Catholic Student Center

CONSTRUCTION will begin this month on a new Roman Catholic Student Center at Dartmouth College. The three-unit center, to cost about $460,000, will include a chapel seating 250, a chaplain's residence and social center, and a connecting building housing a 133-seat lecture hall and library, where study facilities will be available.

The Center will be built on Webster Avenue at the west end of Fraternity Row on a 2½ -acre site. The site was acquired from the College in exchange for the present Aquinas House property on Choate Road, a remodeled residence which is no longer adequate for the student activities conducted there.

A campaign to raise $550,000 for construction and other costs of the new Aquinas House has been in progress since January and has reached two-thirds of its goal. The Rev. Father William Nolan, Aquinas House chaplain, explains that although Dartmouth officials and the Hanover parish have cooperated in its student program, the center will continue to be completely independent of both financially. It is under the supervision of the Bishop of Manchester, but its support comes entirely from individual parents, alumni and friends.

Richard Cardinal Cushing spoke to several hundred students and some alumni at a communion breakfast in Hanover on April 9. He described Dartmouth's Catholic student center as the first of its kind in New England and said it would have "a tremendous effect for good."

The first Aquinas House was established in 1953 to provide religious and social facilities for some 400 Catholic students at Dartmouth. Father Nolan has announced that the lecture hall and social facilities of the new center will be available for use by other religious and campus organizations.