The Class Officers Weekend

CLASS officers and their wives were welcomed to Hanover by beautiful spring weather for their annual gathering on May 2 and 3. A total of 234 officers participated in the working sessions of the weekend and, with the 159 wives in attendance, enjoyed the social events of the two days.

The opening meeting of the weekend took place Friday afternoon at 3:30. J. Michael McGean '49, Secretary of the College, presided and introduced the two speakers for the session, Charles F. Dey '52, Dean of the Tucker Foundation, and Gilbert R. Tanis '38, Executive Officer of the College.

In the evening the officers and their wives gathered for cocktails at the Top of the Hop, followed by the annual banquet in Alumni Hall. After dinner everyone adjourned to the Spaulding Auditorium for the presentation of three Dartmouth Alumni Awards. Wilbur W. Bullen '22, Chairman, Dartmouth Alumni Awards Committee, presented them to Truman Thwing Metzel '23, Edward William Roessler '25, and Wesley Hall Beattie '33. (Citations appear on the next page.) The Dartmouth Glee Club then presented its special Bicentennial production entitled "A Dartmouth Portrait." An informal social hour held after the concert was enlivened by sounds of the Dartmouth Five.

The 1969 reunion chairmen got down to business before everyone else on Saturday morning by holding a breakfast meeting at 8. They joined their fellow officers for a joint meeting at 9, presided over by Robert E. Alden '49, president of the Class Presidents Association. Addison Winship II '42, Director of Development, gave a progress report on the Third Century Fund and the 1969 Alumni Fund campaigns. Lloyd D. Brace '25, chairman of the Board of Trustees, discussed "The Search for a New President."

Mr. Brace reported that a long list of names had been suggested to the Search Committee and that a group of nominees who would get the most serious consideration had been separated out. The only thing he could report with certainty, he said, is that the next President of Dartmouth College will not be a woman. There are no prejudices as to background or age, although the man chosen would be expected to serve not less than ten and probably not more than twenty years, and there is no requirement that he be a Dartmouth alumnus. Mr. Brace mentioned the complex factors that enter into the choice of a President at this time, and added that the committee had even been examining the suggestion that the job be divided between two top men. The work of the Search Committee will not enter its final phase, Mr. Brace said, until a report has been received from the Analysis Committee, made up of faculty, student, alumni, and administrative members and charged with the job of defining the objectives and aspects of the College that the next President will be called upon to deal with in the next ten years or so. In conclusion, he said that there is still time for Dartmouth men and others to make further nominations. The Trustees hope and expect to get the very best man available.

The meeting was adjourned in time for the officers to join their wives for coffee at the Top of the Hop. The wives then departed for a Hanover-Norwich House Tour and lunch at the Outing Club, while their husbands attended separate sessions of the six officer groups. The discussions were presided over by the presidents of the various associations: Robert E. Alden '49, presidents; Charles N. Blakemore '52, secretaries; Edward S. Brown Jr. '34, treasurers; Edwin C. ChinLund '29, class agents; Thomas Van A Kelsey '54, newsletter editors; and Thomas V. Cleveland '2l, bequest chairmen.

At these individual association meetings, officer-of-the-year awards were presented to the following: Bertram R. MacMannis '39, president; George W. Putnam '05, secretary; John C. Hubbard '29, treasurer; Wilbur I. Bull '09, newsletter editor; and Gilbert N. Swett '17 bequest chairman. (Citations are printed with their class columns in this issue.) The 1970 Reunion Chairmen also met to discuss future plans. At 11:30 the class presidents and treasurers joined together for a meeting devoted to dues and class projects.

The last formal gathering of the weekend was the stag luncheon in Alumni Hall with Mr. Blakemore presiding. Mr. McGean announced that the Class of 1930 had been selected for the second annual Class of the Year Award and presented an inscribed gavel to Fred C. Scribner Jr., class president.

President Dickey's Remarks

President Dickey, as the speaker at the luncheon, focused his remarks on the concern that campus turmoil is creating in the minds of alumni and the general public. There is no question, he said, that this kind of trouble is producing an uneasy, hostile, frustrated relationship between higher education and its publics, a reaction that is likely to increase rather than diminish for some time. He cited legislative actions and reduced financial support as two of the most obvious forms of public disapproval.

Alumni understanding has become one of the most precarious relationships to maintain, he said, and this is made all the more difficult by the human inclination of most alumni to love the College as they thought it was and not as a place where youth and change hold sway. Prescriptions as to what the "College should do are not in short supply, he said, but they are not very helpful because most are emotional and are based on views uncomplicated by the knowledge and concerns of those who are responsible for the complex, day-by-day operations of the institution.

President Dickey stated that his main answer is to suggest that "a society such as ours has no alternative, absolutely no alternative, than to place its bet on education, the higher the better." Making that bet amidst today's troubles places a burden on alumni, he added, but more than the colleges themselves are needed to support the idea. Alumni who threaten financial retaliation could pick no better way to play into the hands of the element they most despise, he asserted, than to attempt to demonstrate that America's institutions of higher learning are craven in the face of financial pressure and are not their own masters.

In answering some of the questions put to him, Mr. Dickey said that the faculties hold the key role in keeping campus dissent within rational and orderly bounds, that SDS as a nihilistic, hardcore minority is seriously disruptive only when it can enlist wider campus support, and that the encouragement of militant counter groups is not a desirable answer because student battles and vigilante action have their own dangers. To a question about coeducation he replied that it would not be settled in his administration but that the College should not be afraid to study the question straightforwardly in order to know why it does or does not want coeducation. It is his personal feeling, he concluded, that the central issue is whether coeducation will make Dartmouth a stronger and better college in the years ahead.

Officers Elected

Association officers elected for the coming year are as follows:

CLASS PRESIDENTS ASSOCIATION? President, Fred C. Scribner Jr. '30; Vice President, Leonard J. Clark Jr. '56; Secretary, David E. Orr '57.

CLASS SECRETARIES ASSOCIATION: President, Robert C. Bankart '37; Vice President, Henry Conkle '39; Secretary, J. Michael McGean '49; Executive Committee, Thomas J. Swartz Jr. '49 and Arthur W. Hoover '62; Alumni Magazine Advisory Board Member, Jerry Talmer '42 (reelected).

CLASS TREASURERS ASSOCIATION: President, Dr. Theodore R. Miner '23; Vice President, Willard C. Wolff '31; Executive Committee, Louis A. Young '41 and John T. Schiffman '62; Representative on the Alumni Council, Eric Miller '50.

CLASS AGENTS ASSOCIATION: President, Charles A. Rowan Jr. '45; Vice President, G. Warren French '30; Secretary, Clifford L. Jordan Jr. '45; Nominating Committee, John W. Newton '53 (chairman) and Seth deV. Strickland '60.

CLASS NEWSLETTER EDITORS ASSOCIATION: President, Roger G. Allen '37; Vice President, Eugene H. Kohn '60; Executive Committee, Mark Short '32 and Alexander G. Medlicott '50.

ASSOCIATION OF BEQUEST AND ESTATE PLANNING CHAIRMEN; President, Charles F. Bruder III '28; Vice President, Jack D. Gunther '29; Secretary, Robert L. Kaiser '39; Executive Committee, Thomas V. Cleveland 21, Thomas E. Wilson '35, and John F. Rich '30 (ex officio).