Should The College Change Its Tune?

A clash between Dartmouth of myth and modernity keeps its people from singing in harmony.

DARTMOUTH'S president faced a delicate problem: some students were clamoring for a new alma mater. The old one, they argued, was anachronistic-it failed to reflect the College as it had changed over the years.

The president agreed that the song should be replaced; in fact, one of his predecessors had already insisted on a new alma mater. But the current president demurred at first; the earlier decision had "antagonized many an alumnus," he recalled.

The president, Ernest Martin Hopkins, wrote these words almost exactly 60 years before David McLaughlin faced the same issue. The alma mater in 1926 was "Song of Dartmouth," at the end of which men were supposed to spell T-I-G-R—a work of orthographic cheering that had lost favor among most students.

Not that the song's proposed replacement, "Men of Dartmouth," was without its flaws, as the Alumni Magazine pointed out at the time. "One boggles at the idea of wind in the circulatory system, if not at that of granite where the brain should be," noted an anonymous writer.

Nonetheless, President Hopkins felt that the old alma mater was "wholly inadequate to and unworthy of the College in whose behalf it had been presumably sung from time to time." And so, in the fall of 1926, he urged that the newer song take over. The issue gradually was laid to rest with "Men of Dartmouth" as the official alma mater.

Before this story raises the well-worn lament, "If only Hoppy were still here," a word of caution: today's version of the alma mater issue has some thorns that were not around to bloody President Hopkins' fingers.

For one thing, no satisfactory replacement song waits in the wings.

Secondly, the old song's problem is not an outdated cheer but a concept of Dartmouth that seems anathema to a small but growing body of people. Shanties and controversies over gender-specific resource centers make any change in this alma mater an issue that goes far beyond semantics.

Perhaps most thorny of all is the defense mechanism built into the current song's lyrics: "set a watch lest the old traditions fail."

Tugging opposite that pull of tradition is the feeling among some students—albeit a minority—that the College has changed from the one lauded in the song. "Quite simply, it was written for a different Dartmouth," asserted an editorial in TheDartmouth in January. "An institution's alma mater must unify and represent the entire community, and the current song does not."

From the standpoint of sex and race, at least, the Dartmouth community is indeed changing. According to a study by the Alumni Affairs office, females comprise 9 percent of the alumni body, minorities 3.7 percent. A decade and a half from now, if the enrollment of these groups remains the same, females will account for 19 percent of alumni, minorities 7 percent.

And yet, the song's roots go deeper than the topsoil of current society, and are anchored in the school's very foundations —which happen to be thoroughly and irrevocably male. Is there more at stake than a few words of a song?

The women who came with the first official coed class of '76 seemed to accept the school's hirsute, chest-beating traditions as part of the territory - though not necessarily one to which they would swear allegiance themselves. In 1972 the minority of women who responded to an informal poll indicated support of "Men of Dartmouth." One woman wrote on her ballot, "If men want to sing about rocks in their heads, it's fine with me."

But a new poll taken last month showed that feelings had changed: a narrow majority of female respondents thought that the song should be altered to recognize their presence.

The change in attitude may have come about in part as a result of last year's imbroglio over shanties and alleged racism on campus, during which many of the College's shared assumptions came under fire. Last May, a committee on "diversity" consisting of faculty, administrators, and students appointed by President McLaughlin stated that the alma mater was inappropriate " as a school song for coeducational Dartmouth." At the same time, the group agreed that the alma mater might be sung by consenting adults "under suitable circumstances . . .when a purely historical intent will be dear." Presumably, such occasions might include events attended exclusivedy by those historical personages, the alumni.

Tie committee's recommendation was seconded by McLaughlin during Corvocation last fall, when he announced his support of a change. He late: summarized his feelings in the "D': "Since the lyrics and title of 'Men of Dartmouth' no longer accurately describe or characterize the college community," he wrote, "it is my belief that a clange of some sort is required: an alteration of the present lyrics, the addition of a new verse, or, alternatively, the adoption of a wholly new and different song."

Several students and faculty members at Convocation stated their agreement by refusing to sing the anthem. A tast majority did stand and sing, however—despite the broad dissemination of a handbill that exhorted the audience to remain silent.

Soon after Convocation, McLaughlin asked the Alumni Council and the Student Assembly each to establish committees to recommend a course of action on the song. McLaughlin said he would submit any major changes in the alma mater to the trustees.

Dartmouth is not alone on the issue. Syracuse, Chicago, and Princeton all recently desexed their own school songs. But the changes here are not likely to be so easy. The lyrics to Dartmouth's song were written by a poet who celebrated not just its male students but their very maleness. "Bigger we bulk for our striving,/ More virile, more splendidly male," Richard Hovey gushed in his poem, "The Spirit of Dartmouth." That same deepvoiced spirit imbues a whole body of Hovey's Dartmouth lyrics—including the alma mater.

This Dartmouth "spirit" was created by Hovey virtually out of the blue, according to historian Allan Houston Macdonald in his biography, RichardHovey: Man and Craftsman. During the 1880s, the College was losing its sense of purpose; it was following schools "of comparable size at an uninspiring distance," writes Macdonald. "It

needed a new idea and a new myth." Hovey's biographer said that the poet rose to the occasion by creating a new Dartmouth, "the Dartmouth of myth which stands any assault of reality, a pagan, Anglo-Saxon myth of primitive living and comradeship unlike that of Latin piety toward Alma Mater."

That myth lives on in the minds of at least some alumni. The "ideal, mythic Dartmouth," said W. Boyd Barrick '68, "transcends time and place and gender alike." Barrick, who is a dean at Castleton State College, Vermont, wrote in a letter to the Alumni Council that a neutering of the alma mater "would rupture the continuum" of that myth "more profoundly than the coeducation which it seeks to acknowledge."

Clearly, the idea of a male bastion of "primitive living" in today's computerized, coed dormitories cannot reflect reality with much fidelity. On the other hand, Barrick argues, myths are supposed to live outside reality. If the recent campus poll on the alma mater is any indication, a majority of students apparently agree—for better or worse, depending on which side one is on. Sixty-one percent of undergraduates surveyed last month said the alma mater should be kept in its present form. (The sexes were divided on the issue; while 72 percent of males wanted the song to remain unchanged, a 55 percent majority of females supported a change.)

According to the student ad hoc committee on the alma mater, the survey was just one factor in the students' recommendation to the president. Solicit a new song, the committee advised. If a satisfactory one is not found in two years, then revise the old one.

After all, members of the committee said privately, the alma mater is just a song, and students in the throes of corporate recruitment, finals, and study trips abroad find little time to worry about failing traditions. Although twothirds of students on campus participated in the poll, talk in the dorms during winter term centered more on the sex kit (see p. 24) than on singing.

Even among alumni, the issue may not be a burning one. An "open forum" held for alumni to discuss the alma mater during Alumni Winter Weekend in February drew few participants (in defense of the missing alumni, it was a beautiful day and the Skiway was offering cut-rate lift tickets).

That apparent lack of universal passion may favor a resolution of the issue. A number of pundits on campus — some of them alumni — assert that the most pragmatic course lies in phasing in a new, only slightly changed version of "Men of Dartmouth." This feeling has inspired a variety of responses (see the sidebar on page 36).

A couple of them show ingenuity beyond the words themselves. Orton Hicks '21, a former vice president of the College, inserted some lines in "Men of Dartmouth" about women after the first verse, because, he argued, "they were admitted to the College later than men."

Deans Greg Prince and Marysa Navarro made a pitch in the student publication Common Sense for a "single alma mater" with two versions: a traditional and a "contemporary" one. The lyrics would be similar enough to "allow both versions to be sung simultaneously and without any sense of discordance."

Not that any solution will cause the whole College to sing in harmony. Boyd Barrick asserts that changing the song at all "is as unnecessary and dangerous as putting aluminum siding on Dartmouth Hall." For other people, fiddling with the wording would be inadequate. Charlie Moore admits, "When you make minor changes you draw a line between people who think those changes are enough and those who think the very bases of the language are sexist."

Still, a vast majority of students and alumni who have spoken about the issue at all seem to agree that Dartmouth has larger concerns looming ahead of it. Ort Hicks urged in the"D," "Let's start removing some of these annoying little picayune differences and have this campus reunited."

Hovey may disagree, but for a lot of people on campus, Hicks' words are music to their ears.

They sang as one on Dartmouth Night, but a majority of women on campus wart the song changed.

The "ideal, mythic Dartmouth" of primitive male virtues lives on in the minds of manystudents—especially freshman. The class of'9o overwhelmingly supports the current song.

The old alma mater should be preserved for alumni, said the Council on Diversity, whichalso noted that the song is inappropriate "for coeducational Dartmouth."

Jay Heinrichs is the editor of this magazine.He is keeping an open mind on the almamater, but his two-year-old daughter refuses to sing anything but the old version.

Maestoso Men of Dart-mouth give a rouse (give a rouse,) For the col-lege on the hill . . .

Maestoso We of Dart-mouth give a rouse (give a rouse,) For the col-lege on the hill . . .

Maestoso Now for Dartmouth give a rouse (give a rouse,) For the col-lege on the hill . . .

Maestoso Here's to Dartmouth give a rouse (give a rouse,) For the college on the hill . . .