Encyclopedia
Dartmouth College is a private academic institution in
Hanover,
New Hampshire, in the United States. It is a member of the
Ivy League and is one of the nine colonial colleges founded before the American Revolution. 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 and the seventh-wealthiest in terms of funds per-student. 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. It is incorporated as
Trustees of Dartmouth College.
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 . 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 and final 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 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 , but Wheelock instead applied the funds to the establishment of Dartmouth College. Classes began in 1770 and the College granted its first degrees in 1771, obtaining a seal to affix on them in 1773. Dejected and betrayed,
Samson Occom went on to form his own community of New England Indians called
Brothertown Indians 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's 1816 attempt to amend the College's royal charter to make the school a public university was challenged. An institution called Dartmouth University occupied the college buildings and began operating in Hanover in 1817, 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 reversed New Hampshire's takeover of the College. Webster concluded his peroration with the famous and frequently-quoted 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 without enlarging campus accommodations. The year is divided into four terms corresponding with the
seasons; students are required to be in residence during their freshman year, sophomore year summer term, and senior 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 Latin motto is literally translated as "The voice of one crying in the wilderness", but the College administration often translates the phrase as "A voice crying in the wilderness", which, while not technically correct in Latin grammar, attempts to translate the synecdoche of the phrase. The motto is a reference to the Christian Bible's
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 is a 1978 [i] comedy film [i] in which a misfit group o ...
was cowritten by Chris Miller 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. 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 section of the yearbooks of the period, such as the 1963
Aegis. The movie was filmed at the
University of Oregon.
Presidents of Dartmouth College
| • The Rev. Eleazar Wheelock | |
| • John Wheelock, 1771 | |
| • The Rev. Francis Brown, 1805 | |
| • The Rev. Daniel Dana, 1788 | |
| • The Rev. Bennet Tyler | |
| • The Rev. Nathan Lord | |
| • The Rev. Asa Dodge Smith, 1830 | |
| • The Rev. Samuel Colcord Bartlett, 1836 | |
| • The Rev. William Jewett Tucker, 1861 | |
| • Ernest Fox Nichols | |
| • Ernest Martin Hopkins, 1901 | |
| • John Sloan Dickey, 1929 | |
| • John George Kemeny, 1981A | |
| • David Thomas McLaughlin, 1954 & Tuck 1955 | |
| • James Oliver Freedman, 1998A | |
| • James E. Wright, 1964A | |
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 2010, 13,933 students applied for a little over 1,000 places in the class, and only 15.4% of applicants were admitted. Median SAT scores lie within the low 700s for each subject, and 93% of the members of the Class of 2010 graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class. Alongside the undergraduate college lie small graduate schools, the Dartmouth Medical School , the Thayer School of Engineering , and the
Amos Tuck School of Business Administration . With these graduate programs, conventional American usage would accord Dartmouth the label of "Dartmouth University"; but because of the focus on the undergraduate body, as well as historical and nostalgic reasons , the school uses the name "Dartmouth
College" for the entire institution.
Board of Trustees
Dartmouth is governed by a Board of Trustees. The board includes the College president and the state governor , eight trustees appointed by the board itself , and eight trustees nominated for board appointment by members of the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College, a body created in 1854 that represents over 60,000 alumni.
Academic reputation
In 2007, Dartmouth College was ranked 9th among undergraduate programs at national universities, according to
U.S. News and World Report is a weekly newsmagazine [i]. ...
. According to Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education, Dartmouth College is ranked 102-150th in terms of number of Nobel Prizes awarded and quality of scientific research in their 2006 Academic Ranking of World Universities - eighth in the Ivy League behind Harvard , Columbia , Princeton , Yale , Cornell , University of Pennsylvania and Brown . With Dartmouth's focus on undergraduate education, as opposed to graduate research, this ranking is not surprising.
Facilities
Hopkins Center for the Creative and Performing Arts
The 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 faculty. The building was designed by the famed architect
Wallace Harrison, who later modeled
Manhattan’s Lincoln Center front façade after the Hopkins Center. 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 . 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 . 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 , 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 or the War & Peace Fellows, which foster undergraduates' awareness of international affairs. Several grants and awards are also administered by the Dickey Center, including the prestigious Chase Peace Prize, conferred annually to the senior thesis that contributes most significantly to an understanding of the causes of peace and war.
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 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 designed by noted ceramist Leon Victor Solon, although a later mezzanine housing locker rooms has obscured some of the designs. 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
The University of Chicago and
Yale, Dartmouth has several housing clusters located throughout campus. The College experienced a slight housing crunch due to the unusually high yield of the class of 2005. Partially as a result, the College erected temporary housing, and two new dormitory clusters are due to be completed in the fall of 2006. Also starting in 2006, the College will guarantee housing for students during their freshman and sophomore years.
Athletics
As of 2004, Dartmouth College hosts 34 varsity sports: sixteen for men, sixteen for women, and coeducational sailing and equestrian programs. This places 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 & mascot
Since the 1920s, the Dartmouth College athletic teams have been known by their unofficial nicknames "The Green" or "The Big Green." The nickname is based on students' adoption of a shade of forest green as the school's official color in 1866. Until the early 1970s, teams were also known as the "
Indians," and athletic uniforms 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." Some alumni and a minority of students, as well as the conservative student newspaper, The Dartmouth Review, have sought to return the Indian symbol to prominence, but no team has worn the symbol on its uniform in decades.
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
Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern is a college humor magazine [i], founded at Dartmouth College [i] ...
, was "
Keggy the Keg", an
anthropomorphic beer keg who makes occasional appearances at college sporting events, but Keggy has only received approval from the student government. The Moose appears in some Dartmouth Athletic Department publications.
Varsity teams
Dartmouth's varsity athletic teams compete in the
National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I, 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 Eastern College Athletic Conference . Dartmouth athletes have earned several high honors, excelling in
track and field,
basketball,
cross country running,
rowing,
soccer,
skiing,
golf,
sailing,
lacrosse, and
diving.
As is mandatory amongst all Ivy League schools, Dartmouth College does not offer athletic scholarships, yet is home to many student athletes. As 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 percentage of varsity athletes and varsity sports are thus disproportionately greater than at many much larger colleges in the country.
In addition to official varsity sports, Dartmouth students participate in several club teams, such as those for rugby,
water polo, Figure Skating, Men's Volleyball and Ultimate. These teams generally perform quite well in their respective regional and national competitions. The Dartmouth Figure Skating Team has performed particularly well in recent National events. They are currently the Collegiate National Champions after 3 consecutive years.
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
racketball courts, indoor track,
fencing lanes as well as a
rowing training center. The college also maintains the Memorial Field
football stadium, Leede Arena , and Thompson Arena , as well as a rowing boat house and a tennis complex.
Dartmouth's original sports field was 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.
Student life
Student groups
Dartmouth hosts a large number of student groups, covering a wide range of interests. Students are commonly involved in more than one group on campus. As of 2006, the College hosted at least 11 literary publications, 8 a-capella groups, 10 other musical groups, and over 200 organizations recognized by the "Council of Student Organizations". Notable student groups include
The Dartmouth, America's oldest daily college newspaper,
The Dartmouth Review, an independent conservative newspaper, The Dartmouth Film Society, the nation's oldest college film society, and The Dartmouth Aires, an award-winning a-capella group.
Greek life
Dartmouth College is host to many Greek organizations and a large percentage of the undergraduate student body is active in Greek life. In 2000, nearly half of the undergraduate student body belonged to a fraternity, sorority, or coeducational Greek house. First year students are not allowed to join Greek organizations, however, so the actual fraction of Dartmouth students that become active in Greek life during their studies at the College exceeds half of the student body. Dartmouth College was among the first institutions of higher education to desegregate fraternity houses in the 1950s, and was involved in the movement to create coeducational Greek houses in the 1970s. In the early 2000s, campus-wide debate focused on whether or not the Greek system at Dartmouth should become "substantially coeducational," but most houses retain single-sex membership policies. The college has an additional classification of social/residential orginazations known as undergraduate societies. These organizations are not part of the official Greek system, but serve a similar role on campus.
Technology
Technology plays an important role in student life, as Dartmouth is perennially ranked as one of the most technologically-advanced colleges in the world .
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 messaging programs.
Student reliance on BlitzMail has led to computer terminals being installed all around campus, so that students can check their "blitz" in between classes or while away from their rooms. Dartmouth has more than 12,000 computers available for use on campus.
Dartmouth was also notable as the first college campus to offer entirely ubiquitous wireless internet access by 2001. The wireless network is available throughout all college buildings as well as in most public outdoor spaces. Other technologies being pioneered include college-wide Video-on-Demand and VoIP rollouts.
Native Americans at Dartmouth
The charter of Dartmouth College, granted to Eleazar Wheelock in 1769, proclaims that the institution was created "for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land in reading, writing and all parts of Learning ... as well as in all liberal Arts and Sciences; and also of English Youth and any others." The funds for Dartmouth College were raised primarily by the efforts of a Native American named
Samson Occom.
While Dartmouth's students since have mainly been white, the college still claims to have a long history of involvement with Indian education. In 1970 the school established Native American academic and social program as part of a "new dedication to increasing Native American enrollment."
Wheelock, a Congregationalist dedicated to converting Indians to Christianity, was head of Moor's Indian Charity School prior to establishing Dartmouth. It was this institution that Mohegan preacher
Samson Occom raised money for; Occom was bitterly disappointed to see Wheelock transform it into an English college.
Traditions
Dartmouth is home to a variety of traditions and celebrations:
- Homecoming and Dartmouth Night: Each fall term, a bonfire is constructed by the freshman class, a tradition stemming from the late 1800s. Freshman run around the bonfire in accordance with their class year .
- Winter Carnival: Founded in 1909 by the Dartmouth Outing Club to promote winter sports, this celebration includes a snow sculpture on the Green and a variety of outdoor events. Winter Carnival was the subject of the 1939 motion picture comedy Winter Carnival, starring Ann Sheridan
...
.
- Green Key Weekend: The spring Green Key Weekend began in the 1920s with a formal function related to the Green Key Society, but the importance of the Society in the weekend is largely diminished. Green Key is today a weekend devoted to campus parties and celebration.
- Tubestock: Tubestock was an unofficial summer tradition in which the sophomore class used wooden rafts and inner tubes to float on the Connecticut River. Begun in 1986, Tubestock met its demise in 2006 when Hanover town ordinances and a lack of coherent student protest conspired to defeat the popular tradition.
- Fieldstock: The class of 2008, during their summer term on campus in 2006, attempted to replace the now-defunct Tubestock with Fieldstock. The student government coordinated with the college to organize a day of events in the BEMA and on the Green, including a free barbecue, live music, and the revival of the 1970s and 1980s tradition of racing homemade chariots around the Green. Unlike Tubestock, Fieldstock was college funded and supported, though whether or not it becomes a true college tradition will depend on whether the class of 2009 chooses to hold it again in the summer of 2007.
- Freshman trips: Prior to matriculation, the Dartmouth Outing Club sponsors four-day freshman outing trips for incoming freshman. Each trip concludes at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.
- Dartmouth Pow-Wow: A two-day ceremony is marked by traditional dancing, crafts, music and art, held every spring since 1973. The Pow-Wow is organized by the student group Native Americans at Dartmouth.
Alumni
Notable graduates and students at Dartmouth include:
...
See also
References
*
External links
- — Faculty book publication list
- – History of the Winter Carnival
- An electronic library of undergraduate research
- *
- Bio of Chris Miller, Dartmouth '63, cowriter of Animal House is a 1978 [i] comedy film [i] in which a misfit group o ...
- , cites Chris Miller
- – quoting Animal House being based on Dartmouth
- *
- by Baxter Perry Smith
