The Undergraduate Chair

College Spirits Take Nosedive as Spring Thaw Arrives; Rumors and Athletic Success Save Some Morale

The dismal months are upon us. The time is here when the great white Hanover Plain melts. The crunch of feet on snow becomes the slosh of galoshes in massive puddles. The pure, clean gleam of crystalline hills is unbecomingly besmirched with dirt. A depressive grey hangs over the sky. The atmosphere is saturated with a penetrating damp. Mind and matter are soggy.

It is a time when a relieving Easter vacation would ordinarily be at hand but isn't. The prevailing mood is melancholy. Students wade across the campus to classes and wade back again without gaining much inspiration in the interval. They wander into dim dormitories and stare through streaky windows. They dream of home and girls and the Army.

Perhaps the general outlook is not quite as gloomy as this, but this season above all times in the year is when that dull subject, the weather, becomes most overbearing because of its very dullness.

And this year There is added reason for the somber atmosphere. There was always the beautiful consolation in other days of the gay, free summer to come. Spring was the hope of the dismal months. Spring was the prelude to a summer of freedom from the academic weariness of the text book. Even last year, with study throughout the year under an accelerated program, there was the feeling of summer, the novelty of a Hanover of green grass instead of white snow.