Admissions Policy Misrepresented

ALTHOUGH THE COLLEGE has made no change in the Selective Process of Admission which it has operated successfully for more than two decades, Dartmouth suddenly became the target of the New York tabloid press and the recipient of distorted publicity early in August when these papers played up sensationally a statement by President Hopkins that Dartmouth each year makes a restrictive selection from the large number of Jewish boys applying for admission, mostly from the New York schools, just as it does from other groups in the application list normally running to three or four times the number of men who can be admitted to the freshman class. Charges of "anti semitism" were leveled against the College, and on the basis of the New York newspaper stories rather than upon any inquiry as to the facts, the agitation was taken up by some other parts of the press and by at least one radio commentator, and was reported in such national magazines as Time and Newsweek.

The ALUMNI MAGAZINE feels that no extended defense of Dartmouth's admissions policy is called for, and it has no intention of dignifying the misrepresentation by devoting any considerable amount of space to it; but for the benefit of Dartmouth alumni who have expressed a natural concern it does wish to present the following background facts.

On February 10 President Hopkins received the following telegram:

The recent action of the American Dental Association in trying to force Columbia and New York Universities to establish religious quotas clearly demonstrates the urgent need for a National Fair Education Practice Committee to eliminate quotas and other forms of racial and religious discrimination in the nation's colleges, especially in relation to returning service men seeking education under the G.I. Bill of Rights. Will you join with us and other educators throughout the country to urge immediate establishment of such a committee to abolish intolerance and discrimination from the higher education systems?

Dr. Alonzo Myers, Chairman, Education Division, Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences, and Professions; Donald Dussane, Executive Secretary, NEA Commission for Defense of Democracy Through Education; Ralph McDonald, Executive Secretary, NEA Department of Higher Education.

To this he replied on February 10:

Understand complexity of problem and am sympathetic with purposes you have in mind. Cannot join with you, however, if your protest is against proportionate selection, for I believe nothing would so increase intolerance and focus racial and religious prejudice as to allow any racial group to gain virtual monopoly of educational advantages offered by any institution of higher education.

Almost immediately after this exchange of telegrams, Mr. Herman Shumlin of New York withdrew from membership in an organization which Mr. Hopkins then headed and accused Dartmouth's president of anti-Jewish prejudice. President Hopkins wrote to Mr. Shumlin in further exposition of the stand he had taken, and later Mr. Shumlin turned this personal correspondence over to the New York Post: This provided the basis for the Post's telephone interview with Mr. Hopkins which appeared in its issue of August 7. The story charged Dartmouth with applying Jewish "quotas" and combined alleged quotations from Mr. Hopkins with extracts, out of context, from the letter to Mr. Shumlin.

President Hopkins, who was out of town at the time of the publication of the Post story, telephoned the following statement to his office for publication in the Dartmouth Log:

The letter to Mr. Shumlin, as a whole, speaks for itself. The telephone interview with the New YorkPost, made up of extracts of conversation and statements removed from their context, was wholly misrepresentative of anything I ever believed or said. The import of my statement made in reply to interrogation was that with our excess of applications for admission over any enrollment possible for us to accept, we have for many years selected a balanced student body to include varied geographical, economic, racial, public school, private school, and other groups; and that this policy was designed to preserve a balanced student body truly representative of our general population; and that thus we believed we could serve democracy best.

In reply to some of the heavy volume of mail which resulted from the Post story and others which followed it, the College has pointed out that its Selective Process of Admission, designed fundamentally to be as genuinely inclusive as possible of all elements in the American body politic, by the same token must "discriminate" against large numbers of unsuccessful candidates of all sorts. It has also stated flatly that Dartmouth has never had any socalled Jewish quota, that it has none now, and that it has no intention of adopting one.

Dartmouth's Selective Process of Admission has been in effect since 1921, at which time the applications for admission had begun to exceed substantially the number of candidates who could be admitted, a proportion which developed rapidly to three or four candidates for every place available in the College. The process seeks to select candidates of scholastic promise and also to provide the most broadly representative study body on the basis of geographic and economic as well as racial backgrounds, and also the widest possible secondary school background. For example, while the College could easily fill the student body with fully qualified graduates of half a dozen preparatory schools, it sets a limit of 25 from any one school, with the result that a normal freshman class of 600-700 represents more than 300 different preparatory schools. Similarly, instead of deriving its enrollment entirely from natives of Massachusetts or Connecticut or New York, as could easily be done, preference in choosing between applicants of equal scholastic promise is given to candidates from more distant areas, with the result that in normal times, Dartmouth has students from almost every state in the union and many foreign countries.

Joins Eye Clinic

LT. COL. CHARLES W. CAPRON of Benning ton, Vt., joined the Dartmouth Eye Institute staff on September 1 as executive assistant to John Pearson '11, director. His duties at present are with the business department of the Institute's clinic.

Mr. Capron recently ended five years of service with the Army, three of them spent in the South and Southwest Pacific combat areas. A graduate of the University, of Vermont in 1930, he was for six years business manager of the Bennington Evening Banner.