Mount Vernon College - Bell Cote Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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Message to the Class of 1967 It is difficult to think June-thoughts in November. Somehow the psyche doesn’t want to cooperate. The foliage, or rather what ' s left of it, is entirely the wrong color and composition, and field hockey, foot- ball weekends, and frost are currently in phase. Months must pass be- fore May’s mild-mannered days lead to the joy of June’s graduation. In November, too, you would have been aware of this dichotomy. You would have acknowledged a sense of incompleteness, a certain semi-illumination as you approached the half-way point in your final year’s orbit. But 1 must write for June and not November, for a time when pre- diction and prognosis will have been met, a time when your paths at Mount Vernon will have been fully run. It is tempting, therefore, to assume the role of astrologer, to ven- ture into the realm of pseudo-scientific prognostication and attempt to foretell terrestrial events by the paths of your planets. I prefer, how- ever, not to write as an astrologer but rather as an observer of two years of your lives and as one who has been privileged to share in both your deliberations and aberrations, your apogees as well as your perigees. From my vantage point of observation— neither always remote nor ivy-covered— it has been clearly discernible that your paths have been pleasingly diverse, at times even radically so. You have occasionally ventured into the realms of the abstract and the original and have returned, somewhat to your amazement, not only intact but also in- terested. In seeking your independent paths you have learned to tem- per individuality with a healthy regard for the common course, and you have become increasingly mindful of the fact that, while the vari- ables in life are the most interesting, it is the virtues which are most lasting. In two years, your personal stars, upon occasion, have burned brightly and then dimmed, but they have never gone out; rather they have taken on a clearer and more even incandescence, and it is from this illumination that your pathways for the future will be lighted. From my point of observation, therefore, I see both the end and the beginning, a two-year cycle which I trust has brought to each of you not only a sense of completion but also the incentive to set a new and demanding course for the years to come. In determining your future paths you will do well to remember your Alma Mater’s well- chosen motto and reflect often on the thought expressed in the follow- ing lines by William Golding: What men believe in is a function of what they are ; and what they are is in part what has happened to them. 9

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Peter D. Pelham, President 8

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Office of the Dean Flora Bridges Harper Acting Dean of the College Assistant to the President Doris Coster Dean of Students Sally Bet Cuningham Director of A d missions Adrienne M, Meloy Clare Sbruhan Assistant to Director of Admissions Assistant to Director of Admissions to