Brown University - Liber Brunensis Yearbook (Providence, RI)

Page 24 text:

No less characteristic of Brown life than the good times are the conflicts faced by every individual. Whether no more applicable today than yesterday-or unique to contemporary progressthey exist as problems of time, place and responsibility which must be resolved. Communications and transportation advances have accented the conflicts that arise out of the transient character of the student's place at Brown. He is going from home to here, and back again. Students lose track of high school buddies as they make new friendships and spend more time at the University. Hometown girls come up for Big Weekendsand are foresaken for dates closer to Brown at other times. But phone calls link, highways connect, and airways reach out to friends and dates in all parts of the country. It becomes easier to meet many new people. Yet as acquaintances and distances increase, so do the choices which must be made. Even in the jet age, you can be in only one place at a time. Academics and social life vie for the time of the individual. The trivia of everyday life only complicate matters. In the hurry to meet a date at the train station, the lines at the Refectory may be too long or the laundry delayed for a half-hour. In the rush for tomorrow's exam, it seems that suddenly the library stacks are claustrophobic or everyone in the house is playing hall hockey. You expect the problems, you know that everyone has them, but you wish they wouldn't happen to younot now anyway. Academia has been proclaimed an Ivory Tower. If it is, then the consistent academic pressure we feel does not exist; our sometimes frustrating social and economic problems do not arise; and we do not have to make choices, large or small, which affect our lives. To the extent that we experience these, however, Brown becomes a real world with sometimes different, but nonetheless worldlike conflicts.