The Undergraduate Chair
I'M depressed," the freshman announced last month as he wandered into a dorm room of seniors one evening. "I don't want to book any more; I got hit high and low in football practice; my date shot me down with a postcard. What can a guy do - huh?"
The seniors grinned like hyenas as the nonplussed '70 sat down. "Freshman syndrome at last," said one. "I remember it well."
The senior put down his law boards crambook. "You've arrived," he told the pensive peagreener. "We've taught you everything these past few weeks. How to win the girls, how to clutch exams, how to drink when you've clutched the exam, how to punt — in short, how to be a student prince. Yet you're still depressed - right?"
"I have a French exam tomorrow," explained the frosh.
"It comes out," exclaimed the senior, ignoring the dirty looks of his roommates. "The frivolity of student life merely masks the hunger of your questing mind. That is to say, Hanover life is a grind. The thing is —" he popped a top - "to make the most of it."
"You wanna flick out with us?" invited another senior. The freshman looked dubious. "N-o-o-o," he said at last. "I can't spare the booking time."
"As you please," the senior told him. "But you've got eleven terms to make it up in."
The freshman didn't go, but the seed was sown. The excitement of buying fresh new textbooks and signing one's name in them quickly wore off for the '70s. It was not long before their pleasure here was roodtripping, and they began to fall behind those rigorous study schedules tacked up next to their desks. As the senior said, they had "arrived," and like everyone else they began to compartmentalize.
The head of the average Big Greener is divided into bulkheads labelled "pain," "pleasure," "libido," "fear of Probation," and so on. When he sits in class listening to his professor he is on. When he sits in the Midget Diner afterward, lecture safe in his notes, exhaust fan blowing kitchen air out to Allen Street, he is off. He has also not spoken a single word all morning.
This is compartmentalization, and watertight at that. No middle ground seems to exist between on and off; the student either books or punts. The Top of the Hop was designed as a middle ground - a restful place to sit, enjoy an abstract painting, and watch the world go by. In no time it was seized by the bookers, who spend all afternoon in the astronaut chairs, staring 12 inches in front of their faces. Conversely, audiences for the more esoteric events at the Hop have been dominated by townspeople, for as the Big Greener says, in effect, "I'd like to, but I can't spare the time. And I'm learning enough as it is."
The image of the "Dartmouth Experience" — of Socrates in a Big Green jacket chatting with the faithful - is all very well, but in recent years the fact of compartmentalization has been bewailed at Convocations and in think sessions, and handed down from class to class until it finally reached our pensive '70.
When Great Issues and the General Reading Program died from it, the College decided to make their replacements completely volunteer. For the Freshman Reading Program, for instance, a '70 can, if he chooses, pick up a book from the reading list, then attend a lively bull session run by an upperclassman. The Senior Symposia, which replaced G.I. this year, kicked off in October with a three-day visit by Archibald MacLeish. Spaulding was packed - voluntarily. Students were on, without threats, without monitors, because MacLeish was a great man and they wanted to hear what he had to say. They gave him a standing ovation.
In such little ways times are changing at the College. Compartmentalization is being attacked. And the most important event this term - in its potential consequences for College life - was the quickening change in those bastions of Big Greenism - fraternities.
Last year had been a bleak one for the houses, so far as their relations with Park-hurst went. College inspectors had closed down most house kitchens, forcing the brotherhood downtown to eat. There was an unfortunate obscenity issue. "Would you like to have the fraternity system here eliminated if a workable alternative could be found?" wrote one student to Dean Seymour, in a correspondence reprinted in The Dartmouth last winter.
"Last year no. This year maybe," replied Seymour. And while no evictions or plans to turn Fraternity Row into study halls ever materialized, all agreed that there was a chill in the air.
Soon there was also reform in the air. The only question was how it would solve Hanover's unique social vacuum, and from which direction it would come. Parkhurst was reluctant to do anything radical; the Interfraternity Council debated and killed the usual rush reforms. The answer, surprisingly, came from the fraternities themselves.
Most houses are planning a series of seminars (with and without faculty) this year. An Experimental College, a student group like those described in Time magazine, is being set up by the versatile Bob Reich '68. A curriculum of non-credit courses will be offered winter term, most of them taught in the fraternities.
Delta Upsilon (now a local, and shopping for a new name) decided, under the leadership of President Michael J. Merenda '67, to include ten faculty in the house - that is, to give them the run of the house, and treat them as "one of the Bro'."
The decision was far from unanimous - many brothers felt that a professor in the house was an invasion of their privacy - hadn't they joined to get away from books and being turned on? Others Were worried about the fraternity's reputation if the word got out that Delta Upsilon welcomed faculty. What wouldpeople think?
Nonetheless, the measure carried, and Delta Upsilon sent invitations to a number of faculty, rushing them, as it were. Ten eventually joined. And to the surprise of both the hard core, and other houses, the ten meshed into DU without disrupting student life or dangerously inhibiting the brothers. "We figured they'd have to take their chances," said Merenda.
In a real testament of faith,. the professors have even taken to bringing their wives over to the house, and the wives have brought cakes and pie. Prof. James H. Clancy even brought over the cast of the Houseparties play (The Chinese Wall) for a casual get-together.
Something happens to the faculty members when they enter the house; they cease to be "Professors" as such - their scholastic aura falls away. If they are not yet "one of the boys," they are extremely interesting guys to talk to they have insight and humor, and they somehow look younger. So the compartments break down, little by little.
Indicative of the new spirit that pervades the fraternities this year, Zeta Psi mortgaged itself, and spent $12,000 over the summer renovating the interior, with the help of several brothers. Perhaps symbolically, it turned its venerable attic chapter room into a lecture hall, and impressed the new pledges with the new idea that the house belonged to them, and that the Bro' should keep it that way. "After all," explained President John H. Sinnigen '67, "we intend to be around for a long time." If classes and intellectuality could not break down the compartments, then, perhaps determination could.
Fraternity spirit was the most important news of the term, but the most spectacular was the students' victory in the "women upstairs" issue - fraternity room parietals similar to dorm room parietals. This privilege was won because students were willing to work to get it.
Students had felt that it was unfair to discriminate against fraternities and the 410 men who roomed in them. After study last spring, the proposal was drafted in early October by Palaeopitus, and quickly endorsed by the Interfraternity Council and the Undergraduate Council. Eighty per cent of the student body signed a UGC petition in favor of the proposal.
Then the proposal went to the Faculty Committee on Administration, the final arbiter. Parkhurst seemed still wrapped in mistrustful clouds, and what it would do was anyone's guess. But the students had done all they could.
And the Committee, under Dean Seymour, approved "women upstairs," gave Palaeopitus the responsibility of enforcing it, and set January 1 as the starting date. "A minor modification in the social privilege," said the Committee's resolution, but it was more than that. The Administration's approval seemed to signify a new era of mutual trust.
"What we ask," the IFC statement had stated, "is that Dartmouth show her faith in herself and in us, her product, by recognizing the right of a man to be alone with his date, and by granting us the accompanying responsibilities." The Collegs had come through; now it was the student's turn.
