Archbishop Mitty High School - Excalibur Yearbook (San Jose, CA)

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This is the 1971 Excalibur of Archbishop Mitty High School. This book was put together with the efforts of photographers Russ Hughes, Tom Chargin, Paul Landry, and editor Dale Gregersen. This book is not an all out attempt to glorify Mitty in every respect. Mitty has made mistakes, and the editors have also featured some of the school's problems on these pages in an attempt to produce a balanced yearbook. There is the traditional coverage of sports, which the teams deserve: a foot- ball squad coming from a dismal 1-9 record last year to a 7-3 record this year g undefeated winners of the Buchser basketball tournamentg one of the finest soccer teams in Northern Californiag a fine baseball teamg plus the hardy cross-country club--all are included. However, there is much more to Mitty than sports. Mitty has moved ahead in areas totally ignored by other high schools. Mitty is not merely four walls and a roof designed to imprison students for a few edu- cational hours each day, it allows its students a much freer and more realis- tic atmosphere on campus than do most high schools. School seems more like an extension of everyday living with the adoption of the open campus policy and the creation of co-ed classes. Students also make up their own class schedules, 2

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and by exercising this right are assuming the responsibility expected of them. The new school standards have produced a spirit of change and progress about campus. Students and teachers alike are putting their own ideas into practice-- such as the S. S.P. workersg the off-beat, song filled Sunday massg the expand- ed Guidance and Counseling programg plus the ever-present spontaneous frisbee matches, poker games, and snowball fights that crop up. It is mostly in these zany and spontaneous escapades which occur on and off campus that students witness the feeling that life is worth living and that there is something worth living for. Most yearbooks, especially high school yearbooks, are given to high-blown sentiment, purple prose filled with exultant corn whose ooze drowns the truth and obscures the vision. Annual publications at best attempt the impossible-- to capture life AND to preserve it. This book, like Mitty l-ligh School, is a little bit of every person who put it together, both may be summed up in this line by e. e. cummings: Life, for eternal us is now, and now is much too busy being a little more than everything. John Waters Jr.