Dr. Wheelock's Journal

You can't exactly call it a budget crisis, but senior Dartmouth officials have been looking rather glum lately. The reason is that the rapid increase in revenue—an average of 9.5 percent a year over the past decadeappears to have come to an end.Provost John Strohbehn predicts that income will rise only 5.2 percent, or $5.5 million, next fiscal year. One reason is that the Dartmouth Trustees have demanded more modest tuition hikes in the years to come. Tuition went up by 6.8 percent and 6.9 percnt during the past two years—the lowest additions in 15 years, but still too far above the consumer price index to satisfy the Trustees. The current tuition is $ 14,445. Including room and board, the charge is $19,335 a year.

The Board took away another financial cushion when it said the administration should stop using unrestricted gifts to pay for deficits. Such gifts ordinarily go into the endowment or are used for long-lasting projects such as the new chemistry building. For the past several years the money has been used to clean up some red ink $347,000 when the fiscal year ended last June.

The future could make the budgeters look even gloomier. A similar deficit is predicted for this fiscal year. The current budget totals $224 million, with $150 million allotted to Arts and Sciences. Anew three-year budget model shows that current spending patterns could make the situation worse. Early forecasts show a $5.8 million gap between revenues and expenses for 1991, increasing to an $8 million deficit for fiscal '92. In an effort to turn finances around, top management is asking all areas of the College to reduce total expenses by 1.8 percent from the current year's amount. As this was being written in mid-January, more budget details were expected soon; there was talk around campus of program cuts and possible layoffs.

The moves were hinted at last November, when President James O. Freedman told the Arts and Sciences faculty that financial problems "threaten" the College's "fiscal integrity." He pointed out that other schools—notably Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and Stanford—face a far greater budget crisis. Faculty salaries nationwide have been increasing after years of stagnation; the cost of research is soaring; and library materials are getting more expensive. Specific problems at Dartmouth include health-insurance premiums, which now cost the College 40 percent, or $1.1 million, more than a year ago. Retirement benefits have increased by $1.6 million. Financial aid gets more expensive every year as the tuition grows and as Dartmouth recruits more minority students. And thanks mostly to the dispute with the Dartmouth Review, legal expenses were $329,000 more than anticipated—almost as much as the deficit itself.

The main criterion in deciding where to cut will be "academic excellence," Freedman told the faculty last November.This made some non-academic departments nervous; the Hanover Inn, which has been in the midst of extensive renovations, lost $117,000 last year. A lousy winter gave the Skiway a loss of $320,000. And the Faculty Club had a $40,000 shortfall. Other programs are likely to be under scrutiny as well.

"How do we live within our means," the president asked the faculty, "and still preserve the excellence of this institution?" The answer may be good news to those who think the College needs a better focus as it goes into a capital campaign next year. Campus pundits say the cuts could put force behind the College-wide planning process; one way to determine what Dartmouth should do is to decide what it won't do.

As of this writing, no challenge had been made to the candidacy of Richard Page '54 as alumni Trustee. Unless another candidate is nominated by petition, Page will be the only one running for the office. Half of the elections since 1978 have been challenged.

You may recall that the Trustees have created a committee—led by former Board Chairman Sandy McCulloch '50—to look into the process. McCulloch's group has now released a draft report that recommends changes in the way the Board is chosen. The committee would have the Alumni Council choose three to five candidates instead of one. The winner would be chosen by a complex balloting system in which alumni rank the candidates in order of preference. If a group of alumni didn't like any of the Alumni Council's choices, they could still petition to place a candidate on the ballot. The winner would not have to run for a second term; instead, the Board itself would decide whether to keep an alumni Trustee for another five years.

In its draft report, the committee said it was about to tackle a more fundamental issue—the number of trustees on the Board. Currently there are 16 members. Seven are elected by alumni, and seven are chosen by the Board; the state governor and Dartmouth's president fill the other two slots. Alumni make up the largest proportion of trustees of any school in the Ivy League—44 percent, compared to an average of 21 percent for the others. The size of Dartmouth's board is also unusual; the average number of trustees for the rest of the Ivy League is 36. Why worry about size? The committee says it is difficult to build "a balanced team of varied skills" if the Board can pick only seven members.

The Alumni Council is sponsoring a forum on March 8 in New York City to talk about the proposals. The entire committee is expected to be there to take comments and questions.

The Council has been a more interesting place lately, thanks to its frank talking president, Murry Bowden '71. "I absolutely refuse to permit the Council to be a stage for the playing out of prescribed business," he told fellow Councilors at a meeting last November. Bowden thinks the Council's chief role should be to serve as a sounding board for alumni to the Board of Trustees. "Our unwillingness to do so" in the past, he said, "has diminished our standing among alumni." One sign that the Council is becoming less soporific: the group passed a resolution urging the Trustees to give a better explanation of its South Africa divestiture decision.

We caught up with Bowden at the end of the meeting and asked him what the Council can do for the College beyond its current role in selecting Trustees. "We want to be A resource for the Trustees," he said. "We don't want to start dictating decisions for them, but if the Trustees are deciding on something they're unsure of, they should run it by the Alumni Council. "The static in the system is growing," he continued. "There's a lot of frustration out there on the part of a lot of the alumni. One of the ways to vent frustration is to allow them to participate in some meaningful way in the processes of the College. The Councilors want to be heard, to get their two cents in. They're overachievers, used to being listened to. You can't expect them to come up here, in the climate we're in, and do nothing. Once you invite them to do something, they're going to do something. They'll try to make a difference."

What is causing the frustration in the first place? "It's a general, overall fear that we're going down the wrong path, abandoning some of our strengths. But some of these values are articulated in the Planning Steering Committee report that's been circulating. I think if people read that report, they're going to feel better. If the word gets out that people up here understand Dartmouth College and what it's all about, then people will rest easier."

Nota Bene

• We hope you read this month's story by Charlie Wheelan '88 on drinking. It gives some good news about Dartmouth. (It also tells how Charlie's fraternity antics cost him a job as a spy.) For those who want to read more about student abuse of alcohol and other drugs, the College offers seven publications that have been made available to campuses nationwide. They include: Alcohol Use and HealthRisks; Alcohol and Drugs Versus AthleticPerformance; Alcohol Use: Accountabilityandresponsibility; Assistancefor ImpairedMedical Students; Drugs Drugs Drugs;Alcohol and Drug Programs at DartmouthCollege (An Overview); and PartyPlanning and Party Monitors.

• We just learned that Biology Professor Christopher Reed has succumbed at the age of 38 to a long batde against cancer of the lymph system. Reed, who joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1982, received the J. Kenneth Huntington Memorial Award for Out standing Teaching in 1988. The professor's disease led to a campus-wide search for compatible bone marrow; more than 600 people were tested in Webster Hall. Although no match was found for Professor Reed, a donor was found for another patient.

• A woman from Trinidad has become Dartmouth's 57th Rhodes Scholar. Joanna Morris '89, will study psychology at Oxford. A psych major at the College, Morris was a Presidential and Rufus Choate Scholar and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She interned with Dartmouth's Affirmative Action Office, was a teaching assistant in the education department, served as vice president of Delta PhiEpsilon sorority, and was active in the Glee Club, the International Students Soiety, and WDCR radio.

• The number of candidates for early decision to Dartmouth was down again, a year after applications dropped 29.3 percent. This year's early-decision hopefuls totalled 1,015, versus 1,026 last year and 1,452 in 1988. Nontheless, the College accepted more early-decision students this year. The acceptance rate was 36.9 percent, the highest since 1980. Forty-four percent of the female candidates were admitted.

• Nancy Bekavac, counselor to President James O. Freedman, is leaving Dartmouth to become the first female president of Scripps College in Claremont, California. Her responsibilities at Dartmouth have included longrange planning and budgeting, academic initiatives, public affairs, and xdevelopment.

• DaveKramer'89isworkingtoform an Ivy League radio network to broadcast football games. Kramer, who is sports director of WNTK in New London, New Hampshire, hopes to line up at least 30 stations this year. The colleges are being given 18 minutes of airtime each game to talk about themselves or give news to alumni. And the network will give updates of other college contests.

• The College has formed the Bartlett Tower Society, composed of those who have made life-income gifts to Dartmouth or have made bequests of $5,000 or more. The society is named in honor of Samuel Colcord Bartlett, class of 1836, who was Dartmouth's president from 1877 to 1892. "Dr. Bartlett was Dartmouth's first real fundraising president," according to the College's Bequests & trusts office.

While the planners propose what Dartmouth will do, the budgeters choose what it won't.