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

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OB ERVATION S N STUDENTS Observingthe reactions ot students to Berkeley College is an interesting process. The reactions are as variable and unpredictable as a Yale-Harvard la- crosse game, but they are always interesting. There are the lively students, who throw them- selves into the athletic contests or the social program or dramatics with great good will and surprising amounts of talent. In their innocence, they attempt too much and then go ahead and do it, giving us the pleasure of a winning team or a successful dance or a good play or some good music. I fully expect one of these years to have our Berkeley Players propose a production in our dining hall of Ben Hur , com- plete with chariot race, and I am quite prepared to seek house-broken horses with the necessary acting ability. There are the talkative students, whose contribu- tions to the college are semantic. Sometimes they seem to talk interminably, but some of them elevate the level of conversation at meals and in bull sessions, and some of their talk results in constructive sugges- tions. Then there are the actors, the Walter Mittys of Berkeley College, who walk through roles set out by themselves or their peers. It is curious to see some of the conflicts between the role played and the true nature of a student. The cool, suave type played by a student who wouldnlt want anyone to know that he has a social conscience or that he enjoys his studies is far from uncommon, as is the high-ranking student who works very hard at his studies and also works very hard to create an impression that he never studies. And there are the inert ones, who give the impres7 sion that Berkeley College is a place to sleep and eat and Yale College a place to spend four pleasant years with a minimum show of interest and enthusiasm. Closer observation reveals that some of them are actu- ally quite sensitive men who find simply that they don't need a hectic schedule in order to be fulfilled. There are other types, too, some desirable and some not. The interesting thing about all of this, however, is that there is a great variety in the re- actions of students to Berkeley College and that any one student Hits from type to type, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly. The variety in type and in time is a healthy thing. The students I worry about are the ones who are consistent to the point of being rigid, missing the educational value of a few cycles of change in attitudes. CHARLES A. WALKER, MASTER 1 I mls w .

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CLASS OF 1966, BERKELEY COLLEGE with Miss Harper and Peg directing things, still re- mains beyond dispute. Our selection of jams in the morning and the effort which went into making big weekends special ones were both unequaled. As up- perclassmen, our memories shortened with age, we could not understand why the lines in Berkeley seem- ed so perpetually long, especially on bad weather days, and whose faces they were which kept us so far from the kitchen. It was cause for a universal chorus of groans and curses. Q My God, a line this long?-at this hour? It's the damn freshmenluj It was small consolation that the French Circle gave us the honor of holding their dinners at Berkeley. Meals, though, were always too short, and the conversations after- wards ended too quickly. The closing of the dining hall each night usually failed to suppress the communicative powers of all the sons of the good Bishop, and many found the library quiet enough to provide an adequate forum and a docile audience. Attempts were made, of course, to use a whisper, but that was a lost art. There were whispers capable of penetrating the thickest book or the deepest concentration, though not loud enough to be understood. At twelve o'clock, upon the stealthy entrance of Mr. Mullen, there was the dutiful retreat to that haven of luxury-the Red Room. Though some disclaim knowledge that it ex- ists, it was often the scene of skillful and ruthless jockeying for chairs. Those who were caught asleep above at twelve o'clock entered the room cautiously. Their eyes pierced the smoke and might catch a glimpse of Falco Harlani but of no place to sit. A standing joke among library afficionados was that three weeks earlier one of the invisible librarians was seen in the vicinity of the cage but that the rumor had been denied. It was also a standing joke that once, at four in the morning, a sophomore had thought it funny and laughed. One of the happier events during our short but glorious years at Berkeley took place in the tightly- locked pool room. The marble slate which leaned for so long against the wall was formed into a bil- liard table. All those who were hardy enough or needed the exercise walked to the guard's office in search of the key, made their way to the pool room, and repeated the ordeal when they had finished. The Bishop's miter, the symbol of authority and leadership in Berkeley continued to rest on the pate of Master Walker, with the able Dean Scott on his gospel side. It was perhaps the informal and relaxed tone imparted by them which unified the college more than anything else. It was an informality im- ported from Texas, the state from which the master hailed. Although Dean Scott came originally from an Indian territory to the north, he served an apprentice- ship in Texas ways in his college days. Mrs. B. and Mrs. A. were, as usual, the indispensable mainstays of the office. Reflecting no new trend, student-fellow relations stayed settled in a state of peaceful co-existence. Formal intellectual life at Berkeley has still not got- ten its health. College seminars, attended enthusi- astically by sophomores, are unheard of afterwards. The Commonplace Society postponed all meetings until after the football season. This may have seemed like a gap to some and was the subject of discussion during the year, but life continued as usual. Strengthened by our experience at Berkeley, we push through to the famed destinies that await us. Light of heart and full of purpose, we bear the trust of the Bishop into the hard world seen growling through the arch. DICK GLEEN

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THIS YEAR AT BERKELEY I recall reading from a published remembrance of Yale by someone in the Class of 1870 or there- abouts. He described the time he spent here as carefree, irresponsible, charming, mildly sensuous, slightly reflective, gentlemanly, graceful in an adolescent manner, certainly not too serious, and never marked by concerns that disturbed personal equilibrium. His were days of roses if not of wine in a time before college education lost its innocence and Yale students lost their sense of restrictive bliss. His mood and perspective, I am afraid, would be singularly inappropriate for a description of this year at Berkeley College. The difference is not, hopefully, that students now do not change toward manhood in a human way. This gentleman from the past, however, re- membered changing in a relaxed atmosphere: weekends were pleasant when a group of chums, as he called them, could walk leisurely to East Rock or Light House Point or, on a par- ticularly splendid Sunday, to Sleeping Giant. We will not remember this year, as chronicled and crystallized in this book, as leisurely, and most of us will not recall the multitudinous changes that took place in us in the soft light of cherished Sabbaths and sentimental journies. Many of us have jerked and jogged through assignments and pressures. We have gasped at moments of respite, patched up wounds, and prepared for the next battle. We have been confused by endless chal- lenges, and nearly overwhelmed by competition. Some of us have glimpsed excellence and tasted momentary competence. There have been times of hope and exhilaration and love. But whatever happened came in a setting of extraordinary am- bition and drive. We have not been gentled here. But we have changed, and to the extent that all of this has occurred to us in Berkeley, the college is imprinted in us as a place of importance, well worth remembering with both pleasure and pain. CHARLES E. SCOTT, DEAN