Dero A. Saunders '35 Elected President of Alumni Council
DERO AMES SAUNDERS '35 of New York City was elected president of the Dartmouth Alumni Council for 1970-71 at the annual meeting held in Hanover June 4-6. He succeeds Judge William H. Timbers '37 of Darien, Conn., who presided over the three- day gathering.
Mr. Saunders is executive editor of Forbes magazine, which he joined in 1960. That year he also began teaching an evening English course at Hunter College. Earlier in his career he had been associated with Fortune magazine, 1945-57; the Medical and Pharmaceutical Information Bureau, 1957-59; and The New York Times, Sunday department, 1959-60. He is the editor of three books: The Portable Gibbon (1952), Theodore Mommsen's The History ofRome (1958), and The Autobiographyof Edward Gibbon (1961). Besides his Dartmouth degree, he holds an M.A. in English from Columbia.
He has served his class as co-editor of their newsletter since 1966, and he was a member of the MAGAZINE'S Alumni Advisory Board from 1961 to 1967. He was elected to the Alumni Council in 1968 as the newsletter editors' representative. He has two Dartmouth sons, David '63 and Richard '69.
Elected vice president of the Alumni Council for the coming year was Robert Zeiser '49 of Rumford, R.I., an insurance man with Beach & Sweet, Inc. He has formerly served as chairman and secretary of his class and as president of the Rhode Island Alumni Association. J. Michael McGean '49, Secretary of the College, was reelected secretary.
Named to the Executive Committee, in addition to the president, vice president, and secretary, are F. Charlton Mills III '38 of Cleveland, Ohio; Eric T. Miller '50 of Bronxville, N.Y.; Paul D. Paganucci '53 of New York City; and Emerson B. Houck '56 of Indian- apolis, Ind.
The Council elected five new members-at-large to serve three-year terms until June 30, 1973. They are Roald A. Morton '34 of Rye, N.Y.; C. Carlton Coffin Jr. '43 of Atlanta, Ga.; Paul D. Paganucci '53 of New York, N.Y.; Harrington K. Mason '57 of Des Moines, Iowa; and Seth Strickland '60 of Oneida, N.Y. Serving as the faculty representa- tive for the coming year will be Franklin Smallwood '51, Professor of Government; and the student-undergraduate representative will be John H. Marshall '71 of Fair Lawn, N.J. As chairman of the executive committee of the General Association of Alumni, Frank J. Yeager '60 of Wichita Falls, Texas, will be an ex-officio member of the Alumni Council.
The Council elected Daniel J. McCarthy '54 of Hanover, N.H., as an alumni member of the Athletic Council for a second term of three years. It reelected John H. Hatheway '48 of New York City as its representative on the Hanover Inn board of overseers for one year.
Committee chairmen for the coming year include Robinson Bosworth Jr. '37 of Milwaukee, Wis., Alumni Fund; John F. Rich '30 of Boston, Mass., Bequest and Estate Planning; Norman E. McCulloch Jr. '50 of Pawtucket, R.I., Class Giving to the College; Paul B. Urion '38 of Rochester, N.H., Enrollment and Admissions; John H. Hatheway '48 of New York City, Nominating Committee; Ernest L. Barcella '34 of Washington, D.C., College Public Relations; Thomas J. Swartz Jr. '49 of Short Hills, N.J., Regional Organization; Sanborn C. Brown '35 of Lexington, Mass., Academic Affairs; George B. Munroe '43 of New York City, Class Organization; and William H. Morton '32 of New York City, Athletics.
Students Participate
Since the Alumni Council met while College was still in session, it was possible to have more undergraduate participation than in previous Junes. Brent Coffin '70, undergraduate member of the Council, made a report; six students made presentations on different topics on Saturday morning; and approximately 15 students were invited to the small dinner discussions between Council members and the faculty. Council members also had informal contacts with students, and at their final session they expressed the hope that undergraduates would participate in future meetings.
John Kemeny's meeting with the Council was his first as President of the College. He spoke at the annual dinner Friday night and headed the panel of College officers who fielded questions at Saturday morning's closing session. One of the Council's actions at the latter session was the passing of this resolution of welcome and support for President Kemeny:
The Dartmouth Alumni Council at its 120th meeting welcomes you as the thirteenth President of the College and gratefully recognizes your sixteen years of gifted and distinguished leadership as administrator, researcher and teacher in the mathematical and computer sciences at Dartmouth.
The Council pledges its support and resolves to move jointly with faith and confidence to meet current moral and intellectual challenges in these times of accelerating change. We will join others of the Dartmouth community in debate and soulsearching; foster rational discussion and discourage violent dissent; respect past achievements but not ignore present problems; and remain dedicated to the ideals of academic excellence and social responsibility.
President's Remarks
In his address at the Council's dinner President Kemeny spoke about "Strike Week" in May; about the current alumni, faculty and student surveys regarding coeducation; and about some student and faculty achievements of the spring.
"May 4 was a day of decision for me," he said. "It was a day on which I had to decide whether I was going to be President of Dartmouth College or not. A sequence of events of major national significance took place and ... on this campus and most campuses in the country there was created perhaps one of the most emotionally charged atmospheres in the history of American campuses. There was an overwhelming feeling on the part of most students and most faculty members that people on the campuses had to speak out and somehow take part in the debates on these national issues. There was an overwhelming feeling that something had to be done but practically no consensus as to what form this action should take.
"On May 4, after talking separately with the senior College officers, with all department chairmen, and with a large delegation of students, it was clear to me that unless someone stepped in there would be a huge mass meeting on the Green the next day — as indeed there was with some 2000 people present - and an attempt would be made, without any major organization, to work out the script for the rest of the academic year in a situation which I felt could be complete chaos. I felt that I could not as president of this institution permit this to happen. I felt that the only responsible thing to do was to assume the role of leadership, not to try to stop the expression of feeling, which no one could have stopped, but to try to channel it into constructive avenues so that the event would not be chaotic and destructive.
"The very difficult decision I had to make was that my voice would have been totally useless unless I was willing to express my own personal position on these political issues. I happened to agree with the majority of students and faculty. I was particularly influenced by the fact that this very large group included, as I wrote in my letter, not as some alumni seem to feel, both the small group of radicals from whom one hears all the time and also a huge group of students, many of whom I knew personally and about whom I knew from personal experience that they either had been apolitical - that is, took no active interest in politics or were rather conservative in their political views.
"By one of those very strange coincidences, my May press conference with student reporters on WDCR was scheduled for 9 p.m. the evening of May 4th. Therefore the chance of the president's taking no stand at all was totally inconceivable. After one of the most difficult days of my life I came to this conclusion: that while I had always as a faculty member strongly opposed institutions taking stands as institutions (and I still do), I have always felt that individuals could and have to speak out on things that they believe; and I felt that even a president of an institution was not exempt from this rule, although he must use it very sparingly because it is terribly difficult for him to keep saying that this is a personal view and not an institutional view. With that preface I went on to express my own deep concern about the events that took place, tried to explain why I sensed in the entire Dartmouth community an enormous worry and concern about national events, and why such a very large segment of our student body felt that at that moment they had things on their minds that took priority over going to classes....
"I then declared the next day, Tuesday, May 5, a day of mourning for the Kent State students who died and a day of soul-searching for the entire institution. I suspended normal academic activities for the remainder of that week and asked the faculty to come up with the means as to how we could best accommodate all students for the remainder of that week, so we could sit down together as a community to participate in discussions on national issues and try to reach an agreement as to how an institution can best behave in such highly troubled times.
"The result in the short run was one of the most intensive series of discussions I have ever seen on an academic campus. It is easy to say that normal classes were suspended, yet I think the number of contacts between students and faculty members has never been higher in any other week in the history of Dartmouth College. Meetings took place from early morning to late night with enormous student turnouts for discussions on wide-ranging subjects by faculty members whose opinions covered the entire political scale, and I think all of us can say that we learned an enormous amount in that week.
"It was very interesting to see the change in attitude during that week. We started very much a split community, with a great deal of bitterness. No sooner were there calls for a strike - which incidentally from the very beginning the students said was in no sense a strike against Dartmouth College - than there appeared a considerable group trying to work against a strike and specifically wanting to make very sure that students would have an opportunity to finish their education in the normal manner. When one thinks of the degree of bitterness that was on this campus on Monday, May 4, and then realizes that on Friday of the same week the leaders of these two opposed groups could get up before a mass meeting and both overwhelmingly endorse the faculty's proposal of plans for the remainder of the term - well, I would describe that as nothing short of a miracle. I think that if you talk to those of us who went through this you will find that the phrase most often used on campus about the May events is that they brought all of us in Hanover closer together, even those people who completely disagreed with each other politically. At the end of that week there was much more of a sense of a united community with a common purpose than had been true for a very long time."
President Kemeny then explained the course options given the students by faculty action, and described the constructive activities locally and elsewhere that grew out of Strike Week.
Turning to the studies now in progress concerning the possibility of educating women at Dartmouth, President Kemeny reported that no decision is imminent and that the Trustees probably will have no chance to digest or take initial action on some 200 pages of supporting documents before October. Before then, he said, the results of a personal-interview survey among a carefully drawn sample of the entire alumni body would be made known to all alumni.
The student survey is the only one that is in hand and fully analyzed, Mr. Kemeny reported. This shows students to be in favor of coeducation by better than a four-to-one margin. Alumni Council members were invited to participate in the shorter faculty survey, which was then nearing completion along with a similar survey among administrative officers.
"The moment of decision is not yet here," President Kemeny said, "but I think the next six months will be extremely important and I hope we will maximize the opportunities of exchanging information and opinions in discussions on this issue so that the Trustees may be guided by what the entire alumni body feels."
Council president Dero Saunders '35 (r), New York magazine editor, withJ. Michael McGean '49 of Hanover, who was reelected Council secretary.
