The Great White Father

Regardless of housing differences, or lack of anything resembling House libraries at Harvard the Dartmouth undergraduate boasts an impressive center of learning in the imposing Baker library. Part of his regard for the academic center dates back to a day in 1932 when Jose Clements Orozco, world famous Mexican muralist pushed through the crowd in the basement of the library and dramatically climbed the scaffolding.

After months of preparations, he was finally ready to begin his series of murals for the library. Prominent visitors, alumni, officials students, and townspeople watched attentively from the long basement study hall. Orozco carefully prepared his colors and began to paint. But the deft strokes of the master muralist began to trickle down the smooth plaster wall. The crowd snickered; Orozco fumed.

After the onlookers dispersed, Orozco discovered the source of his embarrassment. A few days earlier, the University's plasterer--eager to contribute his best toward the success of the mural--had installed what be described as "the best water-proof plaster in the world."

Eventually Orozco got his paint-holding plaster and by 1934 Dartmouth got its far-famed murals. These freezes, which cover over three thousand square feet of wall space, depict the Aztec legend of Quetsalcoti, the Great White Father both modern counterpart.

Persian Rugs, Public Affairs

The modernity of these murals forms a singular contrast to the white-toward Georgian beauty of the library, which Dartmouth candidly claims is the largest college library in the world, with 750,000 volumes. Rising Lowell-House-like above the "green", Baker Library houses a variety of treasured, including such outstanding author collections as those of Robert Burns, George Ticknor, Stephen crane, and Robert Frost and such regional libraries as the Stefannson Collection on polar areas. Since Dartmouth prides itself on a "teaching" faculty, most professors there do comparatively little research. Thus, the library is considered easily adequate for their needs as well as those of the undergraduates.

The structure also houses a magnificent main hall, checkered with marble flooring and dark chestnut-finished catalogs, the "tower room," a super-sized. House-library type room with ever stuffed chairs, paneled bookcases and alcoves, and Persian rugs. In the basement, too, there is the Public Affairs laboratory of the Great Issues course.

Lest the Dartmouth men are left so fascinated with narrow academic interests or intoxicated with the diversions of small-town, small-campus life that they fall to appreciate the perplexities of modern living all seniors are required to take the course in Great Issues.

Apparently operating on the philosophy that a Dartmouth man is known by the dilemmas he keeps, the "G. I." administration tosses a different human quandry at the seniors each week. This lightning survey of the world's problems is designed to "provide a common intellectual experience for all men in their last year of college to bridge the gap between formal classroom instruction and the average adult experience in learning; and to encourage in seniors a sense of public purpose and a heightened public-mindedness."

Each Thursday morning a member of the Dartmouth faculty introduced a significant current topic--from foreign affairs to existentialism--to the assembled seniors. The following Monday as outstanding guest lecturer develops the theme and the next morning conducts a discussion on his lecture. This question thus polished off a new dilemma is introduced the following Thursday and the cycle begins again.

Perhaps the most telling criticism of the plan and indeed, of the Dartmouth intellectual atmosphere, comes unwittingly from the Great Issues administrations themselves. In a mimeographed pamphlet the committee writes; "During the last two years of college the student body tends to be split into groups and as often as not choosing electives to augment rather than supplement their major work. This results in the failure of many students to maintain a broad awareness of the basic issues of our times which they will soon have to confront as active citizens."

"Majors is one said," the pamphlet continues, "have been able to speak together in their own particular jargon, but beyond the weather six, and athletic and social topics, the class as a whole has been without a community of intellectual interest or purpose."

Indeed, if Dartmouth men by the beginning of their senior year, have nothing more in common to discuss than Hanover weather, and last Saturday's football game, it is questionable whether a weekly discussion of a current issue will instill profound thought into such apparent intellectual douldrms.

Dartmouth sincerely tries, however, and assigns such reading for the course as a daily perusal of the New York Times. Infrequently, especially when the course turns to philosophy, literature, of the arts, an occasional book or magazine will be assigned in addition.