Connecticut College Alumnae News, Summer 1970

Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Alumni News Archives Summer 1970 Connecticut College Alumnae News, Summer 1970 Connecticut College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews Recommended Citation Connecticut College, "Connecticut College Alumnae News, Summer 1970" (1970). Alumni News. 175. https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews/175 This Magazine is brought to you for free and open access by the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Archives at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Alumni News by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. • • Alumnae Council: The State of the College President Charles E. Shain To call this annual informal talk "the state of the sense of obligation for the use of certain municipal college" seemed like a good if slightly pretentious services, fire protection, police protection and the idea seven years ago. But perhaps in these times use of the city incinerator. We will also probably the title needs refining - by adding certain condi- be asked, along with other tax exempt institutions, tions: that is, "the state of the college as I under- to pay a sewer tax. stand it at 7:15 p.m., March 6, 1970." I shall try What will result from the acquisition of the tonight to generalize about our college and to pro- reservoir property is the opportunity to expand vide some enlightening examples of the way we Palmer Library more inexpensively than we other- live and learn now, but the only wise could. By 1973 the Library shelves will be prediction I think I shall make filled to their maximum capacity. In February the about the campus tomorrow is Trustees authorized me to have prepared feasibil- that there will probably be a par- ity studies for a library expansion that will use tial eclipse of the sun - which the south end of the reservoir property. Next week can be viewed especially well the Faculty lihrary committee looks at the first from the top floor of Bill Hall he- tween 12:28 and 2:56. (Some of studies prepared by the firm of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon who have twice added to the present OUf astronomy students have gone with their instructor to building. Here then is our next building target for Greenville, N.C., to photograph the Quest program. We have already collected the full eclipse.) more than one hundred thousand dollars for the It is always reassuring to have lihrary expansion. We shall probahly need two a group of alumnae on the cam- or three million more - and this at a time when pus. I wish we saw more of you library building grants have been cut off in Wash- more often. To my mind you help ington and when construction costs and money- to reinforce our sense of our- borrowing costs are at all-time peaks. But we must selves by providing, among other have room for books and readers or the College things, a sense of the continuity falters in its mission. We shall somewhere find the of the College. We are so much money. possessed by the power of mo- I hope I can convey to you next the confidence ment these days - the present and pleasure Ifeel in the experience of our first moments are apt to.be quite semester of coeducation. It may be only mini- powerful- that we can stand coeducation but if we can make judgments based now and then a sense of the past on our present success, Iam very hopeful of the a~d a sense of our graduates. Iheard a poignant future. Our thirty-eight Freshman and Sophomore tnbute to the past from a university president last fall, He was about to leave the presidency of a men have made the Dean's list in the same propor- western university which had not been a very tion as Freshman and Sophomore women. (One restful place these past five years, He said, "I have Junior man got straight A's but he was beaten by been in the academic world so long that I remem- a woman for Student Government president.) We ber a time when if a student went to see the presi- have sufficient good male applications for next dent, the student was in trouble." year - and we expect more - to meet our target ,Some of t~e interesting changes in our affairs in of adding one hundred more men, Larrabee House, th,lSaca~emlc year of grace Ihope you will hear our coeducational dormitory, is an exceptionally WIth delight. Perhaps the most solidly cheerful pleasant place to visit. Our basketball team plays pI~ce of news I can bring you is that we are Soon Vassar's tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 and hopes to going to take ~ossession of the approximately two even the score for a defeat in a close game last acres of ~and In the center of campus now owned week in Poughkeepsie. The presence of men on by the Clly of New London, the site of the two res- campus will of course be felt more strongly if we ervoirs. The negotiations behind this acquisition can count as many as 150 next year. I ask you to go bac,k several years and have resulted in a rather remember that what Vassar and Connecticut are complIcated bargain. In exchange for the reservoir doing (perhaps Sarah Lawrence and Bennington land and the street leading to it from Mohegan Colleges offer slightly different models) is making A venue, we deed the City two parcels of land one an historic shift in one branch of the American across Gallows Lane, to the west, for a huge water private college System. This change in mission is storage ~an~; another across Williams Street near the traffic CIrcle below the Museum Park f essentially different from the arrival of women at fire h ,ora Princeton, Yale and Wesleyan. We must be judged new re ouse. In addition, the College has volun- t!ered to pay the City for the next five years about by what happens over the next three years. I hope e even thousand dollars a year to represent our that at this meeting next year I can give you another favorable report. 2 Connecticut Cclleae Alumnae NAWf; • Summer 1970 At the same time that the coming of coeducation of seriously damaging the academic future of changes some of our campus way of life, other a group of students to satisfy the demands of changes have come rushing in propelled by this even a majority (who could be a very vocal energetic, ambitious generation of undergraduates. minority) is grossly unfair and should never It is difficult to separate causes and to know how be taken by any college. much our ways might have changed without the "A college should act in the best interest of presence of men. all its students. A system that allows freedom Certainly our upperclass women have supplied to those who have somehow proven them- the arguments and the pressure to persuade our selves capable of handling it (not worthy, Faculty to place students on Faculty committees, capable) while providing a guiding structure to schedule their own final examinations, to ask to the less well directed student is the only for reform of our calendar, to ask the Faculty to choice. It will be a very difficult system to consider new ways of using the upperclass years establish and may involve the setting up of and departmental majors. During my tenure here guidelines and the existence of (God forbid!) this is the year of the most prolonged debate be- rules, but some form of rules exists in all so- tween students and Faculty on the nature and con- cieties and in the long run such a system ditions of a Connecticut College education. The would be the most practical and the only fea- Faculty and Administration have responded read- sible solution." ily but often, as befits them, with feelings and The self-determining of our dormitory rules for attitudes different from dominant student views. men visitors, the key system and open parietals, Some Faculty and administration members are has now had a semester to make itself felt. The alarmed at the loss of student respect for previous record of our houses has on the whole been good. academic orthodoxies. I was thinking the other But some of our experience of the new freedoms day that if Roz Tuve were here she might be quot- has been disappointing. The administration has had to step in to remind the student leadership of ing John Donne at the most Rousseauistic of our a few houses that in such wide freedom begins reforming students: deep human responsibilities. A February college- "And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, wide meeting of student and faculty leaders on The Element of fire is quite put out, these questions recommended that next fall no The Sun is lost, and th'earth. and no man's dorm should have more than 30 or 35% Freshmen. wit Can well direct him where to looke for it ... The Deans and I are in the midst of meetings with Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne are things small groups of house presidents and housefel- lows to help them understand how crucially the forgot, For every man alone thinkes he hath got nature of this college can be changed by irrespon- To be a Phoenix, and there then can bee sible and anti-social dormitory conduct.

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