A new, multiclass residence cluster on the north end of campus will be named after David McLaughlin '54, the College's 14th leader, current Dartmouth President James Wright recently announced.
The McLaughlin residence cluster, which is projected to open during Fall term of 2006, will be located on the corner of North College and Maynard streets and will accommodate 342 undergraduates, according to statistics released by the College.
In his convocation speech, Wright noted that the College had acquired the Maynard Street site "as a result of [McLaughlin's] stewardship." McLaughlin suffered a sudden death last month while on a fishing trip in Dillingham, Alaska.
"I am pleased to announce that the Board of Trustees has decided to name the new Maynard Street residential complex the David T. McLaughlin Cluster in his honor," Wright said Tuesday.
The new cluster is one of several to be constructed to meet the needs of the College. Two additional residential halls on Tuck Mall, Kemeny Hall, a new building for the math department and the Haldeman Center, which will house the Dickey Center for International Understanding, the Leslie Center for the Humanities and the Dartmouth Ethics Institute, will all be built in the near future. There are also plans for new dining and arts facilities.
According to the College, "McLaughlin and Tuck Mall projects will enable the College to offer greater residential continuity for all students -- an important student life priority."
During Convocation, Wright also asked for a moment of silence to honor McLaughlin's passing and later went into some depth about the former President's achievements.
McLaughlin, who was president between 1981 and 1987, was in many ways considered to be a modern Renaissance man. After playing football for the College, McLaughlin was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles. He turned down the opportunity to play professional football to attend the Amos B. Tuck School of Business.
After receiving his masters of business administration in 1955, McLaughlin served as a jet pilot in the U.S. Air Force for two years. The Hood Museum of Art, the Rockefeller Center, the Friends of Dartmouth Rowing House and the Berry Sports Center were all built during McLaughlin's presidency. He also fought to raise faculty salaries, which spiked 43 percent during his tenure.
Under his watch, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was relocated to its current location in Lebanon, and the Berry Sports Center was erected, thanks to a generous donation from alumnus John W. Berry '44, who later provided funds for Berry Library.
Also constructed during McLaughlin's presidency were the Maxwell and Channing Cox apartments, located next to the River cluster, the Rockefeller Center and the Hood Museum. Faculty salaries increased 43 percent over a five-year period and the endowment grew to a new high of $521 million.
Dartmouth will hold a memorial service for McLaughlin on Oct. 4 in Rollins Chapel.
As president, he was known for a corporate approach to the job -- both a source of outside praise, particularly among alumni impressed with his fundraising prowess, as well as faculty criticism.
Indeed, McLaughlin's resume read largely like a roadmap through some of the most prominent destinations in corporate America. At the time of his death, he was a director of the media giant Viacom. He served as chief executive officer of Orion Safety Products from 1988 through 2000. Soon after retiring as president of the College, he joined the Aspen Institute, a leadership organization, serving first as its chairman from 1987 to 1988 and then as its president and chief executive from 1988 to 1997.
Before leaving his elected chairmanship on the College's Board of Trustees to assume Dartmouth's presidency, he had occupied the top position at Toro Manufacturing.
McLaughlin also presided over numerous nonprofit organizations during his professional career. From 2001 until this year, he served as chairman of the American Red Cross.
Current and former colleagues alike praised McLaughlin for his devotion to Dartmouth as an institution.
"Mr. McLaughlin dedicated so much of his life and considerable energy to Dartmouth and its people," current College President James Wright said immediately after his death in a written statement. "His life was full, and, in the end, too short."
"I don't know if there are too many people who are as devoted to Dartmouth as he was," added McLaughlin's immediate successor, James O. Freedman. "He always furnished me with very great moral support during my time as president."
McLaughlin's efforts at building the campus' infrastructure and strengthening Dartmouth's endowment charted the initial course for the College to head into the 21st century. McLaughlin also enacted important changes to the Dartmouth Plan in 1983, after it became obvious that the decade-old version was creating as many problems as it was solving. McLaughlin created a period of 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.
While at Dartmouth's helm, however, McLaughlin sometimes drew more flak than praise.
Faculty members decried his lack of academic leadership -- the lifelong businessman had never earned a doctoral degree -- and at one point debated a no-confidence vote calling for his resignation.
In January 1985, an ad hoc committee formed by the faculty to examine the governance of the College released a report sharply criticizing McLaughlin's leadership style. A poll in The Dartmouth in April of that year found that more than three-quarters of the faculty faulted McLaughlin for a lack of intellectual leadership and mediocre defense of liberal arts.
It came as little wonder, then, when Dartmouth's Board of Trustees hired James O. Freedman, a lifelong academic who was the president of the University of Iowa, as the 15th President of the College. Chief among his mandates was these: to improve the intellectual atmosphere of a school that, at least among the college guidebooks, was regarded as among the least academically rigorous of the Ivies.
McLaughlin's problems had only deepened over his handling of an event that drew national attention -- a group of students associated with The Dartmouth Review, some of them wielding sledgehammers, attacked a shantytown that had been constructed on the Green to protest the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The uproar drew Dartmouth (and its president) into the national spotlight, and there was little surprise when McLaughlin announced in October 1986 that he was resigning.
There had been other tensions, too.
One especially marked point of contention was the reinstatement of the Reserve Officers Training Corps on campus.
In March 1985, McLaughlin and the Board of Trustees sanctioned the ROTC program on campus despite two separate votes by the faculty stating their opposition to the program.
The faculty reacted negatively to McLaughlin's decision and 52 professors immediately signed a letter warning a leadership crisis could develop.
But McLaughlin never publicly regretted the decision to institute ROTC, though he admitted later that "some of it could have been handled better."
His 1987 exit was met by widespread faculty approval, and students at the time noted that the McLaughlin era had shown them only that the administration neither considered their concerns nor acted decisively.
