D-MAIL

An every-issueguide to staying in touch with Dartmouth

The Young Alumni Distinguished Service Award was given to Susan Marie Fagerstrom '80 at the December Council meeting. She is the second of four sisters to graduate from the College between 1978 and 1987. A winner of academic and athletic awards in high school, Pagerstrom did the same at Dartmouth: Green Key, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude. After an M.B.A. at 'Harvard, she is now in product development at R.R. Donnelley & Sons, but finds time to Serve her community, her alma mater (Alumni Council, Hanover Inn Board of Overseers), and her class (class agent, treasurer, reunion and mini-reunion chairman).

Adapting to Change

The Alumni Council's new constitution as we reported in this space last month is to be promulgated at the Council's May meeting. Change has, of course, long been a key element in alumni affairs. Alumnidom first hove into view in the 1860s, when a group of New York alums stipulated that their $200,000 donation would depend oh the' College ending "the arbitrary power of trustees {with} the naturally conservative tendencies of aged men." It was, nevertheless, another 30 .years: before alumni trustees came into being, under a bill that barely passed the New Hampshire legislature.

During the following century Dartmouth , saw eight more presidents, scores of trustees, hundreds of alumni councilors, the disruptions of wars, various benevolences, two disastrous campus fires, an end to compulsory chapel, the Depression, the selective system of admissions, coeducation and the D-Plan, computers, new curricula and the founding in 1912 of the Alumni Council. Small wonder that the Council wants to revisit its structure and modus operandi.

This constitutional update has been a topic of conversation among councilors for several years, but even since those initial discussions cybernetic concepts such as the Home Page have significantly altered the communications scene. What's more, it has been estimated that in the next two years two-thirds of the alumni body will have access-to the World Wide Web arid, thus, an enhanced ability to interact with Hanover.

While such communications may now be: electronic and instant, the desire has, of course, .always been there. Whether cheering a touchdown in the Yale Bowl, calling a classmate in Omaha, or bitterly objecting to a College policy in an administrator's office in Hanover, most Dartmouth alumni are traditionally— one might say obsessively concerned with the fortunes of their alma mater. Indeed, the absence of such concern would be antithetic to the growth and change that is vital in an organic institution.

Among other Alumni Council developments:

• The Council is studying the possibility of creating a Dartmouth alumni job network that could aid both job seekers and employers. • The College's and the Council's communications are now traversing the Internet, accessible at . • The Council is looking for a hew logo. Ideas may be e-mailed to .

Susan Marie Fgerstrom '80 receives her Award.