THE COLLEGE
THE duckboards are all repaired and ready to go down whenever Mr. Gooding gives the high sign, but it looks as though we will have to lock up the MAGAZINE forms without reporting the actual appearance of these harbingers of the north country spring. Alumni recalling years when the duckboards were laid only to be covered with a foot or more of snow probably would ask for a less fallible portent, but for Dartmouth-in-Hanover spring is virtually official when the Department of Buildings and Grounds decides that it's D-Day.
Some authoritative sign would be helpful , just at this time. While sunburned skiers gleefully report on the deep base and packed powder of nearby slopes and trails, and a foot or so of snow in Hanover provides a proper background for their ski talk, baseballs are thudding into catchers' mitts in the Alumni Gymnasium cage and, when their turn comes later in the afternoon, varsity football candidates contribute more thuds, with a different, autumnal timbre. This convergence of the seasons is slightly bewildering, and something definite like the duckboards will bring reassurance to those who vote for one season at a time.
Thanks to the return of the pre-war spring vacation of 15 days, starting March 25 and ending April 10, Dartmouth students probably will escape the worst of the mud season; and the permanent Hanoverians do not expect too bad a time of it, in view of the mild winter and the alternate freezes and thaws that have occurred these past few months. Like old pre-war times, also, are the window displays by the Dartmouth Co-op and other Main Street shops, showing spring finery for the sun-hungry students who will travel to Bermuda, Florida and other balmy spots during the recess. The Dartmouth Travel Bureau reports that quite a few men will get to Europe and back during the 15-day vacation, and that California also has its spring devotees.
The way undergraduates get around these days is still amazing to most of us. We heard just the other day of a professor who in his Thursday morning class spoke mouth-wateringly of some special brand of Parisian cheese not available in this country. The following Tuesday one of his students placed a package of it on his desk, explaining to the astounded professor that he had been to Paris for the weekend. This, we must admit, is a bit extreme even for the present generation of undergraduates, but they do get around.
DCAC Retrenches
AMONG the Dartmouth men heading south in droves for spring vacation are the baseball and golf teams, which will hold forth in the Washington-Mary-land-Virginia region, and the tennis team and crew, which will go all the way to Florida. What will probably surprise alumni who were in college in a more affluent era is that trips of this sort are now financed by the players themselves. In order to cut down the net cost of these spring trips, which are partly covered by cash guarantees by some of the host colleges, the team members travel by car and pool their driving energies to cover daily distances that are hard to believe, though true.
These self-financed trips serve as strikingly as anything to point up the shift in the financial winds that has occurred for the Dartmouth Athletic Council. Twice this year the DCAC has had to cut back its budget, the second pruning job coming after the 1949 football season had fallen 132,700 short of the budgeted income of {284,000. At the start of the college year, {25,000 had already been cut from the normal costs of operating Dartmouth's program of intercollegiate athletics; wrestling was dropped as a recognized sport, the subsidy for the Band was reduced, and the usual Christmas trip for the hockey team was eliminated along with other economy measures.
After the 1949 football returns were in, the DCAC went to work again to eliminate what Director of Athletics William H. McCarter '19 calls "frill expenses." Some of the moves by which an additional $14,000 was pared from the budget included reducing the number of players on trips, cutting down on entertainment allowances, eliminating all training-table meals except for football, dropping team banquets, and even giving up sports manuals for the players and scorecards for the spectators. Austerity in postwar England has had nothing on that prevailing in Alumni Gymnasium this year.
The failure of 1949 football income to measure up to the budget estimate is explained by factors impossible to predict in advance—weather conditions, the boxoffice appeal of some of Dartmouth's opponents, changes in public spending habits, and, in one instance, a damaging conflict with the World Series. At any rate, the budgeted surplus of $5,000 for the year 1949-50 went out the window early in the year and even the mid-year paring of costs, by the means mentioned above, leaves the DCAC with a deficit that is bigger than its reserve fund.
Back in 1931 the Athletic Council had reserves of $268,000. Four years later, after three whopping deficits and a capital expenditure of $80,000 for squash courts and other athletic facilities, the fund was down to $4,000. Then came a five-year span of successful football teams and profitable operations which boosted the DCAC's worth to $74,000 in 1940, but the war years brought red ink back to the books and it again became necessary to fall back upon the reserve fund, which dropped to $19,000. The five-year period ending last year produced a net surplus of approximately $28,000, but capital outlays of $39,000 for new football stands, a new ticket office, tennis court fences, hockey rink repairs and new playing fields reduced rather than added to the reserve fund, so that the DCAC began the current year of operations with only $12,000 as a cushion.
The villain in this story of financial woe is, of course, rising costs. The prewar year of 1940-41 offers a good basis for comparison, inasmuch as the intercollegiate athletic program then was quite similar to last year's. Gross income rose from $147,000 in 1940-41 to $335,000 in 1948-49 but all along the line the itemized costs of operating an athletic program show tremendous jumps. For example, trips for teams cost $26,000 in the pre-war year and cost $72,000 last year. Expense for the same amount of officiating rose from $4,000 to $7,000; the cost of equipment increased from $11,000 to $23,000; and training-table expenses quadrupled from $3,000 to $12,000. Proportionately higher costs for nearly every phase of the DCAC's operations could be ticked off, and nothing would be farther from the true state of affairs than to believe that the sizable increase in gross income represented any sort of "gain" for the Athletic Council. Of all the departments of the College now engaged in the pervading struggle to make both ends meet, probably no one of them has a tougher problem than Bill McCarter and his DCAC staff.
The financial situation naturally raises some fundamental questions with regard to Dartmouth's program of intercollegiate athletics. The Trustees have the ultimate say in this, and at the present time they have asked for no marked change in the program. The ideal is to have intercollegiate athletics pay their own way, primarily through football receipts in the fall, and it may be that a better financial break in 1950-51 will lessen the problem for a period. Failing that, the alternatives would seem to be a curtailment of intercollegiate sports or the allocation by the Trustees of general college funds for athletic purposes. With the College already desperately in need of every unrestricted dollar it can get, it is safe to assume that the second alternative would be adopted with reluctance. Meanwhile, the Athletic Council is to be credited with a realistic, all-out effort to solve its own financial problem, and it is no wonder it gets a bit jumpy when some alumnus expresses the belief that it is rolling in wealth.
Life with Father
AN UNUSUALLY large number of men in the freshman classes Saturday morning, February 25, were unprepared. Some of them were also uneasy over the possibility of being called upon. In Freshman English the discussion of Milton's Paradise Lost sounded like something from the dim and distant past rather than something in which they could take a knowing part. But no one was surprised at this campus-wide state of affairs, least of all the professors.
One hundred and eighty-five of the men in class that morning were the fathers of freshmen, visiting Hanover as the guests of the Class of 1953. The number of fathers who accepted the invitation to spend a weekend with their sons and share the experience of normal Dartmouth life was gratifyingly large for such a brandnew venture. So many came, in fact, that those in charge of the weekend wished it had been less crowded with other Hanover gatherings. The inconveniences encountered at such popular eating spots as the Inn and the Dartmouth Outing Club House were only minor hitches, however, in an otherwise successful weekend; and another year, if the fathers turn out in equal profusion; the College will no doubt see to its that the limited facilities of the town are not overtaxed by the scheduling of class dinners and other events on the same dates.
Although the Class of 1953 assumed the major responsibility for the Freshman Fathers Weekend, the College officially gave the venture its blessing and support, and the Undergraduate Council was actively and strongly in favor of what now seems certain to be a regular annual feature at Dartmouth. In writing to the fathers when the formal invitation of the freshman class was first extended, Dean Stearns Morse said:
"This is the first weekend of this kind at Dartmouth. Its purpose is to give fathers of the freshmen a glimpse of normal life here at Dartmouth. We hope that those who can come will go to classes, sleep in the dormitories, eat with their sons at Commons, attend the athletic events that are scheduled, meet some of their sons' instructors and friends—in short, spend a pleasant weekend participating in their sons' usual Friday and Saturday activities. For good measure, we will give you a taste of Hanover weatherabout which, however, we make no promises!"
The fathers did all the things mentioned by Dean Morse, and these informal and unscheduled activities were the real heart of the weekend. The sight of father and son crossing the campus together, usually in animated conversation, was a warming one; and for professors and others involved in the work of the College, it did no harm to have this on-the- spot reminder that behind every Dartmouth boy is a father and a family for whom that boy's college experience and success is one of the most important things in the world.
Two more or less formal events during the weekend were a Friday night smoker and a Saturday night banquet in Commons. Class President Bob Brady '53, from Sheldon, lowa, presided at the smoker and introduced Professors Bancroft H. Brown and Allen R. Foley '20 as the speakers of the evening. At the Saturday night affair, conducted with dispatch so as to allow everyone to take in the Dartmouth-Harvard hockey game, brief addresses were made by Dean Morse and Laurence F. Whittemore '48h, president of the Brown Company and a great and good friend of Dartmouth's.
The aftermath of this pioneer weekend has been a large number of letters to Dean Morse, plus other general evidence, indicating the pleasure and satisfaction the fathers derived from their Hanover visit. When the idea of the weekend was first put forward, it was feared by some that the venture would be too "prepschoolish"; as things turned out, these fears were groundless. The spirit in which the Undergraduate Council and the rest of the College backed up the freshman project was an important factor; and, then, whenever Dartmouth is experienced as its natural self, the results are pretty certain to be satisfactory. All in all, a lot of good will toward the College was created by the Freshman Fathers Weekend, and Dad, the next time he takes pen in hand to write a check for his boy at Dart mouth, will probably do it more cheerfully and with a better understanding of just what it is his checks are making possible.
Little Green
FEELING pretty good after the Freshman Fathers Weekend, and functioning briskly in the midst of the Little Green Weekend, 1953's President Brady allowed himself to be interviewed by The Dartmouth, always a courageous thing to do. Brady, "freckled, retiring, red-haired," was ready to tackle the question, "Where, oh where, are the pea-green freshmen?" His answer: "I don't see exactly how you can miss 'em. The freshmen have really gotten together this year and acted as a unit. Our bonfire was the biggest ever built. Father and Son Weekend is a '53 first, and the variety show, The Great Schnitzlebrock, is something new. Where are the freshmen? Just about everywhere, I'd say."
This evaluation of the freshman class would be accepted by most of the College. The '53s have proved themselves to be an unusually spirited and unified class, sure to be heard from during three more undergraduate years and in the alumni years to follow. One "soft spot" in the general picture, however, is the class average of 2.084 posted at the end of the first semester. By pre-war standards, this is about par for the first semester of freshman year, but after the 2.267 achieved by 1952 last year and the 2.196 posted by 1951 before that, the 1953 record could be interpreted only as a scholastic slump. Freshmen on financial aid did considerably better than the class as a whole, with an approximate average of 2.3.
The fact that 1953 is a much younger class than its two predecessors might be a factor in its lower scholastic performance to date. Dean Morse thinks this is so, and that his charges are taking longer to get adjusted to college work. The present semester will be a better test, and nearly all the '53s are still on hand to see how close they can come to 1952's 2.44 for the second semester. Only two freshmen among the 705 who entered have been separated thus far.
The three upper classes almost exactly repeated last year's first-semester average, registering 2.562 as against 2.526. With the freshmen included, the general College average was 2.434, down from 2.458 last year. Fraternity men as a group posted a 2.502 for the first semester, an improvement over last year's 2.475. Pi Lambda Phi again took top honors with 2-793, followed by Sigma Phi Epsilon, 2.715, and Delta Tau Delta, 2.645. The other fraternities, in order, were: (4) Gamma Delta Chi, 2.637; (5) Phi Delta Theta, 2.6308; (6) Sigma Nu, 2.6301; (7) Theta Chi, 2.6246; (8) Kappa Sigma, 2-6243; (9) Theta Delta Chi, 2.569; (10) Chi Phi, 2.546; (11) Sigma Alpha Epsilon, 2-545 J (12) Kappa Kappa Kappa, 2.517;(13) Zeta Psi, 2.468; (14) Phi Sigma Kappa, a-453! (15) Sigma Chi, 2.447; (16) Delta Upsilon, 2.415; (17) Alpha Delta Phi, 2409; (18) Delta Kappa Epsilon, 2.400;(19) Beta Theta Pi, 2.396; (20) Psi Upsilon, 2.379; (21) Gamma Delta, 2.339; (22) Phi Kappa Psi, 2.317.
Miscellany
THE tremendously important role played by alumni in the Selective Process is indicated by the estimate of the Admissions Office that approximately 1,000 committee members have put in 10,000 man-hours of work interviewing candidates for the Class of 1954. Under the new procedures adopted for the next entering class, the first letters of acceptance will go out about April 10. Not all the selections will be processed by that date, and failure of a candidate to hear from the Director of Admissions this month may mean that his application has not yet been acted upon. All decisions will be announced by early May
The newest Dartmouth College film, Dartmouth Outdoors, has been completed and had its first showing beyond Hanover last month. Five prints of the 16 mm., color and sound movie are available for rental. Designed to tell the year-round story of Dartmouth's extracurricular life outdoors, the 28-minute film is built largely around the Outing Club. Superb color photography by Adrian Bouchard adds greatly to the effectiveness of the movie.
The Alumni Council's special committee on Dartmouth College movies held an organization meeting in Hanover this past month, reviewing the films now being distributed and laying the groundwork for a new and more ambitious undertaking that will portray the educational strength of the College
The annual College Chest Fund cam- paign fell short of its $10,000 goal last month, ending with $6,685 collected. Thirteen different agencies will benefit from the fund, which is raised once a year in place of a lot of smaller solicitations. "Fill the Bowl Up" was the theme of this year's campaign, with the Hanover Inn corner sporting a huge figure of Eleazar holding an empty bowl which acquired contents as the drive progressed
Hanover's town meeting on March 14 turned down a proposal to legalize beano for charitable purposes. At the precinct meeting the next night it was voted to install parking meters on Main Street as a means of lessening the parking problem. Webster Hall has been reserved for the biggest town meeting of all on April 19, when the annual school district meeting votes on a recommended $300,000 expansion of Hanover's school facilities. Affirmative action will necessitate a higher tax rate, and the pro and con forces are hard at work explaining things to the voters of Hanover
Youth Marches On: Newsworthy enough for a Dartmouth story on March 7 was the fact that six Hanover kids, ages 12 and 13, had negotiated the Big Ski Jump for the first time The name Dickey was prominent in the results of the annual Children's Carnival. Young John won the silver cup in the junior division, and Tina won not only the cup for the 14-15-year group in skiing but also the Johnny Johnson Trophy for best allaround excellence in the whole carnival.....
An erroneous news story in the RutlandHerald, reporting that White River Junction had voted dry, caused some March excitement, but not as much as the news that Harry Tanzi's cap of indeterminate age was surreptitiously set on fire and was a total loss.
DARTMOUTH HALL AND THE CAMPUS IN MID-MARCH STILL PRESENT A WINTRY SCENE
