Michigan State University - Red Cedar Log Yearbook (East Lansing, MI)

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.Ay 10 Sr rw 1 af sk Quan' 'st H. l Physicist William H. Kelly reads the meters which record radio- active emissions from a substance contained in the ingenious sewertron in the background.

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TI-IE GOOD LIFE Tan shoes and pink shoelaces, A polka dot vest and, man, oh man . . Oh, man! . . . And Elvis still in the army. But the good life, the life we will recall ten or twenty years from now, struggles on. We had hula hoops, a few of them, and frisbies, quite a few. We had the new Aga Khan at Harvard, Stagger Lee,,' Huckleberry Hound, Charlie Brown, Harry Truman, Paladin, and all such things to make life worth living. It was not a wild year. Alas, no panty raids, and alack, a pretty provincial attitude toward the Htogethernessw of phone booth stuf- fing, although AUSG came out for it Ctogetherness, not phone boothsj. And speaking of student government, this yearls Congress was about the most abused group on campus since 1946, when the veterans chucked their beanies and ran the seniors down the mountain. In an effort to maintain the traditional canoe on the Red Cedar, Congress came out against sin, but the jaded State News shouted Gestapo! and sat back to chortle as the Asso- ciated Press picked up the somewhat altered story, and the squawks rolled in .... But no panty raids. It may even have been a dull year. Wedged between the cold war and such unreasonable academic demands as learning to write complete sen- tences in term papers, MSU students took more of a 'Eno nonsense approach to life. In fact, some of them got downright stuffy, got married, and even voted in munici- pal elections. Still, much of the trivia from which legends grow was seeded in fertile soil, and the alums of twenty years hence will have their tales to tell. THE IMPROVEMENT WITH AGE True, there were no model T's around to be torn down and reassembled in a fourth floor dorm room, but we know of one fraternity man's Volkswagen that was buried in a man-made snow drift winter term, and almost had its owner walking until the spring thaw. No initiates appeared on Grand River in their underwear frantically seeking the nearest barrel, but one group of Greek actives charged off over twenty miles to rescue their abducted house mother, who was really calling from a phone booth a block away, while the pledges stifled their laughter in the background. The year was rich in such grist for reunion mills. Even Spartan Roundtable, which as a rule concerns itself with pretty serious business, made a few contribu- tions to the lore. A case in point concerns President Hannah's assistant, Mr. James H. Denison, and the Cowles House cuckoo clock at the second fall term meeting. Twice during the evening, once at seven and once at seven thirty, Mr. Denison was called upon to speak, and twice his words were punctuated by the song of the cuckoo. He somehow missed the eight o'clock call, and shortly afterwards the meeting was adjourned. But by 1980 we'll wager that eight o'clock has joined the rest, that the meet- ing has lasted until ten cuckoos, and that Mr. Denison has sent his secretary to all subsequent Cowles House meetings. Thus do the years embroider our stories and improve the good life. HAIL THE CONQUERING COHODES There is a fat file in the State News. It contains howls in the wilderness liberally seasoned with Mencken, Shake- speare and Chesterton. It contains amazing metaphors, artful cacophonies and probably most of Webster's un- abridged dictionary. lt is the file of Jerry Cohodes' letters. Consider his profundities: To believe that Jefferson and lzis cohorts would have anything to do with Nasser's goals is, to my mind, so much mush. It is as absurd as to believe that Ted Williams will play in the class D Kiddy League, next spring. tCohodes disdains Nasser.J I have also been accused of not controlling my state- ments by facts. To this charge, I retort that I 'II not soil deathless prose with another's lifeless facts. CCohodes disdains facts.J Governments spawned out of violent revolutions are like a virago of a woman. One never knows who they are going to wreak their wrath on next. CCohodes dis- dains '6whom. j Through his monumental missives, Cohodes has assured himself of a place in reunion recollections. His letters have created a campus character without competition. We may forget the class presidents, the editors and the chairman, but Cohodes, the character, has insinuated him- self into our good life. Actually only a few of his letters have been printed, but already the number seems greater, and time can only multiply it more. Such is the amplified buzz of our self-ordained gadlly. May his tribe endure, it is not likely to increase. Add, now, the beards and the Florida tans, some false I.D. and a few late minutes, and the planting is complete. We may have a few new realisms to attend to, but this will not disturb the good life, which we have enjoyed this year, and will enjoy the more for its aging. 13

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RESEARCH The mind of MSU is a curious mind, adventurous and creative. There might have been no beet sugar industry today if it were not, and because it is, there may someday be no tooth decay, and perhaps no cancer. Though MSU has seen much new on her campus in recent years, the attitude of continuing inquiry is as old as the university herself. We are by charter and purpose a university of applied science, but the meaning of applied exists here only in its broadest possible sense. While State's Engineering Experiment Station expands existing industry and even opens entirely new commercial areas, such as it has through the development of water repellent dyes, MSU physicists explore the age of the universe and MSU com- munications experts chart the impact of major news. The entire dimension of science at Michigan State is beyond brief description. Each of the varied areas of inquiry contains many stories. A few of them are here: MUSHROOMS AND DR. LUCAS The apple a dayv experiments conducted by the late and honored Dr. E. H. Lucas, Professor of Horticulture, who succumbed to a heart attack in late January, received national publicity as he observed the effects of a daily apple ration on the health of several hundred MSU stu- dents. The test was indeed an interesting sidelight to Dr. Lucas' work, but a sidelight it was, and only a small part of his unique but fundamental approach to the problem of cancer. Tracing them through folklore, he investigated many varieties of plants with reputed medici- nal powers on the supposition that the increased cancer rates of recent years could be caused by our more highly cultivated but less potent modern plant foods. Dr. Lucas, death cut short his work before he could find conclusive evidence to support his theory, but in one case he actually discovered tumor inhibiting chemicals in several varieties of the lowly mushroom. Investigation of Dr. Lucas' theories will be continued, but this is by no mean MSU's only attack on cancer. Dr. Joseph Meites of the department of physiology and phar- macology, Dr. John C. Speck of the chemistry department and Dr. Allen S. Fox are among the many MSU scientists seeking cancer causes and possible cures. Dr. Meites, part of whose work is supported by the U.S. Public Health Service, is investigating the effect of hormones on the as yet unknown mechanism which alters the basic protein structure of healthy cells, turning them into malignant destroyers. He has so far demonstrated the unusual fact that certain hormones, notably thyroxine and hydrocortisone, can either increase or decrease the incidence of skin tumors in mice exposed to a cancer causing irritant, depending entirely on whether the hor- mone is administered before or after the irritant. Dr. Speck is exploring an approach which amounts to an outwitting of cancer. By the use of chemical com- pounds called anti-metabolites, the very appetite of cancer which destroys healthy tissue is used as a means to destroy the cancerous cells themselves. Like sleeping pills, anti- metabolites merely inhibit the activity of the body's law- abiding and temperate citizen-cells, but the criminal cancer Four pedigreed white rats take time out from an indolent life to contribute their saliva to the study of tooth decay. is greedy. It is believed that in their wild frenzy to grow, malignant cells will overdose and destroy themselves. Dr. Fox is searching for answers to the cause of cancer by investigating the affect of heredity on proteins, the building blocks of the living cell. By examining the ves- sels of heredity, the genes and chromosomes which exist in every cell, Dr. Fox hopes to find a genetic process which causes the development of the kind of proteins found in cancerous tissue. These projects are only a few of the many such on campus. In fact, 13 such programs of research are being supported by the American Cancer Society alone, while a number of others are being carried on either inde- pendently or with partial support from some other agency. 15