Townsend Harris High School - Crimson Gold Yearbook (Flushing, NY)

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the ordinary course of a high school being modified to a strange environment and strange circumstancesg it is for me now only to make a few remarks on the activities of the school as they were manifested in the literature, the athletics and the society work. Academic Herald The literary history of the school may be comprehended in the one name- Academic Herald. Outside of the Tatler, a short-lived weekly, that existed but a very few issues during 1912, nothing has appeared to challenge the one monthly magazine. The Academic Herald was first published in 1907. lt commenced as a magazine similar to the City College Mercury, but ended in l9lZ as a full-Hedged high school periodical. Since then it has grown from a drab little magazine of l6 pages, commanding a circulation of 500 to an active virile paper of 32 pages, commanding a banner circulation of 2,000 or more. Practically everything was doubled except the price. That, as an important factor in the literary attainment of the school, remained the same. a convention that alone of the T. H. H. conventions stands in no fear of innovations. Quill Club Until the Advent of the Quill Club, the Academic Herald drew its editors from the VVebb Literary Society. This society was the fountain of the Academic Herald staff. A word of praise to the society itself, its attitude towards the school, its aid to the school, and a word of dispraise to the school that did not support it, is all that need be added. lt was a severe blow to hear that the NVebb Literary Society had disbanded. Since then the Quill Club has been slowly taking up the work which the VVebb relinquished. Its members are very well represented on the present Ac staff. Art Club VVhat the Quill Club does in the way of literature, the Art Society does in the way of art. All the Academic Herald artists may be seen, congregated in the society's room every Friday over oblong drawing sheets, chewing char- coal stubbs, with a true Bohemian abandon. So much for the school's literature. Just asithe two other societies represented the school in literature and art, so the Harris Debating Society represents Harris in the oratorical world. Athletics The Athletic activities of T. H. H. should properly center about the A. A. The A. A. is the strongest student activity in the school. lt is the power that sets up our teams and snatches us from an athletic oblivion. The athletic history of T. H. H., thanks to the unrelenting and rigorous curriculum system in force, presents no glory save vain-glory. Properly we should delve into the annals of Clinton H. S. for the history of T. H. H. Athletics. Clinton victories over Harris itself were due to Harris ex-members. In l9ll, T. H. H. won the Manhattan soccer championship. Since then the Soccer Teams of Harris were always so near, and yet so far away from the championship. The basketball teams always plunged into a rose bed at the beginning and then, when the P. S. A. L. games were scheduled, slid back ungracefully into an inferior position. So with the baseball teams. But it is surprising that under the conditions in Harris any records were made at all. The swimming team has shown itself invariably a good representative of Harris Amphibians. The wrestling team has always been victorious. That of all the other teams has reflected

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SXVIMMINC POOL THE

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50 THE HARRIS ANNUAL some of the glories of Harris in the interscholastic athletic mirror. Periodically tennis teams and chess teams are raised up from the dust of a comparative obscurity, but they go down to the same perennial dissolution with a disappointing regularity. Perhaps it would be best to revert to the gymnasium the scene of T. H. H. basketball victories and to the natatorium the scene of swimming victories and defeats. The gym is formally called the C. C. N. Y. gymnasium. It might with equal justice be called the T. H. H. Gym. Here T. H. H. came, saw and occasionally was conquered. But, passing over this, the gym is one of the greatest athletic structures in the city. Equipped with one of the largest swimming pools in the city, with one of the best running tracks, boast- ing of the most complete athletic apparatus in the city, preserving in its management a wise and discriminative course, it has become one of the real factors in the athletic development of the school. The gym is something so fine that praise can only be a disparagement. As a building it combines with the necessary structural forms of a gymnasium, all the distinctive architectural features of the City College group of buildings. The pool in its white-tiled dignity, in the gloom of the corridors leading to it, in the soft splashing of a stray swimmer, in the gentle rippling of the water on the smooth sides, seems to have the typical atmosphere of the school. The running tracks, the hand-ball courts, the stacks of dumbbells, Indian clubs, and the wands seem like sentinel to the esoteric athletic spirit of Harris Hall. Here are bound up this school's athletic traditions in a knot which can never be dissevered. It is one of the academy's influences for good. The Stadium Another influence which promises to be just as important is the stadium. All that there is of the stadium now is the blueprints, but work is being pushed on, and in the Fall season there will be a new amphitheatre for T. H. H. athletics. The stadium, according to the plaster-of-paris cast in the Lincoln Corridor of the College, is to be simple in its structure, a Fine example of the majestic beauty of Doric architecture. It is to extend from 138th Street to 136th Street and east from Amsterdam Avenue to Convent Avenue. The field, therefore, will be very large, and there will be room for almost every activity. The original plan did not provide for shower baths and lockers. In the same breath, it neglected a fence about the held. Active work was entered upon by some wide-awake college men who circulated a petition that was signed by several thousand students. As a result, a bill of appropriation has been passed to provide showers and lockers for the stadium. The social activities of the school are not many, but are widely diversified. The diversity approaches very nearly to chaos. There is no cohesion, no cen- tral activity. The clubs are self-centered. They can realize nothing but their own petty necessities, and they provide for nothing but their own individual interests. The announcement that a General Organization was being planned was greeted with joy by sincere Harrisites, the subsequent abandonment of the plan, the slacking of the first ardor, the gradual loss of all interest in the project of all enthusiasm, the tacit admission that T. H. H. was not yet ready for it, the spectacle of virile clubs retrograding because the school was not yet ready for it, was greeted with corresponding sorrow. There is nothing left to do but to end, and yet that is so hard when one knows that soon the very name of T. H. H. will only serve to bring back memories, fond memories of days spent and enjoyed in the institution. The