A Lecture From the Faculty

By Ezra Bowen

When the trustees of Dartmouth College installed David McLaughlin as the school's 14th president in the summer of 1981, he seemed a perfect choice for a scholarly Ivy League bastion steeped in lusty, old-boy fellowship. Indeed, his persona glowed the deepest Dartmouth green: Phi Beta Kappa in the class of '54, wide receiver on the football team, M.B.A. from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration. Three of McLaughlin's four children had graduated from Dartmouth or were going there. Finally, as chief executive officer of the Toro Co., makers of lawn and gardening equipment, McLaughlin was an exemplar of the business success that can be earned by a Dartmouth man with the right stuff.

That last credential was particularly important, since Dartmouth, like other colleges across the country, was facing the pressures of a cost crunch and a projected dip in enrollment. McLaughlin has responded to the challenge. By last fall he had boosted the endowment from $254 million to $414 million and fattened faculty salaries 33.7%, to a healthy average of $50,600 for full professors. Although applications for the Hanover, N.H., campus were rising to an all-time high of 9,500 for only 1,030 places in the freshman class, McLaughlin pushed the enrollment of blacks; Dartmouth now has a larger percentage of black undergraduates (9%) than any other Ivy League school. And not least, he cracked down on fraternity low- jinks that had made Dartmouth the inspiration for the caustic film National Lampoon's Animal House. !

It seemed a bravura performance, worthy of praise all around. But over the past month, at a series of querulous meetings, Dartmouth's faculty of arts and sciences has unanimously condemned McLaughlin's reign. A special faculty committee drafted a 16-page critique that bitterly complained, "The administration of the college is insensitive to and not knowledgeable about education concerns and (the faculty's) proper and necessary role in the governance of the college." In lay language: McLaughlin had given his orders and done his works without first conferring with the faculty, a serious oversight at an intimate, old-line school like Dartmouth with a deep tradition of collegiality. Said Biology Professor Melvin Spiegel: "He responds as chairman of the board, not as president and leader of this institution." As one Cornell professor describes the administrators, "They're used to running that place like a New England town meeting."

Among the major complaints emphasized at the various meetings: McLaughlin revived an on-campus ROTC program the faculty had killed during Viet Nam times; without due consultation, he proposed moving the school's major medical complex some 2 1/2 miles off campus; he tolerated a right-wing student journal called the Dartmouth Review. The paper, which has no official connection with the college, has at various times ridiculed black students in Stepin Fetchit argot, suggested that academic standards might fall if more Jewish students were admitted, and published secretly taped conversations during an off-the- record meeting of homosexual students. The stoic McLaughlin attended the faculty sessions, which turned into heated arguments over his incumbency. "To say that you speak for the college is unacceptable," declared Professor of Music Jon Appleton. "You did not consult us." Added Spiegel: "If you had any respect for this faculty and for this institution, you would step down." McLaughlin retorted that if he ever felt he was not serving Dartmouth, "nobody will have to ask me to resign."

Amid all the unhappiness and at the worst possible time for McLaughlin, a dozen students, most of them members of the Review, staged a midnight raid to demolish several shanties that had been erected on campus to protest Dartmouth's unwillingness to divest itself totally of stock in companies doing business in South Africa. Later, Review editors bragged that they were "merely picking trash off the green." When protesters immediately staged a sit-in in his office, McLaughlin waffled on the issue, saying the shanties' "presence should be respected," then further angered his critics by asking that the shacks be removed. Complained William Cole, a black associate professor of music: "You've brought a lot of pain here."

Despite the turmoil, McLaughlin ended the contentious week with his job intact. Although faculty members adopted the report, they balked at a call by Spiegel for a vote of no confidence that would have forced McLaughlin out of office. "Who the hell do we think we are?" demanded Economics Professor William Baldwin at the final meeting, deploring the spectacle of a faculty going after its president's skin. Said Donald Pease, an English professor: "If we react in a crisis sensibility, we will remain in a crisis state."

However, the faculty did approve eight tough recommendations for both McLaughlin and the board of trustees. Among them: that McLaughlin "increase the level and quality of consultation with the faculty"; that the trustees "hold the president accountable" for such consultation; that faculty from other colleges be brought onto the board, which is now dominated by businessmen; that the faculty have a say in the selection of future presidents.

Afterward, the beleaguered Mc- Laughlin conceded that he perhaps "did not take the time for the deliberative processes of this college," but saw no reason to apologize for his record "or any part I have played." In sum, he admitted he had "learned a good lesson" and determined that henceforth "actions, not words, are going to count."

Biology Professor Thomas Roos, a faculty leader in the whole confrontation, agreed. "We're saying that you're not off the hook," he said. "We're going to keep looking."

With reporting by Joelle Attinger/Hanover