DR. WHEELOCK'S JOURNAL

In mid August, a fat loose-leaf notebook landed with a thump in each Trustee's mailbox prior to the Board's annual retreat. The document has recently been released to many College officials as well.

The Trustees reportedly paid close attention to the notebook; it represents one of the most thoroughgoing efforts at planning that Dartmouth has gone through in many years.

Officially called the interim Report of the Planning Steering Committee, the document is based on the work of four College-wide task forces covering institutional size, graduate studies, facilities, and finances. The faculties of Arts & Sciences and the three graduate schools also contributed reports. And the architecture and planning firm Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown prepared an interim. "Concept Plan" to guide development of the campus north of Baker Library including the buildings to be emptied by the Medical Center's impending move to Lebanon.

Provost John Strohbehn has been leading the 24-member committee's effort since November to come up with a ten-year "vision" of Dartmouth. He writes in the report's executive summary that it does not represent a "fully discussed long-range plan for Dartmouth" but rather the basis for discussion of an eventual plan. Strohbehn has already spoken about the report to Alumni Fund volunteers, and he intends to give another talk to the Alumni Council in November. New task forces and committees are being considered to deal with subjects such as student life, the arts, the library, and "external forces"—government regulations, economics, and technology. The Steering Committee will present the more detailed longrange plan at the Trustee's meeting in April 1990, with a final report completed by the following June.

While the interim report contains few specific recommendations, it an alyzes the College's past and current aspirations and attempts to set out the "likely directions for Dartmouth in the 21st century." Few of the directions mentioned will startle alumni. The committee attempted to define the institution's niche in the educational marketplace as it currently exists. "A mark of Dartmouth's uniqueness is that when it tries to find comparison schools there are no good matches," the report says. "Dartmouth will have to continue to be confident of its special character and build on its existing strengths, rather than search for models to emulate." Some suggestions include a major examination of the undergraduate curriculum, visiting committees to review faculty and programs, and an increased international emphasis.

The planning exercise should help the College set priorities as it goes into a major capital campaign in the next few years. But who will actually make those decisions? While the president and his senior staff oversee all of the personnel at Dartmouth, a college is not a business; President Freedman himself favors the traditional "collegial" method of participatory decisionmaking. Like most academic institutions (and like another decision-making body, the U.S. Congress), the main work gets done in committee. The Trustees have six standing committees. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has 13, plus four "divisional councils" and eight councils of the general faculty. There are overseers of each of the graduate schools, and of the Dartmouth Institute, the Rockefeller Center, the Tucker Foundation, the Chandler Foundation, the Hanover Inn, and this magazine. In addition, there is a student government, and students serve on numerous College committees.

Given this honeycomb of decisionmaking at the College, the Trustees have decided to have a look at their own role in the process. They have appointed a Committee on Board Organization to study the Board's makeup and operation and its Oversight of Dartmouth. Specifically, the committee was asked to recommend the best way to find and select prospective trustees. It will also consider whether the chairman's tenure should be lengthened past its current two or three years to allow for better continuity of leadership. "This study will be the first comprehensive examination of these matters in 30 years," says George B. Munroe '43, the current chairman of the Board.

Munroe's predecessor, Norman E. McCulloch Jr. '50, chairs the committee. Other members are Susan Dentzer '77, Trustee Robert P. Henderson '53, William H. King Jr. '63, Thomas D. Rath '67, Trustee Robert B. Reich '68, Thaddeus Seymour '49 A, College Counsel Cary P. Clark '62, and Government Professor Frank Smallwood '51. The committee expects to complete its recommendations and report them to the Trustees by June 1990. "The president needs the strong and sustained support of an informed board," McCulloch says. "Our committee is charged with identifying those elements most conducive to meeting that goal."

The work of the Trustee committee and the Planning Steering Committee represents an effort of selfexamination perhaps unparalleled in Dartmouth's history. The upcoming capital campaign, the series of raucous Trustee elections, and the seemingly endless controversies over the Dartmouth Review offer sufficient cause for soul-searching. But it would have happened anyway, with James Freedman on campus. Freedman likes to speak in terms of "conversations" that lead to decision. One of the best accounts of that style in action was made recently by Judson D. Hale '55, editor of Yankee Magazine, introducing the president at a talk in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Hale said:

"Dr. Freedman assumed the presidency of Dartmouth College in 1987—when Dartmouth was in a frenzy of bitterness and battles over such issues as whether or not to fire the football coach, whether or not to cover up the paintings of nude Indian ladies hanging in a College pub, whether or not to ban the Dartmouth Review, a conservative off-campus student newspaper, whether or not to change a few words in the college song, and, of course, whether or not the college symbol or mascot ought to be an Indian.

"Most of us wearers of the Green were, I think, a little embarrassed by it all—and more than a little baffled. I mean it was difficult to figure out who was for what and why.

"Dr. Freedman, almost instantly in my opinion (at least as seen from the outside), raised the frenzied clamor up to the level of a reasoned, intellectual, stimulating, thoughtful debate over such subjects as the role of Dartmouth in the future of American education; the sorts of teachers and students Dartmouth should seek; as well as the type of curriculum Dartmouth should offer; and the role, form, and substance of a liberal education, itself.

"Oh sure, the debates continued to be heated and basic disagreements remain up on the Hanover Plain. But as Sarah Jackson, class of'88, recently wrote in this summer's Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, 'We must acknowledge that harmony has never meant unison.' And, I feel certain, Dr. Freedman would be the last to advocate unison."

Nota Bene

• Progress is rapid on the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's $215 million move to nearby Lebanon. The hospital, Dartmouth Medical School, and Hitchcock Clinic have formed an association similar to those that manage condos. The project, which is on 225 acres, includes two five-story inpatient care towers, a diagnostic and treatment building, an ambulatory care building, a conference and education center, and two research facilities. The first phase of the project is scheduled for completion by summer 1991, with occupancy slated for the fall.

• A campus committee is considering sites for a new or enlarged student center. A student survey found a demand for late-night fast food, a campus pub and a copy center. Officials are considering expanding the Collis Student Center into part of College Hall.

• Dartmouth is now among the elite schools being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department. College officials are watching closely to see what the impact might be on policies dealing with financial aid, tuition, and faculty salaries. Currently, the investigation's chief focus is on the way the top schools share information about financial aid offered to prospects. When two schools accept the same student, they agree in advance on how much aid each will offer in order to avoid bidding wars. Some 40 percent of Dartmouth students receive grants or loans.

In a look to the future, the College does some organized soul-searching.