Hobart College - Echo of the Seneca Yearbook (Geneva, NY)

Page 26 text:

In the spring of ’54 two friends of Senator Joe Mc- Carthy, vomited up by the decade’s apparent need to examine the content of its sewers, showed two unhappy themes. Schine, neanderthalic, looks the neo-barbarian that the decade idolizes. Cohn is the tongue-lolling jackei, smart, preying, opportunist, handy with a switch- blade. Both are unmasked. But the near-hero, handsome McCarthy, is both together, moving on for power over principle, drifting from investigation to investigation, until trapped by his own coils. The kiss of death came unawares. A landing gavel expressed retribution: Hennings, innocents, “softies,” servants.

Page 25 text:

True knowledge, as all knew, poor humanities stu- dents not so well as bright mathematicians, was to be found in Science. The X-RAC, the RCA color camera, and the urani- um reactor represent scientific developments which are hallmarks of sacred Progress. The generation was star- tled at times and would inquire, Progress to what? The failure of the leaders to provide a satisfactory answer led to great despair and indifference. Pile generation thumbed its nose in contempt at smug truths of science, smug churchly certainties, was bored with relativism and too tired to make existential leaps and began to live without thinking. The generation hooted at selective service in “The Girl He Left Behind,” deified James Dean because he smiled at nothing, and, looking into a mirror, espied itself, in long hair, a snarling smile, poor, tender, rebellious—Elvis Presley. Leading, hoping, a gem, once uncut: the mature J. Robert Oppenheimer. Made one of us by a certain un- fortunate “incident;” a fool confessed. Inspired by Mr. Murrow, “Oppy” was the Dean of academicians; Au- thor of sin, he made amends but he did not capture the imagination of the decade. As he passed, it seemed as if a serpentine whisper sadly pursued him.

Page 27 text:

I I i t ( 1 I Myrtha Trotter augured a great social change (an early Autherine Lucy) when she entered Claymont High School, Delaware. The Supreme Court had yet to act; the south had yet to rise again, warlike. But it would come; and when it did the decision of the genera- tion: where indeed lay the victory of this generation in America ? Less sinister and representing an aspiration of ath- letes perhaps as old as utopian dreams of political philosophers was the breaking of the four minute mile. Roger Bannister, running against all scientific calcu- lations of how to do it, on damp cinders, against wind, fastest in the first lap, sped to success—and immortal- ity. The children of the atomic age aspire also to speed to success but not to death’s immortality. «7 f