Yale University - Banner / Pot Pourri Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

Page 26 text:

ments of contemporary life in Morse College - to be opened in the year 2261. On Alumni Day, under a gray sky and in front of a desultory crowd, in went the little metal box. Meanwhile, WELI began a series of radio reports about Yale, widely hailed despite occasional dispar- aging comments about University life. William H. Dunham, master of jonathan Edwards for five years, announced his retirement from the post. A music professor, Beekman Cannon, was named Dunhanfs successor. To the distress of a great many people, right- wing professors David C. Rowe fpolitical sciencej and O. Glenn Saxon feconomicsj signed a peti- tion favoring the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the midst of the HUAC controversy, the John Dewey Society and the Yale Law School Young Republicans sponsored two propaganda films and a heated debate on the subject. Any reasoned discussion was virtually hooted down by an unruly audience of over a thousand persons. The whole affair was reminiscent of a McCarthy witch hunt and a Red demonstration being carried on at the same time. Meanwhile, tragedy struck. In a close meet with a powerful Navy team, a perhaps overconfident Eli swim team lost 48-47 - thus ending a 16-year streak of 201 straight wins. It would take another fifteen years to build up such a record. Intelligent, acute, and articulate anti-segregation- ist Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Cozzrtilutiovz, began a quiet weekls stay at Yale as another Chubb Fellow. At the end of the week, the East experi- enced its worst snowfall in over a decade - the fourth bad one of the season, and Yale dug out from under 14 inches of snow. Most dining hall employees didn't make it to work Saturday evening. Rhodes Scholar Augustus Kinsolving announced the inception of an organization to be called Stu- dent Truck. The objective was to buy a truck flater changed to carsj and tour depressed areas in the South over spring vacation. The whole idea reeked of slumming on a grand scale, and it was easy to imagine twenty students piling out of a vehicle and asking some roadside farmer, Are you a depressed person? Another major financial grant came from the Ford Foundation - S2 million for the establish- ment of an economics research center at Yale. Sterl- ing Profesor Lloyd G. Reynolds was named direc- tor. Yale, which bitterly bemoans the raiding of its hallowed grounds, itself raided Johns Hopkins and persuaded L. Van Woodward, expert on the post- bellum South, to become Sterling Professor of His- tory f which is not the departmental chairmanshipj. A three-day Christian mission at Yale proved to be worthwhile, with stimulating talks in the colleges by visiting ministers and theologians. Two more donations were made to the Univer- sity, one endowed a Russian professorship and the other allowed construction of the new arts center to begin. While the money kept rolling in, Yalies received a mortal blow: the Smith College schedule for next year had eliminated Thanksgiving vaca- tion, making Friday a calendar day. With the Har- vard game being played on that weekend, the news was doubly cruel. Representative Joseph W. Martin came down for a brief visit to the Political Union and gave one of the most delightfully off-the-record speeches ever heard here. Three well-known liberal arts teachers - Vincent Scully, Leonard Krieger, and Alvin Ei- senmann - were promoted to full professors, but things were not so well in the science departments. Yalies de.fe1'le:l lbe tables for lbe mrrelr. i i 1 .M-1.-1-I

Page 25 text:

head from five townies Qwho else?j, who later were caught and admitted doing it just for kicks Qwhat else?j. Often vapid, if sometimes vulgar, Ne-zur pundit Richard Stewart reached the high point of his career by calling graduate girls ugly without excep- tion. This immediately caused a furor in the gradu- ate schools, and young ladies wrote back saying they were not ugly. Even the Eli swim team's 200th consecutive vic- tory fwinning it from Brown's better than average mermenj couldn't stem the tide, and the Yale Ad- missions office acknowledged there had been a drop in applications-later admitted to be 1Of4-. Never- theless, Dean Arthur Howe said he would admit 25 more freshmen next year. Wliile Freshman Dean Harold Wliitenian clung to the moral standards of our Founding Fathers and Queen Victoria, upperclass activities Dean Richard Carroll announced that Friday curfew hours in col- leges would be extended to midnight. In Wasliing- ton, john F. Kennedy was inaugurated. The podium caught tire during the innvocation, but no one seemed to mind. President Griswold proved to be human and en- tered Grace-New Haven for an intestinal operation, 'TbiL'!'?.f, C:II'llfI'cIl' brightened lbe zvifller. His recovery was satisfactory, but slow, and Yale did without him for the better part of the remaining year. Dean William C. DeVane also suffered a mild heart attack about the same time, although he was back in office by March. One of the year's best pieces of news came with the announcement of a 551 million bequest by the late Neil Gray '90 to improve Yale's almost non- existent creative writing program. Among the crea- tions of the grant - the Gray Professorship of Rhetoric Cto be held by Cleanth Brooksj, several new writing courses for underclassmen, and visiting fellowships by practising writers. Meanwhile, Yalies were in the 717f.l'f' of exams and fighting their way through the third large snow storm of the year. Somehow, both passed, and life returned to normal. The football team made its annual appeal for spring practice, and the A.A. made its annual de- nial. In Congress, Sam Rayburn - with the help of Kennedy forces - rammed an enlargement of the Rules Committee through the House by a slim margin of 217-212. Oblivious to atomic annihilation, the Second Coming, or advancing glaciers - the administra- tion announced it would seal a number of docu- fnfpta lj sf

Page 27 text:

There, biophysicist Richard Setlow and chemist S. Singer left for greener pastures. Freshman Prom Weekeiid started with a big bang as the King of the XVorld, Homer A. Tomlinson, crowned himself on a portable throne with a paper crown in front of the library. The gravity of the occasion was broken up by two Dramat students, who came dressed as Christ and John the Baptist, and who later blessed a throng of people from a Saybrook balcony. The gravity of flair occasion was destroyed when the Campus Cops politely suggested that rush-hour New Haven trafnc would like to continue down Elm Street. On Monday, the Yale Co-op backed out of a series of charter flights to Europe they had spon- sored, thus infuriating most ticket buyers and in- curring the partially justified wrath of the Yale Daily News. In Wasliington, the Supreme Court opened hearings on Connecticut's birth control laws. Dr. Lee Buxton of the Medical School testi- fied that the laws endangered the lives of two of his patients, and Professor Fowler Harper of the Law School argued that the laws violated the 14th amendment to the Constitution. The justices inferred that the laws weren't being enforced, said they would postpone a decision indefinitely. Meanwhile, the week-long second annual Under- graduate Arts Festival got under way, with special events scheduled for every night of the Festival. But the raison d etre were the exhibits, and exhibits there were. From music to mobile, paintbrush to pickaxe, Dada to Da Vinci - all forms of art were represented. The whole affair was fun, and there was even some good art. Then, Friday came and with it the Junior Prom. Cbrirl mule I0 -wifi! . . . The sun shined all day, and that night 400 couples danced till two at the New Haven Lawn Club. Buddy Morrow played Night Trainf' and the crowds cheered. Despite a rainy Saturday, the Uni- versity stayed in a bright mood as the swim team saved its season from total disaster by trouncing the odds-on favorite, Harvard, at Cambridge. Sunday the King of the Blues, Ray Charles, put on a rip- roaring show at Woolsey, even if he did run out of numbers mid-way through the second half. Dates gone, life got back to normal once more. Mid-term exams plagued most Yalies, and some . . . the King of the ll7orId. S6 yi'