Wabash College - Wabash Yearbook (Crawfordsville, IN)

Page 26 text:

The meaning of the existence of Black students on the Wa- bash College campus has been obscured during this past year. Because of this, it is difficult to answer the question as to what the year has meant for Black students. Sure we had name speakers (and parties), but these offered no real mean- ing. Perhaps we considered these as additional entertainment fea- tures rather than teaching de- vices. We seemingly forfeited — or failed to remember — our past at dear Ol’Wabash.

Page 25 text:

Maybe we just need someone to dump on when a tradition rubs us the wrong way, and in this case the faculty is an easy target. But if we didn’t lose any sleep, over comps, why complain about them? Maybe because there’s something in comps worth preserving, and if we’re not careful the good will be sacrificed along with the bad. What’s good about comps? Well certainly not questions which are merely “super finals” and do nothing but separ- ate the men from the IBM machines. And not the half- hearted fashion in which comps are given — and taken — as though we're all performing an annual pennance merely to open the way to a diploma. But there’s another side of comps — the oral exam. Even orals can become a drag, expecially when some prof decides to play the ever-popular quiz game, “‘Guess What I’m Thinking”, and there are still some questions as to exactly what the oral is to entail (the role of the third man, for instance). But the oral provides a forum for broad-ranging discussion — discussion of what the students has learned outside the classroom as well as in it. In short, what the ““Wabash Experience” has meant to him personally. It should be a time for self-evalua- tion, criticism, and a relation of the Wabash education to life itself. Maybe fifty minutes isn’t enough. Comps, like all-male education, intramurals, camara- derie between students and faculty, and boring weekends, are part of the “‘Wabash Experience.” But something had better be done soon before they become merely another thing we endure here at Wab-Col. In case anyone has forgotten, you have to pass comps to graduate, and such a powerful weapon should not be wielded with such apparent lack of purpose.

Page 27 text:

In the past we moved like warriors, creat- ing ineffaceable marks on a supposed moun- tain. We moved quickly and profoundly causing the reverberations of our actions to shake the mountain. Yes, we were bad — not the stereotypic “‘bad,” just bad — before we became toothless, resulting in our being spoon-fed. Yes, we were bad — before the track marks, mentally speaking, became evident. We were bad — once. We dug the change, nevertheless. In a word, the change was congenial to us — a death wish. Death wish?!? Congenial?!? That’s cor- rect — a congenial death wish. We became what we found disagreeable — a materially comfortable but spiritually defunct people. We became dead and subsequently lost our ability to shake the mountain. In fact, we made the mountain more secure. We became additional dirt to add to the already consolidated dirt complex. We became Wa- bash College! — Stigler