Seventy years after they graduated from Dartmouth, approximately 40 members of the Class of 1930 will descend upon Hanover to reminisce and enjoy one another's company, according to Senior Associate Director of Alumni Relations David Orr.
Though their reunion will be decidedly more low-key than those of the younger classes, they still have many events planned. Both Friday and Saturday evenings they will have a reception and dinner catered by the Hanover Inn. In addition, Rev. Michael G. Fonnre '74 will officiate a memorial service for the now deceased members of the Class.
When members of the Class of 1930 attended Dartmouth, they encountered many of the same issues current students do. Writers in The Aegis complained of "those dismal dormitory rooms" and "those evening lectures in Dartmouth Hall where we sat dazed and sleepy" in their freshman year.
During their first year, Baker Library was being built, President Tucker died and the basketball team remained undefeated.
Sophomore year, Dick's House opened, the Winter Carnival featured a medieval theme, and as far as opinion on the new Baker Library went, "the Tower Room was the last word in deluxe reading rooms."
Building on Streeter, Lord and Carpenter began their junior year, while Sinclair Lewis visited the college and President Hopkins inaugurated the Senior Fellowships program.
Athletics were very popular at the time, and yearbook articles predicted that the sport of aviation would soon take off at the college level, while the "comparatively new movement" of intramural sports was viewed with skepticism. But "without a doubt, Dartmouth is a 'play college,'" the yearbook stated.
The Jacko-O and the DOC both celebrated their 21st birthdays during the Class of 1930's senior year, while an Emergency Fire Squad was began by the President's office to assist the Hanover Fire Department.
Their senior year was punctuated with visits by eminent scholars and writers such as Bertrand Russell, W.E.B. Dubois, Carl Sandburg, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Margarat Sanger.
Reflecting on their upcoming graduation, a yearbook writer philosophized that "there must be something magic about being an undergraduate, which is irrevocably lost at the instant when one tosses the black tassel from one side of one's mortar board to the other."
But for this weekend, they will return to Dartmouth, in hopes of perhaps recapturing that magic seventy years past.
