Dartmouth at Dartmouth House

In my role as one of the co-chairs of the Dartmouth Club of London, I was recently contacted by the college informing me that one of the Trustees of the College (Diana Taylor '77, the current girlfriend of New York mayor Mike Bloomberg) was coming to visit in May, and we should make plans. Then I was informed that Dartmouth had recently bought an institutional membership to Dartmouth House, another club in London and the home of the English Speaking Union. So tonight, myself and the two other co-chairs were due to meet a member of the Dartmouth Development Office who now lives in London.

I arrived at Dartmouth House right on time, only to realise after I gave my name at the front desk (and they assured me the person I was meeting was "around somewhere") I had no idea what she looked like. So I went to the bathroom to freshen up and quickly check my e-mail, hoping there might have been a clue in the last message she sent. Once again, the iPhone turns out to be a brilliant investment, as there was an e-mail from the woman telling me to meet her in the tea room, so went in and found she was the only person there (that was easy!)

She got us a bottle of white wine, and we were shortly joined by the other, more reliable co-chair, and we got into an extensive discussion about the background of the Development Officer and how she came to be in London, our thoughts on having a trustee come speak and so forth. So it was very annoying when the unreliable third co-chair finally showed up, and we had to repeat pretty much the entire conversation thus far!

Yet, it was a valuable conversation that gave us all many good ideas about things we could do with the Dartmouth Club, and how we could seek out more funding for some of our activities. I was really impressed at how confident this woman was that she knew the big alumni donors who might be willing to sponsor what we do. And it just sort of blew my mind, to realise how much of an operation Dartmouth is, this giant corporate behemoth that exists beneath the surface of the little college where I went to school. When I was there, I really had no idea how this all worked, or how massive the enterprise was.

At the end of the evening (they came in to let us know the bar was closing at 8 PM!) she gave us all little jars of M&Ms that said on them, "There's only one Big Green", and inside amidst all of the small green and white M&Ms was one giant peanut M&M. How clever!

As it turned out the Development Officer also lived near Kensington Olympia, we caught a bus back together, and chatted about life and Dartmouth... Turns out that she's an alum, a Kappa, and she was able to tell me quite a bit about the new Alpha Xi house. Makes me all that much more excited for reunion, to go back and see it!