Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

Page 11 text:

Good Lord, it ' s like I ' ve never been away. The feeling has always seemed to us as neces- sary a part of a return to Swarthmore as high heels in Commons, missing trunks, registration lines, pro- gram changes, and What did you do this summer? We have expressed the sentiment after every vaca- tion, and have alv ays considered it a slur. Just this year, however, we heard these strange words added to the traditional ones: It makes me feel wonderful. This shocked us. We were forced to admit that we have been disguising a certain amount of af- fection under our sophisticated slur. And that although we have complained for three years, about Collection, the dining room, the conduct committee and the work, we have often had excuses for leaving late in the spring and returning early in the fall. There was good reason for this dishonesty, just as there is a good explanation for our present naked souls. We see this clearly when we remember that the next ticket we buy to the big wide dangerous crowded unfriendly rigid dull conventional authori- tarian world will be a one way ticket. The reason is,of course, that until now we were secure enough to gripe. We are not yet in the position of which Presi- dent Smith spoke. We are not yet able to look back

Page 13 text:

and wonder how four years could have been so consistently happy. But there have been too many good things in too many of our days here. The next time we say the traditional words, we will have a hard time accompanying them with the tra- ditional smirk. Now that this has been said, we will do our best to gripe until June. Present enlightenment and honesty not- withstanding, when we returned to Swarthmore in the fall of our junior year, everything that didn ' t look the same looked worse. The year moved along, as Swarthmore years have always moved since men and women have been allowed to talk to each other unchaperoned, through lawn, porch, commons, porch, and lawn. When we carried our suitcases back down Magill through the daffodils, Swarthmore looked about the same as it had when we first felt like we had never been away. But some of us knew that although nothing was objectively different, our junior year could best be characterized as a year of change. The contents of our Halcyon are in part devoted to this intangible metamor- phosis. There has even been a small revolution between the covers of the Halcyon. You will notice this as soon as you begin to look for the junior section. We have dispensed with the letter of year-book law in order to come closer to the spirit of Swarthmore life. We believe Swarthmore has an exciting spirit because its activities mirror student interest so well. The present Halcyon staff feels that activities and students are inextricably mixed and should not be separated in our yearbook. Because of this we have shown the picture of each member with one of the several activities in which he has participated. We hope our 1954 Halcyon is true to the spirit of Swarthmore in general and to that of our junior year in particular.