As members of the Class of 1951 return to Hanover for their 50th reunion, most will be reminded of the sweeping changes that have transformed the College since their days as undergraduates just after World War II -- among them, coeducation, growth of the student body and increases in the number of faculty, a more diverse applicant pool and many new buildings, to name just a few.
According to alumni class president Henry Nachman '51, Dartmouth was "quite a different school back then," noting that the entire social dynamic changed when females were admitted in 1972.
Nachman recalls the weekend road trips that many current students have probably heard about. On Friday, Dartmouth men would travel to other schools within a 150-mile radius to visit friends and see members of the opposite sex. Oftentimes, these would be blind dates set up by friends.
Some students ended up dating nursing students from the nearby Mary Hitchcock Medical Center, to whom several were later married.
Some things students might love -- or complain about-- at the College haven't changed, though. Nachman explained that as isolated as Hanover is now, it was even more so 50 years ago.
"There were very few cars in town. Most people took the trains, which ran between four and eight times a day," he said.
The athletic system is one aspect of the College which is the same in some respects, but different in others.
Around mid-century, there was no Thompson hockey rink or Leede Arena, both of which were built later. Instead, Nachman recalls, there was the Davis ice hockey rink, which was only able to make ice by lowering the indoor temperature to below freezing.
Despite the frigid temperatures, students still turned out in huge droves to pack the hockey games, as they did with football.
The layout of the campus is another facet of the College which has seen momentous changes.
Many buildings which students at the turn of this century have critiqued as being ugly -- Gerry Hall and the Choates residence halls, for instance -- had not yet been built. Nor was the Hopkins Center yet a defining marker of the south end of the Green.
Nachman remembers that Wilson Hall, which stands right next to the Hop today, used to be the College library.
"We were known as the Ivy League school with the biggest gym and the smallest library," he said with a chuckle.
And while there are those who complain about all-freshman housing or all-freshman floors today, 50 years ago, Collis was an all-freshman dining hall. Not until students were sophomores were they allowed to eat at the larger Thayer dining hall.
One of the characteristic markers of Dartmouth's approach to education was also different during the Class of 1951's undergraduate tenure. The infamous D-plan, which appeared with coeducation in 1972, had not yet been put in place. Instead, students took eight terms of five classes each.
Nachman recalls the academic plan as being very rigid -- there was no FSP program and only a very small number of people stayed during the summer.
Frank Smallwood '51, who returned to Dartmouth to work as an administrative assistant under College President John Sloan Dickey and then as a government professor, characterized the Class of 1951 as President Dickey's "first postwar class."
Although himself a veteran by the time he entered College in the mid-1940s, Smallwood said that most other veterans had been in the class before him. Nachman estimated that perhaps 15 to 20 percent of the members of the Class of 1951 were veterans of World War II.
As upperclassmen, yet another war broke out, this time in Korea, and many students would find themselves in the armed forces after graduation.
During their senior year, the '51s were required to take the "Great Issues" course, a result of the importance President Dickey placed on international affairs.
According to Smallwood and Nachman, the course, which brought in speakers to lecture about current events in Europe and elsewhere, had a strong influence on many students' educational progress.
Although the Korean War never elicited such strong reactions from students as did Vietnam, several alumni attested to Great Issues spurring them to see the world beyond Hanover.
Another difference between then and now was the structure of the intramural sports program, which was all based on interdormitory and interfraternity competition. IM sports, along with interfraternity hums or plays, helped foster a sense of community, Nachman said.
