Haverford College - Record Yearbook (Haverford, PA)

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ENGLISH The darkling sun hangs limply in the torrid, fever-encrusted atmosphere. From the miasmal wastes, heavy with mold, pours o stench of rotting, laden with a fine tang of faintly scented urine. The morass extends both forward and backward through the eons, untouched by any real light. Trees, twisted by cancerous growths of all sizes and types, hang heavy with humid nightbiue fruit. Grey-white mist pervades all. The dark is one of gaseous putridity with murky humours lurking around every branch, moss, crawler, bush, or bog. And then, lightly and quietly, two shadowy figures dance onto the scene, clod scantily but tastefully in the glowing white of Eternal Dawn. These two gnomes, Edgar Rose and Alfred Satter- thwaite, carry in their hands brightly glowing, spark-showering fire-brands. No time is wasted. One touches his ember to the eye of the sun, transforming the scene as the Sun begins to fling his flaring beams. The other dances blithely, merrily, touching his spark to the throngs of stars, giving a richer, deeper hue to the once dark bog. The gnomes finally come together to ignite the moon to end their pas de deux This is the signal for the third gnome, Frank Quinn, carrying the Trumpet of Trumpets, to spring on the scene. After skipping lightly over a mouldy root here, a treacherous bog there, he pauses in a pose and poses in a pause, applies the golden trumpet to his lips, and sounds a call of triumph into the newly lighted wilderness. Quickly, Gerhard Friednch pirouettes in. This elf carries a transparent bag bulging with fireflies, and with a sweep of the wrist, he flings open the satchel and, as he spins, tosses myriads of the bugs both heavenward and groundward. When this is done, the trumpeteer again sends forth a clarion call, and two others appear, slowly, painfully burdened. Max Bluestone lopes on, bear- ing a monstrous green sack on his right shoulder. Patiently, he swings the bag to the ground, and pours into one of the bogs the contents. A veritable cornucopia of truths flow out; some shining and beautiful, others bent and scraggly, a few quite old and hoary. The first truths sink into the miasmal wastes, disappearing immediately from sight, but the truths ore so plentiful that those poured on top gradually stay on the surface to form the beginnings of an island. Tu ' entv-six

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Scarcely believable are the phenomenally bene- ficial yet revolutionary changes which have re- cently token place in the composition of the faculty within on atmosphere of artificial tensions and heated controversy. The College during this unusually turbulent four-year period suffered from intra-College squabbling, the loss of the guiding genius of Gilbert White, and a funds drive designed to achieve objectives antithetical to those upheld by the teaching staff. The resulting conflict ap- peared to find o focal point in the matter of the appointment or re-appointment of members of the faculty. Because of the intimate relationship which existed amongst and between the faculty and stu- dents, fostered by the isolated and somewhat self- protective atmosphere of the small and liberal arts college, each individual lost his objectivity when viewing fellow members of the Community, and subjectively judged teachers and colleagues as friends, not professors. First in this conflict which enropt the whole college came the faculty, who, by Gilbert White, (as a mark of his democratness ) had been given committee authority to oversee and perfunctorily confi-rm department appointments. Second came the students, heralded by vociferous English majors (only in the second case prompted by a purgee), who sided with one or the other camps within the faculty, and became even more obnoxious than the faculty (which was quite a feat!) out of ignor- ance of even the basic facts in the case. But though each and every one who partook in the struggle thought himself extremely vital, the college machinery ground out its predeter- mined course. Student opinion, when prompted by a can ' t-toke-it, was categorically disregarded, and proved, much to the naive chagrin of rabble- rousing undergrads, that student opinion wasn ' t worth the bread it was buttered on when it come to evaluating a member of the faculty. And the faculty committee, placed in its position by Gilbert White to safeguard against such abuses as per- petrated by an aspiring department chairman only proved that its services were instrumental to the system. Indeed, when June, 1956, acting as referee, stepped in to stop the fight, it was found, amidst the blood-shed, that System had won a resounding victory over Emotional Attachment. But only the administration, recognizing that student ignorance of basic facts was in large port responsible for the continuation of the battle, could prevent further bloodshed, by instructing students in the ways of the System and the criteria (no matter how arbi- trary) used in evaluating the faculty, something they didn ' t do ' But although ignorance and emotions hod tried to ploy their integral roles in faculty appointments, the record shows that notable — if not outstanding — progress had been made in garnering an excep- tional faculty especially suited to the Haverford system. In the sciences, no less than amazing prog- ress was made: Loewy arrived m a done Biology Department; Lemonick into a Physics Department, (given to playing games on the demonstration table), Williams into the Chemistry Department and Heath into the gut-ridden Psychology Depart- ment. All assumed department chairmanships, and all did a |ob which for outshone the work done by their counterparts in t he social sciences and humanities. And besides these four bright lights, Haverford ' s fortunes shone onto a lower level : the natural sciences got Wisner and Sonter, the social sciences, Muller, and the humanities, MacCaffrey. The losses, when juxtaposed with the gains, found Haverford still well on the winning side. And what of the future? Each year there was a turn-over of approximately 25 per cent in the faculty, and consequently it was difficult to soy from one year to the next where the trouble spots would turn up. But of a few we can now be quite certain: the History Department (which needs at least another MacCaffrey and a half); the Philoso- phy Department (which needs about two more Bennetts); the English Department (which needs another Quinn and perhaps an Ashmead thrown in); and Economics (which needs help). The moral of the story is really quite simple: The savior i n the post has been what the hope in the future must be: not student participation in selecting and reappointing faculty members; and not a faculty banding together to discharge the outcast and retain the friend. It is the young in- tellectual, the Allendorfer, the Roche, the Bell, the Muller, or the Heath (not the tried scholar and antiquated lecturer) who, content to come to Haverford for experience, plans (if he fails to place love of Haverford above financial security) to end his days chairmaning a department at some large, well-paying university. What Haverford thus learned from the chaotic experience of these post four years was that it would draw such men to its fold not through petty squobbling and administra- tive dickering, nor by reform of its component parts, but by preserving — if it couldn ' t improve upon — the Haverford system per se: its intellec- tual vitality proportional only to its age of emo- tional and intellectual maturity and youth in pro- fessorial and ideological endowment. T H O U G H T S O N F A C U L T Y

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Following behind, carrying a load equally as heavy, comes Jack Lester. On his stalwart shoulders lie an infinite number of books. Slowly, he mixes these books in with the truths and the islond that is formed begins to toke on shape and meaning. While this creation is being brought to comple- tion, on the outskirts of the group dance two vaporous sprites, John Ashmead and Ken Wood- roofe. Although it is almost impossible to see them, their work of removing the noxious vapours stirred up by the island building is considerable. Finally, the foundation has been laid. The one- time miasma is now ready for its Eternal Use. A final call comes from the trumpet, and the par- ticipants retreat behind various bushes and up various trees to watch the blooming that is to follow. Ralph Sargent appears on the island, play- ing a fife, dancing lithely: now swirling, now curling, smiling between the notes of his inviting song. Behind him comes the horde; a brawling, screaming, tumbling moss of bpbes: pink-cheeked, sparkle-eyed, dressed in swaddling clothing. Some pause, looking with wonder at the surroundings, picking at every leaf, or sniffing every swamp; others ' plod on steadily, looking at neither side, their faces dumb. Some wander far from the lead of the merrie fifer; others stick close behind him, even clutching onto him for reassurance. All are fresh, most are young. This is their adventure. Once they ore on the island, with a flourish and final vibrato, the fifer departs steathily from the troop, joining the other gnomes behind the trees to see what the children will do with their new- found toy. First to start work and first to finish is Dick Smith. Without even adjusting his swaddling cloth- ing, Dick prys up the truths and books nearest at hand and builds a neat white house with a picket fence and fine white smoke puffing from the chimney. Once through, he ignores the labors of the others and sits in the doorway of his perfectly constructed bungalow with a stock of The Satur- day Evening Posts, checking through the stories for possible material. Almost OS quick is John Wallace, but unlike Dick, John never really gets through with his job of construction. Within minutes he fashions, using many books but few truths, a massive cord- filing system, complete with folders, cross-filing, and annual index. Once the major task is complete, the work really begins, because then the faults, the incompleteness, the failings that constantly spring up in the filing system con be reworked and re- fashioned, making subtle changes that may seem inconsequential to the casual observer, but which are of real importance to the system itself.