The Undergraduate Chair
Applications from Foreign Students Show Great Increase, But College Has Room to Admit Only a Limited Number
WITH THE FORMATION of UNESCO, the revival of many prewar cultural exchange institutions, and the ever-increasing demand of foreign students to come to America to complete their war-interrupted education, there has been a decided increase in interest and facilities extended to these men when they arrive at our colleges and universities.
For the first time in the history of Dartmouth, a Committee on Foreign Students has been organized and set up under the chairmanship of Prof. Joseph B. Folger of the Romance Languages Department, and there are now applications in his office from students representing forty-five different countries.
The committee was founded just a year ago because of the increasing number of inquiries being received from men in liberated countries who wished to come to the United States to complete their education. The purpose of this new committee is to channel all the various applications into one office, whereas previously they had come to the Dean, the Registrar's Office, Tuck and Thayer Schools and the Medical School. Mr. Folger explains that the majority of students who come to this country are in a position to do graduate work and consequently they head for the larger universities such as Columbia, Yale, Harvard and Michigan. Despite this, the applications to Dartmouth, at first a trickle, have now grown to a rather sizable stream and the College unfortunately is unable, because of its own swollen ranks of ex-G.l.'s, to accept as many as it would like to. This condition will probably last for another year or two, anyway, until the incoming freshman classes have returned to their regular size.
"These boys from whom we hear are in dead earnest and want to study over here badly," says Mr. Folger, "but the College simply hasn't got the facilities to handle them. We now have a total of about eighteen foreign boys at Dartmouth but applications from forty-five separate countries, including India, Ethiopia, Iraq, Java and the Maylay States. Nothing from Russia yet. They apparently don't seem interested in allowing their students to wander around a democracy."
Mr. Folger gave an explanation of how the application set-up worked. "Boys either write directly to us, or work through the Institute for International Education or such other foundations as may be operating in the countries themselves. Then when a boy is definitely accepted on his credentials here, we write a letter to the State Department for an educational visa on the boy's passport, and he comes to Hanover. Sometimes there is considerable difficulty in arranging financial matters. Some countries will allow only a limited amount of money to outgoing students, in which case, they either contact relatives in this country, or are aided by the regular financial scholarships that exist at Dartmouth."
I have chosen four undergraduates on the Dartmouth campus who represent widely diverse nations in the world and who all have different reasons for being here. As a whole, they like the College, the U. S. and the people, but, to a man, they want to get back home.
Odd Ramsay '47, a valuable man on this year's ski team, comes from Oslo, Norway. He came to Dartmouth via the International Institute for Education in New York, which had written to various colleges during the war, asking them to take a small quota of foreign students whose education had been interrupted and could not be continued in the countries where they lived. A committee of four professors had been named at the University at Oslo, to discuss the matter and set up standards of selection and scholarship needs. When these had been decided upon, various bulletins were posted, and Odd, passing in the street one day, saw the notice. He became interested, filled out an application, received an appointment, and two weeks later was bound for the States on a ship.
His only knowledge of Dartmouth came through a secretary in the American Embassy in Oslo, who told him about the Winter Carnival, although she herself had never been there!
When he arrived in New York, he reported to the Institute, not having the slightest idea of which college he was going to. He finally was placed at Dartmouth and came here in November of 1945, after having arrived in New York on the 24th of November. "The same day that Quisling was executed," he recalls.
Odd was active with the Norwegian Underground all during the German Occupation and worked constantly with teams to bring in arms and munitions and news from Allied planes which dropped their loads by parachute in the forests outside the city. Towards the end of the war, when an Allied victory was a certainty but the attitude of the German occupations troops towards a general capitulation was not known, Odd and his mates worked out a tremendous and complicated plan to protect Norwegian heavy industry, factories and public utilities in the event that the Germans made an attempt to destroy them.
Odd graduates in June and intends to go home as soon as possible. He hopes to get a job with a public opinion polling group but there are no definite prospects and necessarily won't be until he gets back to Oslo. His family is there and he has an older brother who has just graduated from the military academy.
Dimitri Carellas '50, or "Jim." as he is known to everybody on the ground floor of Butterfield, comes from Athens, Greece. He lived there with his family all during the British debacle and the German Occupation and learned to talk English then, with the idea of possibly going to school in England when the war was over. However, his father, who is in the textile business, was a great friend of the father of a former Dartmouth man, Bill Dipson '37. Mr. Dipson convinced Mr. Carellas that Dartmouth was the place for Jim. He came here to college last fall, after gaining admission directly through Mr. Folger's office. He had previously been to France and Italy before the war, but that was all the traveling he had done before coming to America. After spending a week in New York with relatives, he came directly to Hanover and will complete a full fouryear course here as an undergraduate. His father and mother are still in Athens, but he has hopes that his mother will be over here in another few months or so.
Daniel Moreau, a Tuck School student, comes from Paris, where his family is now located, but his wartime career, in and out of various countries and concentration camps, has made him familiar with most of Western Europe.
He first heard of Dartmouth through Ted Germann '34, an assistant military att ache at the Embassy in Paris, after the German defeat. Daniel had been inquisitive about coming to America to study and Germann was kind enough to write Mr. Folger about Moreau's case. He came to Hanover last summer as a special student. He expects to remain here until June, then take a year at either Stanford or Michigan, to get a better look at the country before going back to Paris and home.
Daniel escaped from Occupied France in 1942 by crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. Hoping to fall in with sympathetic forces and (hake his way out of Spain, he was picked up by some Franco agents and immediately tossed into a concentration camp with a great many other Frenchmen in the same plight. He got out of the camp, however, and worked his way south to a seacoast town, thence by fishing boat to French Morocco. There he joined the Free French Army of Le Clerc, went with them to England and became part of Patton's Third Army. After fighting through Normandy, and scoring on the breakthrough, he was in the Armored Division that liberated Paris in 1945, thus rounding out a tremendously exciting and worthwhile wartime career.
From one of our Good Neighbor coun- tries, Cuba, comes Jorge Saralegui '49, a native of Havana. Jorge is a graduate of the Jesuit School at Belem, a school which prepares young Cubans for what is known as a Bachillerato, or junior Bachelor of Arts. It is a regular high school, and this represents part of Cuba's new educational program. Instead of confining the students to a limited amount of schooling, the course lasts six years, during which time physics, mathematics, chemistry and phi- losophy are required, along with the regu- lar prescribed courses in the humanities. Jorge wanted to go to the Columbia Busi- ness School, when he first came to New York, but didn't like the city and couldn't make up his mind just where to go. He hardly knew a word of English and it was terribly difficult to get around and ask questions. He finally ran across a man who told him that Dartmouth was only twenty- five miles outside the city limits, had mountains, lots of skiing, and might be just the place Jorge was looking for.
Desirous of finding out more about this earthly paradise, he went to see a business friend of his father's, Frank Granata '24. Mr. Granata called up Dean Strong and Jorge came to Hanover for an interview, using Professor Arce as official interpreter. He was admitted in October of 1945 and graduates a year from this June.
He recalls that the going was a little tough when he first came here because he knew so little English. He wandered around for two weeks, tearing off Commons tickets as he ate in the various drugstores and restaurants before he knew what he was to use them for. He now speaks English very well and gets around without any trouble at all.
Jorge expects to return to Cuba as soon as he gets his degree and go into business with his father.
FROM NORWAY: Odd Ramsay '47, a member of this year's ski team, came to Dartmouth from Oslo.
FROM GREECE: Dimitri Careilas '50 of Athens has vivid memories of the German Occupation there.
FROM FRANCE: Daniel Moreau, Tuck School student from Paris, fought with the Free French Army.
FROM CUBA: Jorge Saralegui '49 of Havana will return to his native land for a business career.
