Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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brief marriage, annulled the experiment and recovered their status. Of course, the authorities and spokesmen of most col- leges that have taken the Big Step exult in the wisdom of their actions - but their pronouncements must not be trusted as evidence, only heard as testimony, for such functionaries are not at all above misrepresentation, if it eases their anx- ious lives or feeds their well-merited glory. Yes, single-sex education has been part of the real world for far longer than coeducation. Why can it not be that to a society apparently stirring itself back to reality we boast that we here maintain not a dream-world, but a bright corner of that reality? After all, if all-maleness is unreal, so is the l-lonor System. The lit- tle boy called home to dinner is just being petulant. We can make him wise, wise in the practical reason of traditional wisdom. Any society, from club to com- monwealth, that has a purpose has an authentic justification only if that purpose is positively constituted and articulated. A society properly conceived, and hoping for survival, cannot be based on negative principles, on keeping categories of peo- ple out. A single-sex college is a perfect example of such a purposive society. Operational tests of the success of such a uniquely purposive group as a college are the success of its products and the morale of its participants - members, if you willg no reasonable, disinterested observer can claim that any deficiencies in either of these areas have anything to do with the single-sex question. The single-sex matter is a convenient but specious diagnosis of undemonstrable illsg coeducation is snake-oil. Of course there are intangibles, the ambience, of atmosphere, or whatever, that defy the challenge to philosophical justification, there are among human values such things as tastes, beliefs, commitments, sentiments, that defy philosophical justification. And there is among human institutions and values such a thing as historical justification, or heritage. Why be ashamed or apologetic in proclaiming a positive purpose: that here we try to give men the education they need in order to enter a world that compromises the real differences between men and women to its own sorrow and to the laughing judgment of the future? -John L. Brinkley '59

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.Alf i Opening An unidentified student shucks oysters during a tailgate party. Don Thomson entertains his family at the Theta Chi house during Parents' Weekend.

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Ope A College for Men I 'Y 'if A ll