It's Still "Men of Dartmouth"

"Women should be proud to be Men of Dartmouth," penned a coed on her ballot supporting retention of the traditional Dartmouth College alma mater, "Men of Dartmouth." By decision of the Board of Trustees at the regular fall meeting, her view has prevailed.

This fall, the inauguration of coeducation raised questions about the appropriateness of "Men of Dartmouth" as the College song. While the issue was being explored and to avoid any appearance of male chauvinism, the poetic and highly evocative "Dartmouth Undying" was substituted for "Men of Dartmouth" at the College's 203rd convocation last month—with the permission of F. William Andres '29 of Boston, chairman of the Board of Trustees.

But one group of students still got up at the end of convocation and sang their own rendition of "Men of Dartmouth" to raise the standard in its defense. And reports quickly circulated that many of the new coeds also thought that the historic song should be retained.

The Dartmouth grasped the nettle and polled the 350 matriculated coeds, asking them their preferences: whether the College should keep the old alma mater with all its references to Dartmouth's male fellowship, the wording should be changed slightly to reflect the presence of both sexes, "Dartmouth Undying" should be adopted, or whether an entirely new song should be written.

The largest contingent of coeds polled was conspicuous by its silence. Of the 350 coeds queried by TheDartmouth, 256 failed to return the questionnaire, suggesting to one editor that most women at Dartmouth, at this early moment in coeducation here, either do not care or are too busy to think about such an issue, women's lib notwithstanding.

But of the 94 women returning ballots, the newspaper reported that 64 (or 68 per cent of them) voted to honor tradition and history and retain "Men of Dartmouth" as the College song. Seventeen coeds suggested slight modifications of the wording, three recommended that it be replaced with "Dartmouth Undying," and 11 said the school should have a new song.

Among the remarks attached to the coed ballots were: "Don't let old traditions die just because there are chicks here," and "If men want'to sing about rocks in their heads, it's fine with me." The last comment obviously referred to the closing stanza of "Men of Dartmouth," written by Richard Hovey '85 around the turn of the century when granite-like perseverance and tenacity of mind were prized character traits and such slang expressions as "rocks in the head" had not yet been invented. That line goes: "They have the still north in their hearts, the hill winds in their veins and the granite of New Hampshire in their muscles and their brains."

With all this background, the issue was brought to the Trustees, who reviewed the evidence and reaffirmed "Men of Dartmouth" as the alma mater of the College and the song that still best captures the independent spirit of derring-do that has characterized the Dartmouth man for more than 200 years and hopefully will in the future.