Indifference Tempers Winds of Change

At Dartmouth, perhaps the most unregimented and isolated of all Ivy League schools, the campus mood tends toward apathy. While a small minority of politically active students and concerned administrators and faculty formulate plans to "completely reshape today's Dartmouth" in the words of one assistant professor, the vast majority of students seem more intent on playing and working in the relaxed and relatively unstructured atmosphere which already exists.

When officials introduced the novel Dartmouth Plan for reorganizing undergraduate life in 1972, they unwittingly fostered an aura of transience around the Hanover, N.H., campus. Today, plans to implement a new student government, consolidate dormitories, and tighten the options students have under the Dartmouth Plan appear to be a reaction against the liberal trend of changes made in 1972.

Although the revisions may reduce the flexibility and freedom of choice now in undergraduate life, few students seem committed to participating in the process of change. "There have been proposals to change parts of the present system, but I don't think many students really pay that much attention to them," said freshman Chip Fleischer. "Things are pretty fine the way they are now."

Recreation

Other students agree. "I think the biggest part of life here is recreation," said Alex Gutterman. "You'll see the school for what it really is on a nice spring day," he added. "There is some really hard-core studying here, too, it just takes place in the libraries where no one can see it."

Despite contented attitudes like these, a small minority is determined to effect changes in college life. There are currently three major reform proposals on the campus agenda:

* A plan to combine autonomous dormitories into groups, called "clusters," that will share central common rooms, recreational facilities and small kitchens;

* A proposal to add more structure to Dartmouth's calendar plan, one of the nation's most flexible, which allows students to schedule their own vacations throughout college.

Eight Arms

"The student government right now is like an octopus," said Steven N. Barnett, vice president of Dartmouth's Undergraduate Council, when describing the problems with the present system. "It has so many branches," he explained, citing the half dozen councils and committees which represent various factions of the student body. Since the delegates to the campus-wide government are elected at large, he added, they don't know who voted for them and feel responsible to no particular constituency.

All that would have changed last month if students had approved a referendum to create a consolidated student assembly and attach a $10 fee to every student's term bill, a transformation similar to the metamorphosis of Harvard's Student Assembly into the Undergraduate Council.

But although more than 90 percent of the students voting favored the change, the total number of ballots cast was not enough for a quorum. "We needed near 1500 votes, and we missed by 72," said Michelle C. Ott, vice chairman of the present student government.

"It's a real Catch-22," "Barnett said. "Students are very apathetic, and that's because they don't have a channel for their voices. But they can't get a channel for their voices unless they vote."

Now students are organizing a petition drive for the new government, Ott said. The petition must receive the signatures of at least two-thirds of the student body if it is to be approved. "I don't think there's really much chance that it won't be passed," she said, because backers have planted petition organizers in every dormitory and fraternity.

"They're working hard, and if they can finish by finals [which begin at the end of May for Dartmouth] my guess is they'll have a student government," said Robert B. Graham '42, director of the Darmouth News Service

Pathetic

But some students see the drive in a less enthusiastic light. "The percentage of people, around 10 percent, who voted in the first election is pathetic," said Fleischer. "It's just honest that people don't give a damn about student government."

The administration says it is trying to change that perception with the new cluster dormitory groups, which it hopes will bring students closer together and make them more interested in the actions of their leaders. "Right now, dorms are just places to sleep, like hotels. We hope that [clustering] will give students the facilities to develop programs that will bring more of them together," said the Committee on Undergraduate Life that first developed the housing proposal.

In addition, the clusters--which are intended to promote intra-cluster parties--alone with unified extracurricular activities--may take some of the social pressure off fraternities, which currently dominate Dartmouth social life.

"We recommended reducing the impact and number of frats in the [housing] report," Mather said. That section of the proposal, she added, initially came under heavy attack from students concerned that the college was trying to wipe out fraternities.

"They're just trying to help us out," said George Faux, vice president of the Phi Delta Alpha fraternity. Fraternities were concerned by the tone of the report when it was first released, he explained, but now have come to accept it.

Surprisingly, the most far-reaching change on Dartmouth's horizon commands the least student opposition. In 1972 Dartmouth instituted the Dartmouth Plan for Year-Round Operations, which gave students complete flexibility in scheduling their four years at college. The Plan broke the academic year down into four quarters, students were required to attend school for only 11 of the 16 quarters that would comprise their undergraduate tenure. With the exception of one required summer quarter students could build their vacations around anything from job opportunities to travel abroad or special studies.

"The program is so flexible that less than five percent of all students share the same class-vacation 'pattern', "said Graham.

Confusion

Indeed, it is too flexible. "Many people have felt there's a degree of unsettledness in the system," he added. Students, he said, were unable to form steady friendships that were not disrupted by constant, unsynchronized breaks.

The current reform proposals, already approved by the faculty's executive committee and awaiting a full faculty vote which most expect to be affirmative, will curtail some of the flexibility. Students will be required to remain on campus for their full freshman and senior years, so experimentation in innovative scheduling will be limited to sophomore and junior years. The summer session requirement will remain.

Here, while students know about the issue, "there's not much debate," said George Mannes, the managing editor of the school newspaper. "Everyone basically agrees [with the proposals] as long as they don't take away too much flexibility."

All of this apathy, then, begs the question: where is the center of Dartmouth life? Is it in fraternities that still provide most of the social life in the tiny New Hampshire town? Is it, as Barnett maintains, on the playing fields and in the libraries? Is it in the handful of students that campaign for changes in the structure of campus life? Or is Dartmouth merely in hibernation after the flareups of the sixties?

When asked to describe the Dartmouth student on the basis of her 13 years in the Council of Student Organizations, the oldest worker interviewed at Dartmouth probably answered the question best when she said. "Dartmouth students are just very busy."