Lawrenceville School - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Lawrenceville, NJ)

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IIPD lol EAD MASTEIPS MESSAGE Y year with the Class of 1937 began prematurely at the final Conference last Iune, when the unhappy announcement clashed upon your ears that radios and phonographs had no future at Lawrenceville. To be sure, I was protected from your fury by an intervening phalanx of outgoing fifth formers, to whom the news could make no difference. Nevertheless it was clear that my statement did not receive what is sometimes called a good press, and the later announcement of the Harkness gift, which l had hoped would rouse the student body to a joyful outburst, was received in grave silence. Now the memory of that occasion is one of Hold, unhappy, far-off things and battles long agof, By September you found it possible to sustain life without a dial at your elbow. It seemed for a while, indeed, that the radio had so lost caste that it would be difficult even to introduce one into the precincts of the House of Lords. The ultimate arrival of a machine for the Common Room marked a return to stability. Your fifth form year has witnessed a number of innovations and new departures. Perhaps because of the absence of radio, or perhaps, more flatteringly, because of the presence in the form of a group of gifted songsters, you have sung more and better than any fifth form in the past twenty-five years, which is a short period in the memory of Woodie. To be sure, some of you demonstrated in Conference a tendency to sing an octave lower than the proper pitch, but even so, you have given us good singing and it has added to the gayety and pleasure of life at Lawrenceville. You have been the first fifth form to study under the Conference Plan, and have exhibited an almost superhuman power of self-restraint in failing to-carve on the fresh maple surfaces of the tables your names or the names of others dear to you. You have been the first fifth form to enjoy the liberalized smoking rules, which have made the beer-gardenu an incredible memory and have caused the esplanade to sprout a row of sturdy urns, which even now you do not fully understand are intended as receptacles for butts and matches. You have been the first to play fifth form games with the senior teams of other schools, by means o-f which you have, we hope, cemented rather than destroyed our friendly relations with our chief rivals. You are the first fifth form which has danced till four o'clock in the morning and has indulged itself at the same time in the magnificent gesture of employing the great Hal Kemp to submit his genius to your approval at 2 a.m. You are the first fifth form which has seen the discontinuance of day as well as evening study, a loss which you have borne with fortitude. You are the first fifth form which has seen the Periwig connive in the production of a play with actual girls in the female parts, and thus destroy a bugaboo which has for generations given the head mistresses of America unquiet slumber. You are the first fifth form to enjoy the so-called leisure provided by advancing the time of daily chapel to eight o'clock, an action which, it is hoped, will have a civi- lizing and otherwise salutary effect upon you and your successors, In summary, it would seem that your life has consisted of one shattering of tradition after another, and that you have shaken Lawrenceville life to its deepest foundations. Indeed the contemplations of your extravagant iconoclasm is a little awe-inspiring. lt is comforting, therefore, to observe that your devotion to the Lawrenceville traditions of throwing chewing-gum and peanut shells on the gymnasium floor at the movies, Th irteen