Hopkins Center
THIS ISSUE OF the MAGAZINE contains a full description of the near-final plans for the Hopkins Center, recently revised to conform to a new and broader conception of the part which the auditorium building is to play in the daily life of the College. Once again President Dickey has brought to College councils a fresh approach; it was he more than anyone else who steered the planning committee's thinking away from a building that would house only a large auditorium and allied dramatic and musical activities and directed its thinking toward a center that would provide all these things and at the same time fulfill a large part of Dartmouth's need for better facilities for the daily social and cultural life of not only students and faculty but also the alumni who are returning to Hanover for visits and vacations in ever-increasing numbers.
Of all the things covered in Mr. Hayward's article, the planning with relation to Dartmouth's alumni will probably hold special interest for the MAGAZINE'S readers. Other than the Hanover Inn, there is now no central gathering place for the alumni who return to the campus, and the Inn has already hoisted the distress signal over its inadequate lounge and rooming facilities, especially on big weekends. The revised plans for the Hopkins Center have been dovetailed with this Inn problem and should, in large measure, help to solve it.
More unfortunate perhaps than the lack of centralized alumni headquarters on the campus is the difficulty which the visiting alumnus has in meeting casually and informally with members of the faculty and with students also, for that matter. The proximity of the social quarters which the Hopkins Center will provide for alumni and faculty and the reciprocal welcomes which will be extended by the two groups promise to reduce this particular shortcoming in the present scheme of things. And if the strengthening of educational ties between the College and its alumni is to be carried forward, as the MAGAZINE believes it will and should be, the best reason of all exists for making it easier and pleasanter for the faculty and visiting alumni to get together.
Despite the special application of these Hopkins Center features to themselves, many alumni will have greatest interest in such over-all objectives as the plans to provide a hall large enough to gather together the entire student body as one unit a means of fostering an undergraduate cohesion and a sense of family that have been too long absent from the campus and to provide a headquarters for the daily social mingling of undergraduates, whether they be upperclassmen or freshmen, fraternity men or non-fraternity men. On the morning of the convocation exercises which opened this semester it was an unpleasant sight to see hundreds of Dartmouth men go up to the doors of Webster Hall and then turn around and go away because of the jam. What was happening inside can be gathered from one of the pictures illustrating the Hopkins Center article in this issue. As for the lounges and other social facilities planned for Dartmouth's undergraduates, they represent nothing in the way of luxury; they are rather an overdue answer to a sizable gap in what is needed for the fuller realization of the well-rounded product of the liberal arts college.
The fact that the Hopkins Center, as redefined by the planning committee, is to have a daily and intimate relation to student life, and is moreover to provide centralized social headquarters for the faculty and alumni, makes the choice of the southeast, cross-roads corner of the campus as its site even more logical than before. We have confidence that this important addition to the Dartmouth plant, when finally erected, will demonstrate the soundness of the long and careful planning that faculty, alumni, administrative officers and Trustees have put into it.
All Dartmouth men will want this tribute to President Emeritus Hopkins to be just as useful and perfect as humanly possible. The Trustees, who stand second to none in this respect, have given their unanimous approval to the final recommendations of their Committee on Physical Development and Maintenance of the Plant. All hands now look ahead to the day when this great plan becomes a reality, to the enhancement of the liberal arts and the enrichment of Dartmouth life.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO THE DARTMOUTH FAMILY
