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

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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

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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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flight are all self-imposed, ' the town and school have showed us others who absorbed and, ultimately, conveyed not the letter but the spirit of education; we see now the tiniest spark of beauty that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, and ' we now can speak of beauty with- out embarrassment at the word; ' , because we have lived in Chapel Hill and learned at Carolina, we can ac- cept other human beings on the basis Page 30