A $9 Million Fund

The Alumni Council, meeting in December, put their stamp of approval on a $9 million goal for the 1982 Alumni Fund, with some members eager to push it higher. Fund chairman Robert D. Brace '52 pronounced it "an exciting challenge" that he faced with "enthusiasm." And Henry Eberhardt '61, director of the Fund, has announced that, by the end of the year, 7,662 alumni had already contributed $3-7 million toward the 1982 goal, $1 million and 1,225 donors ahead of the previous year.

It's easy to remember that the 1972 Alumni Fund aimed at $2.75 million. But, then, a three-term Dartmouth education

tuition, board, and room cost an average $4,145 a decade ago, and the ALUMNIMAGAZINE actually carried an advertisement for a nine-room Hanover house within walking distance of the campus for a paltry $53,000 ten years ago this month.

The whopping 20 per cent jump in the Fund's goal has many reasons, according to Eberhardt, chief among them the need to offset cutbacks in federal funds for scholarship assistance. As President David T. McLaughlin '54 explained to the Alumni Fund committee, Dartmouth's continued commitment to "need-blind admissions" meaning that the question of ability to pay does not enter the picture until after a qualified student is accepted requires an increase of $1 million in the College's financial-aid budget for 1982.

With a concomitant determination that faculty and staff salaries remain competitive, with falling stock prices and rising costs, and with administrative expenditures to be pared by a full five per cent, Eberhardt said, the only remaining variable that can pick up the slack is the Alumni Fund.

The director professed no concern that a Fund goal more than 300 per cent higher than it was a decade ago might siphon off large gifts that could otherwise go in even more substantial figures into endowment through the Campaign for Dartmouth. (Although Fund contributions are credited to the Campaign for Dartmouth in donors' names, Fund proceeds are intended for current use rather than for increased endowment.)

If the capital campaign were lagging," Eberhardt said, "we might be concerned. But, while the Fund has been growing at a healthy rate, the Campaign for Dartmouth is ahead of its schedule in the final year."

All rational arguments aside, Eberhardt pointed out that Princeton raised $8.74 pillion in annual giving last year, a figure bound to be topped in 1982. And, if Princeton can do it...

Now that's a challenge.

JANUARY 18 was the bicentennial of Daniel Webster's birth, a date observed in Hanover, Washington, D.C., and Salisbury, New Hampshire, whence he sprang. A worshipful Dartmouth has long been the collector-recipient of a lode of relics of its defender and most famous son, class of 1801. Shown here are his beaver hat (size 8¼); a portrait by Chester Harding of his first wife, Grace Fletcher, who died in 1828; a sketch of Webster far more benign in appearance than the fiery visage depicted in the famous Black Dan portrait; his United Fraternity badge; a plow from his Marshfield, Massachusetts, farm; and his corkscrew (allegedly put to frequent use). The College also owns the Old Roman's hayfork and razor.