The Starting Point

In the first issue of The Dartmouth BiMonthly anteceding by three years the birth of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE, President Tucker wrote in his own terse style, "The publication of this magazine is to be considered as an effort to realize in the most intelligent way the unity of the College."

This matter of "unity" had been on his mind cumulatively during the twelve years since he had taken office as President. He believed strongly that through the years, individually, Dartmouth's alumni body compared favorably with any other. But he also felt that without any effective over-all organization they had been so occupied with fending, with the College administration, and sometimes with each other, that any semblance to an "alumni body" was largely lacking.

The cost of these last decades had been heavy. In the lush financial decades when colleges were pyramiding endowments that originally had been little larger than Dartmouth's, and were amplifying and modernizing their plants, Dartmouth had made little progress.

I do not know but I have always thought that the expression of alumni loyalty, the mobilizing of College interest and the demonstration of alumni financial support that followed the Dartmouth Hall fire in 1904 had convinced President Tucker that the time had come as against all other exacting demands for embarking on his long-considered project of drawing the resident College and its widely scattered alumni into a closer relationship.

At any race, it was at this time that he turned his efforts definitely towards alumni organization and enhancing "the unity of the College."

Impairment of health unfortunately precluded his taking as active a part in development of this policy as he had intended to do, but his vision encompassed all that was later done and his wisdom and encouragement made working out the details of alumni organization, as we now know it, a joy for the many who had a hand in the enterprise.

So he welcomed as a landmark in his administration the enthusiasm of the Secretaries Association for sponsoring a publication to associate all functions of the College in a common unity. Hence, the establishment of The Dartmouth Bi-Monthly, a step towards the magnificent accomplishment that is represented today in the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE, now celebrating its fiftieth birthday.