Bender Plans Mid-West Alumni Group Meeting

Alumni Schools and Scholarships Committees will hold semi-annual conventions in a Mid-Western city--probably Chicago--to supplement the Cambridge meetings, Dean Bender said late last week in an explanation of Admissions Office policies.

The first of these conventions will come in the Fall of 1954, probably at the time of the Princeton game. Since 1949, the Committees have been meeting semi-annually in Cambridge, during odd-number years, on the eve of home Princeton games. At the meetings, Alumni Schools Committee plans and policies for the forthcoming year are discussed with representatives of the Administration.

Bender's announcement of the proposed Chicago meeting indicates the great intensification in Admissions Office policies. "In the last few years," Bender said, "the Cambridge meeting of Schools Committeemen drew large group from the New England and Middle Atlantic areas. Most Mid-Western and Far Western representatives were automatically excluded because of the large expense in time and transportation funds which such a trip necessitates.

"But," he continued, "with a meeting in the Mid-West every other year, we could reach these Committeemen."

Bender emphasized the fact that he was broadening, in a two-fold manner, the powers he found when he entered the Admissions Office last July. The proposed Mid-Western convention, in addition to an intensification of the "field trip" program, are the points of concentration.

Bender and several men of the Admissions and Scholarships Offices have been combing St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, and several other areas, in accordance with the policy of "indoctrination and recruiting."

While Bender actually is merely implementing the powers he found in the Office, he admitted that the Office itself was greatly strengthened shortly before he entered. The Office was given a new, highly centralized set of powers, and was transformed into a position with the three-fold responsibility of Admissions. Freshman Scholarships, and Financial Aid.

This centralization, which came at the same time the College was decentralizing the Dean's Office, inideates, Bender said. "University Hall's desire to keep the whole problem under firm control, and at the same time, on a same level."