The Undergraduate Chair
THERE'S an enterprising little company in upstate New York that makes a lot of money in these parts marketing a product with the unlikely name of "Dartmouth Champagne." It's not that they've developed a new strain of grape; in fact, a little research yields the information that blue-labeled Yale Champagne is peddled in New Haven, red-labeled Harvard Champagne in Cambridge, and so forth.
Every year around Winter Carnival time, liquor stores in the area experience a tremendous run on the $2.99 bottles of Big Green bubbly. This year was no exception, so it was only after a long search that a friend located the Upper Valley's last bottle of Dartmouth Champagne Saturday morning of Winter Carnival.
That night at a fondue party in his room, my friend called me aside as others popped the corks of their Dartmouth Champagne. Bottle in hand, he pledged not to open it until we graduated together in June. "I bought it on Saturday of Winter Carnival, and I'll drink it on graduation day," he said solemnly.
As I write this piece, that bottle of Dartmouth Champagne stands proudly on his shelf, silent testimony to the bond of friendship and camaraderie that ties us and so many other Dartmouth students together. On graduation day we will celebrate our. commencement by uncorking the Dartmouth Champagne and sharing it with a few friends - all seniors. I can't speak for them, but I know it will be the best champagne I've ever had.
Every class likes to think that a little bit of Dartmouth dies when the class graduates. It is, I suppose, a normal enough reaction; we all like to think of ourselves as unique. Yet I'd like to submit that the Class of 1975 is a bit more special than most and that its departure, coupled with the resignation of Dean of the College Carroll W. Brewster, will leave a void in Hanover that will be hard to fill.
The Class of 1975 was a link with the past, a stabilizing element during four years of transition and upheaval. Ours was the last all-male entering class, as well as the last class to enroll before the advent of year-round operation. Under "official college cheer," our Freshman Book lists "Wah-Hoo-Wah." We came to Hanover before the push to make Dartmouth a little Harvard in the woods, when the "Dartmouth Experience" was still very much the thing.
Dean Brewster has always had a special relationship with the Class of 1975. He shares the uneasiness of many class members at some of the changes we've seen. He was one of the few to foresee the dangers of year-round operation when it was first proposed, yet once the decision was made he uncomplainingly shouldered much of the burden and worked tirelessly to help make the Dartmouth Plan work. His constituency was the student body, and all who came into contact with him were touched by his humanity. He was an anomoly in an administration loaded with technocrats and, as a result, his departure was inevitable. For Brewster, students were the real stuff of Dartmouth - not buildings, statistics, or computer printouts.
I'm glad that Dean Brewster will be with the Class of 1975 during graduation exercises before he moves on to the presidency of Hollins College in July. But with my class leaving Hanover in June, I'd feel a lot better about the future of Dartmouth if I knew that Carroll Brewster was staying.
By the time you read this column, the Class of 1975 will have joined the ranks of Dartmouth's almost 36,000 living alumni. In fact, more than 200 seniors graduated early this year for one reason or another, including this writer. My introduction to alumni life came at the Dartmouth Club of Philadelphia's annual banquet. It was good to find long-lost friends of days gone by, but it was still hard to conceive of myself as "an alum." I felt like an undergraduate spying on the gathering. I guess I won't really feel like an alumnus until I get that Alumni Fund letter....
I'm trying hard not to turn this column into a polemic against the Dartmouth Plan and year-round operation, but it's even harder to resist that temptation. I've written the column for a year now and I've played it pretty straight. A hint of sarcasm here, a touch of irony there, yes - but never an out-and-out declaration of opinion. I think I'll speak my piece here.
There's a lot more to a Dartmouth education than 33 course credits. The originators of the Dartmouth Plan failed to realize this, as did most of the students who chose to graduate early and missed that most wonderful of all experiences, spring term of senior year.
There's something about the Dartmouth Experience that demands a certain measure of continuity. The comings and goings necessitated by year-round operation have been more disruptive than even the fiercest critics of the Dartmouth Plan ever imagined. Athletics, extracurricular activities, fraternities, and academics have suffered. Students are often unable to take a certain course because it is not offered when the students are attending school. Worse, year-round operation has hopelessly complicated an already tight housing situation, forcing roommates to break up and in some cases moving students out of their dorms.
With that out of the way, I'd like to recall two of my better experiences at Dartmouth. The first was at Convocation of my sophomore year, the first year of coeducation. The standing-room-only crowd cheered long and loud when President John Kemeny began his remarks with "Men and Women of Dartmouth." But the administration badly miscalculated when it substituted the beautiful "Dartmouth Undying" for the traditional, lusty, and much more singable "Men of Dartmouth." The administration was quickly set straight, however, when a large group of students stood up in the balcony and sang "Men of Dartmouth." Both stanzas, no less. The group got a standing ovation from the men and women of Dartmouth, and from that day on there's never been any question about what song to sing at official college functions.
The other experience I'd like to share is a bit more personal; it concerns the last column I wrote for the Magazine. I wrote the article the day before I was to leave Hanover earlier this term. I brought it into the office that night and left it on my editor's desk, but I wasn't quite satisfied with the result. The next morning at five, fresh from a Tally Rally, a friend and I let ourselves into the Crosby Hall office and began rewriting the piece. Five minutes elapsed before a nightwatchman and two campus cops, flashlights drawn, entered the office. "Just workin' late," we explained, showing our I.D.'s to the suspicious officers. Satisfied, they left, but we stayed and worked until seven when we were finally satisfied. If you read the piece and remembered the paragraph about the Lobster Roadtrip, it will have all been worthwhile.
