is any way the talented Athletic Council can solve this problem, and it has found the right answers to difficult ones in the past, the members will deserve a WAH-HOO-WAH and a 12-inch D.
(2) Whether we like it or not the events and routine calendar of the College are in competition with attractions outside of Hanover, and some distance away. Not a very good case in point, because it is an extreme one, but may open the eyes of some of the old grads, is the undergraduate who drove to Northampton for a Saturday night date, returned to Hanover Sunday noon to pick up a reserve book at the Library, and motored back to Smith for a supper date. (Just when he used the book we don't know.)
The idea that the secondary school youth who applies for admission to Dartmouth understands Hanover is an isolated North Country village, and cannot be reached except by dog team over icy roads, and that week-ends must be spent on the campus or why didn't he go to college somewhere else?—is a fine sentiment, but it doesn't work. The applicant may think he is going to go north to cabins for his fun, but he's more apt to take trips south when the time comes.
Again disruption of the calendar, not as bad as the wholesale exodus from classrooms on a football weekend, but no help to the spirit and the work of the College.
IF OUR CLAIM that there is too much competition for the undergraduate's week-ends is valid then thought and planning should be given to events designed greatly to encourage him to stay in Hanover Saturdays and Sundays. The Dartmouth Center (drama, music, radio) to replace Webster Hall, will in our opinion go a long way toward providing the first rate entertainment that is needed. Home games in all sports, movies, dances, outing club activities, church services and other attractions need to be reckoned with if the calendar problem is to be intelligently attacked from all angles.
Counted among the valued intangibles of the Dartmouth association is the spirit of unity, of wholeness, of many things in common, that has traditionally been nurtured on Hanover Plain. Alumni dislike to feel that undergraduates are finding this less true of present generations on the campus, than was true of their own day. Nor would much if any of all this have been written if we did not sense the joy, the down-right good time, that pervades every crowded event in Hanover. In other words we believe a good proportion of the student body would enjoy popular events in Hanover on week-ends if they are planned, and a place is available to hold them.
DURING THE MONTH two sudden deaths struck blows at the faculty. Dr. Bielschowsky was an eye surgeon of international fame. People had come to Hanover from distant parts of the world since "Dr. Biel" became associated with the Eye Institute in 1934. He had more recently served as head of the Institute, and his death deprives the Dartmouth Medical School of a most distinguished teacher, physician, and authority in ophthamology.
Franklin McDuffee '21, author of the immortal words of "Dartmouth Undying," brilliant poet who won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford, and since 1924 an exceedingly able teacher in the English Department, is suddenly gone and leaves an empty space in the College which no one will want or attempt to fill as he did. The editors appreciate and are glad to accept the suggestion of Professor West that in our next issue the section HanoverBrowsing be made a tribute to Franklin McDuffee by publication of his Michelangelo therein.
EUGENE FRANCIS CLARK '01 died ten years ago this month, February 21, 1930. He was for many years editor of this MAGAZINE and secretary of the College. It isn't a matter of still missing him— we'll always miss him. The memory of Gene Clark is sacred and an inspiration to those friends and close associates he left behind.
"THE CRUNCH OF FEET ON SNOW ...... THE LONG WHITE AFTERNOONS THE CROWDING INTO COMMONS" An immortal song of the College is "Dartmouth Undying" for which the words were written by Franklin McDuffee '21, whose deathJanuary 8 is announced in this issue. Music for Professor McDuffee's verse was composed by Homer Whitford, formerly of the department of music. Ralph Steiner '21, a classmate of the gifted Dartmouth poet, made the pictures used above to illustrate three lines from"Dartmouth Undying' when he was an undergraduate in Hanover.
