The Undergraduate Chair
FEBRUARY is a fickle month; it plays with a student. For weeks on, end it is so cold in the mornings that the hairs in your nose freeze stiff, a prickly welcome to the chill that makes the smoke from the tall stack of the college power plant stand straight up in the blue sky. Then, all of a sudden, a change comes that must have crept in overnight, for this morning a warm spell has settled in. The effect is automatic; lazy casualness of spring descends, lifting everybody's hopes for days to come. Once the thaw has initiated itself it seldom seems to linger for more than a week or so. Students can feel the battle of the elements, especially when we come down with the inevitable spring cold. Whole areas of sidewalk turn into deep puddles that drain slowly and lie in wait as traps to snare the unwary fellow who has forgotten to wear boots. Chances are he's still got on those gray white bucks, sponges of the dampness and clammy discomfort to the feet. The untended snow statues left over from Carnival grow ragged and rot away in the sun and warm rain. Out of such decrepit wrecks of the lingering winter a two-by-four and a bit of torn chicken wire hang in a dejectedness that mourns their former state. The carnage of the sun lies deep on all the walks, and on us too.
On February 18 and 19 the Undergraduate Council sponsored an intercollegiate conference on the theme of Youth and Political Affairs. They imported Rep. Eugene McCarthy, Democrat, from Minnesota, and Senator Clifford Case, Republican, from New Jersey. Each of these speakers tried to convince the young politicos why their party was "the young man's party." The discussion was pretty lively at times. I was impressed to hear two fellows standing on the corner of Wheelock and Main streets, opposite the C&G house, trying to decide between the Nugget and the conference. They chose the conference.
The Interfraternity Council has made some minor changes in the evaluation of fraternity contests in the year-long competition among houses. It has always been difficult to determine the proper distribution of rewards. Consequently, and for other reasons besides, many fraternity men are opposed to the point system. They feel that it encourages a fierce and unhealthy desire just to accumulate a high record. Other aspects of fraternity life are more important.
Between Carnival and spring vacation annually comes a period of interfraternity play contests. You may remember the days when you felt the transformation of greasepaint in the name of dear old Zeta Phi. Things haven't changed much since that time. In this, as in many another fraternity contest, there is an immense amount of behind-the-scenes work that isn't apparent to the casual spectator. Inevitably and interminably the practice rehearsals stretch out late into the night when everybody else has long since gone to bed. Imagine the scene of a smoky, low-ceilinged bar in the basement of the fraternity house. The actors go over and over the short, one-act performance until they are tired and snappish. Sometimes they're just not in the mood. Through all these vicissitudes a small group seems to be able to keep up the pace, so that, at the last, everything in them is wound and ready to burst or purge itself in fifteen minutes of limelight.
The plays are surprisingly good. Not a few are ambitious indeed, and many are highly experimental, even of local manufacture. Both the fraternities and the College have something to feel proud of in the caliber of these performances in the Little Theater atop Robinson Hall.
Big Wheel
HARRY FORBES, - member Palaeopitus; president Judiciary Committee; adviser to the Faculty Committee on Student Life; vice-president Alpha Nu fraternity; - Mr. BIG GUN." I read these words in my mind's eye under Harry's picture on the front page of The Daily D. It was the same cut they ran of him about twice a month, splotchy and over-black, but it still wasn't a bad likeness. You see, I know Harry pretty well; I ought to after four years of rooming with him. Our fathers were in the same class, and we always used to think that was the reason that we had originally been selected as roommates. Ours was one of the few freshman combinations to weather the full four years.
We two were the best of friends from the start. I still recall sitting beside him that first convocation, our freshman beanies on our knees; we were very respectful, eager and awed. To us the white uniforms of Palaeopitus were a symbol of something beyond mortal reach, and we both leaned tensely over the balcony rail and peered down at them as they marched in surrounded by dignity. Harry muttered, "Jeeez," in a half whisper and nudged me with his elbow. He would have sold all his other dreams to march in like that, the object of every eye, and as it turned out, he did.
Getting to know Hollbein, the president of U.G.C., wasn't good for Harry, but it came about quite naturally because Ben lived downstairs on the floor below us. A couple of times a week Harry would go down and closet himself with this BIG WHEEL, and when he came back he couldn't sit still or study or anything. Ben told him all about things that were going on "on the upper level of student affairs." Harry lapped it all up. He sure wanted to be somebody and do things around this campus. He told all this to Hollbein with the result that between the two of them they hassled up a plan to gain that end. It wasn't that Harry was going to run around shaking hands and grinning while he memorized the Green Book. The master plan as they conceived of it was a system of offices and duties that would eventually put Harry on the map. First, he was to go out for freshman football, swimming and track. This would introduce him to a lot of his classmates and at the same time create an aura of respect around him personally. Then he was to be elected to the dorm committee and then the sophomore orientation group. He heeled for The Players because most of them belonged to Alpha Nu, "the" fraternity for big guns. Amazingly enough about all these ends he was perfectly frank, at least he was with me, his roommate.
The master plan did work. Each apple lowered itself at its appointed time as though the branch that bore it was bewitched. And Harry was there waiting to pick the fruit. Nobody who knows him will ever accuse him of not making the best of his opportunities either, for during those two first years he sacrificed himself and worked like a dog. No time for a smoke, no flicks, not even a beer now and then on the weekend, just hours of work, work, work. He grew self-important and plowed around the dorms with a list of names for some recruiting project or other. Actually, he had taken on too much outside extracurricular activity and his marks suffered. The upshot of this dilemma forced him to stay up here over spring vacation to get caught up.
I pleaded with Harry to get out of town with me, come on a weekend trip to Boston or Montreal, but I might as well have asked the stump of Old Pine. "You know I can't leave," he would say. "There's all of two hundred letters to write asking for money from the alumni for the new rugs in the house. They haven't been addressed. And I have to work up my speech. I'm on the program of the national student government conference in New York next week." So I just said to hell with him and went anyhow. I knew he wanted to come and could. It was just that he had to be busy for the sake of being busy, and it was an act, every bit of it.
If you want to really find out what was happening to Harry Forbes ask Mary, the girl he was pinned to. This Mary is as cute a little Smith-town bait as you'll ever see. What's more she was nuts about Harry, and he felt the same way about her. But, when she came up here there was always some business that made the weekend a waiting game. At Carnival Harry was tangled up on the judging committee trying to pick a Carnival Queen while Mary waited for him to pick her up down at the station in White Town. The weekend somehow never warmed up for them. On the side one day she drew me aside at a cocktail party over at the fraternity and remarked to me about him, "He doesn't even talk like the Harry I met at Rahar's that first Sunday evening. It's funny, he talks with words that a lawyer wouldn't dare use to a client, much less at home. Everything is ex officio and Robert's Rulesof Parliamentary Procedure. If he mentions that freshman orientation program again I'm going to take off my shoe and club him with it." Her eyes glared sparks and her little frame shivered with sincerity. She meant it all right.
Matters between them didn't last much longer. Harry had received an invitation from her to come down to Smith for the big spring weekend. Intending to answer it later, he left it on the top of his desk where it was quickly buried and forgotten. On the Monday after he was to have gone down to Northampton the letter in question suddenly came to the surface on that impossible desk. He found it. There followed a long very bitter silence while he stared unseeing at the card. Tuesday a little box came in the mail all insured and registered. He dropped the fraternity pin back into his cuff-link box, a studied futile movement, ballet-like in its pathos.
Just after Mary had signed off I thought Harry would break under the terrible load of work that he had assumed for himself. No more laughing around 408 Hitchcock I told myself, and I was right. It was a burial vault, Harry's. He just tied up everything with his nervous energy. He couldn't sleep at night so he stayed up trying to study. Finally, his stomach got tied up in nervous knots too, and he retired to Dick's House for two weeks. I used to go down and see him every afternoon. He was in such a black mood; he thought the College would fall apart while he was gone. There was this or that affair that he himself and nobody else would be able to get done. I wonder if he trusted even me with the errands he tried to have me run. I didn't give him much consolation, mind you, just sat and listened to his moans. One thing began to puzzle him very much; just how did things seem to be moving along so smoothly? He must have hated to read The D. It was full of daily items, instances where business was getting along O.K. - without Harry Forbes.
One morning very early, a soft misty May one, I came back after a date over at Green Mountain. We had stayed to shoot the bull with Marge and Frank at the Little Club so it was close to 4:30 when I finally dragged myself up the four flights to our room. The smell of damp earth came in through the open windows at each landing in the stair-well. It was so quiet I could hear the first robin outside as he waked and sleepily questioned. The dormitory is so full of noise and life during the day, but at night it's the quietest place I know. The contrast strikes one I thought as I entered our room, dark like a cave. I had held my breath as I softly pulled the door shut till it latched,... didn't want to wake up Harry. It was familiar in here, even down to the same musty smell, probably a wet towel slung in the corner.
Harry cleared his throat just in front of me, and it gave me a start to see him awake, standing fully dressed, silhouetted against the frame pattern of the open window. His figure was ghostly in the pale blue of dawn light. I stood perfectly still listening; I expected him to speak, but there was only a silence that grew. Outside the birds in the ivy and around among the elms seemed suddenly to wake. A great wave of consciousness was rushing on with the coming sun. When he spoke the words were as soft as a whisper and I could scarce hear them against the muffled noises from outside. "I'm sorry," he said. His head moved slightly against the dark grid of the window frame. "I'm sorry, Smitty," the voice trailed away painfully. It might have been another bird. I went over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. In the pause I could hear his breath so close. His face was turned away to the open window and I could not see it. "I've been a fool.... I ... I guess you've known." I shook him playfully, full of gladness for him. My voice came out loud and shattered the silence. "Come on, ol' man, let's hit the sack.... Been a long, long night." We did.
At the intercollegiate political conference, Feb. 18-19, Student Chairman John B. Chaffee '55 (second from left) with Minnesota's Congressman Eugene J. McCarthy (center).
U. S. Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey (seated, right center) talkswith delegates in the Paul Room of Baker Library. President Dickeyis an interested observer.
