THE COLLEGE
The Columbia Game Weekend brought to Hanover more than a thousand houseparty guests and a great many more alumni and other visitors. It also brought to town Morris W. Watkins, the affable executive secretary of the Columbia alumni association, who arrived a day early to talk shop and look into the question of what it is that makes the Dartmouth alumni program tick.
The form and mechanics of Dartmouth's alumni operations were within reach of concrete explanation, but Mr. Watkins wanted to get to the heart of the matter. His chorus-like comment was, "Yes, but there's more to it than that. What do you do to Dartmouth men while they're in Hanover to produce their wonderful loyalty to the College?" In trying to answer that, one has to twist and turn in his reply, touching on the "place" loyalty engendered by Dartmouth's isolated, north country location, on a happy undergraduate experience as the keystone of alumni interest and support, on belief in what the College stands for, on the "tradition" of class and club organization and activity strengthened over the years, on the real but indefinable Dartmouth Spirit, and even on the simple fact that Dartmouth is uniquely Dartmouth. All this, however, hardly provided a satisfactory answer to Mr. Watkins, who went back to New York still believing that there's more to it than that. Maybe those with whom he talked ought to be embarrassed over not being able to give him a more explicit answer —and if any of our readers can do it, we'd like to hear from them—but we're not sure that there can be a completely satisfactory explanation of something so compounded of intangibles. Perhaps President Hopkins gave the best and simplest answer to a similar question some years ago when he said, "Dartmouth alumni are the way they are because they went to Dartmouth.'
In any event, the question raised anew by the Columbia alumni secretary is the sincerest sort of tribute to the record of support given to the College by the rank and file of Dartmouth men. The most impressive evidence of that loyalty comes from the Alumni Fund year after year. This issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE presents the detailed report of the 1950 Fund, again a record-smashing achievement in which 14,945 contributors had a part. The figures are wonderful, the long lists of contributors are impressive, the volunteer work done by class agents, their assistants and the newsletter editors is extraordinary. We look over the whole report of Alumni Fund success, spelled out in black and white .... and then we join Morry Watkins in the chorus, "Yes, but there's more to it than that."
