Sanborn Values

By Byron Fuller | Sunday, June 8, 2003

'I direct said Trustees to set aside from my said residuary estate the sum of Four Hundred Thousand Dollars ($400,000) ...to use the same for the erection of a building to be known as Sanborn House...and that the said building shall house a library on English and topics related thereto...'
—Edwin Webster Sanborn, New York City, 1927.

In closing Sanborn Library, the College would violate the terms and intent of the very document that called this library into existence. The Last Will and Testament of Edwin W. Sanborn, Class of 1878, provided not only for the erection of Sanborn House and Library, but also allocated considerable monies for the initial furnishings and subsequent upkeep of the building. These monies comprise the Sanborn Library Fund, an account now worth in the vicinity of $20 million, disbursing annually about $900,000. Of this income earmarked first for Sanborn, 15% goes to Facilities Operations & Management (FO&M) with the remaining 85% never passing go, but proceeding directly to Baker/Berry coffers.

Outrage has been widespread both on and off campus since last Friday's Daily Dartmouth detailed the euphemistic 'reductions' in library services. These cutbacks, which occur in the wake of heavy endowment losses, would close Sanborn Library despite explicit designation of funding to prevent such. The cuts to Sanborn would not close the space itself; the staff is to be terminated, while the room would become a Tower Room-style reading area, with materials not duplicative of the general collection removed to Baker/Berry. What this means is immediately clear to anyone who has tried to find a specific book on the plundered shelves of the Tower Room: those books remaining in Sanborn will soon enough be picked over, the interesting tomes carted away by endeavouring students. This type of arrangement would negate the intended use of the Sanborn Library. In order to appreciate the specificity of the endower's intent (and the magnitude of the College's proposed transgression), one must consider the history of Sanborn House.

In the mid-1920s, rival schools keen to harp on Dartmouth's inferiority complex, joked that Dartmouth was the only school among its peers that had a gymnasium larger than its library. Then-President Hopkins, evidently smarting beneath such comments (and perhaps suffering from a case of library envy), began his solicitations targeting especially Edwin Webster Sanborn, a wealthy graduate and son of the eminent English and Latin Professor Edwin David Sanborn, Class of 1832. Despite the Professor's dying in comparative penury, Sanborn junior had, with some thanks to a brother-in-law's button-manufacturing prowess and also the Standard Oil Company, amassed a true fortune. Sanborn, however, waffled on committing to the initial donation Hopkins sought, and the latter soon plumbed the largesse of George Fisher Baker, whose surname has become synonymous with the structure now dominating campus. Sanborn, irate at being passed over, at first refused further contact with College.

Though Sanborn was without heirs, and the College remained the natural choice as chief beneficiary, the need for a main library was now sated. In order for a bequest to become possible again, Hopkins realised something considerably different and particularly well-tailored to this donor would be required. He allowed a bit of time for the healing of wounded pride before renewing his overtures. Then, with considerable tact, Hopkins persuaded the aging bachelor to bequeath his entire estate to the College with the aim of establishing a memorial to his father, the late Professor. Professor Sanborn had, in his day, been renowned for his well-tempered geniality, for the care, sympathy, and encouragement he showed his students, and for the magnificent hospitality with which he entertained visiting men of letters. Well aware of the influence this sterling character had exercised on nearly fifty years of Dartmouth men, the ultimate goal of the proposed Sanborn House went beyond the mere erection of a classroom-building. The Special Collections files evince the amount of thought given to how one might best create a setting that would engender the warmth and fraternity Professor Sanborn had espoused. These considerations on the College's behalf found their final form in Edwin W. Sanborn's will. This document proclaims the testator's hope that the building would be a 'homelife center...assist[ing] in keeping alive the earlier traditions of the College.'

That spirit and those aims have survived down to this day, evident every afternoon when at four P.M. the quiet bustle and clinking of porcelain signal the begin of tea. Further, the nature and passion of arguments for saving Sanborn attest to the complete, enduring success of its architect and planning committee—every defense propounded hitherto focuses on aesthetics. People contrast the cold, sterile hallways and factory-like setting of Berry with Sanborn's classical proportions and soulful, elegant interior. Prospective students, on seeing an active Sanborn Library, deliberately make a circuit round its creaking floorboards and then wistfully pronounce it the essence of the old Ivy league. Such arguments are both telling and persuasive, but, alas, ultimately useless: US News rankings don't measure sensuality. The administration neither cares (the majority of the Art History department, for example, went on record, opposing the plans for the mill-like Berry Library) nor could it envision why it should. Numbers have become everything, and quality cannot be quantified, whether it pertains to buildings or even education. The case of Sanborn Library's threatened closure raises distressing questions about the College's priorities.

The proposed reductions make no sense where they pertain to Sanborn Library. The Sanborn will directs the Trustees, after erecting the building, furnishing it, and stocking the library, to:

'...set apart as a Sanborn Library Fund, and to invest and keep invested the same and to devote such income thereof as they may deem requisite for the upkeep and maintenance of the said Sanborn House, and for the repairs thereto, including extraordinary and emergency repairs, and for the renewal, or alteration, when in their judgement advisable, of its furnishings and equipment, and to devote the rest of such net income to the purchase of books, pamphlets, and other publications for the library of said College...'

The construction of Sanborn House, completed in 1929, cost some $344,220.77, which, allowing for several lesser bequests, left the Sanborn Library Fund a beginning balance of $1,405,578.72. As previously stated, this balance has since swollen to approximately $20 million, of which nothing goes directly to Sanborn House or Library. Where are these funds going? Given the present snafu, the lack of explanation is tantamount to misappropriation. Currently, no one can explain the 15% / 85% division that assigns FO&M approximately $160,000 yearly and Baker/Berry the remainder. Successive heads of the English Department have been unable to elicit from FO&M an accounting of the expenses for upkeep. While this maintenance sum may be wholly warranted, the longstanding refusal to provide an accounting suggests a considerable amount of slack. That is not to say that poor use is being made of excess monies, simply that they are perhaps being used for purposes other than those intended.

The magnitude of the allocation to Baker, on the other hand, is simply indefensible. The will states that the income of the fund is first to be used for Sanborn House affairs, and then for the general collection. Sanborn himself clearly intended the building to house a library. As such, it follows that the monies requisite to staffing that library may be taken from the Sanborn Library Fund, and further, that the deduction of this expense would precede any allocation of 'the rest of such net income' to the general collection. Again, this is not to say that those substantial funds being allocated to Baker/Berry are being used poorly, simply that the needs of Baker/Berry are being given precedence over the actual intent of the endower. This reshuffling of import violates the terms of the Sanborn's will. The College is, by the tailored fashion in which it solicited the funds, doubly obligated to honor the donor's intent. Previously, this reshuffling came at the expense of furnishings and the physical plant—this was eventually remedied at the continued insistence of the English Department. That general budget setbacks should now so impinge on the intended use of the Sanborn monies as to force the closure of the Sanborn Library is unacceptable.

Though the College Endowment has indeed shrunk to $2.3 billion, this is by no means cause for the College to dissolve its obligation to honor the restrictions imposed by Sanborn, nor does it justify curtailing the scope of the general library, the College's most valuable asset. By contrast, the administration has been diligently investing in numerous services and entertainments for students, ranging from gas-plasma televisions in the Collis Student Center to the recent appearance of Cornel West. One cannot help but think such lavish expenditure frivolous when we are now presented with drastic, permanent cuts to the library budget—10% over the next two years. What use is an endowment of such colossal size if it remains untapped in times of need and at the expense of the core educational resource on this campus?

The College's Endowment monitoring system is known as the Funkhouser register. A description, taken from the Endowment webpage, indicates its purpose as being to describe '... all information necessary for a complete understanding and an intelligent administration of the various funds, thereby making it possible to carry out the intentions of the donors.'

The College must rectify its negligence in the matter of the Sanborn Library Fund. Sanborn's will specifies then-President and Treasurers Hopkins and Edgerton as the executors, and, in the event of previous demise, their respective successors. As a matter of good faith, the current President and Treasurer should assume the responsibility to verify this catastrophic blunder.

Researches into the origins of the investment fiasco as well as the possible logic of paring down library services at an educational institution continue.

Sanborn Values

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