Shoulder Period: Dartmouth Before the Dawn of Change
Vincent Starzinger
Vincent Starzinger, Professor of Government, known as "The Zinger" by students and faculty.
Onwards and Upwards — From Hamilton to Dartmouth
Tripp's Dartmouth experience began not in Hanover, New Hampshire, but instead in Clinton, New York. Having gotten used to small boarding schools, Tripp originally only applied to small colleges like Middlebury and Hamilton. And though he enjoyed his time at Hamilton, becoming a brother at the Fraternity Psi Upsilon his freshman year, Tripp wanted more out of his academic life. He sought out courses in various departments at Hamilton, finding himself more interested in political science than linguistics. Unfortunately, for either discipline, there were too few professors, leading him to seek out different universities.
Originally, Tripp intended to transfer into Yale or Princeton. By chance, a close friend of his was dating a Dartmouth '64 named Stanford Roman, who was quite active in the student body. Thinking Tripp would make a great fit for Dartmouth, he advocated for Tripp as a prospective student in the Admission's Office and convinced him to apply. Tripp heeded Stanford's advice, but it was not Stanford that convinced him to accept his offer at Dartmouth. Rather, it was Dartmouth's remarkable faculty, particularly in the Government Department, that cemented his decision. Having sat in on Vincent Starzinger's [1929-2017] government course during his interview, Tripp was wowed by college's academic rigor.
Tripp's educational experiences occupy a unique place in Dartmouth's history and the broader history of American Civil Rights. Despite the fact that Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954, nearly a decade before Tripp would enroll in Dartmouth College, efforts to seriously desegregate institutions had only just begun. This is despite the fact that, in 1963, as Stefan M. Bradley discusses in his book, Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League, Dartmouth authorized the establishment of its pioneering "A Better Chance" (ABC) program.
While Dartmouth's outreach efforts would prove more robust and extensive than some of its competitors, only a handful of students of color were accepted and matriculated into Dartmouth by the mid-1960s. As evinced by a document on applicant statistics from 1966 to 1971, college admission practices catered towards accepting more Black students really only materialized after 1972. Further, as is clear in interview of Dartmouth alums who graduated in the mid-to-late 1960s, the socio-economic backgrounds of Black students at Dartmouth changed in the 1970s. The contingent of Black students that attended Dartmouth and other Ivy League institutions were largely middle class. Thus, Tripp and other alums from this time experienced a sort of "Shoulder Period" or cultural transition period at Dartmouth just before the dawn of change.