The Undergraduate Chair
I suppose that it is typical of all graduating classes to imagine themselves to be somehow different from every other class that has come before them. Nevertheless, one has the feeling this spring that such an adage will justifiably attach itself to the Class of 1971 and probably also to the Classes of 1970 and 1972.
What other classes of Dartmouth's 201 lived through four years of college that produced experiences which ranged from the movement against ROTC and the subsequent occupation of Parkhurst Hall to the unrest of Spring 1970 with the first nationwide "strike" of colleges? Members of these classes knew the same sudden switch from inflated prosperity to a time when there were no summer jobs available that Dartmouth students of the Depression knew. We knew a time when the life of the College was completely disrupted much as it had been during several previous wars. We knew a student body whose make-up was different and more representative than in any previous four years. We saw parietals end, drugs explode, and women appear at Dartmouth College.
All of this indicates, of course, change at Dartmouth, and change is a characteristic that has inevitably imprinted itself on every class that has graduated from the College. Yet, one intuitively feels that his "Dartmouth experience" was distinctly different from that of the 37,552 graduates who have come before. A few more traditions were buried. A few new buildings - many new faces appeared. The surface of the College face remained mostly familiar, but the students seemed to the students to be different.
Who can remember a year when the elite graduates of Dartmouth College went out into "the real world" to paint houses in the Tri-town area, to attend one of the best law schools in the country only to drop out to work in a music store, to operate a discotheque in Costa Rica, to move to Canada, to gain the qualifications needed to teach but end up pumping gas at a Hanover service station, to work as a handyman in a clothing store only to be fired? One sophomore leaves the College during summer vacation not knowing if he'll ever get back to Hanover. Another spends 16 straight terms at Dartmouth. One student plans to hitch-hike endlessly after graduating. Half of the graduating students want to teach, practice medicine, or gain a degree in law. Many others plan to perpetually study - or float. "Let's face it, if you don't groove on the Vietnam War you can't get a job these days" concludes one Dartmouth senior. Another resolves to "get back to the Earth" at a commune near Hanover.
To a significant extent the graduating student's malaise is a result of the depressed nature of the economy over the past two years. The state of the economy rather than stimulating the kind of protest that one might expect against the "captalist system's" periodic declines has instead seemed to stifle activity of all kinds. Voting participation which hit a high of over 90% during the ROTC referendum is back to its normal 35% level. Few students can remember a year when there was more political activity at the University of New Hampshire and at Norwich University than at Dartmouth. But political activity has not been the only student pursuit to be affected adversely by the malaise of the year. Involvement in extracurricular activities for the most part is down, one fraternity has died and several others may follow, and fewer students "road trip" to girls' colleges these days.
Perhaps more significantly, however, the malaise stems from a frequently held impression that there is no place in "the real world" for today's student — an impression reinforced by disappointment in presidential primaries and by frustration with the implacability of the nation's leadership. The war has certainly affected this generation, as any War has an impact on any generation, but the war in Southeast Asia has clear]. served to estrange rather than solidify this country. Students have more dip culty leaving the Dartmouth world for "the real world." Some don't leave. The future is no longer eyed with boundless optimism but instead becomes a matter of day-to-day concern in the thoughts of the student—graduate and undergraduate.
What then replaces the student who joined activities and who possessed unlimited optimism about his future' The question is not easily answered because the answer lies within the individual student. Many students think more in terms of individual rather than collective roles. Small groups of dormitory friends become increasingly important. One dormitory raises hell when it learns that it has been chosen as Dartmouth's second residence for women exchange students despite the fact that first choice of available rooms is eventually offered to the dormitory's residents. The proposal of the Committee on Educational Planning to restructure Dartmouth's academic calendar is sharply criticized when students realize that it will become more difficult to retain the same room, roommate, and dorm.
In a real sense today's student attempts to create his own individual world. Drugs, super-fidelity stereo headphones, close friends contribute in many cases to shoring up the walls of our individual worlds. Some choose to live as far as possible from the Hanover campus. Success is measured in the mores of the individual's world. One senior comments: "Fifteen grand is more money than I can possibly see anyone wanting." One other suggests: "We're not so much concerned with success as with ourselves."
Writing after the longest winter in history and the latest spring in my memory, it is perhaps tempting to be unnecessarily pessimitic about today's Dartmouth graduate and undergraduate. Certainly it is more difficult than ever—particularly with a generation that emphasizes individuality above all values—to attempt to generalize about College students. I find myself at a loss—as most students interviewed seem to be at a loss—to explain how an age group that had always urged involvemen seems to be so collectively uninvolved. What has brought such a change from the early and mid-sixties? The College? A number of letters and visits indicates that Dartmouth is far from unique. Parents? One can blame almost anything on parents and today one often does, but it would be somewhat facile to credit parents alone with the nature of today's student.
Probably the coincidental occurrence of a number of extraordinary events — the War, the "Strike," the Recession, Drugs—is the determining influence on '71, but I am too much a participant in my own time to understand myself. Mr. '71 is probably more liberally educated in the liberal arts than his predecessors. He is more inclined not to spend money on meals, travel, books, and other material items, but his stereo system is unbelievable. Mr. '71 is more conscious of social wrongs and of the more negative aspects of "the real world" from which he feels so estranged. He has become more conscious of his personal world and less confident of a collective world.
The school year 1970-71 reflected the basic confusion of today's Dartmouth student. The football team performed better than any in recent history and perhaps of all time, but most of the other traditionally strong teams had disappointing seasons. There was more general opposition to the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration than in any previous year, but the Young Americans for Freedom were more effectively organized than all other "political" organizations on the campus. A student referendum on a judiciary system that would have allowed blacks and Indian Americans the choice of being heard in college disciplinary and academic matters by a jury of peers was rejected, but two blacks were elected to four student positions on the College Committee on Standing and Conduct. Baker Library added its one-millionth book, but the number of books and other items being stolen from the libraries, stores, cars, and dormitory rooms reached an all-time high. Dartmouth's single football bonfire was almost doused by an attempted injunction against such open burning, but by spring a Hanover youth culture group was cooking organic vegetables on the same site.
The Trustees announced this spring that they would consider at their October meeting the establishment of an Associated School for Women, causing near disbelief among many Dartmouth students that after several years of consideration no final decision had yet been reached. Upon hearing that one officer had suggested to the Class Officers Meeting at the end of April that a decision on coeducation should be delayed yet another year to give alumni more time to comment, several students reacted by breaking into near hysterical laughter. A majority of students were greatly disturbed that the Trustees chose only to consider an Associated School approach to coeducation—an approach that many argued would allow Dartmouth to continue to "discriminate" against women.
President Kemeny's year of "soul searching" which ended in March brought a delayed decision on coeducation, a judiciary proposal that was defeated by referendum, an innovative program for restructuring the academic calendar through the use of a parity summer term that received virulent opposition from a number of students and faculty, and a yet untested proposal to reorganize the faculty and to create a Dartmouth College Council that will represent all constituencies of the College.
A number of Dartmouth students went to Washington this spring to join the demonstrations at the Capitol, but at Dartmouth rallies were held to "discuss the issues" or, as one cynic concluded, "to figure out a reason to rally." Teatime at Sanborn Library again became popular, provoking one professor to exclaim, "After all, it is rumored that the establishment is making a comeback this year." The movies at the Nugget were worse than ever, but more students seemed to be "flicking out" than before. Cultural events proliferated at the Hop, and no performer could leave without a standing ovation and several (or in the case of the Steve Miller Band on Green Key weekend twelve) encores. Water beds proliferated in Dartmouth dormitories causing the Housing Office to fear that the venerable floors of Dartmouth dorms would not hold up much longer.
1970-71 proves about as easy to characterize as its students. Often paradoxical and confusing, the year was as indivdually unique as the students seemed. One feels much as Kenneth Clark did looking to the future at the conclusion of his Civilisation series: '"One may be optimistic, but one can't exactly be joyful at the prospect before us." For many I suspect the prospect, certainly less than joyous, is beyond any prognostication. The present, sufficiently cryptic in itself, lies before the future.
Robert J. Cordy '71 (r), student coordinator of the Orvil Dryfoos Conferenceon cultural confrontation, May 13-15, with Peter MacDonald, chairman ofthe Navajo Nation, and President Kemeny, who gave two of the main addresses.
John Marshall, who comes from FairLawn, N. J., is the undergraduaterepresentative on the Dartmouth Alumni Council. He is a Senior Fellow andduring the past year he was GeneralManager of the College radio station,WDCR. As the recipient of a James B.Reynolds Scholarship he will studymodern history at King's College,Cambridge University, next year.
