University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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■A 1 thousands of students who have sat for years in the same varying degrees of inattention; the remarkable variety of amusements developed by and for students; athletic events, Co-Rec car- nivals, Sigma Chi derbies. Beat Dook parades (though that cultural event may have committed obscene suicide ) , auctions, dances, beach trips, plus the usual, normal amount of everyday boozmg. Give us this day our daily circus, we cry and at Carolina, we have had circuses with a vengeance. Too, in the student ' s life are the usually fleeting moments of reflection which approach and recede, but never entirely vanish — moments that carry with them implications of rushing time and future glories — moments in which we each arrive, painlessly. magically and quite unrealistically, at our own particular goals. Each of us has felt at one time or another that certainty of success that is necessary for anyone who thinks or dreams. Most of us will be fairly unre- markable persons who will lead reasonably unremarkable lives. Caro- lina — at the very least — gives us a fair assurance that we shall not Page 28

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not the wholehearted, self-destroying actions of the dope addict or the almost-reverent libations of the hope- less alcoholic, but more subtle, less obvious forms. Dissipation is the squandering of talent or time, and who of us has not cast away huge chunks of his life upon aimless am- bling after pleasure or upon purpose- ful retreats from some unpalatable aspects of life? We who see — God knows, we all should be able to see by now — that professors ' lectures at times are something more than im- pressive polysyllabic exercises and that our minds were made not to parrot but to create. We who have realized this are derelict toward our- selves if we do not act on this know- ledge. It is hard to speak of respon- sibilities and duties without ap- proaching pedantry, for the abundant drivel covering the two words has long since repelled students weary of good, sound advice; but nonetheless, these duties and responsibilities still exist, if in no other sense than Polonius ' much admired and seldom- followed admonition: To thine ownself be true. It is also difficult to speak without lapsing into pathos of our leaving the University, to avoid falling into the Old Well — Bell Tower — Hark the Sound syndrome which is fitting and good for class reunions, but hardly conducive to any serious speculation as to the student, his years here at Carolina, and his life afterwards. But graduation from college is a dividing point, a meridian. On one side of the dividing line, the life of a student: thousands of hours in classrooms positively reeking of shamelessly re- peated facts and opinions and of the fe Page 27

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at the anti-democratic word class ) . Insofar as our degrees insure (or make more likely) our material well- being our degrees are beneficial starve. The University has erected a barrier between us and those who did not make the acquaintance of patient old Silent Sam and the Arboretum ' s joys, of Chancellor House ' s harmonica and the inimit- able Chapel Hill weather. The bar- rier is very real — it is a wall be- tween us and a different class of people (though eyebrows will raise zens. But if our degree from Caro- lina brings only the stuffs of the good, flaccid American life, it is worse than useless. If — always the almighty ' — Carolina and Chapel Hill have show- ed us that the boundaries of our objects, for even the most unworldly, Epictetus-quoting soul among us will hardly refuse the comforts so easily gotten in America by educated citi- Page 29