COLLEGE GETS NEW NAVY UNIT
Largest Basic V-12 Center Replacing Indoctrination School
AN IMPORTANT CHANGE in the form of the Dartmouth-Navy alliance was projected for the near future when Navy announcements early in April disclosed that the College had been selected for perhaps the biggest basic unit of V-12 students under the Navy College Training Program, starting in July, and that the present Navy Indoctrination School at Dartmouth would be closed down when the latest class of student officers has completed its training on June 4.
The total quota of men assigned to Dartmouth for the V-12 a program is 2,400, made up almost entirely of apprentice seamen in the basic course. The latter number 2,300, with two small units of 67 men in the pre-medical course and 32 men in the civil engineering course filling out the College quota. The original Navy announcement on April 5 designated Dartmouth as the site for 1,300 basic trainees, but with the decision to close the Indoctrination School an additional thousand V-12 students were assigned to the unit. Although no definite figures are available, it is understood that this expanded group of 2,300 men will be the biggest basic unit in the country.
The closing down of the Navy Indoctrination School, which has been in operation since last July, is believed to be due to the lessening of Navy procurement at the commissioned—officer level and to the decision to consolidate all Navy indoctrination training centers. The Dartmouth school probably will be incorporated into the similar training center which the Navy is conducting at its own station at Fort Schuyler, New York. The size of the classes here have been gradually shrinking, and the present total of approximately 800 student officers is in contrast to the full thousand which opened the school in July.
Hanover will not be long without students in Navy uniform, for the new V-12 school will start just about a month after the indoctrination unit disappears, and when the program eventually gets into full operation the College and the town will be given over more completely to the Navy than before. Just what portion of the full quota of 2,400 men will report to Dartmouth "on or about July 1" is not known at the present time, but it is fairly certain that the entire unit will not be ordered here at the outset. Dartmouth undergraduates who are now enlisted in the V-1 and V-7 classes of the Naval Reserve and in the Marine Corps Reserve will remain in College and will form the nucleus of the starting unit. At the latest count, this group numbers 421 men in the freshman, sopho more and junior classes. To them will be added Naval reservists from other New England colleges which have not been designated as Navy training schools and an undisclosed number of V-12 freshmen who have been selected on the basis of competitive examinations and who will be entering college for the first time. In all, more than half of the ultimate unit of 2,400 is expected to be on hand when the program starts about the first of July.
Only the V-12 freshmen will be required to follow the prescribed curricula which Dean Bill describes in another article in this issue. The reservists now enrolled at Dartmouth and those transferring into the upper classes from other colleges will be permitted to carry on their programs of major study while electing as many of the special Navy courses as possible. The Navy has announced that its intention is to make the transition from the civilian College to the combined Navy-civilian College as smooth and as gradual as possible, and at the start Naval trainees and undergraduates of the regular College will be in many classes together.
Instruction in the basic, engineering and pre-medical curricula of the Navy will be provided entirely by the Dartmouth faculty, which in certain departments will be faced by a man-sized assignment. Faculty members who have been taking refresher courses in the sciences will be utilized as laboratory assistants and in other teaching capacities, it is almost certain in view of the large size of the basic unit. Still further conversion of the faculty is scheduled for the short intersession of seven weeks which precedes the start of the Navy program.
While instruction will be entirely in the hands of the College, the administration of the new Navy school will be taken over by the Navy itself. As executive head at Dartmouth the Navy will soon name one of the officers now undergoing special training at Columbia University for the express purpose of administering the Navy College Program throughout the country. This officer and his staff will have general oversight of discipline, drill, and the hundred and one problems of running a training unit as large as the one at Dartmouth is slated to be. Naval trainees will be in uniform, will draw service pay as apprentice seamen on active duty, and will in all probability be under strict Navy regulation from morning until night. The part which extra-curriculum activities will play in the general program is one of the major decisions which the commanding officer will be empowered to make. Physical training, probably handled jointly by the College staff and Naval officers, under the latters' direction, will be an important part of the Navy program, but whether the reservists will be allowed to compete in intercollegiate athletics along with civilian students is a verdict yet to be rendered.
In addition to instruction, the College will be expected to provide housing, meals and medical service for the trainees, all on a contractual basis with the Navy. When the basic unit of 1,300 was originally assigned to Dartmouth, tentative plans were announced for feeding the entire unit in Thayer Hall and for housing them in nine dormitories on the west side of campus: Butterfield, Russell Sage, Hitchcock, Gile, Streeter, Lord, and Massachusetts Row. Now that the school has been increased in size, the dormitory and dining facilities used by the Indoctrination School undoubtedly will be devoted to the V-12 program too. The present Navy unit is being fed in Commons and is being housed in New Hampshire, Topliff, Middle Fayerweather, Ripley, Woodward, and Smith Halls. College Hall will continue to serve as staff headquarters.
By its recent revision of the academic calendar, Dartmouth has already met the Navy requirement that colleges and universities participating in the College Training Program operate on the basis of three 16-week terms in each calendar year, starting on or about July 1. The civilian College will conform to this Navy schedule, but in all other respects it will follow its traditional, liberal arts form, President Hopkins has reasserted. Made up largely of entering freshmen, a civilian College of perhaps as many as 500 men is anticipated in July. For these undergraduates and thereafter for as many men as can follow the normal educational program, Dartmouth will unfailingly offer its traditional curriculum, the President and Trustees have promised, even though this policy may entail a per-student cost greatly out of proportion to the normal cost of offering the liberal arts courses.
While recognizing the position of the civilian colleges and expressing the wish to disrupt normal procedures as little as possible, the Navy has also been forthright in stating that its College Training Program is designed "for the benefit of the Navy to win the war" and that the men selected for this training are not being given a college education at government expense but are being prepared to fill urgent national needs. Lt. Comdr. A. S. Adams, director of the Navy program, has told college faculty members, "It is your high responsibility and perhaps your grave concern to see that their (trainees') morale is held at the highest peak, and that they are constantly realizing that they are not in college to benefit themselves. They are there to make themselves more useful to our very urgent needs." C. E. W.
CAPTAIN H. M. BRIGGS Commanding officer of the Navy Indoctrination School which will close in Juneafter operating at Dartmouth for elevenmonths and training more than 5,000 commissioned officers.
