Marist School - Guidon Yearbook (Atlanta, GA)

Page 20 text:

b I r.N.. We are systems, patterns. Did you use them? lA Did they control you? Have you Hved in them? Have you died because of them? Can you win? Look inside my friend, and find the answer. 16

Page 19 text:

if COMMISSIONING DAY 1973 BLUE AND GOLD COMMENT Individuality is the keyword of the now generation, the generation to which this student body has so explicitly ascribed. It is individuality that is generally cited as the reason why there is such an adamant dislike for the ROTC uniform, for haircuts, and formations. We really have no set opinions on the relative merits of these items, and we must respect the right of those who do hold set opinions. But, what we cannot tolerate is the hypocrisy and cowardice which this student body of individuals exhibited during the Commissioning Day Ceremonies. In his book. The Seven Storey Mountain , Thomas Merton, the great Trappist philosopher, said, about the students in the prep school which he attended, that when you were with them separately they were mild and peaceable and humane enough. But when they were together there seemed to be some diabolical spirit of cruelty . . . viciousness . . . obscenity . . . blasphemy . . . envy and hatred that banded them together against all goodness and against one another in mockery and in fierce cruelty and in vociferous uninhibited filthiness. Contact with that wolfpack felt like contact with the mystical body of the devil . . . How well a man who wrote this thirty years ago sums up what happened less than three weeks past. That night during the Commissioning Day Ceremonies the group of blue clad individuals lost whatever semblance of individuality they might of ever had, and acted with one mind and spirit out of malicious and envious motivations. We hate to disagree with Father Harnett, but it wasn ' t ten percent of the wing that caused the trouble, it was the wing, the total sum of the parts. Beyond what little self-respect and dignity the students exhibited that night, it was rather sad to see Father Brennan as he delivered an excellent speech that fell on hostile ears, and watch what he had worked for during the majority of his life being spat upon by those who were now reaping the benefits of his labor. He deserves an apology. And perhaps the greatest apology that can be delivered to him is for the student body to act upon the topic of his speech, prudence (which, incidentally, he defined as doing the right thing at the right time). If we, as people with ideas and emotions, lose our individuality in a group of just half a thousand, there is no doubt but that those same ideas and emotions will be engulfed and cease to make themselves manifest in a larger group, which we will inevitably encounter sooner or later.

Page 21 text:

V ■ 4 17