COMMENCEMENT 1968
COLLEGE officials who had elected to "live dangerously" on several Commencement mornings in recent years chose that course again this year — and came through unsoaked. Under a ceiling of rain clouds that threatened but did not let go until late afternoon, a capacity audience of 5,000 filled the south lawn of Baker Library on Sunday morning, June 16, for graduation exercises that ended the spring term of Dartmouth's 198th year.
Among the 944 who received degrees were 708 seniors upon whom President Dickey conferred the Bachelor of Arts degree. The occasion was primarily theirs, in temper as well as numbers. The most academically decorated class in the history of the College, the men of 1968 included 116 members of Phi Beta Kappa and 144 seniors who had won 312 awards for graduate study. Ironically, it was also the first graduating class to have its advanced education clouded by the Vietnam war and made doubtful by new rulings of the Selective Service authorities. In the light of these anxieties about a war that was debated all year, the hard-won achievements of the men of '68 were all the more notable.
The recent growih of graduate programs at Dartmouth was reflected in the record number of 228 advanced degrees conferred on Commencement morning. Among the 14 recipients of the Ph.D. degree were the first two men to complete the new doctoral programs in physics and pharmacology. Seven of the doctorates were in molecular biology and five in mathematics. Tuck School awarded the Master of Business Administration degree to 105, the Medical School gave the Bachelor of Medical Science degree to 47, and Thayer School awarded a variety of advanced engineering degrees to 34. Other advanced-degree recipients were 25 who earned the Master of Arts degree, all in the sciences, and three who earned the Master of Science degree.
This year's honorary degree list was headed by three men who received Dartmouth's highest honor, the Doctorate of Laws: William Benton of Southport, Conn., chairman and publisher of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and U. S. Representative to UNESCO; the Hon. Jacob K. Javits, United States Senator from New York; and Sir Eric Wyndham White of Geneva, Switzerland, recently retired as Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. President Dickey conferred the honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters upon R. Buckminster Fuller of Carbondale, Ill., engineer, professor of design science, and architect-innovator of the geodesic dome, and upon Katharine Meyer Graham, president and publisher of The Washington Post. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, minister of the Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia and founder of the Philadelphia Opportunities Industrialization Center; and the honorary degree of Doctor of Science on John C. Ewers '31 of Washington, D. C., Director of the Museum of History and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution, and on Prof. Roger R. Revelle of Cambridge, Mass., Director of the Center of Population Studies at Harvard University.
Senator Javits gave the Commencement Address at the conclusion of the conferring of honorary degrees. But his prepared speech underwent some change extemporaneously when he responded to the address by Senior Valedictorian James W. Newton '68 of Glendale, Ariz., who earlier in the exercises had provoked part of the audience to boos and expressions of outrage and some of his classmates to a countering show of support when he, a Quaker pacifist, denounced U. S. involvement in the Vietnam war and urged the men of '68 to refuse to fight there. The full texts of the Newton and Javits addresses appear in this issue.
Senator Javits had come to Dartmouth prepared to speak on "Change in Our Society — Violence or Nonviolence?" and despite the additional remarks evoked by Newton's valedictory, this was still the heart of the Senator's forceful address, which got a standing ovation at the end. Violence, he warned, is a self-defeating vehicle of change that ultimately could provoke only "bloody counter-action." The apostles of violence, he said, must be deprived of the "pragmatic argument that only violence works by showing people — young and old — that something else also yields results and with far less cost. That something else is political action and other forms of legal action as a means of persuasion. This is why I believe we must clearly display to those who are attracted to violence that the laws of our land — including the Constitution — are capable of reform through peaceful processes. There are no limits to the changes we can make."
President Dickey, in his valedictory to the Class of 1968, touched on the same theme of turbulent, tragic events in American life today. "America must learn from these recent events," he said, "that there are great needs of equal opportunity and social decency that must be met, and that there is no need that can be well met within a free society by the destruction of that society and the renunciation of man's obligation to be human."
President Dickey's brief farewell address came near the close of the exercises. After the singing of Men ofDartmouth and the benediction, the seniors marched out to await their families on the campus, where the postmortem discussion of the morning's events was the most animated in years.
Honorary degree recipients pose with President Dickey before the procession to Baker Library.Seated (l to r): Sir Eric Wyndham White, LL.D.; Katharine Meyer Graham, L.H.D.; President Dickey;Senator Jacob K. Javits LL.D.; William Benton, LL.D. Standing: The Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, D.D.;R. Buckminster Fuller, L.H.D.; John C. Ewers '31, D.Sc.; and Prof. Roger R. Revelle, D.Sc.
The Commencement academic procession arriving at BakerLibrary after marching across campus, from Hopkins Center,through the split ranks of the 708-man graduating class.
The Old Pine survives another barrage of smashed pipes.
Minigowns worn by two candidates forthe A.M. degree were a new touch.
At ROTC graduation in the Bema on Saturday morning, 83 seniors receivedcommissions in the Army, Navy and Air Force. Rear Admiral William C.Hushing, commander of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, was the speaker.
Gene Rycewicz, of football fame, alsowinner of the Barrett Cup, as Chief Marshalprepares to lead his class to thegraduation exercises at Baker Library.
Cameras at the ready, families await the entrance of graduating seniors.
Peter Hofman '68, president of the graduatingclass, addressing parents, alumniand classmates at Saturday luncheon.
