The Undergraduate Chair

Human Frailties of College and Its Students Disclosed In Confusion and Escapes During Present Crisis

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE is an institution proud with human frailties. This is true all the time; it takes only a look around some time when the pride of institution isn't encasing your senses to see that Dartmouth College is a place where frailties are built right into the buildings and into some glorious shams and facades that become hallowed with association.

This struck me one evening last month when I was talking to a recent graduate—l happened to point out to him what every freshman going to his first class is likely to discover and forget—that the three main doors to Dartmouth Hall are largely fakes. "Well now let's see; I remember a couple of lectures in 105 that I've seen people going out those front doors—they open onto the balcony of the auditorium and so of course they aren't fakes. They serve a very useful purpose and so they're functional," my friend of five months' absence from the College argued.

So I had to point out that the three front doors are locked all the time, that three inches behind the glass transom of the center door you can see the plaster where the door has been bricked up, and that even if the two other doors are used on nights of lectures (which I seriously doubted at the time), they are to all everyday purposes nothing more than facade. "They haven't ever opened when I've been coming out of lectures—maybe I missed some lectures that people were more anxious to leave and so I didn't see the doors opened—were they used when Laski spoke up here?"

"I don't remember, but I'm sure those doors open and are used when there are lectures in 105; as a matter of fact I think I saw people going in and out of those doors the time Robert Frost spoke when I was a freshman," he contined with considerable heat.

"I guess I just don't go to the right lectures. Anyhow, I wasn't at Dartmouth the year Frost spoke. I've tried those doors and I know they won't open because they're locked. All those doors are for is to make the building look like it did before it was redecorated and all the doors and steps are good for is to be a background for the Glee Club when they sing. The center door I'm sure of; it's bricked up. I don't know about the side doors. I think you're right that they enter into the back of the balcony of the auditorium but they've never been used within my memory," I argued back with increasing certainty.

"Isn't there a projection room for movies at the back of the balcony? That's where that center door opens and so of course it's useful."

"The door is bricked up; you can see the plaster behind it. The other two doors don't open for anyone's use, and I don't think they're even used at lectures. They make you feel foolish. What if you were visiting the College, just walking around, and you wanted to go in Dartmouth Hall? Wouldn't you naturally try the front door because it looks like the biggest and most important? And it's bricked up, I tell you, and the other doors are locked, and right above it there are those numerals that say 1784. You're kept out of the main building on campus right under the oldest sign on campus. It's all facade." We stopped there.

Three days later I checked up. All the doors were locked. Behind the center door I saw the plaster. The other two doors open onto the balcony of the auditorium but they're seldom opened, only when there's a big crowd for a visiting speaker.