Married Undergrads

John McGreevy was kicked out of Dartmouth in his junior year because he had cut 120 more classes than the rules allowed. "I'd look out the window in the morning," he said, "and decide it was snowing too hard to go to class. Then in the afternoon, I'd decide I'd better ski. I didn't know where in hell I was going. Up until the war my life had amounted to zero, zero, zero."

He became Navy Lieut. McGreevy, veteran of 56 months' flying in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Last week, with a pretty bride, he was back at Dartmouth--along with 49 other couples--studying chemistry, zoology and Greek, and finding it possible, and even profitable, to attend classes. The McGreevys are snugly settled in one of the two dormitories which all-male Dartmouth has turned over to married vets and their wives.

The halls of Fayerweather and South Fayerweather, that smelled only of beer and pipe tobacco, now exude faint traces of Prince Matchabelli perfume. The battered furniture, handed down for cash from generation to generation, has been junked for double beds, ruffled curtains, flowered drapes and potted plants. Hot plates glow busily under home-cooked dinners. Dartmouth plans to erect a lattice fence to hide the disturbing sight of bras and panties drying on the clothesline.

Many of the wives have part-time jobs to add to their husbands' G.I. allowance of $75 a month (single men get $50). The college tries to keep them all entertained by letting them play squash in the men's gym, join in music, stage and handicraft groups. Next step: special classes for the wives.

Campus Cop Nelson Wormwood, a steely-eyed ex-Vermont farmer, used to enter Fayerweather on the double when an all-night beer party got too high. Now he skips it. "It's just like a private apartment house," he says contentedly, "no trouble at all."

Forts & Gyms. With his wife comfortably settled in "Fayerweather Arms," John McGreevy is luckier than most of the 40,000-odd G.I.s who have taken their wives with them to college. Dartmouth plans to build a village of 50 prefabricated houses to hold the 100 new couples expected next March. Overcrowded University of Colorado is refusing admission to all out-of-staters but G.I.s. The University of Vermont has lodged some of its overflow in the Army's Fort Ethan Allen. The University of Michigan has set up a prefabricated "vet's village." Wisconsin's "Vetsburg" is a thriving town of trailers. Some 50 other campuses have trailer colonies housing from 100 to 400 couples. Unmarried students at Indiana University sleep in dormitory hallways and on cots set up in gyms and locker rooms.

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