Collis Student Center

Opened: January 11, 19791

Formerly: College Hall

Also Known As: Common Ground

The entrance to the Collis Center, behind a snow covered path.
Exterior of the Collis Student Center, winter 1979. 2

Contents

The Inspiration for Collis

Starting in 1975, when they were first-years, students Sean McLaughlin and Lenny Sitomer began looking for a way to bring together what they saw as separate, “isolated” Dartmouth communities.3 They imagined a “Common Ground – where all these various peripheral groups could come together to interact, to communicate, to offer new perspectives and challenge old assumptions.”4 They drafted a thorough proposal and, after trying several administrators with no luck, brought it to breakfast with the chairman of the Trustee Committee on Student Affairs, Robert Kilmarx.5

Kilmarx took to their idea; it “struck [him] as one small way of balancing out some of the problems at the fraternities.”6 Initially, Kilmarx agreed with the students that Webster Hall (which now houses Rauner Library) would be the ideal place for the student center, but College Hall was eventually chosen, in part because it could fit office space for student organizations.7 After a million-dollar donation from Charles Collis ’37,8 the Collis Student Center opened in the winter of 1979, McLaughlin and Sitomer’s graduation year.9

In the Alumni Magazine article about how the Collis Center began, Tim Taylor ’79 spends nearly an entire paragraph describing how McLaughlin and Sitomer were “not typical Dartmouth students.”10 He points their disinterest in sports and “out-of-the-mainstream” majors, emphasizes that they “look and dress a little more…casual…than most students”11, and suggests that they may be more interested in “catch[ing] some jazz at Foley House” than socializing in traditional fraternities.12 Whatever Taylor meant to imply by this description, McLaughlin and Sitomer seemed to fit the part for people creating an alternative social space.

Use by Student Organizations

Once the Collis Center opened, McLaughlin and Sitomer “stress[ed]…the need to insure equal accessibility to all groups” and to avoid allowing the Center to “cater to only one type of student – like a non-exclusive fraternity.”13 In its earliest years, at least, Collis did include a variety of student groups. The Alumni Magazine issue following the opening lists fifteen “organizations which will share office space in one large room,” including the Gay Students Association, the Afro-American Society, Women at Dartmouth, Native Americans at Dartmouth, and the Asian-American Association.14

The Council on Student Organizations played a role in determining which organizations needed space, and how much, in the Student Center when it first opened.

A page of a typewritten letter discussing COSO's recommendations for the new student center.
Dee Johnson sends Dean Manuel COSO’s evaluation of what space organizations will need in the new student center.15
COSO identified the Afro-American Society, Asian-American Association, International Students Association, Native Americans at Dartmouth, and Women at Dartmouth as organizations that most needed “some area of their own, either an office or lounge.”16  COSO also recommended in January 1978 that the Students for Social Alternatives get “a small cubicle with a file cabinet and storage area.”17 However, by the time Collis opened, the SSA was inactive.18 The Gay Student Support Group was new enough when COSO was making its space recommendations that it had to be handwritten at the bottom of the list of organizations they were using.19

Notes

  1. “Collis Opens,” The Dartmouth (Hanover, NH), January 11, 1979, 1. ↩
  2. Collis Center 1, n.d., Dartmouth Photo Files, https://libarchive.dartmouth.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/photofiles/id/55159/rec/81. ↩
  3. Tim Taylor, “It Flew,” The Undergraduate Chair, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, January/February 1979, 42, http://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/issue/19790101#!&pid=42. ↩
  4. Taylor, “It Flew,” 42. ↩
  5. Taylor, 42. ↩
  6. Robert D. Kilmarx, interview by Chris Burns, transcript, February 8, 2001, 102. ↩
  7. Kilmarx, interview, 104. ↩
  8. Kilmarx, interview, 103. ↩
  9. “Collis Opens,” 1. ↩
  10. Taylor, 42. ↩
  11. Ellipses and emphasis are Taylor’s. ↩
  12. Taylor, 42. ↩
  13. Taylor, 42. ↩
  14. “Bedfellows,” The College, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, January/February 1979, 20, http://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/issue/19790101#!&pid=20. ↩
  15. Dee Johnson, Dee Johnson to Ralph Manuel, January 27, 1978, 1, DA-8, Box 2610, Council on Student Organizations, 01/01/1977 -12/31/1978, Rauner Special Collections Library. ↩
  16. Johnson, Dee Johnson to Ralph Manuel, 1. ↩
  17. Johnson, 1. ↩
  18. Council on Student Organizations, “Annual Report: 1978-79,” November 9, 1979, 1, 6, DA-8, Box 2626, Council on Student Organizations, 01/01/1979-12/31/1980, Rauner Special Collections Library. ↩
  19. “COSO Organizations,” n.d., 2, DA-8, Box 2610, Council on Student Organizations, 01/01/1977 -12/31/1978, Rauner Special Collections Library. ↩