The President's Answers to Some Questions During Radio Interview

The greater part of President Kemeny's hour on College radio station WDCR was devoted to answering the questions of three student interviewers. Following are his answers to the more pertinent questions raised during the interview:

When the Trustees first announcedthey would consider the question ofyear-round operation they said theywould consider the establishment of anassociated school for women. Is thispart of the administrative arrangementsthat you and Mr. Zimmerman willdiscuss before January?

Yes. That is, we will be discussing administrative arrangements. On the other hand, the Trustees reaffirmed their most recent vote that all arrangements have to be consistent with the five principles that were announced.

Could, in ' a sense, the associatedschool be consistent with those fiveprinciples?

I think not in the sense in which this would have been considered last spring.

The Board had about nine or tendocuments in its packet overweekend which it weighed in this decision. Was there any one of those documents that seemed to play a majorrole in tipping the balance in theBoard's decision?

I can't say that there was any single document that played a major role. There were several which were extremely important. For example, the report on the legal situation had a very important effect in the following sense: 1 am quite sure that the Board would have been reluctant to act if they had been forced to move one way or the other, or if there had been the threat of force one way or the other. I think it is wonderful that the Board was able to make this historic decision entirely on its own judgment and without any outside legal pressures.

I must say that the report by the consultants on the effect of coeducation on Princeton and Yale was most influential. Incidentally, the Board decided not to release that document other than to authorize me to make the statement I have just made, simply because we feel that it is not right for Dartmouth College to publish an evaluation of anything at Princeton and Yale. We have shared the reports with the President of Princeton and the Acting President of Yale, who were very happy to have it.

What about the other documentprepared by Cresap, McCormick andPaget, the financial study? Will that bereleased?

No. It was certainly an influential document and probably one that received as much discussion as anything, since the Board had to make its own judgment on the financial implications. As I said, this is a document that came UP with a range in capital and in transitional costs and in long-range operating costs. Roughly speaking, it indicated that we should, with good management, be able to break even in the long run on this plan. Indeed, the consultants feel that there is a possibility that it might help the financial balance of the institution slightly, and I want to emphasize very slightly. On the other hand, it is equally clear that there will be transitional costs, perhaps fairly substantial, and we are going to seek outside support, perhaps from some of the foundations that have indicated that they are strongly in favor of this idea.

The most difficult question is the capital costs. Let me say why it is difficult. The consultants did an extremely good job at indicating what the minimum costs were that make the plan possible. They indicated a long list of things, some of which are a matter of judgment for the Board of Trustees as to whether they are necessary or desirable, and some of which are simply in the category that if specific gifts were obtainable for these, and many of these are very attractive targets for gifts, then they would become desirable. Therefore, in a sense, adding these up before the Board can make a judgment on them one by one, and before we know whether it is possible to get specific gifts for them, would not be a meaningful exercise.

President Kemeny, could you outlinefor us what you see as the biggestquestions facing the administrationnow, as far as implementation of year-round operation and coeducation?

The biggest problem, if I can put it that way, is the enormous amount of work facing all of us. We are looking forward to it, we are ready for it. For example, I would suspect that the Admissions Office will be flooded, starting tomorrow, with applications for admission. As we know, the faculty recommended the establishment of an office for year-round operation and I will certainly recommend such an office to the Board in January; we will start moving immediately to implement that recommendation.

There are a number of areas where additional staff will have to be hired. These, of course, were built into the cost estimates for long-range operating costs, not all of them necessarily in the first year. To give you a very good example of it, the load on the Office of the Dean of the College will increase significantly, partly because in addition to the normal number of students in the academic year he will also have a significant number of students in the summer. In addition to which, as the Dean said, and quite rightly so, the students who are off campus are just as much his concern, whether they are on vacation or on a Dartmouth program, as those who are on campus. Therefore his staff will have to be increased, We will, in effect, have to go through all the major administrative areas and evaluate where changes are necessary.

Let me now balance this on the other side. There is the question of the faculty. Clearly we have no intention of implementing this plan without the recommended increase in the size of the faculty. It won't all happen in one year since this increase will come mostly in the freshman class. We will have four years before the plan is in full effect, possibly five years, and therefore we have to start very careful plans of a systematic, orderly way in which we increase the faculty before the load hits them rather than afterwards.

Will there be any effect on thegraduate education at Dartmouth as aresult of The Dartmouth Plan?

I am not aware of any direct effect on this. I noticed that most of the graduate constituencies voted quite enthusiastically for the plan. Therefore I hope that they will be happy with its implementation. I do not see any direct effects, but there are bound to be indirect effects. For example, it is quite customary in most graduate programs, though not necessarily in Tuck, to have graduate students around in the sum- mer. I am quite sure that there will be a great deal more activity of a variety of sorts available in the summer since this is now a full parity term, and I think this will be highly beneficial for graduate students who are around in the summer.

When Dartmouth admits women asfreshmen next year, will the Collegealso accept women transfer studentsinto the sophomore and junior classes?

Yes. The plan hopefully is to admit freshmen, to admit some transfer students, and to continue the exchange program. As a matter of fact, I think we are very fortunate to have the exchange program which I feel has been extremely successful. Because of that it will not be true that the overwhelming majority of the women on campus will be freshmen, but we will have a significant number of upperclassmen. But I can't say at this moment what the exact numbers will be. I hope after the Minary Conference we will have a better guess at this.

Will women students who are currently here as exchange students beallowed to matriculate next year andreceive credit as degree candidates forthe courses they took at Dartmouth asexchange students?

Let me first say that if we matriculate any such students, we certainly would give them credit for courses they have taken at Dartmouth College. On the other hand, we certainly cannot matriculate any significant number of the exchange students because this would be in violation of our agreement with their home institutions. In effect, we would be stealing students from other institutions. There is always the possibility that one might, with the agreement of the home institution, make a small number of exceptions to this rule, but it would have to be a small number under exceptional circumstances.

Of course foremost in the mind ofmost of the Trustees was the questionof what is good for Dartmouth, butcould you tell us what was the primaryobjection of most of the Trustees whovoted against the concept of coeduca-tion?

I think it was the judgment on whether at this stage Dartmouth should make so radical a change in the nature of the institution. There was no Trustee who objected to the concept of women degree candidates; it was a judgment on whether this was the right move to make for the College at this time.

How intensive has the alumni lobbying been in the last month or so,particularly since the faculty approvedthe CYRO proposal?

I think lobbying is not a fair statement, particularly since you have heard from the President of the Alumni Council that the overwhelming majority of the letters we received reassured the Trustees that, while they were expressing very strong feelings in many cases, they would accept and support the recommendations of the Board of Trustees. Certainly, as the decision neared a conclusion, there were a significant number of alumni who expressed their opinions on this issue. I did not count them, but I am sure there must have been a couple of hundred letters on the subject of coeducation and year-round operation.

Is there any indication at this pointwhen new dormitory facilities might bebuilt consistent with the CYRO plan?

That is one of the points on which the Board decided not to make a hasty move. The Board wishes to see experience with CYRO for at least a year before it makes a decision whether or not to build a dormitory. The fact is that the Budget Officer has made some very careful estimates of enrollments or campus, and it is not entirely clear that we will need additional housing facilities. And yet there was a very persuasive argument in the CYRO document that even if such a facility is not absolutely necessary, it would make the plan much easier to implement. For example, it might turn out that instead of needing 200 beds we might need 100 beds.

It was the feeling of the Board that rather than having a crash program to construct a dormitory for this fall, and then almost certainly regret what we do, we should wait and see what the experience is. If we build a facility, we would have ample time to plan it out and make sure that it is where we want it to be, and it is what we want it to be.

I don't know whether you can gointo this any more, but in the Cresap,McCorinick and Paget study of Yaleand Princeton, can you give us someidea of what types of factors werestudied within those institutions?

Yes. I will be happy to say that in both institutions they had interviews with many Trustees, they had interviews with all the key administrative officers, and in addition at Princeton they had interviewed a random sample of the student body and interviewed a number of faculty members. They picked what are called "departmental representatives" at Princeton—it's roughly what we would call major advisers here at Dartmouth. They received an overwhelmingly favorable impression from all of these constituencies. They also looked into the costs. An interesting comment in both places was that the cost did not turn out to be quite as high as was predicted before they went into the plan. They looked into various questions: The effect on social life, the effect on the academic life of course, and they asked the question, if you were going to do it all over again would you do it? There certainly was an overwhelming "yes' on the part of the people with whom they talked.

The Dartmouth Plan is revolutions)in many aspects, not the least of whichis an apparent lowering of the cost of a Dartmouth education. How significantwas this aspect of The Dartmouth Panin the Board's consideration?

It is certainly one of the very attractive features of the plan. It is " totally unheard of phenomenon

All sixteen members of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees were present for the special meeting of November 20-21 . Seated,All sixteen E. Buchanan'24, Governor Walter R. Peterson Jr. '47, F. William Andres '29, Charles J. Zimmermanfrom left, are Willam Kemenv '22 ad, Lloyd D. Brace '25, and Harrison F. Dunning '30. Standing: David P. Smith'35, RichardD. Lombard'53, DavidT. McLaughlin '54, David R. Weber '65, Ralph W. Hunter '31, Thomas B. Curtis '32, Robert S. Oelman '31, Thomas W. Braden '40, and Ralph Lazarus '35.