University of Rhode Island - Renaissance / Grist Yearbook (Kingston, RI)

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JUNE 1970 RATHSKELLER OPENS IN UNION: FIRST STUDENT BAR FOR URI O CO H j s o o H U H 13 53 H U HH 0 co H H M 0 2 13 p 25 13 53 0 U 0 co H 0 Let’s face it. Freshman year is a tough year to write about under any circumstances. The entire year is marked by delusions of structure, aim, and other things that would hint at integrity or unity. Perhaps at the heart of these delusions is the idea of college life, and the fear of the new grading systems, that are expected to be so new and unusual after all those high school horror stories that you were subjected to. If I had any advice to give to new freshmen, I would say don ' t be afraid that you ' re going to flunk out the entire time. Once in awhile, like the night before a final, and you’re slinko, and you don ' t even remember the name of the course, sure by all means get a little concerned; but for heaven’s sake don’t make the same mistake I did. I spent the whole first two semesters getting the worst marks I ' ve ever had in school, because I was too busy worrying about them. Listen, when you’re living in a triple in Butterfield, and the combined cumulative averages of all three of you doesn ' t add up to 2.0, you’ve got to keep your sense of humor. Just look at all the people who gel good grades and say to yourself, “there ’s someone who is lousy in BED ! I can 7 emphasize the word enough. Bed is home to a freshman on campus, and anyone who doesn 7 think so, hasn ' t done enough time on campus. I mean, it was a regular POW camp that year. We. freshman, couldn 7 have a car on campus, and there were no girls allowed in the male dorms, and freshmen couldn 7 live off campus. This means that freshmen learned two things very quickly: one, that alot of people fell in love with their right hands (except for those lucky ambidextorous types), and two, that you must immediately devise ways of breaking the rules. So, the earliest recollections I have of college life are learning from the ‘big boys’ how to sneak girls and liquor into the dorm, without detection, (and they say the A Cl is a training ground for new criminals). But these are very normal freshmen stories, and I’m sure your father could tell the same ones to you. But add to this the biggest event of the sixties, the Woodstock Generation. I mean, if everyone who came back to school saying that they had been to Woodstock had actually been there, they probably would have had enough people to start a country. But this is not to say that they were not there, because they were, in spirit. I mean this in a very real sense. When we came to school in 1969, we were ready to take off our clothes, make love in the streets, and play frisbee until the fringe was literally flapped off our jackets. But what did we find at URI? The answer, as always, was about five days-slraighl-of what must have been the worst rain to ever hit our little ' Kingston Swamp Estate. ’ FACULTY SEN. PASSES B.A. CURRICULUM URI MORATORIUM PROTESTS FOR PEACE PS 3 H PS P 0 o 26 70” TO INCLUDE FOUR DORMS AND

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2,000 STUDENTS VOTE FOR ' UNLIMITED STRIKE’ FEASIBILITY OF BIRTH CONTROL CLINIC ON CAMPUS EXPLORED Couple this with a complete disorientation because registration was in Rodman Hall, and nobody even knew where that was, and you get a pretty soggy bunch of disenchanted youth, not to mention the various fungus diseases caused by wearing that same pair of soaked jeans which were really the only ones you had ‘broke in just right’. But this is getting just a little far afield of what the real concern was in freshman year, and that was lo neli- ness. Freshman year is a very lonely time, and perhaps lonliness is the main reason people drop out of school A freshman expected two things from school: one, an education, and two, a rabid four year sex adventure. Why shouldn ' t he expect it? Especially with all those stories about College Girls that had been filing his brain, and those weird tales about Hippie Chicks? And what about when they were one and the same. College Girl Hippie Chicks??? Oh, my God, It still makes me pant!! But we all know what happened. You find out that all the girts you see are the same ones you went to high school with and they haven’t changed a bit, not even with Woodstock and your new side burns and moustache. Crissakes, we grew ten thousand feet of facial hair, and it was all over the floor and sinks before every long holiday so Mom and Dad wouldn’t know. Its hard to go back so far and remember that you were afraid to walk down the street with your new hair, because some lousy-red-neck was bound to make trouble. So it was just one more reason to stay in bed, away from other people. So you can see that the strike woj more than a strike against the action in Cambodia, which certainly deserved a strike, and still does. The strike was real anger, frustration, and hatred embodied in one movement. And this is the reason it failed. When so much tension is involved, and the leaders are talking about ‘Gay Lib’ and all you want to do is find somebody you could really talk to, and make love with in the grass, your anger is turned towards the people who are leading the strike. The strike wasn t centered on anything. If you really wanted to do something to stop the war, you were in the wrong place. After all we had marched on Quonset, for some reason. I remember, because I had a red convertible and was with a guy and we both had long hair, so some clown asked us to lead the way. but I didn’t know the way. So we followed them to Quonset, and expressed our dissatisfaction by walking around in a circle and singing. Well the strike was better than that, but not much. If you were on strike and serious about doing something about the war, you also had to be a part of gay lib, supporting Mao, and scarfing up Health Food on the way. It was prob- ably the greatest disenchantment of them all. But as with all good kiddy stories, we all struck school, got pass-fail AO’s and lived happily ever after, at least long enough to discover that we’re now becoming sophomores. BIG BUBBLE BUILT FOR TRACK AND TEAM SPORT PRACTICES 27 URI GETS LIQUOR LICENSE FOR MEMORIAL UNION BAR