Fordham University School of Education - Grail Yearbook (New York, NY)

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soon learned that Alma Mater demanded much more than tuition from her children. lThere were lab fees, registration fees, student activ- ity fees, text book expenses, voice recording fees, etc.l Most of the time had to be devoted to serious effort in order to remain. The more mature met with limited success. Quite a few married and withdrew from school and not all of us intended to teach, Those who came here for intellectual and spiritual enrichment were not disappointed. But whatever superficial motives we pos- sessed in coming to Fordham, most of us real- ized deeply, if subconsciously, that in coming to the School of Education we would enjoy a deep personal enrichment which would extend throughout our lives. So, when we mouthed the cliches our classmates had mouthed before us, many of us came to realize for the first time why we had sought in Fordham the continuation of our Catholic education. Thus it was that we all filed applications, had rogue's gallery passport photographs taken, transcripts and recommendations sent, health records compiled and tended to all the other details that to some of our number were faintly reminiscent of the red tape of entrance into other organizations. With feelings akin to those engendered in a newcomer to a Turkish Bath, we assembled, notices of acceptance and green registration cards clutched to our breasts, outside the fourteen story converted office building that was to be our future place of ordeal at about ten o'clock on a warm Septem- ber ninth for a first look at our new classmates and a last smoke preparatory to embarking on a new phase of our existence. Freshman Week was at hand. Someone summoned us inside to the academic precincts of Shealy Hall. We shrugged our shoulders, carefully extinguished cigarette ends, put them in our breast pockets, lthat sine qua non of veteran existence, the government check, had not arrivedl and filed in to register. is

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Back in September of l947, at the start of our college careers, the energetic and very efficient Miss Scanlon, who appeared to be in general charge of a bewildering kaleidoscope of sanity tests, exhortations, questionnaires and confusion that constituted Freshman Week, requested each of us to reveal to the assembled mass of our newly acquired classmates our names, terrestial origins and the reasons why we came to the School of Education. The rea- sons why we registered as students in the School of Education are perhaps as varied as the hundred and sixty-nine personalities that finally made up the entering Freshman class. Some of us, prompted by the aureate vestiges of an adolescent athletic partisanship to seek a closer spiritual kinship with the sweaty tra- ditions of Alex Wojciechowicz and the Seven Blocks of Granite , envisioned college life as a glorious round of football bacchanaliae. Some, influenced by the cinematic caperings of the Rudy Vallees of our youths and the last traces of the goldfish swallowing-hipflask-raccoon coat epoch in American culture, thought of higher education in terms of dances, parties, and that ultimate culmination of middle class social expression, the Senior Prom. Others, the would-be Frank Merriwell fans, born twenty years too late looked upon college as a four- year period of government or pa rent-sponsored rest and recreation complete with ivy-covered walls, white bucks, blazers and fraternities. The more mature members of the Class of 'Sl saw college as a means to an end, connubial bliss, or a fattened pay envelope. And finally, some of us entered Fordham to seek intellec- I I I tual and spiritual enrichment, personal develop- ment and a step forward in the working out of our salvations. The complete lack of athletic facilities at 302 Broadway and a 75-O rout by Pennsylvania soon convinced the few who pictured college as a projection of grubby-fingered applause at the Promethean feats of Jimmy Crowley's stal- warts, that the School of Education was scarcely the place to seek gridiron laurels and that the iron age in Fordham's football history was at hand. Those who envisioned college as a gay round of cinderella balls met with early disil- lusion. Term papers and exams left little time for extensive social flitting, The few who thought of higher education as vacation time

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Amazing-he got it right the first time. The bizarre ritual that followed our first entrance into the concrete campus came as a profound shock to those of us who expected college life to be an uncomplicated process of personal self-integration. Herded to long green tables, we seated ourselves upon the uncom- fortable wooden folding chairs which exhibited an alarming tendency to unfold at precipitous moments. A small voice bleated from an im- pressive loudspeaker. A large blackboard to the front of the hall exhibited cryptic notations and numbers, carefully arranged and periodi- cally changed. Various female supernumeraries flitted up and down the aisles distributing a confusing array of varicolored cards which were said to contain the destinies of our lives as 2 ,,,,..,.- .. . . X W, it 1 2 1 23 E Q . . But I don't want to take Seismology I. A students, mystically concealed in the Delphic system of holes punched on their borders. Consulting catalogues, notes and ouija boards we embarked upon the arduous task of filling them out, while instructions blared from the microphone. Three hours later, our fountain pens were empty, our minds exhausted, and our cards filled out. The supernumeraries reappeared bearing huge red pencils with which they dec- orated the forms with checks and initials. Some of them, that is. Most of us were petulantly informed that we couldn't possibly take the thirty-six credits we had planned, would we stop kidding and please fill out a new set of cards correctly. Two hours later we surrendered the majority of forms to a lady who proceeded through a wierd ceremonial of extracting other cabalistically significant cards from the huge dispenser in front of her. Ending the rite with a significant snap of a rubber band, she gave us further instructions. Taking our leave with all due deference we proceeded lippity lip to the second floor, waited endlessly on an inter- minable long line, surrendered our life savings or displayed the magical orange indentification card, breathed a prayer to a beneficent govern- ment or parent and thence proceeded to the other pereginations of Freshman Week. ln the mornings of this three day mental purgatory we were treated to batteries of apti- tude and achievement tests that unhinged what few mental resources we possessed. The final blows to our stability came in the between-test lectures. With frequent vague allusions to the chimerical existence of such alarming realities as majors, minors, state, city and degree re- quirements, free electives, modern language Aom,,,,,,r - --