Dartmouth College
| Motto | Vox clamantis in deserto (The voice of one crying out in the wilderness) |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Established | December 13 1769 |
| Endowment | $2.7 billion |
| President | James E. Wright '64A A.M. Ph.D. M.S. B.S. |
| Undergraduates | 4,078 |
| Postgraduates | 1,666 |
| Location | , , |
| Campus | Rural town, 265 acres (1.1 km²) -- over 31,000 acres total |
| Athletics | 34 varsity teams |
| Nickname | Big Green (unofficial) |
| Mascot | The Indian, Keggy the Keg, the Big Green (all unofficial) |
| Website | www.dartmouth.edu |
Dartmouth College, incorporated as Trustees of Dartmouth College, is a private academic institution in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, with funds partially raised by the efforts of a Native American preacher named Samson Occom, it is the ninth-oldest college in the United States. In addition to its liberal arts undergraduate program, Dartmouth has medical, engineering, and business schools, as well as 18 graduate programs in the arts and sciences; hence it would tend to be called a university in standard American usage. For the sake of tradition- in part stemming from the legacy of the landmark Dartmouth College case- and in order to emphasize the central importance it gives to undergraduate education, however, it refers to itself as a college. With a total enrollment of 5,744, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League.
In 2005 Booz Allen Hamilton selected Dartmouth College as one of the "World's Ten Most Enduring Institutions," recognizing its ability to overcome crises that threatened its survival (most famously Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward).[1] Dartmouth alumni are famously involved in their college, from Daniel Webster to the many donors in the 19th and 20th centuries. Over many generations, Dartmouth has had one of the highest alumni donor participation rates.
History
Dartmouth was made the ninth colonial college when it was given a royal charter by King George III in 1769, mostly as a result of the efforts of Eleazar Wheelock, a Puritan minister, and his patron, Royal Governor John Wentworth.
Dartmouth's original purpose was to provide for the Christianization, instruction, and education of "Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land...and also of English Youth and any others." Ministers Nathaniel Whittaker and Samson Occom (an early Native American clergyman) raised funds for the college in England through an English trust among whose benefactors and trustees were prominent English statemen, including King George III's Secretary of State for the Colonies in North America, William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, for whom Dartmouth College is named. The fundraising was meant to support Wheelock's ongoing Connecticut institution of the 1740s, Moor's Indian Charity School (chartered 1754), but Wheelock instead applied the funds to the establishment of Dartmouth College, the ninth and last colonial college. Classes began in 1770 and the College granted its first degrees in 1771. Dejected and betrayed, Samson Occom went on to form his own community of New England Indians called Brothertown in Oneida country in upstate New York.
In 1819, Dartmouth College was the subject of the historic Dartmouth College case, in which the State of New Hampshire attempted to amend the College's royal charter to make the school a public university. An institution called Dartmouth University occupied the college buildings and began operating in Hanover, though the College continued teaching classes in rented rooms nearby. Daniel Webster, an alumnus of the class of 1801, presented the College's case to the United States Supreme Court, which found the amendment of Dartmouth's charter to be an illegal impairment of a contract by the state and prevented New Hampshire from taking over the college. Webster concluded his peroration with the words,
- It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it.
Dartmouth was a men's college until 1972, when women were first admitted as full-time students and undergraduate degree candidates. At about the same time, Dartmouth adopted its unique "D-Plan", a schedule of year-round operation that allowed an increase in the enrollment (with the addition of females) without enlarging campus accommodations. The year is divided into four terms corresponding with the seasons; students are required to be in residence during the summer after their sophomore year. One wag described it as a way to put 4,000 students into 3,000 beds. Although new dormitories have been built since, the number of students has also increased and the D-Plan remains in effect.
Dartmouth's motto is Vox Clamantis in Deserto, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness" (a reference to John the Baptist as well as to the college's location on what was once the frontier of European settlement). Richard Hovey's Men of Dartmouth was elected as the best of all the songs of the College in 1896, and today it serves as the school's alma mater, although the lyrics and title have since been changed to be gender-neutral.
The screenplay for the film Animal House was cowritten by Chris Miller (B.A. 1963) and is based loosely on a series of fictional stories he wrote in 1974 about his fraternity days at Dartmouth, including "The Night of the Seven Fires." In a CNN interview, John Landis said the movie was "based on Chris Miller's real fraternity at Dartmouth," Alpha Delta Phi. In an interview with The Dartmouth, Miller said that at least one incident in the film—one in which a Delta Tau Chi brother skis down the stairs as the band plays "Shout"—occurred at an Alpha Delt party at Dartmouth. The names "Otter" and "Pinto" may be found in the Alpha Delta Phi section of the yearbooks of the period, such as the 1963 Aegis. The movie was filmed at the University of Oregon.
In January, 2001, two Dartmouth professors, Half Zantop (b. January 24, 1938) and Suzanne Zantop (b. August 12, 1945), were found stabbed to death in their Etna, New Hampshire home. After an intense nationwide manhunt, two teenagers from Chelsea, Vermont, Robert Tulloch and James Parker, were arrested in Newcastle, Indiana and extradited back to New Hampshire. Both defendants eventually pled guilty to murder charges and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Presidents of Dartmouth College (the Wheelock Succession)
| • Rev. Eleazar Wheelock | (1769–1779) |
| • John Wheelock, 1771 | (1779–1815) |
| • Rev. Francis Brown, 1805 | (1815–1820) |
| • Rev. Daniel Dana, 1788 | (1820–1850) |
| • Rev. Bennett Tyler | (1822–1828) |
| • Rev. Nathan Lord | (1828–1863) |
| • Rev. Asa Dodge Smith, 1830 | (1863–1877) |
| • Rev. Samuel Colcord Bartlett, 1836 | (1877–1892) |
| • Rev. William Jewett Tucker, 1861 | (1893–1909) |
| • Ernest Fox Nichols | (1909–1916) |
| • Ernest Martin Hopkins, 1901 | (1916–1945) |
| • John Sloan Dickey, 1929 | (1945–1970) |
| • John George Kemeny | (1970–1981) |
| • David Thomas McLaughlin, 1954 & Tuck 1955 | (1981–1987) |
| • James Oliver Freedman | (1987–1998) |
| • James E. Wright | (1998– ) |
Academics
The centerpiece of today's Dartmouth College is its undergraduate college of 4,078 students, constituting one of the most selective undergraduate institutions in the world. For the Class of 2009, 12,756 students applied for a little over 1,000 places in the class, and only 16.9% of applicants were admitted. The median SAT score of enrolled students in the freshman class is 1470, of whom 87% were in the top ten percent of their high school class. Alongside the undergraduate college lie a small graduate school and three professional institutes, Dartmouth Medical School (1797), Thayer School of Engineering (1867), and Amos Tuck School of Business Administration (1900). With these graduate programs, conventional American usage would accord Dartmouth the label of "university"; but for historical and nostalgic reasons (such as the Dartmouth College case) the school uses "Dartmouth College" for the entire institution.
Board of Trustees
Dartmouth is governed by a Board of Trustees. The board includes the college President, the state Governor (ex officio), eight trustees elected by the board itself (Charter Trustees), and eight trustees nominated for board appointment by members of the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College (Alumni Trustees), a body created in 1854 that represents over 60,000 alumni. (Specifically, trustee candidates may be nominated by an alumni council or by alumni petition, then an election is held, and finally the winner is, by longstanding agreement, appointed to the board by all Trustees. Three recent petition candidates have become Trustees in this manner.)
Facilities
Hopkins Center for Performing Arts
The Hopkins Center ("the Hop") houses the college's drama, music, film, and studio arts departments, as well as a woodshop, pottery studio, and jewelry studio which are open for use by students and the public. The building was designed by the famed architect Wallace Harrison, and its front façade is similar to that of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, a later design by Harrison. Facilities include two recital halls and one large auditorium. It is also the location of all student mailboxes and the Courtyard Café dining facility. The Hop is connected to the Hood Museum of Art and the Loew Auditorium, where films are shown. The Hopkins Center is an important New Hampshire performance venue.
Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center is a center for interaction and discussion on public policy. Dedicated in 1983, the center stands in tribute to Nelson A. Rockefeller (Class of 1930). Known on campus as Rocky, the Center provides students, faculty and community-members opportunities to discuss and learn about public policy, law, and politics. Sponsoring lunch and dinner discussions with prominent faculty and visitors, the Center aides provides close interaction and discussion.
The Rockefeller Center has established a Public-Policy Minor at Dartmouth College and an exchange program on political economy with Oxford University (Keble College). In addition, the Center provides grants to students engaged in public-policy research and/or activities.
The Rockefeller Center's Policy Research Shop is an innovative program that provides research upon the request of elected policy makers and their legislative staff throughout the year. The Center hires students to work under the direction of faculty members, who then produce reports that are typically between 5-15 pages long. The intent is to produce useful information in a timely fashion so that the information can be used in legislative deliberations.
The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding
The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding was established in 1982 to honor Dartmouth's twelfth president (1945-70), John Sloan Dickey. The purpose of the Dickey Center is to "coordinate, sustain, and enrich the international dimension of liberal arts education at Dartmouth." To this end, the Dickey Center is committed to helping Dartmouth students prepare for a world in which local, national and global concerns are more strongly linked than ever. It strives to promote quality scholarly research at Dartmouth concerning international problems and issues, with an emphasis on work that is innovative and cross-disciplinary. And it seeks to heighten public awareness and to stimulate debate on pressing international issues. The Dickey Center also hosts several student-run organizations, such as the Dartmouth World Affairs Council (WAC) or the War & Peace Fellows, which foster undergraduates' awareness of international affairs.
Aquatic facilities
Alumni Gym hosts two pools, the Karl Michael Competition Pool and the Spaulding Pool. Together they comprise a total of fifteen 25-yard lanes and two 50-meter lanes. The Karl Michael Pool, constructed in 1962, was designed by former Dartmouth College Men's Varsity Swim Team captain R. Jackson Smith, class of 1936. In 1970, it was formally named the Karl Michael Pool, after the coach of the men's varsity swim team from 1939-1970. The pool features eleven 25-yard lanes, with a special bulkhead that can be lowered to create two 50 meter lanes. The pool area has a seating area for 1,200 spectators. The Michael Pool hosted the 1968 Men's NCAA Championships, in which several American records were set. The pool also features one and three meter diving boards, with a water well 12 to 14 feet deep.
Adjacent is the Spaulding Pool. Spaulding Pool is a 10 by 25 yard pool constructed during 1919 and 1920 and designed by Rich & Mathesius, Architects. The Spaulding Pool is one of the oldest continuously operating pools in the United States. The pool's interior walls feature original encaustic tiles apparently designed by noted ceramist Leon Victor Solon. The pool has seating for several hundred spectators. Both pools are currently used by the Men's and Women's Varsity Swim Teams, as well as a host of other programs within the college.
Housing clusters
As opposed to ungrouped dormitories or residential colleges as employed at such institutions as Yale and Harvard, Dartmouth uses "housing clusters." Housing clusters are groups of two to four dormitories (although some single-dorm clusters exist) that are located physically near one another. Student tend to associate with a housing cluster more than with an individual dormitory.
Athletics
As of 2004, Dartmouth College hosts 34 varsity sports: sixteen for men, sixteen for women, and coeducational sailing and equestrian programs. This place it among the top United States colleges and universities in this regard. In addition, there are twenty-three club sports and twenty-four intramural sports.
Nickname, Symbol and Mascot
Since the 1920s, the Dartmouth College athletic teams have known by the unofficial nicknames "The Green" or "The Big Green." The nickname is based on students' adoption of a shade of forest green (called "Dartmouth green") as the school's official color in 1866. At the same time, teams also were known as the "Indians," and athletic uniforms eventually bore a representation of an Indian warrior's head. That representation and similar images called collectively "the Indian Symbol," as well as the practice of a cheerleader dressing in Indian costume to serve as a mascot during games, came under criticism; during the early 1970s the Trustees declared the "use of the (Indian) symbol in any form to be inconsistent with present institutional and academic objectives of the College in advancing Native American education." The Indian Symbol then fell into disuse.
Various student initiatives have been undertaken to adopt a new mascot, but none has garnered sufficient support from students or alumni to become "official." One proposal devised by the college humor magazine, the Jack-O-Lantern, was "Keggy the Keg", an anthropomorphic beer keg who makes occasional appearances at college sporting events, but has only received approval by the student government.
Varsity teams
Dartmouth's varsity athletic teams compete in NCAA Division 1 as well as in the eight-member Ivy League conference, which includes Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Some teams also participate in the ECAC (Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference). Dartmouth athletics have earned several high honors, excelling in NCAA championships ranging from track and field to basketball, cross country to soccer, as well as skiing, golf, lacrosse and diving.
As is true of all Ivy League schools, Dartmouth College does not offer athletic scholarships, yet is home to many student athletes. Currently many as three-quarters of Dartmouth undergraduates participate in some form of athletics, and one-quarter of Dartmouth students play a varsity sport at some point during their undergraduate years. The actual numbers of varsity athletes and varsity sports are thus much larger than at schools ten times Dartmouth's size.
In addition to official varsity sports, Dartmouth students participate in several club teams, such as those for rugby, water polo, and ultimate frisbee. These teams generally perform quite well and participate in many regional and national competitions.
For more information on certain individual athletic teams, please see Dartmouth College athletic teams.
Venues
Dartmouth hosts many athletic venues. Dartmouth College Alumni Gymnasium, the center of athletic life at Dartmouth, is home of the Dartmouth College Aquatic facilities, basketball courts, squash and racket ball courts, indoor track, fencing lanes as well as a rowing training center. The college also maintains both indoor and outdoor track facilities, hockey arena, football stadium, rowing boat house, and tennis complex.
Dartmouth's original sports field is the Green, where students played cricket during the late eighteenth century and Old Division Football during the 1800s; some intramural games still take place there.
Current venues include Memorial Field, Leede Arena, and Thompson Arena.
Student life
Student groups
Dartmouth hosts a large number of student groups, covering a wide range of interests. Literary publications include: The Dartmouth (the nation's oldest daily college paper), the Dartmouth Jack O'Lantern (humor magazine), The Dartmouth Review (off-campus conservative newspaper), the Dartmouth Free Press (liberal/progressive newspaper), and the Dartmouth Independent (moderate online newspaper).
As of 2005 student musical groups include: the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble, the Dartmouth Glee Club, the Christian acapella group X.Ado, the Dartmouth Chamber Singers, the Dartmouth Aires, the Dartmouth Final Cut, the Dartmouth Cords, the Dartmouth Dodecaphonics, the Dartmouth Gospel Choir, the Handel Society of Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth College Marching Band, the Dartmouth Rockapellas, the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, the Dartmouth Chamber Orchestra, the Dartmouth Wind Symphony, the Dartmouth Brass Society, and the World Music Percussion Ensemble.
Technology
Technology plays an important role in student life, as Dartmouth is perenially ranked as one of the most technologically-advanced American colleges (as in Newsweek's ranking of "Hottest for the Tech-Savvy"). BlitzMail, the campus e-mail network, plays a tremendous role in social life, as students tend to use it for communication in lieu of cellular phones or instant messenging programs. The complete campus, indoors and out, is serviced by wireless Internet, and all students are required to own a personal computer.
Student reliance on BlitzMail (known colloquially as "Blitz," which functions as both noun and verb) has led to computer terminals being installed all around campus, so that students can check their e-mail in between classes or while away from their rooms. Dartmouth has more than 12,000 computers available for use on campus. [2]
Freshman Trips
Established in 1935 to promote interest in the Dartmouth Outing Club, the tradition of freshman outing trips is among the largest pre-orientation programs in the country, involving upwards of 95 percent of students in each incoming class. The Trips evolved steadily since their inception, becoming steadily more popular and intricate. During the 1960s, under the support of Dartmouth President John Sloan Dickey, the College renovated the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, made the Lodge the final destination for all Trips, and brought participation up to two-thirds of the incoming class.
Today, the Trips take place in the two weeks prior to the standard orientation week, and involve a three-night, four-day trip of hiking, cycling, kayaking, or even nature photography, culminating in a tradition-filled night spent at the College-owned Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. Run almost entirely by current students, these trips feature crews on campus and at the Lodge who, dressed in eccentric clothing, teach many of the traditional College dances, songs, and legends. Around eight incoming students are led by two current students on their trip. Students frequently claim that once their Freshman Trip is over, the Dartmouth spirit has become so engrained in them that the College is part of their blood. As a result, up to one-third of the eligible current students apply to either lead trips or to serve on the Hanover or Lodge crews.
Winter Carnival
Winter Carnival is a long-standing tradition at Dartmouth College that was particularly famous during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.
The Dartmouth Outing Club, founded in 1909, organized a winter weekend "field day" in 1910. This was an athletic event centered on skiing, a sport which the Outing Club helped to pioneer and publicize on a national scale. In 1911 the event was named Winter Carnival, social events were added, and women were invited to attend. By 1919 the emphasis had shifted to dances organized by fraternities. Special trains made runs to transport women guests to Dartmouth, and National Geographic Magazine referred to it as "the Mardi Gras of the North." The event became famous, much as Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale was to be during the 1950s and 1960s.
Carnival was the subject of the frothy 1939 motion picture comedy Winter Carnival, starring Ann Sheridan, who plays a former Winter Carnival Queen of the Snows who has made a bad marriage to a European duke and revisits Dartmouth in an attempt to save her younger sister, the current Queen, from repeating her mistake with a European count.
The movie is remembered mostly for its extracinematic associations; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dartmouth alumnus Budd Schulberg were hired to write the screenplay. While gathering background in Hanover during Carnival, Fitzgerald became scandalously drunk at fraternities and was forced to leave the project. Although portions of his work were used, he was not given a writer's credit. The events and personalities bear a resemblance to those recounted in Schulberg's novel, The Disenchanted.
Winter Carnival takes place each year on a weekend in February and include such events as ski competitions at the Dartmouth Skiway; a polar bear swim; a cappella and jazz concerts; a human dogsled race; a drag ball; and a showing of the 1939 movie. Students build a large Carnival-themed snow sculpture on the college Green. The 1987 sculpture held the Guinness record for the "tallest snowman." The sculpture in 2004 reflected the famous character 'The Cat in the Hat,' in honor of the 100th birthday of Dartmouth alumnus and creater of the character, Dr. Seuss.
Numerous parties are thrown by the campus's fraternities and sororities. In 1999, students cancelled their parties to protest other administration policies.
Dartmouth Night
Dartmouth Night starts the college's traditional "Homecoming" weekend with an evening of speeches, a parade, and a bonfire. Traditionally, the freshman class builds the bonfire and then runs around it a set number of times in concordance with their class year; the class of 2009 performed 109 circuits, the class of 1999 performed 99, etc.
President William Jewett Tucker introduced the ceremony of Dartmouth Night in 1895. The evening of speeches celebrated the accomplishments of the college's alumni. Originally the event took place in the Old Chapel in Dartmouth Hall, but over time other events began to become more important and popular and Dartmouth Night moved outdoors.
The focus of Dartmouth Night is the bonfire. Students had built bonfires during the late nineteenth century to celebrate sports victories, including one in 1888 that recognized a baseball victory over Manchester. An editorial in The Dartmouth criticized that fire, saying:
- It disturbed the slumbers of a peaceful town, destroyed some property, made the boys feel that they were being men, and in fact did no one any good.
The students nevertheless continued to build bonfires before and after athletic events, and by the mid-twentieth century, bonfires were firmly associated with Dartmouth Night.
In 1904, the Earl of Dartmouth visited the campus on Dartmouth Night with New Hampshire politician and author Winston Churchill and marched around the Green with the students. Early on, the tradition of reading out telegrams (later e-mail messages) sent that night from alumni clubs around the country began.
Football first began to be associated with Dartmouth Night during the 1920s. Memorial Field was dedicated on Dartmouth Night in 1923. For decades the raucous pre-football rallies remained separate from the dignified official activities. In 1936, the College first began the tradition of football games during this weekend; ten years later the formal College events and the rally were combined in a single grand event, and for the first time Dartmouth Night was intentionally scheduled on what is called Dartmouth Night Weekend.
During the 1950s, students adopted a star-hexagon-square structure for the bonfire. Following the tragic bonfire accident at Texas A&M in 1999, the school hired professionals to do some of the building; nevertheless the night still remains a highlight of the school year.
Native Americans at Dartmouth
Alumni
Famous graduates and students at Dartmouth include:
- Daniel Webster - US Senator from New Hampshire and Secretary of State of the US
- Salmon P. Chase from Ohio - Chief Justice of the United States
- Robert Frost - poet who won four Pulitzer Prizes
- Nelson Rockefeller - Vice President of the US and Governor of New York
- Theodor Geisel - the children's author better known as Dr. Seuss
See also
- Dartmouth College Greek organizations
- The Dartmouth Review
- The Dartmouth
- Dartmouth College Marching Band
- Dartmouth pong
- The Hopkins Center
- Ivy League
- Ivy League business schools
References
- . ISBN 1596580380.
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External links
- Dartmouth College website
- The Dartmouth Independent — Dartmouth's only online publication, spanning a spectrum of political views.
- The Dartmouth — the United States' oldest independent college newspaper
- The Dartmouth Beacon — Dartmouth's only college recognized conservative publication.
- The Dartmouth Free Press — College-funded liberal publication
- Remembering Maurice Rapf
- Dartmouth Film Society
- Dartmouth's Alumni Association
- Dartmouth webcam
- Books — Faculty book publication list
- Dartmouth Skiway
- The Mardi Gras of the North History of the Winter Carnival
- 2004 Winter Carnival Celebration: "Oh! The Places It Snows: A Seussentennial"
- IMDb: Winter Carnival
- Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts
- Dartmo.: The Buildings of Dartmouth College
- Encyclopedia of North American Indians
- Native American Programs at Dartmouth
- The Dartmouth Pow-Wow
- Chris Miller Bio of Chris Miller, Dartmouth '63, cowriter of Animal House
- Alpha Delta Lawn Party, cites Chris Miller
- John Landis interview, Animal House based on Dartmouth
- All about the Dartmouth Murders (Half and Suzanne Zantop)(www.crimelibrary.com)
- Moosilauke, Dartmouth and the Ravine Camp 1909-1939 Video on the Construction of the Ravine Lodge
- Dartmouth Wireless Network Press Coverage