Dartmouth pulses through the family tree of Trustee Peter Fahey '68.
As Fahey stepped onto campus in 1964 as a freshman for the first time, he started what has become "a great Fahey family tradition." Not only was Fahey the first to earn a college degree in his family, but he was also the first of three brothers to attend Dartmouth. Years later, his three children would also attend the College.
More than 30 years after graduating from Dartmouth, Fahey is still keeping on the great Dartmouth tradition -- as a Trustee and as co-chair of the Steering Committee on the Student Life Initiative -- helping to shape the future of residential and social life at the College.
Coming to Dartmouth
From an early age, Fahey remembers being drawn to the outdoors, and subsequently spent considerable time in New Hampshire, taking advantage of the wilderness. Ski trips north brought him through Hanover several times.
But it was during his senior year in high school when Fahey received his proper introduction to the school, during a recruiting trip for basketball. His early application was accepted and in the following fall he joined the class of 1968.
As with most freshmen at Dartmouth, Fahey went on a Dartmouth Outing Club freshman trip. Hiking in the mountains north of Lyme and around Moosilauke was a great way to be introduced to the College and to meet friends, Fahey said.
Fahey's first friends he met through basketball, because then there were Freshman athletics in addition to varsity. Students could meet a wide variety of classmates in pickup games from the beginning of the term, Fahey said.
"I was a 6 foot 5 inch shooting center, that is not very big for a center now or even then," Fahey said. In addition, Fahey also was on the track team in the spring, though that was a more casual engagement compared to basketball.
Living with a student from his hometown, Fahey received one of the coveted rooms in Massachusetts Hall. His roommate was a legacy at the College and in those days, it was rumored that housing priority was determined by when you applied to the College.
"It was said that children of alums applied on some basis when they were born," Fahey said. "Mid-Mass was a highly desired place on campus, and I was lucky enough to live there during my first two years at Dartmouth."
The Social Life
During Fahey's time at Dartmouth, the residence halls were centers of social life, and there was greater continuity in living arrangements. Students often stayed in one dorm for several years, which provided a wonderful living environment thanks to all of the "familiar faces," Fahey said.
"As freshman, you literally never set foot in a fraternity house," Fahey said, which meant that students were in dormitories to socialize. The Inter-Fraternity Council had rules against Freshmen going to fraternities, as it would be seen as dirty-rushing, Fahey said.
"Then, as now, the fraternity system was the principle social outlet on campus" for upperclassmen, Fahey said. Several of the upperclassmen on the basketball team drew Fahey to Phi Delta Alpha fraternity, but only after he rushed several houses.
Fahey said most freshmen were unfamiliar with the different fraternities, and sophomores would end up rushing four or five houses.
"You had no preconceived notion of the houses beforehand," Fahey said.
Fahey said that intramural sports teams and smaller parties organized through the dorms were the backbone of a freshman's social life.
Even though he was attracted to Phi Delt by fellow basketball players, Fahey said that in the 1960s fraternities tended not to draw entire teams. Instead, it was common for fraternity members to have many friends outside of their own house who they knew through different sports and activities.
Despite the fact that women students were not yet present at Dartmouth, Fahey said that the campus was not too different from today.
"Dartmouth was more similar to now than it is different," Fahey said. "There were women on campus every weekend."
A major part of the social options revolved around making road trips to women's colleges, such as Mt. Holyoke College and Smith College, Fahey said. Students would go down for a night or often just an evening.
"It was probably not a very safe thing, because people didn't take care then, as they do now, to have designated drivers," he said.
Heroes
Throughout his time at Dartmouth, Fahey interacted with many people and made many relationships with students, faculty and administrators.
But the former Dean of the College, Thaddeus Seymour, had an especially significant impact on the climate of the College.
"He had a great sense of getting along with the younger generation... guiding them while being their friend at the same time," Fahey said. The mutual respect from this relationship made students feel that they were being treated like adults, Fahey said.
Another person that had an important impact on Fahey's life, during and after college, was Engineering Professor George Taylor.
While Fahey was a chemistry major, he took many engineering classes and the lessons learned in Taylor's Methods Engineering class stayed with him, Fahey said.
The class was about solving problems, but Taylor's method sought to break the mold by discarding precedent and historical methods to look for new and unexplored ways of problem solving, Fahey said.
"More than any educational experience that I have had, this helped later in a business career," Fahey said.
Life after Dartmouth
After graduating, Fahey chose to remain on campus at the Thayer School of Engineering, continuing a research project he had been involved with as an undergraduate.
The decision to stay on campus was made easier since Fahey got married in the fall of 1968, three months after graduation. Fahey met his wife Helen in the Bahamas during spring break the year before, who was a student at Skidmore College at the time.
Now, instead of paying to go to school, Fahey would be paid, and in light of his recent marriage, "that was a good idea," Fahey said.
Fahey spent two years at the Thayer School of Engineering, to his Masters degree. Fahey then moved his family to Cambridge working for a small company that was pursuing the same field as the research as he was doing at Thayer. After some time in the lab, Fahey moved to manufacturing, and became head of the entire manufacturing process.
"At a young age, it was a lot of responsibility," but "I found that engineering, working with pipes and gauges, didn't give me a thrill," Fahey said.
While at Dartmouth, Fahey had taken a economics course, which had been very interesting. While at Thayer, Fahey had lived at Sachem village with many students from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, and he began to follow the financial markets, Fahey said. It was time to move on.
His application to Harvard Business School was accepted, and it was a "natural thing" to go into investment banking, though it wasn't easy to achieve. Investment banking, then, was much more of an "exclusive club" and an "arcane business niche", and often times employers looked at family background as a criteria for employment.
Fahey joined Goldman Sachs in 1975, which was a bad time for the investment banking business, Fahey said. The company was a second tier firm, not the premiere company it is today, and had just had personnel cutbacks the year before, Fahey said.
Working at Goldman Sachs has been "thoroughly challenging ... very fulfilling, very personal experience, and then the financial rewards that came with it were just icing on the cake," Fahey said.
Becoming a Trustee
Fahey never felt he really left Dartmouth because he has stayed involved with the College almost since graduation. "To this day, I have gone to 33 consecutive Dartmouth-Harvard football games," Fahey said.
In the end of the 1980s, Thayer asked Fahey to join the Board of Overseers, which was his "first big reinvolvement." At the same time, in 1988 Fahey's daughter arrived on campus as a freshman. She would be followed by her two brothers.
In 1993, Fahey retired from full-time work at Goldman Sachs. After years at Goldman Sachs, Fahey had "enough money for my family but not enough time."
That year, Fahey was asked to stand for election to the board of trustees, and only his move to part-time work had given him the time that it would take to dedicate himself to being a Trustee. "Prior to that, I would not have had the time," Fahey said. "I ran and won the election, and have been on the board since."
Fahey involved himself with student life from the beginning of his tenure on the board, serving on and then chairing the Trustee Committee on Student Life. His experience made him an obvious choice to lead the Committee on the Student Life Initiative.
"The College has not devoted much time, energy or resources to student life, to make it as good as it can be, as it has in other areas and as it should. Its overdue and appropriate to be pursued at this time," Fahey said.
Dartmouth has a different profile than the other Ivy league schools, especially in what it is trying to do as an institution, Fahey said. "Most people have an experience at Dartmouth that is totally different ... one that stays with them years after they leave."
The Student Life Initiative is a chance to improve and strengthen those goals and experiences, Fahey said.
"I am devoted to make sure that Dartmouth continues to provide those valuable and total experiences to its students, and as long as it does, it will continue to thrive," Fahey said.
