Binghamton University - Colonist / Pegasus Yearbook (Vestal, NY)

Page 16 text:

The Student Center had changed, and in a very important way. The Music Lounge couldn't be used for dancing because WRAF was next door but a huge, new Snack Bar could, and the Snack Bar's new location had great significance. The new Snack Bar became the stream in which all bathed: it was not just a place to drop into, it became a social, cul- tural and intellectual necessity. Weekends once spent around the Music Lounge were now spent in the somewhat gloomy recesses of the Snack Bar. It became the womb within a womb and rock n' roll was a kind of Muzak of the Womb. The Snack Bar made us realize that sitting and talking, drinking coffee and chewing coffee sticks, were at the very root of Harpur life. Because if Harpur was not based on sheer verbiage, all day long, and about everything, it was based on nothing. The Snack Bar was an open arena, a great stage and we realized how important it was to know what each and every person was doing. We were still insecure and the trimester kept us so. All our freshman fears about going to an anonymity were rekindled by the persistent belief that trimester would mean the plummeting of standards and the flight of most of the faculty. Bartle told us that it wasn't so bad, dropped his classic its as if they were dead quip and left us more worried than before. If trimester came, said scores of discordant voices, we will transfer. But it came, and we stayed, and do did the teachers.

Page 15 text:

Other events livened up the year. When Al Robinson and Barry Levine, both slightly tipsy, heisted a statue of the Christ Child off the Courthouse manger scene, Binghamtonites were outraged. In the spring, Harpur had the only first-class panty raid perpetrated in the four years, since some people actually got into O'Connor, although most of the cowards scream- ing for entrance fled in the opposite direction when the doors were opened. But it was a famous victory. Also, an extraordinary number of very notable people were showing up to speak. Eleanor Roosevelt, her sympathies won by a heart-rending letter written by Ronnie Bayer on the In- ternational Relations Club's state of abject poverty, arrived to speak. Harlan Cleveland, Linus Pauling, Norman Thomas, I. F. Stone, William Rusher and Brand Blanshard found their way here. The Hungarian String Quartet arrived to play a Bartok quartet which brought the house down. These, however, were events which came here. What were the students doing? Well, a group of students stood on the center mall to protest the resumption of nuclear testing by the Russians, a demonstration which took perhaps less courage to participate in than any other. Thirty-seven students took part in a Washington Peace March. Within the school, the key demonstration was the Bermuda Riot, not a riot at all, really in which students, in pro- test of an inane dress regulation banning bermudas in the dining hall, arrived en masse in bermudas to confront Dean Belniak and Mr. Marshall at the door. The result was that the ban was lifted. The year ended with a few more traumas. Dr. Bartle told us that some people in town thought that we were unclean, and that we might wash a little. He added that, oh yes, sophomore boys might live in the Carlton Hotel in 1962-63. We did a collective double-take and then saw visions of 200 boys hounding room service, climbing down fire escapes and dropping water balloons on cops - in a yearlong Marx Brothers orgy. The plan fell through and a chance to irrevocably destroy town-gown relations was lost. As the days lengthened and minds mischievously idled, some boys began to toy with he idea of taking a final, or two, or three. So the Katzenjammer Kids snuck into offices and read the exams into a tape recorder. The plan was perfect, except that they were caught and thrown out of school. So the first year ended, in relative calm. But there had been a portent: the state had picked Harpur as a guinea pig for the trimester and the first stirring of outrage began to be heard. Everything seemed to explode in our sophomore year. The girls were wondering what the new women's housing head, Miss Patricia Wilson, would be like. She was young, the girls were glad to see, and this assured at least a compassionate, contemporary ear to problems. This' notion was quickly disabused by a series of bed checks, flashlight searches, and other bits of nocturnal razzle-dazzle. Miss Wilson became a veritable lightning rod for invective and a cold war was started in the girls' dorms.

Page 17 text:

A new group called Students For A Democratic Community was worried about a whole range of issues and began challenging the Administration on everything from social regulations to educational policies. S.D.C. added to the excitement of the year by giving us the feeling that if we worked things out, the students would get everything, but everything, changed. Delusions of grandeur perhaps, but the election campaign that Spring was the first one that seemed to count. The Civil Rights Club, in its first year of operation, was attempting to sweep the cobwebs out of our consciences and one couldn't open his mailbox without C.R.C. announcement, The tutoring program they set up was the most constructive thing Harpur students had ever done, opening a line of communication with Binghamton. Beer blasts, however, were closing lines of communication. One after the other, various legion halls were left in shambles, this reaching an apex with the S.0.S. Pounce, where an orgy of glass-smashing made the hall look like a bombed-out crystal palace. Basketball games began to involve a kind of group monomania, centered on the wiry figure of Mickey Greenberg, upon whose shoulders fell the burden of carrying the team. And so we sat and asked, pleaded and implored the team to give the ball to him, the star, who did not relish the role. But he scored 45 one night, and brought light into a some- what dim season. It was a year of chaos. Dr. Freimarck, lecturing on Gulliver's Travels found that the stage was ascending and descending and waved gamely to a delirious audience. A campus cop, entrusted with giving out numbered 1.B.M. cards on registration eve, cracked under the pressure and started giving them in the early evening, to anyone who happened by. Word began to filter out and by about 10:30 there was a virtual stampede of anguished boys from the dorms. At this hour, of course, the girls were utterly trapped. Scalpers started selling low numbered cards and Mr. Rishel was almost lynched when he arrived, roused from an evening of partying. Registration procedure was henceforth changed. Chaos extended to the great, rich and famous. W. H. Auden, resplendent in orange hush-puppies, lost his teeth before the unbelieving eyes of a properly reverent audience and Nelson Rockefeller was happy, very happy in fact, to be at Harpur with his old friend and trusted colleague, Glenn Bartlett. As finals approached, the primary uncertainty concerned the effects of the summer semester. A lot of things were being discussed in grandiose terms for the year 1963-64: curfews and the grading system must go, everything must be re-evaluated. But the one thing that was sure midst the flying debris was that the school had acquired an identity, and a certain air of excitement and spontaneity, and this would not easily be undone.