Haverford College - Record Yearbook (Haverford, PA)

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AN EDITORIAL :. ' ■;■. ■ - ■ ' ...■• .i- . - l: = ifiw ' 3 - ! The nebula Haverford revolves around a still snnali point — the fact that it ' s a College. And often that still small point gets obscured in the midst of the burning, rushing peripheral stars. But lest anyone forget, each of us has been here not only because Haverford offers courses in the various branches of Higher Education, but also for those classes. Each member of the Faculty brings his own presup- positions about the meaning of the words Intellectual Community to his office and classroom with him. Each student has his own half-formed and forming ideas about the same question. Though the differences be- tween the groups, and between the individuals, often appear as chasms, a remarkable feature of the College is the broad area of basic agreement. As in many things the members of the Haverford Community have here agreed to disagree — but the area of dis- agreement is relatively small. Such agreement is a sound foundation for success — a success in which each of us — faculty, student, and administration — has had his part. But it also means that basic assumptions seldom get challenged. It seems sometimes as though we are all too willing to take arms for distant causes, to fight for fleeting victories, and unwilling to admit even as much as a question to the ordering of the very center. Perhaps this reluctancTe exists because those things which are close seem complicated, and those which are distant simple. But more probably it ' s because the sta- bility at the center is the precondition for other con- cerns, which somehow seem more pressing. And the concentration on the peripheral is more serious at Hav- erford than at other Colleges (at least we like to think so) — civil rights is a more worthwhile form of inter- collegiate competition than football. Perhaps therefore it is more serious in the negative sense; it is harder for us to remind ourselves that we are not in College for barber shop and ban-the-bomb pickets than it would be for us to remember that we are not in College for football. It is one of the theme of this yearbook that the balance between all sorts of extra-curricular activities and the curriculum Itself Is being upset In favor of the academic. We feel that the balance is crucial — that extra-cu rricular activities are important to the growth of Haverford men. But we do not wish to seem to for- get that extra-curricular activities are extra — that year- books and newspapers and touch football are possible In any community. Education is possible only in very limited kinds of communities — like Haverford College. Page 13

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bastion of truth and beauty, imagined or otherwise, fell forever before our eyes. It was all too easy to get invited to Circe ' s Coffee Hour, The only problem, some of us found, was how to get out. And so we bought a ticket for a train headed nowhere in particular, per- haps back to Haverford or some nlace like it, perhaps to one of the places along the way. And as we stood on the platform, waiting for the train that would take us to our destination, wondering whether it had all been worthwhile, we suddenly realized that somehow it couldn ' t have hap- pened otherwise. Mysterious and inexorable forces outside and inside us — effected ultimately in those curiously feuding formal and easy elements of life — those forces had reacted together and shaped us. And in this pro- cess Haverford has acted as a kind of catalyst — causing and accelerating that reaction in us without being permanently affected itself. After we have gone, the spirit ' f the place will live on relentlessly as before. But having caught a part of that spirit, we came to realize dur- ing four short years not only our possibilities, but our limitations and ca- pacities — our place in the sun.

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administration I .t is a compelling problem for colleges that the men who are most concerned with the long-term management of the college are least concerned in the daily life of the community they direct. These men are the Board of Trus- tees (or, as Haverford quixotically insists on referring to them, the Board of Managers). Although Boards try to overcome this problem in a variety of ways, by far the most important link between the Board and the on-going community they have in trust is the college ' s administration. P. aul Goodman ' s impressive frustrations seem to me to be a relatively minimal cause for concern at Haverford. But this is not to say that Haverford ' s administration does- n ' t face difficulties in its double role of policy making and solving day-to-day problems — nor that it always performs perfectly on either stage. Part of the reason for its failures is, of course, in- herent in the peculiar kind of translation it has to do — the words the Board uses are the same words the faculty uses, and the same words the students and alumni use, but these words often mean quite different things coming from different mouths. The administration must try to make sure that all these different meanings are close enough together to permit the word community to mean any- thing at all. I, .t is perhaps well to remember that the on e interest group in our strange community that doesn ' t have any real vote is the student body. We could, of course, riot, or be abusive, or even walk out — but the sanctions that can be imposed make such action costly, and unlikely. In this day and age, also, there ' s no danger of the college not attracting