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

A new group called Students For A Democratic Community was worried about a whole range of issues and began challenging the Administration on everything from social regulations to educational policies. S.D.C. added to the excitement of the year by giving us the feeling that if we worked things out, the students would get everything, but everything, changed. Delusions of grandeur perhaps, but the election campaign that Spring was the first one that seemed to count. The Civil Rights Club, in its first year of operation, was attempting to sweep the cobwebs out of our consciences and one couldn't open his mailbox without C.R.C. announcement. The tutoring program they set up was the most constructive thing Harpur students had ever done, opening a line of communication with Binghamton. (Beer blasts, however, were closing lines of communication. One after the other, various legion halls were left in shambles, this reaching an apex with the S.O.S. Pounce, where an orgy of glass-smashing made the hall look like a bombed-out crystal palace.) Basketball games began to involve a kind of group monomania, centered on the wiry figure of Mickey Greenberg, upon whose shoulders fell the burden of carrying the team. And so we sat and asked, pleaded and implored the team to give the ball to him, the star, who did not relish the role. But he scored 45 one night, and brought light into a some- what dim season. It was a year of chaos. Dr. Freimarck, lecturing on Gulliver's Travels found that the stage was ascending and descending and waved gamely to a delirious audience. A campus cop, entrusted with giving out numbered I.B.M. cards on registration eve, cracked under the pressure and started giving them in the early evening, to anyone who happened by. Word began to filter out and by about 10:30 there was a virtual stampede of anguished boys from the dorms. (At this hour, of course, the girls were utterly trapped.) Scalpers started selling low numbered cards and Mr. Rishel was almost lynched when he arrived, roused from an evening of partying. Registration procedure was henceforth changed. Chaos extended to the great, rich and famous. W. H. Auden, resplendent in orange hush-puppies, lost his teeth before the unbelieving eyes of a properly reverent audience and Nelson Rockefeller was happy, very happy in fact, to be at Harpur with his old friend and trusted colleague, Glenn Bartlett. As finals approached, the primary uncertainty concerned the effects of the summer semester. A lot of things were being discussed in grandiose terms for the year 1963-64: curfews and the grading system must go, everything must be re-evaluated. But the one thing that was sure midst the flying debris was that the school had acquired an identity, and a certain air of excitement and spontaneity, and this would not easily be undone. 15