Haverford College - Record Yearbook (Haverford, PA)

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PETER SLATER Often, too often perhaps, students are tempted to judge teach- ers on criteria better suited to judging actors. We lend to think teachers should above all be ' exciting ' . We like well organized, fast moving classes. Peter Slater ' s classes have been known to be unor- ganized; they have been known to drag. He has little sense of the dramatic. Nonetheless, Peter Slater is a good teacher, and maybe even better than that. His strength is, in one sense, precisely thai he is not interested in acting. He is interested, first of all in his discipline. Religion: and he is content to lei the discipline itself and his own involve- ment in it do the business of ' exciting ' students. Consequently, his classes are characterized by being thoroughly relaxed and natural. There is no tension that one must listen carefully to catch every rising intonation; there is no tension that one must become involv- ed in a student -teacher dialogue. One sits back and considers the discipline; one is, as it were, freed to learn. ■The discussion rambles, focused only occasionally by Mr. Slater with a burst of critical intelligence directed sometimes at the litera- ture and sometimes at students. He fills blackboards with references and suggestions for reading one could do, if you ' re interested. If not, that ' s all right too. He is interested, and he hopes you might be too; but that ' s up to you. — Ethan Feinsod

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ERNIE PRUDENTE The big man in the red sweat pants and white peeler glanced up in the middle of a pushup and said, Alright you guys on the end of the line there, don ' t goof off. Remember, I got good PER-IF-FER-AL vision. You like that word, huh? It ' s my new word for the day. Every day I add a new word to my vocabu- lary. Got to build up that vocabulary so I can talk to you guys. Ernie smiled and kept putting us through our paces. That was my first day as a Haverford jock, preseason 1961. I was a gung-ho kid, a high school star whose head was full of dreams of glory. I soon found that there wasn ' t much glory in being a jock at Haverford, and, as time passed, most of the other icons of jockdom were destroyed by the Haverford way of life, but Ernie lived on. There was always the Prudente smile, the gentle admonition — When the going gets tough the tough get going, and the word of encouragement accompanied by a slap on the butt. Some- times I wonder how long I would have kept with it if Ernie wasn ' t around. A little over a year later that same big man was standing in front of his famous bod class, (the class that made men out of boys and gave you that washboard stomach). A very undersized freshman at the back of the room was struggling with a set of weights. What ' are ya straining for? asked Ern laughing, It ' s all a question of mind over matter ... I don ' t mind and you don ' t matter. The class hissed and the freshman smiled, because he and everyone else knew that in Ernie ' s book everybody mattered, and that the Big E. cared as much about the wimp in his bod class who couldn ' t do two pushups as he did about his top basketball star. The other day I looked out of my window and saw a giant of a man in those same red sweat pants striding across Walton Field to the tennis courts. It was a long easy stride, and the tennis racquet looked like a ping pong paddle in his big hand. He was on his way to his daily match with the greats of the intra- mural league. I remembered the first day I discovered that Ernie was on the academic standing committee. I was a bit surprised and asked him if it was really true. Sure I know all about that stuff, he said, After all when I was at Penn the only thing I passed was in and out of doors. I smiled. That ' s what made him such a giant; he was humble. One day a kid came into the field house looking for a Mr. Prudente. I knew he was a stranger be- cause he called him by his surname. I told him that Mr. Prudente was the big man working out with the basebcill team at the other end of the building. I knew that when that kid came back he would know that big man ' s name was Ernie and he ' d know just how big he was. It takes you about two minutes to find oul that Ern ' s name isn ' t Mr. Prudente. It takes you just another minute to discover that he is a much bigger man than he looks. Ernie is a bigger man than any Mr. Prudente could ever be. — Chuck Lawrence 15