Emerson College - Emersonian Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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let’s turn back ... Ljooking back, we remember it all started on September tbirteentb, 1948. One hundred and forty strangers descended upon a garage-like structure be- hind 130 Beacon Street in Boston, Massachusetts and were there, through the somewhat hectic process of registration, united into a single body: the Class of 1952 of Emerson College. e had (jualified as freshmen. The glory was short-lived : within a month we had come to realize exactly what a low form of life the college freshman was. Or was it such a low form of life? Or was it the first stage in many, many more that were to change us immeasurahly? Anyway, Hell- eek came along with its weird costumes, equally weird humiliation.s, and casually demonic sopho- mores. W e emerged from Hell-Week trampled and tired hut much the wiser. We were already learning . . . Not only were we initiated freshmen, but we were Eniersonians. A settling down took place, and we began taking an active [lart in school activities. We participated in the organization of the now-traditional Orphan’s Party; we were introduced to the Emerson customs of tlie Inter-Class Dance, the Junior Prom, and the Senior Ball. The members of the class of ’49 gradu- ated, and we watched their excitement and their formal commencement. W e envied them. We were to become still wiser ... Then we became sophomores; the all-wise intel- lectuals. W hen we returned to the college that Sep- tember, we found that a few changes had been made. Dr. Godfrey Dewey was now President of the College. The snack bar looked like Billy Rose’s, except that A1 was still there. Good ol’ Al. Hell-Week arrived once again, only we were on the other side of the fence, and the hazing seemed easier on the freshmen than it had been when we’d gone through it ourselves. The freshmen fullilled the requirements of custom, and we felt older — not by too much, but at least a little older. W ERS-EM opened and Emerson College got itself on the map in bigger letters. Our Sophomore year was drawing to a close, and another class was prepar- ing for graduation; the class of ’50. We watched them and we anticipated our time. Two years were behind us; half of our exposure to education had been completed. There were several light tans. Our Junior year. A construction company went about its business of destruction, beginning to tear up the esplanade, and the Espy went the way of all non-political organizations. We worked from scratch on our prom. Hell-Week . . . and somehow we felt removed from it. Were we really changing? The freshmen looked awfully young, and we wondered . . . “Knickie” even hinted that that wondering might be the ever-so-faint symptoms of potential thought. page SIX

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dedication e is a quiet man with a strangely imp- ish strength. His voice is hot or cold, smooth or slashing, dark or light, adapted always to resist the various forms of the various resistances, and his thought is sharply pimctu- ated by the movement of his body. He poses, flicks dust in your eyes, to make you “scratch your head, take a chance on a few slivers”, to make you participate posi- tively in the examination of whatever must be examined, so that when the veil has been pierced you may feel the joy of having helped in the piercing. The search for truth is part of his and your constabulary duties to be done, to be done, but the labor is not cold and forbid- ding; it is warm and welcoming as well as serious and difficult, and he indicates the existence of this seeming paradox with the “methodology of the pim” and by stretching the tension into the realm of the grotesque, where the brittle atmosphere is liglitly splin- ered into loosening laughter. When he speaks, he introduces the shape of Trtitli like a chairman presenting the president of the corporation to the stock- holders or rescues it like a man hacking entrance into the blasted home of his friend or constructs it like a contractor assembling his many materials into a com- pleted structure. If, there is anything of the Ivory Tower about him, it is one built in the center of the world, with large, opened windows on all sides. Each of his courses is in reality two. One is the academic, on the successful com- pletion of which the student has earned credits toward his degree; the other might be called Lifemanship, on the successful completion of which the student has realized himself, has recognized truly the value of a personal integrity. Fundamentally, this is all “words, words, words”. Words caimot carry it; words can ony hint at any delineation of his meaning to us, and we can only hope that these hints suggest it as clearly as it can be suggested. Possibly even the act this introduces is inadequate, but here too, we can offer only tlie best we have, hoping tJiat our tribute is accurately suggestive of what we would like to give. With respect and love, we dedicate the 1952 Emersonian to DR. WILLIAM S. KNICKERBOCKER page five

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We found ourselves working with uncommon dili- gence for a Resistentialist, and our lives became com- plicated by Donne, Spender, Eicbrodt, and too many cuts. The debating team rose to new heights under a man with a pipe, a chessboard, and a great dramatic sense. WERS-FM had grown old enough to shave, and LIGHT UP THE SKY toured with a success not at all surprising to Emersonians. The Prom finally arrived, and Joyce McLeod graced the Hotel Somer- set’s Louis XI R allroom as reigning queen. Emerson became accredited. Our degrees — those we were going to get in a year — looked like they might be sheepskin after all. e said “so-long” to a few men as a new war rose in the East. Jack-hammers had cut the esplanade, our unofficial campus, into huge chimks of ugly earth, as the construction company pounded the man- made park into a slick, quick highway — and over- head, jets roared their ironic disapproval of humanity. May Day honored Alice Cowley as its Queen, and Alice honored the day with her characteristic charm. Dean Jonathan W. French, Jr. became Acting Presi- dent of the College when Dr. Dewey was called upon to return to his duties at Lake Placid. We watched the city become wet with spring rains and take on a becoming fuzz of green, and the doors of our Junior year began to slide to their usual slow close. hile they were closing, we caught glimpses of the seniors who were graduating and we realized that we were next . . . we were next .... e w ere seniors. The last three years became a hazy shape of many happenings and many experiences . . . some pro- found. We looked back at the hazy shape, just for the record, but all we could make out was a montage of laughter, coffee, cigarettes, and lazily attentive conversations. The exceptions ser ed to prove the general rule. The yearbook got off to a fast, orderly start with schedules, deadlines, pictures, articles, snapshots, and meetings. Scholastic life goes on, and some tans are becoming darker; unhappily, only some. But tlien, some people spend more time in the sun, or tan more easily, than others. hether ’tis nobler,” was a long piece to remember, Reed is — for the second, de- served term — president of our class, and George is acting as official intermediary between us and the administration. We see heartache and unhappiness become more characteristic in the world we are about to enter, and ivhat to be becomes the question. We see failure, and yet we deny ourselves the simplicity of pessimism. e need not inherit the ability to fail. The people with the darkest tans will have to remain up front to protect those of us who fought the vaccinationary exposure. Unlimited cuts, caps and gowns, rings and invita- tions, remind us that our time here is at an end, and we hope to carry through our own Evolutions, re- membering to shout a “ hoa!” when future time seems to run out too fast. page seven