LETTERS
The Alumni Voice
To THE EDITOR:
Mr. Altman's letter requesting more alumni suffrage raises several interesting and highly involved questions. Dartmouth is an alumni-oriented college and theoretically the alumni should have an important voice in college affairs. But is it practical for them to have any more voice than they now do?
A friend of mine who is a college consultant and who has surveyed over a hundred colleges for a prominent foundation reports that the one element that is present without exception in all colleges with high and growing reputations is a vigorous, devoted, generous, and understanding board of trustees. Colleges that are standing still or that are slipping back are those with boards who exercise merely judicial or review functions.
Unless the trustees have an almost complete understanding of the educational aims of the college and unless they take the trouble to find out how those aims are being implemented by getting to know and understand faculty, student, and administration problems, they as a board cannot exercise the leadership entrusted to them.
Would a board elected by the alumni be as effective as Dartmouth's present board? Mr. Altman mentions Harvard's Board of Overseers but fails altogether to mention the real ruling, active group that makes the real decisions on Harvard's destiny - the Corporation. The small group belonging to Harvard's Corporation meet twice a month to study in detail the problems facing Harvard. One of Harvard's department heads who is making a survey of financial practices and problems in higher education told me several days ago that the Board of Overseers was becoming an honorary group that met, listened, and rubber-stamped.
Both of the people whom I have mentioned were unstinting in their praise of Dartmouth. They both felt that its rapid and continuing progress was due in large measure to the rapport which existed between the president and the other members of the board. They stressed that because Dartmouth had a small but working board it was able to adjust quickly and effectively to changing conditions and thus give its students an education based upon the best current practices and thinking.
Most Dartmouth alumni in their unswerving and uncritical devotion to the college which they knew, do not understand how much Dartmouth has changed and how much it must and will continue to change in the future - this despite the excellent interpretive articles in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. It is highly questionable, therefore, whether they would be in a position to choose the kind of men with the devotion, the time, and the educational vision so necessary to an effective board of trustees.
General Secretary, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, N. Y.
Not Impressed
To THE EDITOR:
The enclosure to the April 1958 DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE entitled "American Higher Education 1958" was interesting and contained some fine photographs. Unfortunately, the presentation was highly unimaginative. There were some lovely cliches ("Its pressing problems and needs are exceeded only by its opportunities"), but the article was hardly inspiring. The discussion of quantity vs. quality education is almost trite and certainly not sufficiently comprehensive. The examples of a few institutions attempting to combat this problem were encouraging, but in view of the fact that the original problem is poorly presented these exceptions almost make the article lose perspective. In all, the article's failings were "exceeded only by its opportunities" (to do thorough, imaginative work).
Washington, D. C.
