The Undergraduate Chair
LITTLE PARTY over at the house tonight; ought to take in the hockey game, J too; bunch of guys off for Stowe this weekend; maybe Joe'll get me a date. Maybe you could get him to drive down to Smith tomorrow? Guess not, he's got that paper due: geez, so do I; better hit'm. Getting awful dull around here—awful dull. Wonder what old Willie has to say today?"
So speaking or musing, that will-o'-thewisp, the average Dartmouth student, crunched across campus snow to a morning class the other day. So has he mused and crunched for generations.
In all honesty, let me admit that (minus the crunch) we are also dealing with the "average" college man everywhere. The difference, I think, is that more men fall in that category here than anywhere.
Particularly is that generalization true concerning political awareness, or the lack of it. It is as true now as it ever was, regardless of the glowing publicity you have been reading and hearing about the mature veteran element. In matters of interest intelligent speculation over how the world is spinning, things are indeed "awful dull around here." And, I repeat, they are not so dull elsewhere.
I could prove that in two ways: by listening carefully to the daily thought of a respectable number of students on this and other campuses, or by reporting manifestations of their thoughts from an armchair in Hanover. Since I am neither clairvoyant nor unoccupied, the armchair has it. News of other colleges I take from their newspapers: news of this College, from its recent experience and from local sources interested and involved in the subject.
Manifestations of political awareness of the order we can trace include chapters of national political organizations, and nonaffiliated student groups. Affiliations of various political stripes include the American Veterans Committee, the Progressive Citizens of America, the American Youth for Democracy, Americans for Democratic Action, Young Republicans' Federation and United World Federalists. All of them have active chapters on leading American campuses. Here are some of their activities during the month of December:
Harvard Youth for Democracy formed and published a new magazine, Ne-w Student, on the -order of New Republic, and sought sanction as an official university magazine. Harvard World Federalists sought 10,000 signatures in Cambridge for a petition to Congress favoring world government; Yale Federalists listened to serious professorial criticism of that world government.
At the University of Chicago, the local AVC cooperated with the Committee on Racial Equality in finding and publishing facts of discrimination in the university's clinics and medical school, petitioned to Chancellor Robert Hutchins, who earlier had denied the existence of such practices in his bailiwick and had challenged opponents to prove otherwise. PCA and ADA backed the petition, and a mass student rally was held in its benefit. AVC at Yale meanwhile heard the Chairman of the United States Delegation to the U. N. Atomic Energy Control Commission discuss differing atomic plans.
Harvard Young Republicans, newlyformed, drafted in five weeks a 206-man membership, began publishing a biweekly newsletter, invited Republican leaders to lecture under its sponsorship. It planned to set up a Radcliffe branch; one is operative as near to Hanover as the University of New Hampshire. The HYR thus handily outstripped its political rivals, Harvard Youth for Democracy (35 members) and the Harvard Liberal Union (85), a semi-independent group which sends delegates to ADA conventions.
In January, the Harvard Liberal Union was selecting those delegates, choosing a new "outside" speaker (Leon Henderson had outlined to it "A Liberal Program against Inflation" before Christmas) and defining its stand on the Wallace candidacy. A foresighted Yale chapter of PCA had debated its support of that candidacy in December, before it was announced.
Affiliated to the extent of intercommunication, a larger Students-for-Wallace movement also was inaugurated before the announcement, with groups in Harvard, Yale, Brown, New Hampshire, Western Reserve, LSU, Tulane, North Carolina and California, among others.
As this is written, a few Dartmouth students are planning to add a contribution to that movement here. When and if it is founded, it will be undergraduate Dartmouth's only recognition of any sort thatthere are national and international eventsand issues, that we participate in them bythe very fact of our existence.
We have seen, since the war, three chapters of national organizations, all now peacefully buried. AVC and ICCASP formed small units and ran headlong into the Communist issue; AVC, also suffering internal pressures, died outright; ICCASP disbanded, reformed as a part of PCA, which does not disbar Communists, and, so doing, lost a majority of its members who would have joined a part of ADA, disbarring Communists. Nominally active until this fall, in hopes of recalling the "walkout" members, PCA has one more meeting scheduled—to decide what to do with itself. It is as good as done.
Reasons for lack of these activities, for their failure when attempted, are complex; yet, they reduce to one fact. Contributing factors to the liberals' downfall, outlined above, certainly include the Communist decision; the predominantly conservative background of the student body and, probably to a lesser extent, of the faculty; geographical separation from sources of outside support such as the labor movement; even more effective psychological separation from outside provocation. But the final straw is the inability or unwillingness of student and teacher to overcome such hindrances with intellectual initiative—the apathy that seems individual and is certainly collective. The liberalism of our illfated activities was not their onus; it was their activity. Active conservatism would die as quickly.
I have saved one possible deterrent to affiliated membership, the possible fear of being swept away by national actions not approved by the local. Here the non-affiliated student groups I mentioned before come in. They are notably in operation at Yale and Chicago.
Yale., men have formed three parties of general political outlook: Conservative, Liberal and Labor. They meet in a Political Union, and supply its officers from their ranks. The Union sponsors prominent speakers on moot topics, either to the community or the Union itself; in the latter case, most speeches are followed by concurrent or opposing remarks from party spokesmen, and a vote on the guest's position. Recently, it voted down an Arab proposal on Palestine, and upheld a labor attack on the Taft-Hartley Bill.
From Chicago's Union, generally similar, I cite only the purpose: "to serve as a public forum where campus political groups may present their theories in the light of a specific issue, and where individual students may go to discuss and clarify their political views."
Perhaps this set-up, favoring discussion and clarification over action, better suits Dartmouth's use and students' capacities than affiliations carrying with them the responsibility of support. But the apathy working against one seems equally potent against the other.
Hot stones like Max Lerner, a past lecturer, and Wanhope Building, a provocative experimental play by Prof. John Finch, can occasionally raise Hanover's cold water to boiling point. Nothing as yet has been able to keep it there.
Already voting, or soon eligible, Dartmouth students should be questioning, discussing, clarifying, expressing opinions and being opposed on present politics; they should be sticking their necks out and making mistakes. That is not dangerous. It is dangerous for them to let things roll blandly by, as they do.
Or, to return to my original, it is dangerous to see your son crunching over to morning class, asleep.
1948 WINTER CARNIVAL COMMITTEE: Kneeling, left to right: Roger S. Brown '45, Lynnfield Center, Mass., D.O.C. president; Ray L. Powers Jr. '49, Houston, Texas, publicity; Burton Hicock '45, Cheshire, Conn., equipment; Harlan B. Brumsted '46, Batavia, N. Y„ general chairman; Hugh M. Chapin '48, Wellesley Hills, Mass., tickets and finance; Prof. Allan H. Macdonald, faculty adviser. Standing: Lawrence K. Coachman '4B, Schenectady, N. Y„ police; John R. Barr '49, Howell, Mich., Outdoor Evening; Richard M. Hook '49, Swarthmore, Pa., personnel; Eugene Gottesman '49, Ramsey, N. J., entertainment; Phillip R. Viereck '4B, South Dartmouth, Mass., member-at-large; Richard P. Nickelsen '47, Lynbrook, N Y., features; Dean S. Worth '49, Waban, Mass., member at large; James H. Smith Jr. '49, Glencoe, 111 winter sports; and John R. Zillmer '4B, Wauwatosa, Wis., competitions.
