Class Day in 1973 was held in the unistructure rotunda, under the dome. Later in the decade, large-scale events were normally planned for the gymnasium or for Janikies auditorium.
owners appreciated the students' business. And invitations to free cultural and athletic events at the college brought townspeople onto the campus. At the end of the decade Bryant was once more contemplating expansion. Dormitory space was desperately needed as well as a new and more extensive student union. The debt from the 1970 construction of the new campus was being financed at a high rate over thirty years. Luckily, the college was able to refinance the debt. The college could then assume a larger loan to pay for a new dormitory. The Rhode Island Health and Education Building Corporation negotiated the sale of $12,080,000 in higher education facilities bonds and $1,665,000 in special obligation bonds. The dormitory was completed in 1979. 51 Bryant was not experienced in raising huge amounts of money to pay for a building program. It had been a proprietary institution for so many years that a tradition of alumni support for institutional development had had little time to blossom. Even after becoming a non-profit college, it remained a tuition-based enterprise with no endowment at all until the late sixties when Frank Delmonico set up an endowment with funds from the sale of the old campus to Brown University. Nevertheless, Bryant College alumni had given money to scholarship funds over the years. In the mid-seventies, 100 alumni contributed $26,000 for scholarships at their alma mater. The first director of development, Joseph Welch, appointed in the late sixties, prepared for an annual fund drive to be kicked off each year at the Alumni Banquet. In 1968, the first Corporations Cam-
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