THE 200TH COMMENCEMENT

DARTMOUTH'S 200th Commencement, blessed with as beautiful a June morning as Hanover has ever seen, brought the Bicentennial Year to a close on Sunday, June 14. Although some non-conformist seniors provided a bizarre touch, the Class of 1970 showed up in full force, and underscored the fact that whatever might be the antagonisms on other campuses, the May events at Dartmouth had created a moderation and a new rapport between students and the institution.

In his first valedictory to a graduating class, President Kemeny said, "This spring you made a pledge, not in words but by your actions. You have said that you will try once more to make the system of democracy in America work. I believe that your generation can do this because you must do it. I hope that in the process you are not going to lose hope, because if you lose hope and you give up, you are going to make a mockery of that joint experience we shared this spring. Civilization needs the dedication and the convictions which you share at this moment."

The President addressed his farewell words to a graduating class of 718 men. In the first Commencement exercises over which he presided since taking office March 1, he conferred the Bachelor of Arts degree on these 718 seniors and also awarded 219 other degrees to men and women who had completed graduate courses. The latter included 103 MBA's to Tuck School graduates, 50 medical science degrees, 28 engineering degrees, 20 Master of Arts and Master of Science degrees, and 18 Ph.D. degrees. Counting those given in engineering, a total of 22 doctorates was awarded. Among the recipients of the MBA was Miss Martha Fransson of West Hartford, Conn., the first woman to receive this graduate degree from Tuck School.

Among the nine persons awarded honorary degrees were two members of the United States Senate: Thomas J. McIntyre '37 of New Hampshire and George S. McGovern of South Dakota. They received the Doctorate of Laws, as did Patricia Roberts Harris of Washington, former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, and James Tobin, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale. The Doctorate of Science was conferred on Alan F. Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood - World Population, and James A. Shannon, former Director of the National Institutes of Health; the Doctorate of Humane Letters on Charles G. Bolté '41, vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and the Doctorate of Letters on William A. Arrowsmith, Professor of Classics at the University of Texas, and Kenneth D. Burke, author and literary critic.

Professor Arrowsmith delivered the Commencement Address following the award of honorary degrees. His discussion of the Greek concepts of hybris and sophrosyne was a prelude to a sharp criticism of modern education. America's commitment to universal education has been betrayed, he said, by a pervasive elitism and by a class of psuedo-professionals; and he saw no improvement until it is realized that liberal arts education and teacher education are one and the same thing. The full text of his address appears in this issue.

Two members of the senior class also spoke to an audience of nearly 5,000 gathered on the lawn of Baker Library. Craig Joyce '70 of Tempe, Arizona, who was graduated with a near-perfect record of 4.923, delivered the valedictory (printed in full in this issue) and in a departure from the customary Commencement program, a second student address was given by Wallace L. Ford II '70 of Teaneck, N.J., on behalf of the 16 Black students who received degrees. His address also appears in this issue.

The Class of 1970, already special as the 200th to be graduated from the College, gained another distinction during Commencement when it devoted most of Saturday to a Senior Symposium on "The Search for Peace Beyond Vietnam." As reported separately in this issue, overflow audiences of seniors, their families, faculty, and alumni attended the panel discussions in which Senator McGovern and Mr. Bolte were leading participants. Matriculated as men of high promise and serious educational concern, the seniors closed out their undergraduate careers on the same note.

Graduation this year had some unusual touches.