Unconsenting College

A movie written by a visiting professor of classics, .and starring a recipient of a Dartmouth honorary degree, won't be filmed at the College as the producers had hoped. The name of the movie is Consenting Adults, the professor is Erich Segal (author of Love Story), and the actress is Shirley MacLaine, whose honorary doctorate was awarded in 1973. The reasons given for President Kemeny's refusal to permit filming here are that the production would be a "disruptive presence" on campus, and would be likely to encourage unwelcome publicity about the College. "On top of everything else," The Dartmouth quoted Kemeny's assistant Alexander Fanelli '42 as saying, "we don't need this."

The story is about a professor at a New England college who has an affair with a student, and about the professor's wife who, in turn, seduces a student of her own. Despite the production company's assurances that the film would not be degrading to the institution, that the movie is expected to earn a "PG" or "R" rating, and that the name Dartmouth wouldn't even be used, Kemeny stood by a trustee ruling forbidding the use of the College for commercial purposes except in the case of extraordinary circumstances.

Of course, Dartmouth is commercialized in a variety of ways — there is a profusion of Dartmouth rocking chairs, highball glasses, blazer buttons, nightgowns, gym shorts, wastebaskets, baby pants, bola ties, and even toilet seats on the market — but the last commercial movie to be filmed on campus was WinterCarnival, in 1939, shortly following the disruptive presence of one of its screenwriters, F. Scott Fitzgerald.