Traditions, and Such
As if there weren't enough things going on, our college controversialists have had a simply marvelous time writing Vox Pops to The Dartmouth concerning our good old tradition of Delta Alpha. Some of these epistles expressed a high moral indignation, others a Spartan indifference to the hardships of hazing, others a loyalty to the Good Old Traditions, and still others various hazy sentiments which no one could quite figure out, until finally the reading public was monumentally bored. We don't remember just who started it. But then, someone starts it every year. At any rate, it is rather certain that Palaeopitus and The Dartmouth set out against this grand old custom with certain lethal intents. Not only did this dark conspiracy come near slaying poor old Delta Alpha, but nearly bored the College to death as well. It was semi-tragic, especially since Delta Alpha has seemed in a defenceless and tottering condition these last several years, anyway.
If we hark back to last spring, we find The Dartmouth in a different position on this matter of tradition. It seems that Old Timers' Day was not observed to the complete satisfaction of The Dartmouth, if we may judge from the following editorial, deliciously entitled "Tell Me it Ain't So, Nell":
"Another childish, blue-eyed ideal has gone. Something fine, something which seemed enduring has tottered and crashed. Something there was in our hearts, which has gone forever. The spirit of ho-hum has struck the senior class.
"Everyone has always granted that sophomorism is contagious. Freshmen pick it up and practice yawning gracefully a few months after they hit college. Sophomores work it for all it is worth and then when they clothe themselves in the junorial blazers they still find difficulty in dropping their ennui. It's the easiest of attitudes.
"But somehow it has always been felt that ingenuousness, artlessness, and the fine free enthusiasm of youth would always be sheltered in the senior class. It seemed that here were people old enough to know how foolishly young the blase pose really is. Here, it seemed, there would always be a market for marbles.
"But no. Come Old Timers' Day. What do the staid seniors do? Do they rollick in the grass? Do they sing foolish topers' songs and riot about and sleep in gutters? No, they self-consciously cling to their conservative, hollow dignity. No doorbells are rung, no cows are draped on Prexy's roof.
"There was supposed to be a treasure hunt. Only about five hundred knew that the prize was a case of Gordon water. A few halfhearted expeditions set out, but their zeal was meagre. A few of those in the know cried 'warm, warm!' whenever the stomach of a committee member hove in sight, but nobody got a stomach pump to try to find the treasure. There weren't enough weird clothes on campus to clothe an Earl Carrol chorus. One bicycle did its high-wheeled best to retrieve the day, but the odds were too great.
"Hark to the yelling of the fish and the failing of another old tradition."
It was, as a matter of fact, a rather tame Old Timers' Day, as those things go. It was not so very drunken, there was no election of a Mayor of Hanover, and things just weren't the same. The weather was too hot, or something. The campus didn't go quite as crazy as usual, and there were no babbling mobs of seniors running over each other on the campus But we are not any where near as upset about it as the author of this not-sovery-good editorial. Traditions are interesting and charming things, but we would rather bury one than mummify it.
And anyway, they are not all dead yet.
Take Wet Down, for instance. It still retains much of its youthful vigor and spontaneity, in spite of its sad degeneration from beer to lemonade to nothing at all. Underlying its ceremonies is the serious thrill which young men get in reaching up to new places, new dignities and new responsibilities. It is very colorful in the Hanover twilight, with its summoning clangor of bells, its ceremonial marching behind the green and white uniforms of the band and Palaeopitus, its serious Elijah-to-Elisha gesture of the old to the new Palaeopitus at the Old Pine, its wahhoo-wahs in the dusk.
