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