Haverford College - Record Yearbook (Haverford, PA)

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Dining Room and Coop In a college where uniqueness has bred disunity, there is a need for some impersonal factor to bring the students together. In the Dining Room one sees a very strange Haverford College. The men become very different beings while eating. Leaving books, coats, and all protection without the dining room ' s confines, they adjust to the mass media for a half-hour, end then each goes his own separate way. Served food often suited for animals, the stu- dent body become animals themselves. In the dining room, anything goes. Meals are an escape, but unfortunately the visitor to meals cannot realize this. What seems like a group of pigs, throwing their slop around and banging on the tables just to hear the noise and grunt their disapproval bestially, is merely a force of lotus leaves operating, a vogue narcotic which makes life seem just that much easier for a little while. The fine thing is that no one is fooled by what goes on while eating. Somehow the student who throws a loaf of bread the whole length of the hall can, upon leaving dinner, grasp the time concept of T, S. Eliot, totally unaware of the wilted rose garden which he left. We should not be proud of how we eat, nor where we eat. We must, though, understand. The Coop IS the other important unifying force. The relaxation which is found there is not the some as that in the dining room, but of a more civilized sort. This important meeting ground of student- faculty interaction has been the scene of many serious and insignificant intellectual battles, but it is natural, close, and can be important in the growth of a student who earnestly desires to learn of life Twent -three

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SOPHOMORES After the first period of any growth, there seems to come a let down and slump in which little prog- ress is made. The illusions are destroyed, but replaced by wild complexities, as the new born babe washes off the birth process and becomes aware of life. What was an idea receives the form of a structure, empty, but with some kind of a founda- tion. Upon this skeleton outward appearance is fashioned, while within, floors are being torn up and rebuilt, endlessly, with no apparent plan or purpose. Will we Sophomores move into our struc- ture while it is still of use to us?

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