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The Dartmouth
March 29, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Has the D-Plan outgrown its origins?

While some students sing its praises and others lament the difficulties it causes, few know the origins of Dartmouth's academic plan.

The Trustees' recent call for review of the Dartmouth Plan has brought new -- but not unprecedented -- administrative attention to the unique year-round operating plan the College instituted in the 1970s.

In order to admit 1,000 female students without building new facilities or decreasing the number of male students, the D-Plan enabled Dartmouth to expand at a time when it could not have afforded to increase the size of its dorms or faculty.

Students and faculty embraced the new plan, and educators predicted at the time that other Ivy League colleges and even secondary schools would soon depart from the normal semester system and adopt the more efficient plan for year-round operation.

While other schools -- like Stanford and Northwestern Universities -- operate on a three-term calendar, 29 years after the inception of the D-Plan, Dartmouth remains the only major institution of higher education with a year-round calendar.

Creation

The D-Plan was created as a direct solution to the problems associated with coeducation. Dartmouth, the last Ivy League school to coeducate, decided it would consider admitting women only if it could be achieved without massive construction or a drop in male enrollment.

Estimated costs for facilities to accommodate 4,000 students with a normal academic calendar would have cost $25 million versus the $6.5 million estimated for the D-Plan, the Valley News reported in October 1971.

Additionally, the administration did not want to lose its athletic standing in the Ivy League, which required enrollment of 3,000 males, History Professor and Chair of the 1971 Committee on Year-Round Operation Charles Wood told The Dartmouth at that time.

The committee's recommendations are the basis for the original D-Plan -- a year-round calendar consisting of four 10 week terms, an adoption of 33 courses for graduation and required residency for the first three terms. The original plan allowed for immense flexibility in scheduling: with over 600 scheduling options and no other residence requirements besides freshman year, it was common for students to take multiple leave terms and graduate in three, four or five years.

A majority of the faculty and students supported the creation of the D-Plan, with 56 percent for the new program, according to a 1971 Valley News poll.

"The nation was in the midst of an antiestablishment movement, rigidity was unpopular -- the D-Plan was a flexible, popular change," history professor Jere Daniell '51 said.

Revision

The D-Plan has not gone without change -- it underwent a major review in 1978 under the Committee on Curriculum and Year-Round Operation, with James Wright -- who was then a history professor -- as the committee's chair. The CCYRO recommended abolishing the D-Plan and replacing the four quarters with two 14-week semesters and a 12-week summer term.

Students and faculty immediately opposed the plan, telling The Dartmouth changes would decrease foreign study options and would mean a tuition increase.

Moreover, then-College President John Kemeny found fault with the trimester plan.

"Frankly, I cannot support the trimester proposal even if a significant majority of the faculty endorses it," Kemeny wrote in a letter addressed to the faculty in 1980.

However, President David McLaughlin had no aversion to making changes with the D-Plan in 1983 after it became obvious that the decade-old version was creating as many problems as it was solving.

Difficulties in the continuity of academics, athletics, extracurricular activities and especially social relationships were extremely evident, Daniell said.

"From a student point of view, the D-Plan was a wonderful way to meet people and a lousy way to make friends," said Daniell.

The changes made in 1983 implemented mandatory residence during freshman and senior years, increased the number of credits required for graduation from 33 to 35 and made the summer after sophomore year a required term.

"By and large, students accepted the revisions. I don't recall a lot of student complaint," Wright previously told The Dartmouth, emphasizing that sophomore summer became a student favorite almost immediately.

Despite the popularity of some aspects of the D-Plan, recently it has led to the very housing shortages it was created to prevent. Since 1995, the College has faced housing crunches during the Fall and Spring terms, forcing some students to choose second choice D-Plans.

Changes for the Future?

Even before the Trustees' recognition of the issue, students and faculty were mentioning the need for D-Plan review.

A week before the Trustees' April 19 announcement, Dean of the Faculty Ed Berger told The Dartmouth that a faculty review of the calendar was imminent.

Berger cited the difficulty of scheduling classes for some majors and social discontinuities as some reasons the year-round calendar might be reviewed.

Although he said he was surprised by the Trustees' recent inclusions of D-Plan review in their Initiative changes, Daniell nevertheless called it a rational move.

"[The Trustees] recognize the need to simplify. And we can finally afford to house the entire student body now," he said.

Many student groups agree that the D-Plan needs some updating. The Student Assembly has conducted recent surveys on faculty and student views about the D-Plan.

In the winter survey, faculty and students agreed the D-Plan hurt faculty-student relationships, but provided increased opportunity to attend foreign study programs, where relationships between faculty and students are often close-knit.

The March survey of students showed 70 percent agreed that the role of the D-Plan in creating residential and social discontinuity should be examined more extensively.

"Personally, I was surprised that this figure was so high. I think the shear number of students that agreed with this statement may be indicative of a student body that is less supportive of the D-Plan than most people think," poll organizer Casey Sixkiller '00 said.