Most Exciting Place on Campus
THE AUTHOR of this article thinks he was chosen because he is the oldest employee of the Hopkins Center in years of service. He joined that then ephemeral organization in 1956. He is also sure that this will be the longest piece of fiction ever printed in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. But he is cheered by the fact that no one will know how distorted his imagination is until 1969.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF HOPKINS CENTER
BACK in 1962 many alumni wondered whether the advent of the Hopkins Center would attract to Dartmouth many more students interested in the arts as a career than were found in previous classes and whether the character of the Dartmouth student body would change.
Evidence of creative or performing talent had long been a favorable factor in a candidate's record. When the news of the Hopkins Center began to reach the college-bound high school students, more students with talents and. interests in the arts applied for admission. But the admissions office found that among these men were many candidates with the intellectual capacity or as the students used to call it back in '62, "the gears" to handle the course loads as well as participate in the arts. These were the men they accepted. Since the goal of the admissions office has long been to attract to Dartmouth a "well-rounded" class rather than 800 "well-rounded" men, the increase in the number of men motivated toward the arts has made the recent classes even more heterogeneous.
An unexpected result of the Center was the general attitude of the student body as a whole toward the arts and the artists. Before the Center there was a sizable group of men who took studio courses in art and who worked with The Players. They tended to regard themselves, and were regarded by the other students, as Artists with a capital A and Theater people with a capital T. The attitude toward musicians was more relaxed. If a man sang in the Glee Club or played with a jazz combo he was not regarded as a special breed. Now a large portion of the student body gets involved in the arts with no thought of being an Artist or an Actor but just for the enjoyment of the activity for its' own sake. It is done in the same way that one would go out for the swimming team. It's fun, the facilities are outstanding, the instruction is top-notch, and one might like to continue it as an avocation after college.
With more men actively involved, their knowledge of the arts has increased and their appreciation of exceptional achievement in the arts is enthusiastic. Of course, due to the number of community art centers built in recent years, most students arrive on campus with a much better back- ground in the arts than was true seven or eight years ago. And as you know, this trend is still going on. We are constantly visited by delegations from communities and other colleges who want to see the Hopkins Center and how it works. Even though it took Dartmouth thirty years to get the Center, the timing could not have been better. We are riding the crest of the flood.
But let's get down to specifics by describing the growth in drama. Before the advent of the Center, The Players put on five full-scale productions a year. The Frost Play Contest had three or four entries, and the Interfraternity Play Contest added as many as twenty one-act plays to the yearly schedule. Professional touring companies visited Hanover occasionally.
Now the schedule is much heavier. The Players do two shows a term, one in the large theatre and one in the Arena Theatre. The musical show is still done for Carnival in collaboration with the music department. Every year the drama department helps the music department stage an opera. Dartmouth exchanges a play annually with another college in the Arts Exchange League. We also try to get a play from Howard University or some other institution outside of New England every two years. Of course the Spanish, German, French, and Russian clubs each stage a play a year. It has become one of their main activities.
Community wives have always acted with The Players, but the men in the community have never had a chance (except on the lecture platform) to exhibit their histrionic talents. In the fall of 1962 Warner Bentley organized a group to present a play for the children of Hanover during the Christmas vacation. This was so rewarding that they formally organized into the Hanover Community Theater and now do three plays a year. The Hopkins Center Summer Theatre company repeats one of its successes during the first week of College in the fall to start the season.
Even though the number of plays being done by The Players, the language clubs, and for the Frost Contest and the Fraternity Contest has increased, and an Interdormitory Play Contest has started, the number of students who want to participate has grown even greater. Two interesting developments have taken place which have helped to provide outlets. One, which just started this year, is the "Off-Wheelock Theater." A group of theater buffs who were tired of the absurd theater, the far-out, the way-out, and the completely lost plays which are being written now staged a minor revolt. They were able to talk the College into letting them use the old Robinson Hall theater. They now present revivals of the realistic plays of the twenties and thirties, What PriceGlory, Winterset, Waiting for Lefty, etc.
The other very active group is the "Living Newspaper." This began some years ago when the Hopkins Center did an all-arts festival on "The Culture of the Depression." One-Third of aNation was revived for that occasion. The students enjoyed the technique, which combined live drama, motion pictures, and many special effects. From time to time John Finch had organized small-scale productions on so- cial themes for the Great Issues course. Now it is an organized group of playwrights who are prepared to turn out a script and put on a show related to the course work of any department that wants it. This group of playwrights, technicians and actors have done some fine original shows for the government, history, psychology, and sociology Departments. These are frequently broadcast over the Educational TV Network. Now that we have a Visiting Playwright on the campus, student-written plays and musicals flourish.
ANOTHER important way in which the Hopkins Center has supported and made more vivid the work of the academic departments has been through exhibits. When the Center opened, a heavy schedule of traveling and Center-created exhibits was inaugurated. These were oftentimes suggested by the various departments. The physics department sponsored the first scientific exhibit in the Center. It featured the communications satellite developed by Bell Telephone. But in the fall of 1963 the sociology and geography departments developed their own exhibit using photographs, maps, and charts on "Urban-Suburban No Man's Land" (the cause and cure for the rash of pizza parlors, bowling alleys, outdoor movies, etc., that infect the new traffic arteries approaching our cities).
This exhibit was so successful and stimulating that the number of men electing sociology and geography courses increased appreciably the following term. In self-defense the other departments asked for equal time and space and the competition was on.
This and the "Living Newspaper" productions have become two-way streets. Many students working on a "Living Newspaper" play or on an academic exhibit become actively interested in the subjects being presented, and on the other hand many majors in the department sponsoring the exhibit or the play become interested in the theater or the art of designing exhibits.
Each department's budget has been increased to support such exhibits and they are all given a period in the Center schedule. The best exhibits are circulated to other colleges and secondary schools, and also have been made into TV shows. This has proved of great value in recruiting both students and faculty.
In music, in art, and in the crafts program the developments since the opening of the Center have been qualitative and quantitative. More students are involved in these activities both for credit and on an extracurricular basis. The results, aside from greater appreciation and tolerance as I mentioned in the first part of this article, have been in the quality of performance. The work of the painters is amazing. The competition is fierce, and nobody dares to dabble anymore. They throw away a lot more than they used to, but what they finally come up with is well worth the effort. Whereas earlier it was obvious that the students' ideas greatly outdistanced their ability and command of technique, now if they have something to say on canvas they know how to say it.
The Visiting Artists Program which has brought men of widely divergent views working in a variety of media has increased the students' field of vision in the arts. The art galleries of the Center schedule more traveling shows now and the new works being given to the College Collection have also increased the students' exposure to all the current movements in painting.
In music the growth is most easily measured in terms of the number of musical organizations now performing. In addition to the traditional organizations Glee Club, band, orchestra, chorus, and the Barbary Coast — we have the Spaulding Strings, the Faulkner Woodwind Quintet, The Center Chamber Orchestra, and a couple of vocal ensembles. We have a Sunday Concert almost every week in an effort to give them all an opportunity for public performance. I mentioned the annual opera. The Memorial Garden Court Concerts have helped to keep these organizations functioning all summer. Students attending summer school fill in for students on vacation.
When the Center was built, jazz musicians played in the Barbary Coast or in the four or five small combos. Now the big bands are back, and we have seven jazz orchestras trying to find rehearsal space in the Center. Electronic music arrived on campus when the students discovered the versatile recording equipment installed in the Center. We carefully check out these embryonic sound engineers so they do not blow out more than fifty dollars worth of hardware a term. Have you heard the records now on sale at the bookstore made by Dartmouth's own Fred Farwell and his Feedback Five?
THE craftsmen tend to fall into groups. There are the engineering types who spend their time building vehicles. They have turned out a great assortment of racing carts, gliders, jetsleds, and air buggies. The results are not always visually or aurally beautiful, but the creativity displayed is impressive. The Rocket Society has regular blasts, both beer and launching. There are the sound engineers who build their own equipment, and at the other end of the scale, the Society of Modern Makers of Ancient Instruments. Their harpsichords, lutes, and viola da gambas not only sound good but are good-looking. Then there are those who are interested primarily in good design. They don't care what they make particularly, and are just interested in the intellectual and aesthetic problem of making it look better and last longer. This group makes doorknobs, ski-bindings, faucets, furniture, dishes and tableware. They use materials ranging from Plexicopper to wood to clay. We had two students in the class of '67 who practically lived in the ceramics studio. One has just finished a commission for the new United States Embassy in Luthuliville, the capital of the Federated States of South Africa. He designed and had made in his studios all the planters, ashtrays, and crockery needed in the Embassy. His classmate worked out the glazes on the nose-cone of last month's moonshot.
A large part of the success of our present programs in art, music, drama and crafts has been due to the imaginative counsel given by our advisory groups. This bridge between the academic and the professional points of view has been very useful to us and I think has been helpful in turn to many of our advisers.
Dartmouth's location in a rural area has fortunately permitted us to offer to our neighbors in New Hampshire and Vermont many things that are found only in city cultural centers. The Center now draws to its concerts, lectures, films, art shows, and exhibits people from a radius of seventy miles. With the completion of more and more sections of Interstate Highway 91 (New York to Quebec) and Interstate 89 (Boston to Montreal) travel time to Hanover is being reduced. Many high schools in both states schedule annual trips to Hanover by bus. They arrive in time for a campus tour in the morning, have lunch, and hear a talk on college admissions in the Drake Room. They are given a tour of the Center in the afternoon, go to a football game, track meet, swimming meet, or baseball game according to the season. After supper they attend a play or a concert, then head home.
Of course the Center serves more than just the arts. You who have been back in Hanover for alumni meetings have seen how the Alumni Hall has made these gatherings more enjoyable and more effective. The size, location, and special equipment in this hall and the other facilities in the Center have attracted many educational associations and organizational conferences to Hanover.
THE reaction of girls to the Center has determined to a large extent the ways in which the Center has changed the social life of the College. The Class of 1966 held its freshman mixers in the Top of the Hop and the Fall Houseparty, the Carnival, and the Green Key dances were held in Alumni Hall. Freshmen, not being able to go to the fraternities, attended these in large numbers. Many of them became involved in Center activities - Glee Club, orchestra, band, players, the art studios, and the craft shops. In the fall of 1963 the number of men joining fraternities fell off slightly. For the first time non-fraternity men had a place they could be proud to take their dates.
It is the girls who have made the Center a social success. They like the Top of the Hop, the Agora refreshment lounge, the Buck Jazz and Folk Music lounge, the art galleries, the garden court and the terrace over the art galleries which is used for dancing in nice weather. They probably feel more glamorous in the new Center than they did in the dorms or fraternity houses, and they like to meet all the boys, not just the ones around the houses. At first the fraternities began to worry about what they regarded as competition. But as the classes of '66, '67 and '68 became upperclassmen they began to accept and use the Center as an asset. Many houses have their banquets in the Drake Room and some have pretheater or concert dinners there with dates. Sometimes two or three houses will hold joint dances or costume parties in Alumni Hall. The Interfraternity Council has worked out a system whereby individual houses sponsor open events such as an after-the-game jazz concert or what we used to call tea-dances on Saturday afternoons, or a folk-music hoot on Saturday night.
Many students were afraid that the Hopkins Center was planned to get the girls out of the dorms and fraternity houses. This was never considered and it has not worked out that way. Even though a couple will spend a lot of time in the Center during a weekend, the dormitory and fraternity rules on women guests have not changed. Many more freshmen and non-fraternity men have dates in Hanover on non-houseparty weekends than formerly. There is a lot more for them to do than in the days when the Center did not exist. Dartmouth is not co-ed but on weekends the Hopkins Center definitely is.
What do the students think of the Center? It is a lot like asking them what they think of the automobile. They can't imagine life without cars or Dartmouth without the Center. I understand that the most sought-after dorms are the Fayerweathers because they are equidistant between the Library, the Gym and the Center. The Center is habit-forming. Even on Sunday when there is no mail waiting for them the students seem to go wherever they are going by going through the Center. Naturally, they have a term for this operation, "Let's drop through the Hopper on the way back."
The Jaffe-Friede Gallery
The studio corridor and snack bar in Hopkins Center
