President Dickey's Valedictory to 1969

GENTLEMEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS :

The password at 1969 commencements from coast to coast seems to be "frustration." The year itself, the world around, has been heaped high with frustration for everyone except perhaps our intrepid explorers of space and even they escaped only by "getting away from it all" as no mortal man has ever done before.

However it may be with astronauts, "getting away from it all" is not the way out for the rest of us. You and I who bet our lives on awareness are required to know that few men walk the earth worthily without learning that frustrations are mostly for managing, occasionally for banishing, but not for taking out on the other fellow. A wise man among us once taught that it is only out of the depths of frustration that we climb the heights of discovery.

I have every confidence, gentlemen, that you will make that climb and that in making it you will .carry Dartmouth with you to fresh discoveries which for your offspring will probably be the frustrations from which they in turn make their great climbs.

And now, as I prepare shortly to follow you, I bid you join me in leaving our frustrations behind to discover that in the Dartmouth fellowship there need be no parting.