"The President Speaks"

Shortly after the College had reassembled after the Christmas recess President Dickey gave the first of this year's "fireside chats" to the students over WDBS. These talks by the President were inaugurated last year as a means of keeping in closer and more frequent touch with the undergraduates—an objective no longer achieved as easily as it was in the days when Dartmouth was considerably smaller. Two such talks last year were highly successful, and the January 10 broadcast, scheduled for 10:30 p.m. when students were settled in their rooms, drew the usual large listening audience.

The President's informal talk dealt with "College affairs of mutual interest" and touched upon the work of the Undergraduate Council, particularly with regard to the proposed honor system; intercollegiate sports, including the matter of spectator conduct; College finances and the outlook on higher student fees; and the approach of the first final examinations for freshmen. President Dickey's comments will interest the alumni as much as the students and faculty, so we quote some of the highlights which space permits:

Concerning an honor system: "The Undergraduate Council has been giving a lot of attention to the question of whether we want to try an honor system at Dartmouth. The Academic Committee of your Council has been working with a faculty group, and within a few days there will be another full review of the subject in the Faculty Council. I just do not know what will be the outcome of these discussions, although I think it highly probable that the faculty as a whole will welcome any wellconsidered proposals for an honor system which are genuinely supported by an overwhelming number of you fellows. Higher education is not a game but serious business, and if the great majority of you really seriously decide to make a go of an honor system or, for that matter, anything else which will make your Dartmouth experience more meaningful to you, I promise you that you'll not find the official College slow to respond.

"But regardless of where we may or may not come out on an honor system, I want to be sure that all this talk about 'systems' doesn't lead some of you to take your eye off the ball, which, to put it bluntly, is not the system, but you. Indeed, gentlemen, the thing I fear most about any honor system is that it may foster the fatal idea for some fellows that their honor is only at stake when they are told by someone else that they are, as the phrase goes, 'being put on their honor. Leaving aside what I hope may be the evident fact that honor is an individual business between you and yourself and not something between you and any system, I do want to point out that in the practical world of affairs where mice and men do their work honor is not equated with an absence of supervision or a lack of enforcement to prevent and punish dishonorable acts. In any business or profession known to me you are expected to hold yourself uprightly regardless of how many bosses, auditors, or policemen are or are not there to keep you straight or to pick you up, in the familiar sense of that term, if you wobble and fall."

Concerning intercollegiate sports and their place at Dartmouth: "We have all heard, read and probably most of us have thought a good bit about college sports in recent months. As with any sizable activity of any consequence, intercollegiate sport has, and indeed always has had problems. And as you would expect, there are today, as there have been in the past, men of competence who are doing something about those problems. I cannot tonight attempt to deal with the breadth and complexities of these problems, but I do want to touch on one or two points. In the first place I think it is hardly necessary to more than say that Dartmouth believes in intercollegiate sports; we believe in the value of the will to win in honorable competition; we want good teams, but we know that our fortunes will vary from year to year and from sport to sport in healthy cycles so long as, and only so long as, our teams and the teams we meet are subordinate activities in the service of the purpose of institutions of higher education.

"Judged by these principles I believe the state of intercollegiate sport at Dartmouth is essentially sound, and we intend to keep it that way both by attending to whatever may need attention here from time to time and by joining our sister institutions in the Ivy group in further developing the structure of common standards and practices which has gcomoverned football play within the group since

"I wish I could tell you that the finances of intercollegiate athletics had a promising prospect. The contrary is true. This year we face a heavy deficit in our intercollegiate sports program and I fear the worst is yet to come. The general funds of the College are now being used to meet these deficits, but in the years ahead this condition will require either more income for the College or a reduced intercollegiate sports program, and my guess is that in the immediate future it means a little of both. In any event there seems to be no likelihood that football, at least as it is played by institutions of our character, can continue to attract enough spectators to support other sports in the style to which we became accustomed in the twenties and thirties."

Concerning the finances of the College: "I know from my own student days and from more recent experience on this job that the average undergraduate is not greatly interested in where the College gets its income except as it gets it from him in the form of tuition charges. This is natural enough, and I'm not one who thinks that a college student can be expected to worry about all the problems of the College as well as the world, but I do think that you might be interested in knowing that last year more than 15,000 individual alumni raised and presented to each of you about $200 for the purpose of putting you through Dartmouth regardless of whether you are receiving scholarship aid or not. Last year's Alumni Fund brought to Dartmouth more than half a million dollars. Those alumni reached down into their pockets and literally put a pretty sizable wager on you as an individual worthy of a Dartmouth education. ... I suggest to you, gentlemen, that one need not turn softly sentimental to recognize that such Dartmouth men are in turn worthy of the best that is in you and in me as we fashion the contemporary character of this College.

"A few figures will be helpful in giving you a concrete idea of the financial problem which the College faces simply to hold its own, let alone to make that kind of steady progress which alone keeps an institution first-rate. In 1940 the general educational costs of the College were about 2 million dollars; last year the same costs had risen to a total of over 31/2 million dollars, which represents an increase in college costs of 75%. During the same period Dartmouth's tuition and added fee have increased 50%. During this period the teachers and workers of the College have increasingly had to bear the brunt of the rise in living costs, and we are once again at the point where increased resources for these purposes are imperative if the College is to be kept strong. Simply on the basis of this year's budget it looks at the moment as if we face a gap of something like $550,000 between our operating expenses and our regular income from endowment and fees. That gap can only be closed, if it can be, by another stupendous effort of the alumni through this year's Alumni Fund. That is not your worry or responsibility yet but, gentlemen, what you are and what you do is a mighty big factor in raising that kind of money for your education. Let's be straight about it, it takes an awful lot of conscientious effort on your part every day of the Dartmouth year to make it all worth while in anybody's eyes. To put it briefly, you're the product we market.

"I want to say a word about the outlook on student fees. As I indicated a moment ago, our fees have not kept up with College costs and I think there can be no question but that the gap between the two must be closed before long. A number of our sister institutions either have raised their fees for next year or are planning to do so shortly. Vassar is putting a $400 increase into effect next year, and Yale recently announced an increase just short of $200. I understand that others are likely to make upward adjustments of between $100 and $200.

"No decision has been reached as yet on this question at Dartmouth, but it is a question which must be considered by the Trustees in the near future."

Since President Dickey's talk, Princeton has announced an annual increase of $150, raising the total of tuition and extra fees to $850, compared with Dartmouth's $675 at present. Columbia also has announced an increase in tuition from $600 to $750 a year.