The Start of Things

A sense of community and honor within that community were the themes as the College, on September 19, celebrated the start of its 208th academic year with the traditional Convocation ceremony. Almost as traditional as the professorial regalia and the strains of "Men of Dartmouth" was the drizzle that baptized the freshmen into the Dartmouth family.

President Kemeny, noting the 15th anniversary of the Honor Principle at the College, called for a rededication of the Dartmouth community "to the task of making the most important principle of any institution, the principle of trust and honor, a true success at Dartmouth College." With the phrase "Dartmouth family" taking on renewed meaning, the time is appropriate for that rededication, the President suggested. "If there is any place that honesty can survive, it is in the family. And families cannot survive without a complete sense of honesty and trust."

The other speakers - Vice President Leonard Rieser '44, Dean of Students John Hanson '59, and Stephen Meili '78, class president - played variations on the same theme. The priority of the mind and the search for truth, along with the sense of community, characterize great educational institutions, Rieser said. Hanson noted the special community of Dartmouth "as powerful and as productive of lasting human relationships" as any available to any student.

Yet another, more recent, Dartmouth tradition was observed with cider and doughnuts following Convocation - its temporary suspension in 1975 having occasioned the most heated protest of that academic year.