The Undergraduate Chair
Early Events of Year Indicate Split Between Serious College Aim and Students' Desire for Last Fling
THE CAMPUS WAS ALMOST as noisy the night after the Norwich game as it normally is on houseparty weekends. On the night after the Amherst game it was a little noisier and a little more boisterous. After the big victory over Colgate it was the equal of the most uproarious of Carnivals. Stray groups of undergraduates sang by the Senior Fence at varying times on all these nights; late on the night of the Colgate game a large Morgan workhorse was being led up Main Street past the Administration Building with a student and his guest astride the horse's back; the same night a goat was sold four different times in four different fraternity houses.
Although prices in the stores in Hanover are slightly higher, there seems to be more spending, more liberally, this year than in many years previous. Although railway tickets are higher because of the new tax and although gasoline is cut off for twelve hours of each twenty-four, there is more week-end travel than in any other opening month of the College. Although the Norwich and Amherst games were, in prospect, little more than warm-up games (excepting the threat of Norwich's weight and training), crowds were larger and Dartmouth men with dates were more numerous than at most of the important games of last year. The Colgate game drew the largest crowd that Memorial Field has held in five years; it was an unproclaimed minor Fall Flouseparty of major proportions.
The College has gone "collegiate" in a big way, these facts indicate in part. It's gone "collegiate" in the way that a Hollywood movie about college life is "collegiate," at a time when even the least accurate of Hollywood's script-writers would have college men slightly less intent upon being College Boys. Bull-sessions in dorms during the week usually touch at some time on the question of the draft, and there too the dominance of the College Boy character is apparent in the talk of those who take a perverted pride in their ability to get around a local draft board or in their prospects of an office job in the service to be obtained by some slight wirepulling.
The whole aspect of Dartmouth College in its opening month has been one of boisterous good times, "good kid" deviltry, and College Boy indulgence. This isn't to say that classes have been relegated to the position of an adjunct to prolonged weekending. Classes, for the most part, are well attended, assignments and studying and honest intellectual activity are apparent among many groups, and many classrooms are centers of active discussion in which complacent, rutty thinking is jolted and brought to life. There is no organized, consciously-directed effort to make the College into a playground or to devise excuses to get easy deferments from military service.
It's an individual affair, touching every member of the College, making each man conscious of the pleasantness of life in a comparatively insulated college community and consequently a little leery about getting yanked out of it by an order from the home Selective Service Board, and finally a little over-anxious to taste the fruits of College good-fellowship, College Boy good times, and a last year or six months of freedom before beginning a dirty job in the service.
There's plenty to be said for the present life. For one thing, one very important thing, Dartmouth College this year has one of the best football teams it's had in years. If no one were consciously seeking a banner to hang his enthusiasms on, it would still be natural for the College to get excited about the two best backfields in the East, about the beautiful running of sophomores Meryll Frost and Tom Douglas, about the finely coordinated running and ball-carrying of All-American candidate Ray Wolfe, about the fine blocking and tackling of Captain Stubby Pearson. There'd be natural, spontaneous enthusiasm in any school over a football team that demonstrated the collective drive and power of the Big Green against Norwich, or the brilliant individual play in the Amherst game, or the tough, tricky, cagey teamwork in the Colgate victory. The team is an excuse for a lot of the enthusiastic overflowing of Dartmouth this year; it's a legitimate excuse only if it isn't a rationalization for escape from serious thought and action about how an individual student in Dartmouth College is to serve his Nation, his College, and himself best at a time when honestly-alive, realistic, deeply sincere men are needed.
More of the same is just the goodness of freedom and fun and the excitement of being together, noisy and happy and boisterous, in an environment as pleasant as Hanover's. The hypnosis of sharp fall weather and the green-sweatered band and loud cheering in the stands, followed by an evening of celebrating, is a unifying force of a kind. The trouble is the kindit's a unification away from, not towards, an honest group or individual understanding of the place of the College in time of war.
Probably most true at this time, however, is the fact that, as individuals, most of the students in Dartmouth College this fall are unwilling or unable to make a decision with regard to their status as members of families, communities, a College, and a nation at war. Those ineligible for the draft because of age come to College with the rather unsteady hope that they can finish out their course and at the same time pick up some aptitudes and training through a Defense Course that will assure them of a chance for specialized jobs in the services when their time comes. Those eligible for the draft and not yet called hope with a more unsteady hope that their entry into what is generally believed a dirty mess will be forestalled and that they too can learn enough from a quick trick at a Defense Course to assure them of something better than $21 a month. And those who have received their questionnaires keep their fingers crossed hoping for a deferment or a re-classification.
Families don't help the matter much; the Dartmouth Defense Bulletin arrived at the homes of students during the summer, and from much evidence it seems apparent that most parental reasoning was along the line: "There's nothing like a liberal education to give you a real understanding of people and trends and all that, but now you have a chance to get some technical knowledge that will help you a lot and that won't cost you anything extra and, of course, if you're really interested in it, why it might even make you Useful in National Defense. Now why don't you take this Math 32 course, Sonny, you always liked arithmetic, didn't you?" To which Sonny generally agreed.
What the College can do with such a situation seems to be a pretty tough question. The College's service to the Nation in training well-educated, alert, intellectuallyalive men must be carried on with even greater force of understanding and will. The Nation's demand for men trained in special skills and with special aptitudes made advisable the setting-up of Defense Courses. The College is also interested in remaining a college, composed of students. This isn't so easy when the draft boards take men out of liberal arts colleges just as quickly as they take them out of jobs which promise promotions or the chance to get married. And so the College is anxious, where it can with justice, to recommend deferments for men about to complete their courses of study.
LARGEST GROUP OF HANOVER BOYS IN THE FRESHMAN CLASS Eleven members of the class of 1945 are residents of Hanover and their names includeseveral faculty families very familiar to Dartmouth men. First row, left to right, (withschools attended in preparation for College): Frederick J. Chamberlin, Vermont Academy; John F. Gile, Hanover High, Exeter; Richard D. Elston, Hanover High; PeterHeneage, Clark School; Donald W. Bruce, Hanover High, Exeter; back row: StanleyL. Rice, American School (Manila, P. I.), Exeter; John G. Truxal, Hanover High, Exeter;John N. Washburn, Hanover High, Exeter; E. Winsor Burbank Jr., Hanover High;John Q. Gooding, Vermont Academy; John H. Chivers, Hanover High, Deerfield.
The night before the Dartmouth-Colgate game was the occasion for one of the biggest and most enthusiastic rallies in the historyof the College. To the left is shown part of the huge student-alumni throng which gathered in front of Commons, while to the rightis shown Coach "Tuss" McLaughry addressing the crowd from the Commons porch. In the background, between the two microphones, can be seen Director of Athletics William H. McCarter '19, and to his right is "Stubby" Pearson, varsity football captain.
