THE COLLEGE
JOHN SLOAN DICKEY would be the first to admit that a college president who opens an academic year by alerting his community to be prepared and responsive to change stands a good chance nine months later of being declared a soothsayer. In the hope that the College's 195th year can be seen in summary for the dynamic span of time that it was, the event is linked to the Convocation Address excerpt that "foretold" its happening.
"Being prepared for change has always been one of the functions of education ..." In a world exploding with hyphenated combinations of sciences (and the astounding vitality they represent), the dedication of the Dana Biomedical Library as a new unit of the Gilman Biomedical Center showed that Dartmouth was not only marching with, but perhaps ahead of, the leaders in being prepared for change in the sciences. And not only that, as Mr. Dickey noted in his dedicatory remarks, Dartmouth has eliminated the hyphen! Hyphen or not, the medical and biological sciences have been brought together at Dartmouth. Meanwhile across campus in the less impressive, and considerably older, Bartlett Hall, the Com- parative Studies Center moved quietly but decisively into the life of the College under its co-directors Professors Gramlich and Radway. Concentrating on non-Western studies, the Center set out to explore with the faculty the many possibilities for enriching the teaching of undergraduate courses by a comparative examination of their fields of interest as known in other cultures.
"For the unprepared it (change) can beall kinds of misery." The wisdom of this particular statement was thrust upon the student body early in the year when, as our Undergraduate Editor Dave Boldt '63 put it in his November column, students found themselves "facing up to the ugly problem of racial discrimination." In its editorial columns, and through the student letters it printed, The Dartmouth expressed the distaste of the campus for the actions of the two fraternities who were so "unprepared." Responsibility for corrective action was taken by the Interfraternity Council and, after much moral re-examination among the students and several false starts, a resolution opposing group and individual discrimination practices in fraternities was adopted and received a vote of endorsement by the Faculty.
"... the prerequisite ... is a capacityfor being undismayed when, as happensto all of us, we come face to face withchange we neither made nor foresaw and'damn well don't like.' " The unexpected's name was George C. Wallace and he is the Governor of Alabama. He was unexpected because his invitation to speak at Dartmouth was sent by the Undergraduate Council and Cutter Hall. Of those who were looking forward to the Alabaman's visit, the great majority saw in it the ideal opportunity to protest and to dramatize the need for dramatic change in the civil rights plight of Negroes in the South. And protest they did, both student and faculty'— by black armband, placards, and picketing. Nathaniel Leverone Field House was jammed that evening as most of the College community came face to face with this leading proponent of a status quo that the audience' obviously damn well didn't like.
"... also knowing there are seasons ofneed other than his (the student's) own inwhich change ripens." One of the ironic features of the Wallace visit (for Mr. Wallace, that is) was the impetus it provided for the creation several months later of a Hanover chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The problems the local NAACP concerns itself with were not in Hanover's backyard but in the nation's, and the importance of this is sifting into the realities of student life. Some have joined in NAACP membership; many others stopped to hear Chad Day '53 of Boston speak at a sunny Sunday noontime event commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision on school segregation; and others were among the purchasers in the art auction in which $3200 was raised to support the civil rights movement. Fittingly, the auction was held on the plaza before the Hopkins Center on the weekend in which the final event of the two-month "World of William Shakespeare" was celebrated. In music, art, drama, literature, history, science, philosophy, etc., the issues of an important era in the history of man had been explored with a tremendous vitality. The soul-searing paintings of William Christopher in honor of Martin Luther King hung in the Hopkins Center Lounge in the shadow of an Elizabethan banner.
"He must have a taste for it; he mustbe able to judge it, spotting the specious . . Mr. Dickey was talking about change but "politics" might well be substituted for "it," if one wished to credit the President for predicting the student involvement in the New Hampshire Primary. But the change Messrs. Rockefeller, Goldwater, Stassen, Lodge and Nixon (both by proxy), and Mrs. Smith had in mind was one of personnel, although the student communications media tried hard to make it one of issues. From all accounts, the students' taste for judgment was there, but as with all changes of a political nature the ability to judge the specious was not always as much in evidence.
"And if leadership is to be creative aswell as good, it must on occasion generate the change it leads." Last fall Associate Dean Charles F. Dey '52 had scarcely enough time to shake the dust of the Philippines from his Peace Corps boots before he was plunged into one of Dartmouth's most imaginative, and potentially constructive, extracurricular activities of the decade—Project A.B.C. Called "A Better Chance" because it promises to give just that to fifty boys, mostly Negro, from deprived backgrounds, this summer-long program will prepare these young people through an intensive study of math and English to enter cooperating private preparatory schools where they will continue their studies.
Another summer program that fits the self-generating pattern will bring 150 college juniors, male and female, to Dartmouth this summer for the first part of a two-summer training program to prepare them for Peace Corps service in Frenchspeaking West Africa. The idea for this project occurred to the College after completing the 1963 program for Peace Corps volunteers to Guinea. The idea was submitted to Peace Corps headquarters and was cordially received for a similar program was being thrashed out there.
There have been other good ideas on campus this year, of course, but these two are of such import - and were so impressively put into being - that they will be the headliners in another big summer on campus.
