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

The year began strangely, in the summer, but summer was a farce and is only tangential to our history. We returned in November and the leaves had changed already, so the land– scape was brown. Bingham and Endicott were on the verge of coJiapsing; a new Slater sys– tem of served meals did, in fact, collapse. The Slater people, for reasons unbeknownst to us, had whisked away lovable Wally Aitkenhead, he of the corn-fed tones and clip-on bow ties. Wally's successor was inscrutable and imperturbable - there was no insult he could not turn to his advantage, no slur he couldn't coolly withstand. His lucid rationalizations for every move Slater made were done with a dexterity students were forced to admire. (Especially noteworthy was the brilliant defense he made of "one dessert a meal, one steak a week," ·at a time when there were no steaks.) There was a shadow hanging over the campus: !'affaire Haumont. The whole business was dark and alien to a campus where everybody was supposed to know everything. Students interviewed secretly by authorities, teachers and administrators testifying in closed sessions: these were elements of a troubling affair. When investigators from Montreal came to Har– pur to a look around, and looked for all the world like extras from a French spy drama or a very bad Bogart movie, the Haumont matter seemed more shadowy than ever. The Fall featured a cerebral Orientation Program which was, in many ways, pushing the S.D.C. program. Work began on a drive to lift curfew ceilings, a drive that was ultimately successful. The Colonial News came out with a front-page editorial calling for open dorms: the paper was dated November 22, 1963, and suddenly nobody could have cared less about open dorms, or the CN. Political activity was in a state of quietus after the assassination, this lasting until H.U.A.C. went to Buffalo. The favorite intra-mural sport was lambasting Bio. Sci., which the CN took for a cause, along with the now traditional vendetta against Miss Wilson. But what strikes one most about the junior year is the absence of a mood. In our freshman year, there was insecurity and doubt; in the sophomore year, change and doubt, but the junior year was a calm one. C.R.C. and S.D.C. were still active but they were institutions already and institutions are never as exciting as new organizations. The new organization was Serv– ices for Youth, but there was no mood tied to S.F.Y. except a kind of genial ambitiousness, and this kind of crypto-welfare organization didn't stir the blood so much as make one feel vaguely happy that there was something like this happening. Children would frolic at Harpur on weekends and break some of the monotony of a world without children or old people or dogs or cats. Students for Off Campus Housing had meetings in the Coffee House which often seemed like cell meetings, but the purpose was too narrow to excite anyone except the boys involved, for whom it was a holy cause. The students attempted to contrive events to breathe some spontaneity into a year, which was, for the most part business as usual (or unusual). The dawn dance was a passable suc– cess and the Stepping on the Coat ceremony, held at a more civilized hour, was a greater success. 16