The Fourth Estate

One usually thinks of a college as composed of administration, faculty and students—the three obvious Estates of the Realm—and of the alumni as the products thereof, rather than as a continuing Fourth Estate. Indeed it has been rather common in the American college world for the other three Estates to regard the fourth as a sort of barely tolerable nuisance, useful chiefly when the hat was being passed, but at other times better kept out of the picture. It is one of Dartmouth's great claims to distinction that during the Tucker-Hopkins regime this Fourth Estate has been so successfully integrated as an element in the college set-up, with a definite place in the Scheme of things and a definite part to play, day in and day out, consciously and conscientiously—a part of Dartmouth College in spirit and in truth.

The first steps toward this consumma- tion were taken when President Tucker developed the participation of alumni trustees, and when President Hopkins de- veloped the Alumni Council as representa- tive of the more unwieldy General Alumni Association, as active adjuncts of the ad- ministration of college affairs. At present the Board of Trustees consists of ten men (with the President of the College and the Governor of New Hampshire as additional members ex officiis) five of whom are trus- tees for life, and five the nominees of the Alumni Council for limited terms of service. True, the Board of Trustees remains technically a self-perpetuating body; but it does, as in duty bound, elect to its membership the nominees of the Alumni Council each year, so that half the members serve as the direct representatives of the alumni body, chosen by the latter and ratified by the Board. Ordinarily the five life members of the Board are themselves alumni of the college—usually men who have served as alumni trustees prior to acquiring permanent status—so that alumni participation in managing the affairs of the College is virtually complete. It has worked amazingly well in practice and bids fair so to continue.

At all events, the alumni of Dartmouth have come to feel that their connection with the college is not a thing of the remote past to be looked back upon, but a going concern of the present and an important part of life.