IN BRIEF ...
AS an addition to its indirect compensation benefits for faculty, administrative officers, and other employees, the College is now paying the full costs of a Group Major Medical Expense insurance program that went into effect July 1. This form of insurance protects against the "catastrophic" medical expenses of severe illness or accident and pays the major part of expenses not covered by Blue Cross-Blue Shield and similar plans. The new plan is underwritten by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, with which the College has its retirement program. At the same time, the College announced changes in its contributory group life insurance plan which provide added coverage for accidental death and dismemberment and also keep in force a larger amount of life insurance between ages 61 and 65, with $3000 instead of $1000 in force after retirement.
Phi Gamma Delta, the one Dartmouth fraternity that had not brought about a change in its national charter or gone local to meet the anti-discrimination requirements of the Dartmouth Trustees, gained local autonomy from its national organization over the summer. The Dartmouth chapter maintains its national affiliation but now has full freedom to set its own membership qualifications.
In another fraternity development, local Sigma Nu Delta last month voted to reaffiliate with the national Sigma Nu Fraternity, and applied to the Undergraduate Council for permission to do so. Action by the national this summer exempting the chapter from charter requirements regarding membership has met the conditions set by the College for continued national affiliation, Sigma Nu Delta contends.
A three-room camp, intended primarily for the use of alumni and their families, was built this past summer in the Dartmouth College Grant. It is located about five miles north of Wentworth Location on the privately maintained Dead Diamond Road, and commands a view of both Mount Dustan and Black Mountain from a clearing originally known as the Van Dyke Farm. Funds to build and equip the camp were contributed by Henry J. McCarthy '3l of Marblehead, Mass., president of Bomac Laboratories in Beverly, Mass., who has made frequent hunting and fishing trips to the Grant in his own mobile sporting camp. The new lodge was built of spruce logs cut nearby. Eric Sailer '6OM headed the Dartmouth student construction crew, the same one that replaced the DOC Hinman Cabin in Lyme-Dorchester earlier in the summer and rebuilt the DOC Peaks Camp last year.
Thirty New Hampshire and Vermont secondary-school teachers of biology are currently enrolled in the Saturday Institute of Biology at Dartmouth College. Under the direction of Prof. Charles J. Lyon, the Institute consists of twelve Saturday sessions on the general topic of "Environment and Growth." For the second year it has been made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation. In addition to Professor Lyon, Dartmouth faculty members teaching in the Institute are Professors F. Herbert Bormann, David S. Dennison, Roy P. Forster, William T. Jackson, and W. Byers Unger.
The Damon Runyon Memorial Fund has given $25,000 to Dartmouth Medical School for its cancer research program. The funds are being used to purchase research equipment for several departments in the School's new Medical Science Building. Cancer studies at the School currently deal with leukemia, methods for diagnosing gastrointestinal cancer, and ultra-microscopic and biochemical studies of living cancer cells. Since its founding fourteen years ago, the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund has invested more than $14,000,000 in cancer programs at 295 institutions in fifty states and 25 foreign countries.
Dartmouth's student-operated radio station, WDCR, will soon boost its daytime power from 250 to 1000 watts. The Federal Communications Commission has approved the station's application to make this change in order to equalize its broadcast range during the day and night. The daytime boost will give WDCR a dependable radius of approximately twenty miles. During the required waiting period before its new transmitter can go into operation, the station — which proudly claims to be the nation's first and only AM commercial radio station operated entirely by students — is installing a new dualchannel console and is remodeling some of its studio facilities on the top floor of Robinson Hall.
Dartmouth's 1960-61 concert series opens this month with afternoon and evening concerts on November 17 by the National Symphony Orchestra, directed by Howard Mitchell. The series presents Gina Bachauer, pianist, on January 10; the Robert Joffrey Ballet, January 25; Carlos Montoya, flamenco guitarist, March 7; and Marian Anderson, contralto, April 4.
The Lebanon Regional Airport this fall opened its new mile-long runway which now makes it possible for four-engine planes to operate there. Northeast Airlines has added a daily DC6-B flight from and to New York, via Manchester. It leaves Idlewild at 10:45 a.m. and arrives at 12:41 p.m. The return flight leaves Lebanon at 1:25 p.m. and arrives at Idlewild at 3:18 p.m. More frequent DC3 service continues between Lebanon and New York (La Guardia) and between Lebanon and Boston.
The required reading program for freshmen and sophomores continues as part of the "three-three" curriculum, but now it is called General Reading instead of Independent Reading. Students complained that the former designation was a misnomer because the program wasn't independent enough.
