After reading Lauren Rosenbaum's article, ("What's in a Name?," Jan. 13) I could relate to the author's frustration with Dartmouth's relative obscurity outside of the United States. My relatives overseas were dismayed that I had chosen to matriculate at Dartmouth, a relatively little-known institution in South Korea (that is, before College President Jim Yong Kim's ascension). As Rosenbaum pointed out, many of my international and domestic acquaintances were unaware of Dartmouth and mistook it for a school that only offered an undergraduate education. Yet despite its moniker, Dartmouth has been a university in everything but name since 1796, when Nathan Smith established the Dartmouth Medical School.
What Rosenbaum does not recognize, however, is that discarding "Dartmouth College" in order to appeal to the general understanding of the masses ignores a critical part of Dartmouth's history.
According to "Dartmouth College: An Architectural Tour," by Scott Meacham '95, Dartmouth University was actually the name granted to the public institution operating on Dartmouth campus from 1817 to 1819. The university was born out of a power conflict between John Wheelock the son of College founder Eleazar Wheelock and Dartmouth's Board of Trustees in 1815. Wheelock appealed to the legislature of New Hampshire, which attempted to change Dartmouth's original charter in order to turn Dartmouth into a state-run institution. The changes gave the state governor the power to make appointments, add new members to the Board of Trustees and create a state board with the power to veto the decisions of the university. The College and university operated side-by-side in a hostile standoff until the latter gained access to Dartmouth Hall.
In response, College officials resisted and faculty members held classes in their homes. The situation for Dartmouth College seemed grim, however, until the College's successful 1818 lawsuit in which Daniel Webster famously declared, "It is, sir, I have said, a small college, and yet there are those that love it."
The College reclaimed its buildings, and the case, chronicled in American history textbooks as "Trustees of Dartmouth v. Woodward," established the sanctity of private contracts in America and provided affirmation for the rights of private corporations.
After discussing Rosenbaum's article, I realized that many fellow students, including upperclassmen, are unaware of Dartmouth's historic legacy. History aside though, what concerned me most about Rosenbaum's article was her concern regarding Dartmouth's perceived lack of prestige and her suggestion that we ought to improve the world's opinion of our institution through a superficial name change.
As I have written before ("The Problem with Prestige," Oct.22), even if the global community bestows Dartmouth with more respect, we should never regard something as intangible as "prestige" as a reflection of our institutional worth.
Instead, our collective actions and future accomplishments are the ultimate validation of Dartmouth's quality. If we wish to change the world's impression of the College, we must prepare our students to go out into the world and achieve great things. Dartmouth alumni are relatively well represented in the areas of economics and politics, but if we truly wish to validate our position as one of the best undergraduate institutions in the nation, we need to demonstrate our capabilities in all fields. We must also prepare our students to take the lead in the real world. We need to instill our current and future students with a firm pride for our alma mater (which, as Rosenbaum's column evidently suggests, is somewhat lacking). A simple name change will not accomplish any of these goals.
The sons and daughters of Dartmouth have defined and will continue to affect the course of American history. As the collective inheritors of that legacy, and with the various opportunities the College grants to us, we have the capability nay, the responsibility to define the future of our world.
