A Poor Wager

Readers of the "Vox Populi" column of The Dartmouth perked up when they turned to Page 2 of the October 15 issue. There was only one communication to the editor that day but it was signed by President Dickey and what he had to say was of special interest to the campus, as it will be also to the Dartmouth alumni.

President Dickey s letter, his first public communication in the letters column of the student daily since he took office six years ago, was a commentary upon TheDartmouth's editorial denunciation of the removal of the University of Chicago student editor because of seeming Communist activity. The editor of The Maroon had attended the Communist World Youth Festival in East Berlin last August, and to the University of Chicago authorities this was enough evidence of Party sympathy to cause them to suspend the student paper until the editor should resign. The Dartmouth did not defend the summer activity of the Maroon editor, but it strongly condemned his removal from office as censorship and as a violation of the guarantee of the freedom of the student press.

At this point President Dickey felt impelled to make the statement that, given the same set of circumstances at Dartmouth, he "would not wager very much on the assumption that a different course would be followed here than has been followed by the official college and the undergraduate authorities at the institution in question." His letter, in full, was as follows:

To THE EDITOR:

This is the first public communication I have addressed to The Dartmouth. I write now because I fear that the recent editorial expressions in your paper regarding the removal of the editor of a student paper at another institution may mislead many here and elsewhere regarding what would happen here assuming, on the basis of your editorial, that the issue of a Communist Party student editor were involved. My instincts and training are opposed to making decisions on a hypothetical basis, but in this instance I will depart from my inclination and custom so far as to say that I would not wager very much on the assumption that a different course would be followed here than has been followed by the official college and the undergraduate authorities at the institution in question.

May I just add that this departure from a strict policy of neither associating the College with nor dissociating it from individual undergraduate utterances is strictly sui generis and not a precedent.

With great confidence in you and your hardworking associates.

Sincerely,

JOHN S. DICKEY

The Dartmouth took the President's letter in good spirit but came back with the assertion that if the Chicago action was right, it should have been initiated by the paper itself and not by the university authorities. There the matter stood, but President Dickey was clearly on record.