The 190th Commencement

SOME 612 Dartmouth seniors received bachelor of arts degrees June 14 in weather as threatening as the Commencement speaker made the world situation seem. Topcoat weather, more reminiscent of an October football Saturday than a June Commencement Sunday, greeted the 5,000 parents, alumni and visitors who turned out on the Baker Library lawn for the 190th Commencement ceremonies.

But if the spectators were huddled in their coats and blankets because of the windy 50-degree weather, they must also have been further chilled by the Commencement Address (printed in full in this issue) delivered by Dr. Charles H. Malik of Lebanon, president of the United Nations General Assembly.

Consider these thoughts:

"Communism appears to be winning on every front.... It controls directly one third of the world and it has infiltrated and softened up in varying degrees the remaining two thirds; it commands a most formidable international organization ... (and) great atomic capabilities; the West appears to be on the whole on the defensive, waiting for a Communist initiative to react to it, and the visible struggle is all on this side of the Iron Curtain.

"The rising generation is receiving wonderful things at the hands of the reigning generation, but it is also inheriting these serious situations for which, not the universe - whatever that may mean - not the cosmos, not dark impersonal forces, not the laws of nature or of history, but the human culture of a whole epoch must assume the responsibility."

The exercises at which Dr. Malik spoke were the climax of the three-day Commencement Weekend, and, of course, of four years of study and maturation for the seniors, who were in distinguished company in this debarkation. Nine men, all outstanding in fields ranging from arctic exploration to zoology, received honorary degrees. They were:

Patrick Murphy Malin, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union, and Joseph Lee McDonald, Dean of the College, Doctors of Humane Letters;

Alfred Sherwood Romer, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Doctor of Science;

James Barrett Reston, the Washington correspondent of The New York Times, and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, arctic explorer and author, Doctors of Letters;

Laurence McKinley Gould, president of Carleton College; Charles Edwin Odegaard, '32, president of the University of Washington; Fred Clark Scribner Jr. '30, Under Secretary of the Treasury, and Dr. Malik, Doctors of Laws.

Then, too, 24 candidates received diplomas in medicine from President Dickey after they were presented by Dean Rolf C. Syvertsen of the Medical School. Fourteen others, presented by Dean of the Faculty Arthur E. Jensen, received Master's degrees.

The valedictory for the College was given by President Dickey who urged seniors to "care" greatly as Dartmouth cares about them. John Edwin Baldwin, Oak Park, Ill., delivered the valedictory for the graduates, and discussed the "commencement act" as a moment in life. "At Commencement we joyfully celebrate not just past achievements or future promise, but the heroic action of going on, in spite of being only partially competent. We celebrate the present moment and its act."

This was the end of the beginning, as Commencement speakers are wont to say. The weekend had started Friday June 12, when the Baker Library chimes called the Class of '59 to Class Day exercises at the Bema. There parents and guests were welcomed by Edward J. Hobbie, president of the class. In the Senior Oration, Patrick O. Burns urged the seniors to put aside their fears of "being different," and of the unknown, and to seek independence and progress. The Class Ode, "Let Us Now Begin," by Lloyd H. Relin, and the Class Poem, "Fame is a Lingered Melody," by Cary P. Stiff II were also read.

Following a closing address by Kurt Wehbring, former president of the Undergraduate Council, the class moved to the Old Pine, where James A. Mueller, togged in Indian garb, delivered the Sachem Oration and Gilroye A. Griffin gave the Address to the Old Pine. The seniors, in their caps and gowns, concluded the traditional ceremony by filing past the Old Pine's stump and breaking their white clay pipes.

The Class of '79 Trumpeters made the first of their Commencement appearances at 6 p.m. and the Dartmouth College Band concertized at 7:30. The next scheduled event, a reception in the garden of President and Mrs. Dickey's home, was the first victim of the weather. Just as the affair was well unde way, the rains came. The reception was first moved into the President's House, then, for lack of room there, to Baker Library. The Glee Club concert in Webster Hall and the Commencement dance at Dartmouth House wound up the Friday activities.

On Saturday morning Phi Beta Kappa held its traditional meeting and 139 officer candidates from Dartmouth's three ROTC units were commissioned in ceremonies at Rollins Chapel. A pelting rain just before the affair forced a move from the scheduled site in the Bema. Seventy-four cadets were commissioned as second lieutenants in the Army, thirteen in the Air Force, and nine in the Marine Corps. Forty-three midshipmen were made Navy ensigns.

The newly commissioned officers heard Richard Jackson '33, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for personnel and reserve forces, urge them to consider seriously military service as a life career. "The United States today must have the leadership of men who know what America and democracy are all about, who fiercely believe in the validity of the moral ideas which underlie our society," he said.

The Commencement luncheon in Alumni Gymnasium at 12:30 found seniors, with their families, mingling with faculty, reuning alumni and guests. Here the crowd in effect picnicked indoors on chicken and potato salad while seated in the basketball bleachers and chairs on the indoor track.

After luncheon the crowd gathered in the upstairs gymnasium to hear President Dickey and Sidney C. Hayward review the year's activities in Hanover. The address for the 50-Year Class of 1909 was given by Joseph W. Worthen, and Richard G. Jaeger '59., class chairman, spoke for the seniors.

A rugby game pitting Dartmouth's Eastern Rugby Union champions against the Montreal Beavers followed. The Green's victory, closing out the season with a record of 21 wins, three losses (two on a Christmas trip to England and one on the spring trip to California) and a tie was the first rugby game many of the alumni and parents had seen. Down on the Connecticut the Dartmouth crew ended its home season with a sweep of the three races against Columbia and M.I.T.

Banquets for the reuning Classes of 1889, 1894, 1899, 1904, and 1909, a band concert and the Dartmouth Players' presentation of "The Boy Friend" wound up Saturday activities.

As Sunday dawned cloudy and cold there was some doubt whether the outdoor ceremonies could be completed, but the threatening weather remained just that - threatening.

This, then, was the end of another Dartmouth year. And it ended suddenly, as they all do. Within hours after Dean Fred Berthold pronounced the benediction that ended the Commencement ceremonies, the campus seemed deserted except for some reuning alumni renewing their love affair with the Hanover Plain.

The 1959 touch was given to Class Day when the Sachem Orator arrived at the Old Pine in a foreign car instead of by horse.

Despite chilly weather, Commencement drew a large audience on the Baker Library lawn.

The ROTC commissioning exercises in Rollins Chapel, where Richard Jackson '33 spoke.