Southeast Missouri State University - Sagamore Yearbook (Cape Girardeau, MO)

Page 15 text:

WHEELS NIGHT: FHRST TASTE OF FREEDCDM After the outing, a program beckons from Houck Stacliumg and after the program the students participate in Wheels Night, Where each organization engages in kinds of subterfuge to entice each susceptible freshman into membership. Many of the new students are in- terested, many have further questions to ask. And at last the organized day is over. From the confines of planned activity, the freshmen move out into the stilling night. Some, for the first time, learn the thrill of a new and rare freedom: to walk the cooling streets, to stare into bright places, to find- Oh do not ask what it is. Let us go and make our visitf' Cove dwellers, s elunkers to the initiates, entice fellow under P . ground men for membership. A new freedom: to walk the cooling streets, to stcire, to clo-these are the rare moments. l 13

Page 14 text:

And then dusk approaches. With the bustle of the day over and evening not yet begun, self-conscious hundreds stand in the paradoxical pool of aloneness. Occasionally a too-brittle laugh breaks the strained silence, a small curse or shout is heard as insects buzz hopefully in and out, but nothing really breaks the tension. The freshman feels, as if for the first time, the paradox of being alone in a crowd. But then the shadows of the night come on, filling the land with strange and unusual patterns, slipping by the terraces, making sudden leaps, and seeing that it is a soft September night, curling once about the trees to fall asleep. With the falling of night, each is allowed his own safe anonymity. Now talk is freeg the desire is to make oneself heard. Amidst laughter and frolic, the unending line moves onward toward the outdoor barbeque. As in no other oc- casion, these queued beginners learn well a kind of Miltonic Shadows ofthe night come on filling the land maxim: that only those who wait are served. . with strange and unusual patterns. The unending line moves onward, groping its way toward the smelled but oh-not-tasted outdoor barbeque. A good time was had by all. 12

Page 16 text:

The greatest tricils of cull: enrollment, the textbook hurdles, the microfilm- ing, the ID showings, ond this ond so much more .... TRIALS OF ENROLLMENTI LINES, LINES, LINES Morning comes. More discussion, more campus tours, more standing in lineg but nothing seems to dampen their inconquerable Spirits. Then the greatest trial of all: enrollment. Here there is no possibility of steering be- tween Charybdis and Scyllag this fate must be met head-on-and it is. Lines and lines, and then more lines, more closed classes, more blank forms, more neuroses. The faces in the crowd grow haggarcl. The textbook hurdle is next according to tournament rules. The problem is to locate them without getting stepped on or lost. Claustrophobiacs suffer mostg for them the ordeal is almost too much to bear. After the books are found, after the ID showings, after the microfilming, and this and So much more, then wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh. The challenge so reluc- tantly accepted was metg the quest is over. I I Q' if T 5545 fe 2' ei .se We I- :S Lb , ..,,,,.-hm E ffffifii