The Undergraduate Chair

Need of a Focus for Entire College Becomes Apparent As Annual March Doldrums Descend on Hanover

a NYONE WHO HAS HAD any real connec-A tion with colleges and college boys gets a sardonic laugh out of the panics thrown by some of our better citizens over the supposed plottings of Reds on the faculties and in the student bodies. To any who have such acquaintance, there is something comical, nervous, and pitiful in the self-delusions of the economic oldmaids who are always trying to see a Communist behind every pair of adolescent spectacles and a practised bomb-thrower lurking beneath the tweed fabric of every teacher who hints that all is not milk and honey for some of the inhabitants of the land.

The simple fact is that it would take considerable searching to uncover a more reactionary group than the undergraduate body of a college, especially a privately endowed Eastern liberal arts college; and it would take another search to find a body of men more politely unconvinced and cautiously non-committal than the faculty of the same college. The first search might lead you to the doors of the Union Club; the second search might lead you to Limbo, where they ship the neutral souls.

Send out inquiring reporters to ask the college youth: "Do you believe 'in the flag, the Constitution, progress through evolution not revolution, ballots not bullets, and in the essential rightness of the Republican party'?" Inquire diligently after the professors who do not practice "the Golden Rule of Scholarship: 'Listen to both sides of the question and decide for neither.' "

It is true that you would find youths who scornfully replied "no!" to the query, and professors who do not practice the Golden Rule of Scholarship. But there are not enough of them to warrant this trembly looking under the academic bed. Good medicine for worried capitalists would have been attendance at the recent Dartmouth Hall showing, of a double-feature movie on labor relations for freshmen taking social science (recall Mr. Qua's attack?):

First was a slick collation of Ford workers in the River Rouge plant, Ford workers in their company-owned gardens, ladles pouring iron, assembly lines moving, and Fords rolling by. This was applauded and there were murmurs o£ approval over the deft, repetitive movements of the men on the lines and the quick efficiency of the process.

Second was a crude patch-work of CIO members striking against General Motors, CIO leaders determining strike-policy and mediation tactics, pickets being picketed by police, strike-breakers being held up, and workers parading and singing when they won their victory. There were boos, groans, and particularly derisive catcalls when a women picket started to sing "My country 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty."

It is probably true that an audience of juniors and seniors would be less vocal in its disapproval, and it is possible that the prejudice might not be so lopsided. But the fundamental attitude does not change in many cases, and then it is more often a sympathetic response to uncontroverted fact than a wild-eyed response to conscious indoctrination. Suburban environment and over-breeding keep most of the boys from committing themselves to any dangerous thoughts, however. The harmonypreachers and the paternalistic fellowtravellers can sleep in bliss. There's nobody under that bed except their conscience.

Dorothy Thompson came to town and made a speech to what Spud Bray said was the biggest crowd he'd ever seen go in Webster, and the most impressed crowd he'd ever seen come out. She told about the world-crisis and described the Nazi world-revolution. She hinted that the democratic cause was bogging down and that there was little time left for holding meetings. She thought that the situation required action. Terrifying!

A lady-lecturer comes as the guest of the College and allows some emotion to present itself. She calls the turn on the lads who have been talking about the need for doing something to save our freedom, and tells them specifically that Camp William James across the river in Sharon needs recruits. She comes right out and says that she doesn't want questions, she wants action. She asks for a little personal temporary inconvenience in an effort to do a very little something toward strengthening the bonds between classes in this country and giving a few land-poor farmers a better break.

And nearly everyone squealed and said "Look! She's emotional! Look out! You'll get involved! Hide! She wants action! Can her! The job is too small to matter! Let's appoint a sub-committee to discuss waraims."

There were a few who got stirred up enough to come around the next day and soberly petition the College for its official blessing (not its semester-credits) on their proposal to leave for a few months and go to work in the camp. The CCC administration in Washington refused to allow the experimental work to continue, however, so the campers resigned from the C's and started working individually out of farmhouses around the nine townships in the Tunbridge region. The final act for the undergraduates was thereby postponed.

All this is tremendously important as regards morale and will to action. It is not important that working in the camp would not save America from fascism. It is not important that Miss Thompson's speech was not perfect. It is important that the camp was (and is) a potential democratic method of service to the nation and the community, and that Miss Thompson was honestly concerned about what was happening to it, and that she could kick 50 Dartmouth boys in the pants hard enough to get them to a meeting after the lecture. It is important and heartening that as many as eight of them planned to leave school, go to the camp to help it over the rough spot, and then come back.

It is very important and very serious that the official College was embarrassed by the speech and opposed to the stu- dents' leaving, and that most of even the smart and able and well-intentioned un- dergraduates scoffed at the speech and the idea of the camp. It is important that a lot of people laughed off Miss Thompson's earnestness and dismissed the camp as a banner being carried by people who had been looking for a banner to serve under. It is very serious when so many intelligent citizens say point blank that it is wrong for young men to get stirred into democratic action, however narrow in scope, because they run the risk of failure or personal discomfort or only partial accomplishment. It is a sure sign of decay when so many people mistrust an emotion and ask that the college boys be let alone to finish their education, regardless of the war, and then go out and become Influences.

Suspecting that Camp William James is only a segment of the answer we will have to make to the threatened collapse of our world, believing that Miss Thompson is inclined to exaggerate, convinced that a man can be a good democrat by living and educating himself against tyranny, I still submit that people who run away from their emotions and refuse to take a slim chance in a democratic experiment are not likely to be good influences, no matter how educated they get.

Come now the late winter snows and the mock-spring thaws, one after another. Mud runs in the streets at noon and the crust is unbreakable at nightfall. In the evening when the snow falls the crowds of students coming up the street from dinner make a whistling noise of a hundred different tunes that would delight the soul of the Scotchman whose dying wish was that he might go to a one-room Heaven filled with 15 bag-pipers playing 15 tunes.

There is nothing quite like the Hanover March doldrums anyplace else in the world, I suppose. The confusion of the weather, the different tunes they whistle, and the cross-currents in the young men's minds would please the Scotchman this year especially. In the middle of the month we had days of snow and afternoons of spring skiing, nights when the moon was high and murky and then later nights when the wind seemed to have the edge of spring hidden in it. There were promises of more sun, softball, and the girls with their summer dresses; but the sun kept going under clouds and the headlines kept reminding us that we could not escape the answer to the question.

"The long March mud-time of despair and doubt" became obvious again, to put it straight. The optimism and togetherness of the College that hung on from the Cornell victory and the exciting, binding rallies of Monday after the game—they began to show signs of having a false bottom. The separateness became apparent in little things. For the seniors mud-time meant that graduation was only the next step and then what? Jobs are plentiful and pay well, but the military service, voluntary or draftee, is taking a huge slice out of the class. Many others are going to graduate school: a sure sign of uncertainty and the wish to postpone decisions.

The College needs a focus and needs it badly. It may not be too much to say that it is held together now only by its physical environment and the spirit that seems to come from that environment. The old Dartmouth background and the promise of spring days are good solder for a student body growing continually more atomized in every other way. The ones who have made up their minds have little effect on their fellows. There is not much conspicuous attempt to make a big noise out of "escaping"; but their is a conspicuous lack of attempt by more men to make up their minds and prepare grounds for action. "Must the colleges, perhaps in the not distant future, say to their students: Now is the time to stop thinking," asked the editor in last month's ALUMNI MAGAZINE. That would be a confession of weakness terrible to the students concerned about making up their minds; but to many a Dartmouth man it would only be official sanction for a retreat from resPonsibility he had already made himself, saying, "Why decide, the draft board will do it for you."

There is a difference between individuality and molecularity. Now in the mudtime when every day has two or three kinds of weather, the number of molecularized people at Dartmouth grows higher. No executive order can resolve the conflicts. Some sure-footed leadership might help—leadership perhaps by a leader unwilling to force a banner on anyone, but unafraid to offer something to serve as focus.

BEHIND THE SCENES WITH INTERFRATERNITY PLAY CONTESTANTS Theodore Packard, English instructor and assistant in play writing and play production, left, shown making up a student actor while final adjustments on the costume of an undergraduate "actress" are made in preparation for one of the series of popular fraternityplays presented in the annual contest last month. Theta Delta Chi received the Mary Giletrophy with its production of Eugene O'Neill's "Bound East for Cardiff."