While husband James Wright, president of the College, wrestles with the issues of community raised by the Initiative, Susan Wright promotes her own sense of community by regularly opening the presidential residence to students and faculty.
"Jim and I really want to be able to open the house to various groups," she said. "It's a really gracious home, wonderful for having various receptions."
Indeed, the Wrights host a plethora of community activities in the house, which include meals with seniors and their respective thesis advisors, dinners with Presidential Scholars, an annual first-year dinner and senior picnic, and last week's "Connections" program for potential leaders of the '03 class, among others.
Wright recently led The Dartmouth on a tour of the Neo-Georgian home, which was completed in 1926 after being suggested by a $50,000 gift from Edward Tuck in 1862, for whom a commemoratory plaque was placed in the foyer.
"There's a real lure to the house," Wright remarked, commenting on the unique historical dcor and furniture left by past presidents and their families.
"There's really this continuity," she marveled. "The house is shaped by the people who are lucky enough to live in it."
The Wrights themselves only changed the house's paint and wallpaper, in addition to adding some of their own furniture and decorations.
They are also able to borrow works from the Hood Museum of Art to decorate the house, although they have access only to those pieces not being used by students for their academic pursuits.
Yet despite the limited access, Wright said that she and her husband have been "very pleased with what [they've] been able to borrow," and views the pieces as catalysts for the promotion of community within the College.
The spacious arrangement of rooms in the presidential home facilitates this interaction.
The rooms
"The garden room," which Wright described as one of her favorites, is lined with windows and decorated in whites and deep pinks. To the west, the room overlooks a sunken garden and the other verdant grounds from which it gets its name. Although the room itself is filled with foliage, the most distinctive flowers grow just outside.
"We transplanted these Emily Dickinson lilacs from the Emily Dickinson Garden in Amherst, Massachusetts to our house in Etna, and now they are here in the president's house," she explained of the blossoms growing on the rim of the outside deck.
President Wright's study features walls of history books as well as a desk, fireplace and a light peppering of baseball paraphernalia -- his other interest.
Susan Wright's study, formerly called the "morning room" because of its easterly location, also contains memorabilia such as a photo of her and the president with Montgomery Fellow Sheryl Crow, and a November 2, 1971 copy of The Dartmouth announcing the advent of coeducation.
Presidents past and present
The dining room is filled with 15 embroidered chairs -- one created to represent the contributions of each Dartmouth president, a tradition begun by Mrs. John Sloan Dickey during her husband's term in office.
"This is what everybody remembers about the house," Wright said.
Former President John Kemeny's chair, for example, contains a lemon tree. Wright explained that upon Kemeny's one-day cancellation of academic classes in response to the bombing of Cambodia in 1970, his opponents outside of the College commented that Dartmouth had "another lemon for president." Several members of the Dartmouth community banded together and presented Kemeny with a lemon tree in order to demonstrate their support for his decision.
Former President David McLaughlin's chair sports a bar graph depicting the substantial growth of the Dartmouth endowment during the 1980's.
What does Wright expect for her husband's chair?
"That's a good question," she said, finally concluding that it would most likely celebrate the current President's "commitment to the academic excellence of the college" as well as the "vibrant connection" between students and faculty which she said he has worked hard to promote.
Life in Dartmouth's White House
Perhaps the only disadvantage of the house's historic roots is its need for constant repair.
"It's an old house -- the infrastructure I think is showing its age," she said, citing a time in which a heating valve broke, releasing a steady flow of water through the ceiling just before a presidential dinner with visiting Montgomery Fellows.
Daily dinner parties and receptions leave the Wrights little time for privacy, and Susan remembered that at first it was difficult for her to adapt.
"It is the case that for a long time every day I'd get up and feel like I was playing house," Wright admitted. Yet after a short adjustment period she feels that she has reconciled her private life with the undeniably public space in which she leads it.
"We feel really comfortable in the house," she said, pointing out that living in the presidential residence must be viewed as a privilege as well as a responsibility.
"We are doing this because we want to."
