George C Marshall High School - Columbian Yearbook (Falls Church, VA)

Page 105 text:

Below: Participating in a Christmas decorating contest, Freshmen embellish their hall with a bright green and red banner. Bottom: Home Ec students make Christmas cookies to practice decorating; the students later ate the cookies at a class party. Opposite: Art club members decorated the front foyer to give its windows a stained-glass effect. STUDENT LIFE 101 C O

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n a j N i ! n Li HB M l ■ fW I h ■t 1 » There is something about Christmas That makes everyone feel good. In spite of last minute term papers, And harried cram sessions for tests, The week before Christmas vacation Is one of the happiest of the year. There is something about getting a Vacation That lends happiness To the air of Christmas. Halls are decorated with streamers, Posters, banners and paintings. Every decoration proclaims Christmas. Religious and serious cards are Bought or hand-made. Cards are subtle and calm: A quiet card of Peace. Cards are bright and lively, And mischeviously risqu£. Inside, there may be a signature, Or a long personal message. Each card is hidden By a plain white envelope Like a secret. People seem more alive The week before Christmas. Feeling kind and full of fraternity, Everyone tries to practice The themes of Christmas: Patience, love and understanding. Feelings of freedom and happiness Build to a recklessness, An expectancy that creates An excited, tension-filled climax On the last day before vacation.

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GCM 102 STUDENT LIFE An inexplicable apathy seemed to pervade the national political scene during the winter of 72 — in spite of momentous happenings in the U. S. and the world. Even with the ending of the dragged-out war in Vietnam and the release of American prisoners-of-war, some of whom had been in captivity for over ten years, a sense of excitement or even satisfac¬ tion was lacking from the atmosphere. Ameri¬ cans, especially the youth, began to realize that the “end” was not that simple: the goals which they had demonstrated, protested, and campaigned to achieve for years were sud¬ denly somehow not the ultimate answer at all. President Richard Nixon, rather confound¬ ed by the public’s apathy when he’d given it just what it had asked for for so long, was fur¬ ther plagued by Congressional debates and investigations: investigations into th e pre¬ election Republican Watergate scandals, the Administration nominee for director of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, and the mounting outcry about presidential privilege, a constitutional controversy which threatened to split the legislative and executive branches of govern¬ ment. At Marshall, a segment of this current af¬ fairs debate was shared by government students as they participated in the Social Studies Department’s Memorial Seminar on Governmental Affairs. Such famous officials and legislators as Hubert Humphrey, Thomas Clarke, and Hays Gorey, representing the ex¬ ecutive and legislative branches of national government, independent agencies, state and local government, lobbyists, and the media, came to GCM the week of April 9-12. They expressed their views and answered ques¬ tions about such diverse subjects as econom¬ ics, foreign policy, civil liberties, and law en¬ forcement, among others. The speakers’ pro¬ gram gave Marshall a first-hand look at the controversies taking place across the river in Washington. Throughout the winter, emotional shocks, ups and downs, followed each other with re¬ lentless regularity. Dr. Henry Kissinger’s elated election-eve declaration that “peace is at hand” was followed by disillusionment when the North Vietnamese became again stubbornly reluctant to negotiate. Then Nixon s Christmas decision to increase bombing and to mine North Vietnamese ports, protested heatedly by stunned pacifists at home, seemed to prove an effective strategy as Kissinger was finally able to reach a peace agreement. But as the troops began to come home at last, and as the POW’s were released to their warm welcome back in the States, the problems of truce enforcement, retribution and reconstruction aid to Vietnam, and con¬ tinuing guerilla warfare in other Southeast Asian countries came into the spotlight. The deaths, within a month of each other, of former Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry S. Truman also greatly saddened the nation, as the Asian war they had tried re¬ spectively to end and avoid entered a new phase — its conclusion was still uncertain. Inflation and rising food costs were a cause of economic concern, and a group of Ameri¬ can Indians, heretofore a quiet minority, dem¬ onstrated its feeling of repression by taking control of the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. But along with all the disturbing tremors of change, a few comforting traditions remained