Fringe Benefits

There were so many Dartmouth students and professors in Manchester on New Hampshire primary night that one observer suggested the College should sponsor a hospitality suite near Bayh and Carter headquarters in the Sheraton Carpenter Hotel.

The Dartmouth contingent included reporters from The Dartmouth, commentators from WDCR and WFRD who formed the Dartmouth Election Network and broadcast primary developments throughout the state, several curious students looking to hobnob with the Harrises, Udalls, and Shrivers, and 23 undergraduates who were completing internships with presidential campaigns.

The students, whose fieldwork brought them to Manchester or Concord at least once a week, were working on part of a Ford Foundation-sponsored study on the interaction of campaign organizations and the mass media. The students were all enrolled in a government course called "American Parties and Politics," and were placed in campaign organizations by professors Denis Sullivan and Robert Nakamura.

Amy Beren, a Wellesley junior who is spending a year at Dartmouth, worked with the Carter organization. She rode on the press bus and accompanied candidate Carter on several campaign swings in January and February. "I enjoyed the whole thing," she said. "It was fun going into a bank or a store or a factory with Jimmy and watching him talk with people."

Peter Dame '78 split his time between what he called "lousy work" (folding press releases or some other routine campaign task) and "some good stuff." He wrote a few press releases and traveled with the Udall campaign. "We learned a lot more this way," according to Dame, "than we would have by just taking a course."

There were other fringe benefits, however. Steven Witzel and Peter Funkhouser, two freshmen working with the Shriver campaign, were invited out to dinner by David Broder of TheWashington Post. "He bought Us dinner and a few drinks," Witzel said, "and he told us what it was like to cover a campaign."