The College as Mine Host

IN JULY, 1770, Eleazar Wheelock, after scouring the upper Connecticut Valley in search of a site for the new college, came to rest at Hanover. Satisfied at last, he reported to the English trustees that he and his fellows were prepared to give "preference to the southwestern corner of Hanover, adjoyning upon Lebanon, where is a body of choise lands conveniently situate, given for the only use of the college This tract is pritty well watered, and well proportioned for all kinds of tillage It joyns upon the falls, called White River falls .... where is the only place for a bridge across Connecticut River.... and is upon a direct line from Portsmouth to Crown Point, to which we were informed a good road may be had, and its distance but 60 miles; and about 140 to Montreal and but 40 miles land portage to each of these places."

While Eleazar Wheelock's main concern was a site suitable to attract Indian students, he hit upon a spot destined to become nearly two hundred years later the center of one of the most alluring tourist regions in the land. Few Dartmouth men ever go through their Hanover experience without at some time or other wishing that more of the world's benighted might at least have a taste of the New Hampshire hills. Certainly no member of the Dartmouth family whose duties have called for him to spend the summer in Hanover has wholly escaped at least an occasional twinge of guilt as he surveyed the sleepy campus of a July afternoon and reflected that a Dartmouth plant-in-being might well be providing the opportunity for many others to be quietly working a summer away in this pleasant setting.

SUMMER USE OF PLANT SOUGHT

With some such thoughts in their minds and with distinctly practical eye on the College balance, sheet, President Dickey and others in and around Parkhurst Hall came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that a college plant which had shown a capacity to work through war-time summers could also be used to advantage during peace-time summers. The problem thus became that of working out some program for summer usages of the Dartmouth plant which, without jeopardizing other College interests, would (1) produce income for the College and (2) make available to a wider group the advantages that the College and its setting peculiarly offer.

So far as concerns financial gain to the College, wisdom seemed to suggest that "until another approach clearly promised better results, the objective should be to achieve greater return out of existing overhead rather than increasing the overhead in the speculative hope of proportionately greater return. This concept, if it has not ruled out, has at least deferred for the time being the creating of programs operated by the College as such, with the attendant problems of special staffing and all the risks that go with the assuming of full responsibility for such enterprises. Rather, the College has sought a formula which would involve no added overhead but would hold some promise of filling to capacity the existing Hanover Inn and Dartmouth Outing Club summer dining facilities and of employing on a rotating basis those dormitories and class-room buildings which were not decommissioned under the regular schedule of off-season repairs and maintenance. To offer something more than the normally available summer dining facilities would require retaining in operation all or part of the Dartmouth Dining Association (Thayer Hall and Freshman Commons). This kind of thing invites the loss of one's shirt un less there is assurance of a steady and known market such as that prevailing when College is in session.

In harmonizing these various considerations, it was concluded that the College's purpose at present could be best served by simply acting as host to trade or professional associations and like groups which follow a practice of regular summer conferences or institutes and which find that an academic setting particularly lends itself to their needs. Having in mind a successful meeting of the Brookings Institution at Dartmouth in August 1947 the College last spring invited two other associations to conduct their summer gatherings here. Together these two meetings were in session for approximately three weeks and averaged in attendance about one hundred persons. The first of these was the Dartmouth College Sales Conference, August 8-13, sponsored by the National Machine Tool Builders Association, which was attended by a selected group of sales engineers of member companies in the national association. The facilities and faculty of the Thayer School played a particularly important role in making this conference a success. Following close upon the heels of the machine tool builders came the psychiatric social workers. Under the sponsorship of the American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers, a Dartmouth Conference on Education in Psychiatric Social Work was held on the campus from August 26 to September 9. In passing, it is of interest to note that most of those in attendance at this conference were women. The financial return to the College from the rental of dormitories and classroom facilities and from the meals served at the Hanover Inn and the DOC House in the cases of these "pilot" conferences justified Ad Building expectations. Moreover, the host of new friends which the College learned it could count among those in attendance at such conferences warmed the hearts of all the Dartmouth family in residence. The evidence was unmistakable that this line of approach was a sound one. As a result the scheduling of similar conferences on the Dartmouth campus for the summer of 1950 and subsequent years is already well under way.

IDEAL NUMBER NOT OVER 200

Experience so far suggests that for College purposes and for the maximum comfort of the visitors the ideal number of persons in attendance at a given conference on the Dartmouth campus should not greatly exceed two hundred at one time. I ime and further experimenting may well expand this "ideal." Moreover, it seems clear that the group which will be happiest here is the one to which it is of maximum importance to have ample assembly, classroom, library and other academic or semi-academic facilities and to which it is of no great consequence if some of the refinements of a first-class resort hotel are not found in the College dormitories. Essentially it is the "working conference which can be best served. While night life is quite largely confined to the Nugget and the June, there are, as every alumnus knows, plenty of tennis courts, plenty of golf courses, and plenty of mountains, streams and lakes for amusement. The College-owned Ravine Lodge at Mount Moosilauke lends itself to outof-town expeditions, as meals are regularly served there during the summer. And, of course, the other Outing Club cabins are on tap for the more adventuresome. Then, too, all of New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada await exploration by visitors making their way to and from Hanover.

What has been said before has had particular application to conferences scheduled between the last week in June and the first week in September when the College plant is least occupied with burdens associated with its always primary purpose of educating nearly three thousand men throughout an academic year. However, it is important to point out that it is also quite possible to arrange group meetings at Hanover while the College is in session provided they are small enough to be housed at the Hanover Inn and provided they do not coincide with such over-populated moments as football or houseparty weekends or Winter Carnival. Not only are such winter and spring conferences definitely welcome but they are indeed earnestly sought by the Hanover Inn in order to take up the seasonal slack in its patronage.

Individual alumni can render a service by keeping in mind this new program in which the College is engaged and calling the attention of interested associations to the facilities which are offered in Hanover for group gatherings. Correspondence on this subject should be addressed to the Dartmouth College Committee on Conferences and Institutes, Parkhurst Hall, Hanover, N. H.

EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE COLLEGE