The Undergraduate Chair
IT was a tumultuous month for the American university and Dartmouth watched aghast as Harvard smoldered over ROTC, suddenly aware as violence again visited the Ivy League that it can happen here. In Hanover, the issue of ROTC was pushed aside as the AfroAmerican Society, so long quiet, suddenly determined that it was time for the College to press ahead with its commitment to equal opportunity.
To be sure, from President Dickey's postwar forced desegregation of the fraternity system to last year's "McLane Report" there has been change in the air. But institutional change is slow in coming, and it took the Afro-American Society's pressure to commit the College to immediate action. In late March, the AAS issued a list of 18 "demands" to the College administration, calling for implementation of, among other proposals, an 11 percent minimum black quota for each entering class, hiring of black administrative officers, non-discriminatory financial aid rules (which would impose no "costs," such as prohibiting ownership of cars, on financial-aid recipients), a Black Studies program similar to the International Relations major, and suspension of normal degree requirements for professors hired for the Black Studies program.
In addition, the blacks wanted admission of 10 to 15 "special students," Negroes who could not meet entrance requirements but who would enter a nondegree program, becoming regular degree candidates upon satisfactory performance; exemption of two black undergraduates from regular course work each term to spend time recruiting prospective black undergraduates and working in the counseling office; and extension of the summer "Bridge Program" which brings educationally deprived entering freshmen to Hanover for remedial work.
The administration appointed as special negotiators Dean of the Faculty Leonard M. Rieser, Dean of the College Thaddeus Seymour, Dean of the Tucker Foundation Charles F. Dey, and Professors James W. Fernandez, chairman of the faculty Committee on Educational Planning, John A. Menge, acting chairman of the Committee on the Freshman Class, and William M. Smith, chairman of the Committee on Instruction.
The negotiators met with the AfroAmericans on April 4, the deadline the AAS had set for a College response. Undergraduate reporters for The Dartmouth and WDCR stationed themselves outside Nathan Lord House, the AAS student center, trying futilely to break through the secrecy which surrounded the talks, and indeed all aspects of the formation of the demands and preparation of the negotiators' response. Spokesmen on both sides repeatedly said they felt publicity would endanger the bargaining.
Though the Afro-American Society never mentioned violence, the experience of other universities was in everyone's mind, and much of the College was prepared for a building seizure, or worse, if the AAS didn't get what it wanted. Wallace L. Ford '70, the Afro-American Society's coordinator, helped the rumors along by t-lling The Dartmouth the society had "plans" to handle any contingency. Rumors of administration preparations - not all of which were entirely spurious - became the talk of the students and faculty, and the campus, left in the dark, prepared for the apocalypse.
It never came. It was almost anti-climactic when, on April 14, the Afro-Americans issued a statement assuring that the blacks were "confident that our relationship [with the College negotiators would] preclude even the consideration of violence and confrontation by any sector of the College community."
At the same time, both sides jointly made public all official communications they had passed during the bargaining to date. Though they scotched the demand for a minimum black quota and a demand, added during the negotiations, for a separate judiciary for black students the College representatives were prepared to urge passage of the rest of the list, only slightly revised.
While some of the proposals concerned purely administrative matters and could be effected by the negotiators, most required some form of faculty acceptance. Now, the secrecy that had proved so useful during the bargaining backfired among some members of the faculty. Although the executive committee of the faculty ' met three times during the negotiating period, AAS "talking teams" met with several faculty committees and another meeting involved all department chairmen, a number of younger faculty members, left out of the consultations, were resentful that they were faced with the ratification of the negotiators' proposals on the one hand and, on the other, a veto which might bring on disruption. In the final analysis that was no choice at all, and the faculty approved the negotiated proposals April 16.
How much substantive difference the "demands" really made in the context of the McLane Report, which had already recommended most of the changes and had been approved by the Trustees, was problematical. However, there seemed consensus that the experience had speeded things up considerably and, perhaps most significantly, created a case study for peaceful bargaining between a university and its dissident students. Nevertheless, there was no way to assess the wounds left on the faculty or how it would act in a later crisis.
By mid-month, it -appeared such a crisis was possibly on the way. As the faculty was voting final approval of the Afro-American program, Students for a Democratic Society were planning a Parkhurst Hall sit-in to protest inaction on "de-institutionalizing" ROTC, and SDS leaders were saying privately they might disrupt the College if enough support materialized. As the now no longer unaccustomed pressure was felt by administration and faculty, each waited to see how the other would react should another crisis be on the way.
"Pass-Fail's" Future
The future of the non-recording option __ whereby a student may designate two courses each year for which he receives no permanent grade — was in jeopardy last month, following release of a report on the grading option by the faculty's Committee on Educational Planning.
The report, prepared by Professor of Sociology Robert A. Feldmesser, found that the non-recording option, commonly called "pass-fail," was used only about half the time it could have been, that students receiving pass-fail grades in a given course demonstrated significantly lower performance than those who did not, that students who used the option consistently found their courses less interesting than those who didn't use it, and that pass-fail recipients spent no more time in academic activities outside the classroom than those receiving regular grades.
At a two-hour session in the Top of the Hop shortly after the report was issued, students responded by criticizing grading in general. One undergraduate, not surprisingly, said he favored a system where students would grade themselves, then fight it out with the professor if the two disagreed.
A more likely alternative is the one recommended by the report's author. Said Feldmesser: "If it is desired to continue to give students more freedom and responsibility in setting their own educational goals than the conventional system allows, while avoiding the [pass-fail] option's negative effects on motivation and interest, one way of doing so would be to have all grades become part of the [grade point average] and the permanent record but to permit students to vary the weight that each grade will have, within designated limits."
Election "Piefery"
Though formal student government was abolished last year, undergraduates still have the opportunity to vote for largely honorary class officers and the annual recipient of the Barrett Cup, awarded to the outstanding member of the senior class. Apparently, to a band of self-proclaimed protectors against the spread of Mickey Mouse" student government, even this is too much, and last month such a group deftly altered over 2000 student government ballots to their own purposes.
Making their way into the student government offices in the basement of College Hall the night before elections, two undergraduates quietly carried out a box of ballots to a group of waiting cohorts, who in the meantime had prepared a fairly good facsimile ballot for the Barrett Cup vote. The phony ballot differed only slightly from the original, namely by substituting for one of the blank spaces for Barrett Cup nominations the name of "Albert C. Pief," the notorious non-person who swept last year's student government elections. They also added to a list of alternatives for holding this year's Wet Down ceremonies a terse "eliminate it entirely."
As might have been expected, the Pief candidacy attracted the vast majority of voters, most of whom also chose to eliminate Wet Down. Since the nominations are screened by the Dean's Office, which this year as last was unaccountably infuriated by the Pief movement, there is virtually no chance Pief's name will be carried through to a final vote. However, the election defrauders were confident their man would sweep the final vote as a write-in, and there was word several of the real nominees planned to pull out rather than face another Pief bandwagon.
CQ ... CQ ... CQ
WIET, the College amateur radio station, is interested in contacting alumni for the purpose of forming an alumni amateur "net." Interested hams should get in touch with Chris Coakley '71, 404 Wheeler Hall, by postcard, indicating suggestions for time of day, band and mode. Alumni in Hanover are urged to contact Chris for a quick tour of the shack, still .precariously perched on top of the physics building. To start things rolling, the WIET boys will be listening May 18 at 0200 GMT on 14.320 megacycles, plus or minus 10 kc.
