1924
Richard W. Morin, GUEST EDITOR
Our guest editor for this month's issue isDick Morin who, as you know by this time,was recently appointed Executive Assistantto President Dickey. He is also working withthe President in directing the Great IssuesCourse. Dick studied law at Harvard aftergraduation at Dartmouth and also studiedin France. Engaged in law work in AlbertLea, Minnesota, he was also connected withthe Department of State in Washington intheir Foreign Service. He married DoloresDilkes on July 3, 1928, and they have threedaughters. The eldest, Joan, will graduate inMay from the Albert Lea High School. Theclass is indebted to Dick for his interestingimpressions of the new Dartmouth.
You asked me to help "guest" your column for the May issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Hereafter, for what they are worth, are some impressions of Dartmouth from the viewpoint of one who, after a lapse of nearly a quarter of a century, finds himself suddenly a part of the College again. In the two months that I have been back here I have had the greatest difficulty in disentangling my reactions and laying them out in a way that can be recognized. As I examine them now, they seem to be a mixture of sentimentalism about the good old days and admiration for the changes that have come.
Of course, many of our Class, like yourself, have been back to Hanover often since that New England June in the midst of the Terrible Twenties when we all stepped bravely and unsuspectingly into the outside world. Not so with me. One brief reunion visit in 1946—my only Hanover experience in 20 years —was not enough to give me the feel of the College again. And now I keep thinking of that fellow (didn't H. G. Wells create him?) who was projected far into the future where he kept viewing the new scenes in terms of his previous standards and experience. But already the present is beginning to efface earlier attitudes, and while comparison is still mentally possible I am going to set down a few things that seem to suggest differences in the 1948 Dartmouth as contrasted with the College of 1924. To those of our Class who have maintained a fairly close contact with the College, by geographical good fortune or otherwise, these observations will not contain anything particularly new. But I have a suspicion that there is a large and silent bloc of the Class which has been so consistently far removed from Hanover as to be only half mindful of transformations which have taken place here—some long ago, some still in process.
It is hard to wrap up in a few words the changes that have occurred. Educationally speaking, there have been, of course, changes in faculty, changes in class rooms, changes in courses, changes in emphasis. But at the risk of oversimplification it occurs to me that perhaps the greatest change has been worked by an inanimate thing of brick and mortar the Baker Library. The picture of the new Library brooding over the campus, with wings extended, has become commonplace to many of us but only by moving in the undergraduate stream again do you readily sense what a colossal change it has brought upon the Dartmouth student life. By becoming the central point for student studying, the Library has polarized what used to be a rather diffuse exercise in learning. In doing so it has brought serenity and order out of the formerly hectic and hazardous process of hitting the books. It is easy to recall that in our day studying could be done only if the wind was right. When we did want to escape from the bridge game or bull session in our room (and we did want to, sometimes) there was rarely any place to go. Today in Baker Library the student has got a permanent sanetuary, and moreover a comfortable one with easy chairs, few "No Smoking" signs, and freedom from enticing invitations to "make a fourth" or go to the second show or tap a keg. In essence these conditions and the great resources which the Library contains have enabled the faculty to set a faster pace and at the same time have allowed the student to keep up without getting winded. We were one of the last Classes to pass through Dartmouth College without benefit of Baker Library. Of one thing I am sure and that is, being without it, few of us could have survived an academic diet like that being served up today.
So far as concerns the curriculum itself, if one were to select a single educational experience that distinguishes the training Dartmouth students are receiving today from that we received—or at least had offered to us it must be the Great Issues course. This course, required of all seniors, has already been fully described in recent issues of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. In the perspective—or illusion of perspective—which we 1924ers have, the exposures which the undergraduates are getting in this course take on a meaning which is probably only opaquely recognized by the students themselves. But the time will come. Some of us like to think now that if we had had such a course back in the Twenties we would have been better prepared to understand, if not to solve, some of the bitter problems of government, of foreign affairs, of science, of ideology, of values, which instead have found us pretty bewildered and hesitating and dangerously tardy in raising our guard. But the probability is that there couldn't have been such a course given in the Twenties. Not that there were no "great issues" then, but they were so dimly seen, so seemingly free from impelling urgency, so apparently disconnected, that the educational process, which never seems to get so very far ahead of its times, was doubtless not prepared to apprentice us for living in their presence, understandingly and undeceived. Without regrets for lost opportunities which never really existed, it is enough now for us to rejoice that Dartmouth has recognized today's challenge and accepted it.
Evidence that Dartmouth is suspected of having academically struck ore in the Great Issues course is to be found in the fact that more than 95 colleges, universities and secondary schools have sent in requests for information on how the course is operated and what the results have been. Several of them have already set up their own brand of Great Issues Course.
Getting away from the purely educational, I have a strong suspicion that today's Dartmouth undergraduates are demonstrating more skill and imagination in their extracurricular ventures—at least the non-athletic ones—than was once the case. It isn't possible to list all the evidence for this, but take The Players as an example. There is about as much difference between the College dramatic productions of today and those of twentyfive years ago—when I was treading the boards of Webster Hall with Gordy Lockwood, JoeButler and others—as there is between the cross-bow and the atomic bomb. This year at Carnival time, The Players put on a production of Noel Coward's Private Lives that would have warmed the heart of New York's most jaded drama critic. A few weeks later came the pay-off. Nineteen Dartmouth fraternities lined up casts from their own membership (except the gals, of course) and, under directors also drawn from the fraternities' membership, proceeded to produce nineteen one-act plays. Seven of the plays were written by members of the producing fraternities. No one would suggest that the results met professional standards, but the astonishing thing about the whole business was that at least half of the productions were better than those done in our day by The Players (the first team, in other words).
A fact to ponder: the captain of the football team took the lead in one of the fraternity plays and was runner-up for the sweepstake Oscar. Two inferences may be drawn from this. Inference No. 1:
"A play-actor as captain of the football team? What the hell! No wonder Dartmouth doesn't win more games."
Inference No. 2: "There must be something good about a place that leads a guy to develop different interests. In the outside world where it isn't all play-acting nor all football but some of each and a hell of a lot more things, that guy is going to lead a more useful life."
Unless some conclude from all this that the Dartmouth undergraduate has gone completely "brighty" or "grind" or "Christer" it should be pointed out that, with about the same regularity as of yore, he throws snowballs through the third floor windows of Crosby, gets into altercations with the campus police, sketches highly anatomical pictures on the lavatory walls, overdraws his bank account, renders the night unholy with bacchanalian songs, and produces statistics for the next Kinsey report. In fact, the members of the Class of 1924 would all feel pretty much at home with him.
And speaking of our Classmates, here are a few of them who have passed this way in recent weeks. Some I saw, but most I didn't. If it hadn't been for the Inn records I never would have known of those unseen, which leads me to hope that more 1924'ers will part with a nickel to give me a ring while in Hanover.
Charlie Amelung, to interview seniors for the New Jersey Telephone Co., Cip Cipallaroand Mrs. C., Charlie French, Prenny Gallupand Mrs. G., Brad Mersey and Mrs. H. and daughter, Charlie Holbrook and Mrs. H.,Harry Holmlund and Mrs. H., Red Maloney,Dave Perry and son, AL T upper and Mrs. T., and doubtless others who didn't get on the Inn books.
I had all too brief visits with Harry Holmlund and Dave Perry in the confusion of my first few days here. Charlie and Bunny Holbrook rushed through with only time to telephone. When Charlie French arrived things had settled down a bit. We had a couple of good talks between the ski trips he put on for the Cleveland undergraduate delegation. Finding that Charlie could keep up with the boys served to soften the dark look I have been taking at the Fearful Forties.
Laurels: to Ed Winsor on becoming the new president of the Providence (R. 1.) Chamber of Commerce, and to Pete Wheatley on becoming senior Assistant Attorney General for the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
A letter from Leon Rothschild in Los An geles says:
"We are now awaiting Sid Hayward's arrival, and in keeping with the true Dartmouth spirit, we will hold our annual dinner in the local brewery."
Come to think of it, I can't think of a better place in which to leave you.
Secretary,101 Fifth Ave., New York 3, N. Y. Treasurer, Niles & Niles 165 Broadway, New York 6, N. Y. Class Agent, N. Y. Trust Co., 100 Broadway, New York, N. Y.
