Full House
It was the more the merrier — but just barely. Although with Dartmouth reunions, there can hardly be too much of a good thing, the dictum rang a little hollow in some quarters for a brief time in June. Returning alumni, their families and friends came back in such droves that College officials were scouring the countryside for the odd vacant motel room, pressing into service dormitories hitherto unused for reunions, bedding down members of younger classes in recreation rooms and even part of the field house.
The totals, 1,601 alumni and 4,067 people in all, smashed all records. The previous highs were in 1976, when 1,444 and a total crowd of 3,564 showed up for reunions. The overall figure this year was up more than 1,000 over 1978.
The housing shortage was exacerbated by the presence on campus of an extraordinary number of undergraduates who decided to hang around during the break between spring and summer terms. Some 500 managed to find sufficient reason, or excuse — some were working, some had papers to finish or research to do. Extra cots were set up, and as many as five were sleeping in some rooms, student housing director William Crooker reports.
The College had ample warning of the tidal wave to come, says David Orr '57, assistant secretary of the College, in plenty of time to reserve whatever spare rooms were available in area hostelries. The battle plan included reassigning immediately any bed for which the originally scheduled occupant didn't show up. Student actors who had been staying at Brewster, the old dormitory behind Hopkins Center on Lebanon Street, were dispossessed in favor of alumni. In all, during the final weekend of the reunion period, 2,400 in attendance found places on the campus to lay their heads. The others, local residents aside, were farmed out or stayed with friends or relatives.
Catering services, both the Dartmouth Dining Association and the Hanover Inn, performed splendidly under the strain, Orr reports. The only minor bottleneck occurred at the alumni dinner on Friday after Commencement when 1,800 adults were fed at Thompson Arena, while their young, 700 strong, dined at Thayer Hall.
