A Call for Equal Opportunity

ABROAD program to strengthen Dartmouth's capacity to meet the needs of disadvantaged young people, especially black students, was unanimously endorsed by the Dartmouth Board of Trustees at its annual winter meeting last month.

The program, ranging from recruiting and curriculum to the social climate, was proposed by the Committee on Equal Opportunity, established by the Trustees last May to "review Dartmouth's commitment to the objective of equal opportunity with a view both to strengthening existing programs and developing new initiatives."

The committee was headed by John R. McLane Jr. '38 of Manchester, N. H., and was composed of members of the Dartmouth faculty, administration and staff, students, alumni, and representatives of the Hanover community. Other committee members who contributed to the report were: Charles F. Dey '52, Dean of the Tucker Foundation; William L. Baldwin, Professor of Economics; Robert E. Bennett '69; Peter A. Bien, Associate Professor of English; Mrs. James W. Campion III; Robert W. Christy, Professor of Physics; J. Stewart Fraser, College staff employee; William McCurine Jr. '69; Ralph N. Manuel '58, former Assistant Director of Admissions; Pierre D. Payne '70; and Richard Everett III, Assistant Business Manager, who served as executive secretary.

In its 57-page report, which was praised by the Trustees as a guideline for Dartmouth in this area, the committee stated that prejudice and ignorance are important barriers to achieving equal opportunity for Blacks in the United States. To combat this prejudice and ignorance, the committee declared that "the White, whether student, faculty, or alumnus, must be exposed to a greater understanding of the Black, his culture, his history, his goals, his problems and his frustrations."

To this end, the report urged that Dartmouth seek to increase the number of qualified black students at Dartmouth to the point that Dartmouth, as a national institution, has a student body of the "intellectually able broadly representative of national patterns of [population] distribution based on race, religion, social and economic status, and other factors." Current black enrollment at Dartmouth numbers about 90 in an undergraduate student body of approximately 3100.

A parallel proposal calls for the determined recruitment of black faculty members, both regular and visiting, and the establishment of an internship program in teaching and administration at Dartmouth for black college graduates. Recognizing that black students at Dartmouth are handicappedy a lack of social support in the rural, essentially white environment of the Upper Connecticut River Valley, the committee urges that the College enlist the cooperation of other major employers in the area to develop job training programs for Blacks and other disadvantaged persons interested in employment in the area.

In the area of the curriculum, the report recommends the establishment of an interdepartmental faculty committee to correlate course material on Afro-American affairs already being offered in eight academic departments at Dartmouth.

Flexibility and experimentation in academic administration were also encouraged as part of Dartmouth's effort to provide a college education for the "educationally impoverished student from the ghetto, from the Indian reservation or from the culturally deprived areas of rural New Hampshire or Vermont."

As an example, the committee cited Dartmouth's experimental Special Students Program. Through the initiative of a Dartmouth alumnus, the College has been accepting as special students a limited number of young men from the black ghetto in Chicago's West Side who have demonstrated by their leadership records a capacity to benefit themselves and society through a college education. Last year, two young men, one a former leader from the Vice Lords gang from Chicago's West Side, came to Dartmouth under this plan and are now enrolled as regular students, and this year five more men from Chicago have been enrolled as special students.

Responsibility for coordinating the implementation of these and other proposals was given by the Trustees to Dean Dey, who served as vice chairman of the study committee. The Trustees assured him of their support in pushing forward with Dartmouth's efforts in the field of equal opportunity. To this end they requested that immediate consideration be given to those recommendations of the report which can be implemented within the College's existing budgetary and personnel resources.

Beyond the current year, the Trustees recognize the desirability of a special effort by the College in the area of equal opportunity, and the necessity of providing financial support for that effort over the next several years. In particular they approved the principle of including in the budget, starting with next year, a separate item to assist in the implementation of certain of the recommendations such as administrative and faculty internships, expanded enrollment and financial aid programs, curriculum innovation, and further development of the ABC and Jersey City programs. This special budget item will be financed from various sources including the College's own resources, participation in special programs of foundations such as administrative intern programs, and further extension of fund-raising efforts such as those which have supported the ABC program up to the present.

Founded nearly 200 years ago as a school for Indians and other youths, Dartmouth possesses a long tradition of providing better opportunities for nonwhites in America. The first black American was graduated from the College in 1828.

Yet, to underline the impact of discrimination and deprivation upon the nation's black citizens, the Equal Opportunity Committee pointed out that there are only approximately 130 Blacks currently in the College's living alumni ranks.

Even now, the committee noted that regardless of how much liberal arts institutions espouse the cause of equal rights, "the fact is that most black stuents, through no fault of their own, cannot be 'equal' to white students of the same age." Black and other disadantaged young people must therefore be given special consideration, the committee said, "if American educational institutions are to provide equal opportunity for higher education."

The committee reviewed the various ways in which Dartmouth has already been working to try to redress the balance, and urged that most of the past programs be continued and expanded as part of the College's Third Century mission.

Last summer, Dartmouth, utilizing lessons learned in the ongoing ABC program, undertook a new effort known as the "Bridge Program," whereby promising but-disadvantaged students accepted for admission to Dartmouth in September might take special work in math and English during the prior summer. While themselves tutored, they also work as assistant tutors to high school students in the ABC summer program, "demonstrating to Bridge students," the committee said, "that there is an important need for them at Dartmouth."

Dartmouth students, both black and white, are working as tutors and teaching assistants in schools with essentially black enrollment in Jersey City, N. J., Watts, Calif., and Clarksdale, Miss., in addition to contributing extensive educational and other social services in a number of Upper Connecticut Valley communities. It is proposed that Dartmouth enlarge upon this experience by establishing at Jersey City an Urban Center as headquarters for this kind of combination learning-teaching-service program, which, it was stated, would provide "an excellent opportunity for Dartmouth students to experience at first hand the serious problems of America's obsolete citiespoor housing, poor planning, poverty, inadequate education, ghettos, racial segregation and all the other problems plaguing our cities. . . . From this experience, sometime, they may be able to contribute to the solution of this Number One American problem."

Already both the Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business Administration are exploring ways in which they too can help bring their professional abilities to bear on some of the problems confronting Jersey City.

Various departments of the College and the Thayer School also have been conducting student and faculty exchange programs with such colleges as Talladega, Miles, Fisk, and Morehouse. These programs will be reviewed for continuation and possible expansion.

Referring to the positive contributions to Dartmouth life made by its black students, the committee recommended in an earlier interim report that the AfroAmerican Society at Dartmouth be provided facilities on campus. In response to that recommendation, the College made the historic Lord House available to the society last September as a Center for Afro-American Affairs.

"Advocates of this concept of Black Power," the report stated, "seek to encourage pride of Blacks in their race, recognition of the history and cultural achievements of black peoples, and the development of economic independence, educational achievement and equality of opportunity.... It is difficult for those of us who are white on this prestigious college campus to understand the problems of those whom we feel have been denied 'equal opportunity,' and to comprehend fully the implications of the dedication, perseverance, imagination, and hope for a better life for their people which the Blacks in our community express.

"We feel that it is incumbent on all of us to listen sympathetically to what the Black is saying and is striving to achieve. In such new action areas, success, modification and failure will inevitably occur. We, as well as they, must be patient and considerate of the other. We must not be guilty of prejudging. We must on the other hand be equally imaginative about how to secure for the disadvantaged the equal opportunity to which we feel all Americans are entitled....

"Equal opportunity for all Americans is an obtainable goal. It will require concentrated effort at all levels of our society. At Dartmouth, as in the rest of America, we hope that there will be a unity of all as members of the Dartmouth family and at the same time a healthy recognition and respect for the uniqueness of each individual within the 'family.'"

One section of the report dealt with the role of the alumni in Dartmouth's equal opportunity efforts. It is quoted here in full:

We have already alluded to several ways in which Dartmouth alumni can assist the College in its effort to provide increased opportunity for Americans.

Alumni can be of further assistance in recruitment of able black students. Local high school officials need to know what Dartmouth has to offer. Able students should be identified early in their high school careers, preferably as sophomores, given guidance about subjects to take to be sure they become academically qualified, be encouraged to aspire to attend a good college, preferably Dartmouth, and should be assisted in sum- mer work. The Dartmouth Admissions Office should be kept informed of the students' progress.

In the continuing expansion of ABC to new public school communities there is a substantial role for the Dartmouth alumni organizations throughout the country. Alumni groups can assist in providing initial sponsorship and in establishing contacts between local officials and the ABC staff in Hanover. They can later act as "host families" to ABC students. This role was outlined to the Dartmouth Alumni Council at its June 1968 meeting. The Council voted its approval and a committee is being appointed to develop an alumni organization to assist in expanding the public school ABC program.

Much of the nation's effort to provide increased opportunity for Americans will of necessity have to be done at the local level. Dartmouth could play a small but nevertheless important role in motivating action in local communities by bringing to them for a weekend seminar under the sponsorship of local Dartmouth alumni groups a team of Dartmouth faculty and students to speak about the problems of providing equal opportunity, solutions which are being tried by communities and in particular about Dartmouth's contribution. This concept involves an amalgamation of the Alumni College and Horizons program, modified to bring the program to local communities and restricted to the problem of equal opportunity. If the concept has merit, the details of the program's length and content would have to be evolved. Hopefully, such seminars would be experienced by more than Dartmouth alumni and might foster appropriate local action.

Dartmouth alumni might further local initiative by canvassing alumni about their participation in expanding equal opportunity whether in jobs, housing, education or the like. A Dartmouth alumni award might be made to one or more persons or clubs in recognition of distinctive contributions in this area.

John R. McLane Jr. '38 served as headof the Committee on Equal Opportunity.