Wabash College - Wabash Yearbook (Crawfordsville, IN)

Page 24 text:

Tradition Personified What happens to a rhyne after he enters the Chapel is an excellent example of a highly structured folkway in operation. When he has proven to the satisfaction of a Senior Council member (or to an underhanded upperclassman masquerading as such) that he cannot sing Old Wabash under pressure, he is swept up into the gears of a machine which is acti¬ vated only twice a year—the Council as Judge. Told to write the song free from harassment—and without mistakes—the rhynes scatter throughout the Chapel and toil away. The scrawled results are pored over by Council members while the nervous mis¬ creants wait with bated breath in the choir pews. Two lucky winners of the tonsorial prize—Denny Lawson and Richard Perry—emerge from the machin¬ ery and immediately enter a more formidable institu¬ tion: John Evans as Barber. The finished products are gloated over momentarily by those who tried them and found them musically lacking. Then they are sent forth, living proof of the puissance of the Senior Coun¬ cil and the actuality of the word indoctrination . 20

Page 26 text:

w m , ' f §2 ■■ mUM | Jj MB I ISH HHMHKuBHflnNSHrailar ■LA | 71 j Homecoming Two hundred and fifty pajama-clad rhynes dancing the time-honored fire-rite in pagan splendor, a later roar of Little Giant pride at the city courthouse, and the subsequent ravishing of Crawfordsville begin the annual Wabash Homecoming. 22 a