Harpur College 1965 Yearbook (Binghamton, NY) - Full Access

This, however, is all impressionistic. What we certainly need now are the facts - the data. What actually happened during that year? We can report, without too much fear of con– tradiction, that a social life did not exist at Harpur College. The weekends were spent wandering around the student center, the evenings ultimately nesting in the Music Lounge, that goldfish bowl of dreams and sound where the people twisted until their small intestines cried for mercy. And while the people danced, others watched, their noses pressed against the glass, sizing up the same girls over and over, pointing and talking until the lights were doused at one o'clock and all trudged over the esplanade to Digman and Rafuse and Johnson and O'Connor to talk into the night: does God exist, can one derive an "is" from an "ought," who has the best body on campus? The Coffee House was founded that year - and everybody tried to squeeze into the small room to talk and sweat. eat knishes, and play with the candles on the table while somebody folk sang or AI Lupi sang "The Lady is a Tramp." And this is what happened on weekends, after the movies. But during that winter of 1961-62, there was something which hasn't been equalled since, and which cast a glow over December, January and Feburary: the basket· ball team and the Basketball Game as an event. The team won fourteen games that year - they won big, scoring 100 points against Plattsburgh, or they pulled them out at the end, but they always won. And basketball games brought out whatever spirit there existed at the time, and all the frustrations about going to a school nobody ever heard of were let out and drained because here we all were in the gym with the snow melting off our boots in the warmth, and we were going to win another one. We roared for Davis and Greenberg and then we walked up the hill in the snow and went to the Music Lounge. The sport has never played the same role in the life of the college that it played that winter, not only because the team has never been the same, but because winning has never seemed quite as sweet, or as necessary. 12