THE COLLEGE

WE came into very close contact with many of the 813 members of the new Class of 1968 (threatening skies having forced Green Key's opening-day reception into a very crowded Alumni Hall) and can report first-hand that they are not easily nudged aside, that they smile readily and talk intelligently, and that they look very much like young men we saw on similar occasions last year, the year before, and the years before that too.

Only time will tell whether or not the Class of 1968 truly has "gear" - a word from the current student vocabulary that appears to embrace spirit, audaciousness, tradition, collective vocal power, and about everything else - even, we like to think, the gear in intellectual capacity motivation that most delights the faculty. In keeping with an advertising age, however, some enterprising newcomers managed to hang, obviously prematurely, a green-on-white banner proclaiming "Gear '68" high above the Hopkins Center porch - a "first" of sorts.

It seems that most freshman classes at Dartmouth these days can claim one or more very real firsts in making "official" College history, and '68 is no exception. This was the first freshman class to attend an opening Convocation in the Nathaniel Leverone Field House. Amid rich drapery falling 62 feet from Nervi's handsome roof design to form a spacious auditorium, the ceremony beginning the College's 196th year unfolded in a combination of colors matched by the frost-touched hillsides around Hanover.

The Class of 1968 was also the first of its kind to have classes in the newly finished Gilman Life Sciences Laboratory for by mid-September the faculty and staff of the Biological Sciences Department had made the move from Silsby Hall to the spanking new classrooms, laboratories, offices, and roof-top greenhouse at Gilman. The new facility, connected by covered passages to Dana Biomedical Library, the Medical Science Building, and Kellogg Auditorium, will be dedicated on October 30 at the same time the College is dedicating the Gilman Biomedical Center, which includes all the facilities noted above.

For the upperclassmen who have lived with Gilman from the excavation upward there are fewer campus innovations to talk about than in past years. The Green is greener thanks to summer rains and the valiant efforts of Buildings and Grounds workmen (who may also be thanked for pulling out the corn, cabbages, and other fast-growing vegetables planted in the new-sown sections by some seniors in a special effort to aid Miss Gill and her Thayer Hall budget); a very special bridge joins the second floor of Bartlett (now home to the language lab) to the road behind Thornton Hall; some sidewalks have been widened; a new green Har-tru surface now adorns the tennis court behind the hockey rink; but, all in all, it's just about the same Dartmouth they left last June - physically. In the classrooms, however, upperclassmen and freshmen alike will encounter some 82 fine new faculty (complete listing in The Faculty beginning on page 32), six of whom are returning alumni.