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

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.

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 18 text:

The year began strangely, in the summer, but summer was a farce and is only tangential to our history. We returned in November and the leaves had changed already, so the land- scape was brown. Bingham and Endicott were on the verge of collapsing; a new Slater sys- tem of served meals did, in fact, collapse. The Slater people, for reasons unbeknownst to us, had whisked away lovable Wally Aitkenhead, he of the corn-fed tones and clip-on bow ties. Wally's successor was inscrutable and imperturbable - there was no insult he could not turn to his advantage, no slur he couldn't coolly withstand. His lucid rationalizations for every move Slater made were donewith a dexterity students were forced to admire. Especially noteworthy was the brilliant defense he made of one dessert a meal, one steak a week, at a time when there were nosteaks. There was a shadow hanging over the campus: i'affaire Haumont. The whole business was dark and alien to a campus where everybody was supposed to know everything. Students interviewed secretly by authorities, teachers and administrators testifying in closed sessions: these were elements of a troubling affair. When investigators from Montreal came to Har- pur to a look around, and looked for all the world like extras from a French spy drama or a very bad Bogart movie, the Haumont matter seemed more shadowy than ever. The Fall featured a cerebral Orientation Program which was, in many ways, pushing the S.D.C. program. Work began on a drive to lift curfew ceilings, a drive that was ultimately successful. The Colonial News came out with a front-page editorial calling for open dorms: the paper was dated November 22, 1963, and suddenly nobody could have cared less about open dorms, or the CN. Political activity was in a state of quietus after the assassination, this lasting until H.U.A.C. went o Buffalo. The favorite intra-mural sport was lambasting Bio. Sci., which the CN took for a cause, along with the now traditional vendetta against Miss Wilson. But what strikes one most about the junior year is the absence of a mood. In our freshman year, there was insecurity and doubt: in the sophomore year, change and doubt, but the junior year was a calm one. C.R.C. and S.D.C. were still active but they were institutions already and institutions are never as exciting as new organizations. The new organization was Serv- ices for Youth, but there was no mood tied to S.F.Y. except a kind of genial ambitiousness, and this kind of crypto-welfare organization didn't stir the blood so much as make one feel vaguely happy that there was something like this happening. Children would frolic at Harpur on weekends and break some of the monotony of a world without children or old people or dogs or cats. Students for Off Campus Housing had meetings in the Coffee House which often seemed like cell meetings, but the purpose was too narrow to excite anyone except the boys involved, for whom it was a holy cause. ' The students attempted to contrive events to breathe some spontaneity into a year, which was, for the most part business as usual or unusual. The dawn dance was a passable suc- cess and the Stepping on the Coat ceremony, held at a more civilized hour, was a greater Success. 16