Herald The Ouom Daily Enuu published Haadn through Friday during Ike college year I Jan. 5: Feb. 23: Mar. 2, 3, S, 9.10 and 11; Mar. 13 through 30; June 1.2 and 3 by the ' Publication* Board oi the University of Oregon. Entered aa aeeond claas natter _rate*: $5 per acbooi year; Ml _are those of the writer and do net pretend to of Ike ASOO or of the University. Editorial* are written by the the members af the editorial staff. Yes, It's Someone ( Special j See that nice looking worn- 0 an over there? B We're kind of proud to £ have her here. Know why? Because she’s someone. |g Someone who was brought S up in another generation, but Vi understands that some things ■ ' hawe changed. Or at least . she’s willing to give lip serv- 2 ice to that idea. Someone we like to intro duce our friends to. Someone who understands why we don’t write regu larly. Someone who fusses over us a little, yet feels we are old enough to stand alone. If we slip, though, she’s there. ’ Someone who stands by us when we're right, but will tell us if she thinks we're wrong. ; Someone who, in addition to all this, has all those nice qualities that poets attribute to her. Not being endowed ' with poetic skill, we won't even attempt this. There’s a chance, though, that the poets ^ are using the better approach. She’s someone, all right. Someone special. The disquieting thought.. [^> V r ... and the ‘best’ girls. [^> THIS COLLEGE LIFE 1953's Student: No Intellectual, But Solid By BUI Gurney tmwH Mhi|1«| Mh> College days tend, after a few years to take an aura of the In finitely desirable to the alumnus. Truly, they are perhaps the best days of one’s life, and should be savored, and appreciated, like fine wine. Let us investigate. Let's take a long, hard look at the Univer sity of Oregon today. Not at its buildings, or its faculty, but at its students—for they are the university. Robert Maynard Hutchins once said “A university is a community of scholars.. Was he right in the case of Oregon? We do study. We have to, or we do not stay long. Is it the search for ideas, or the storing away of financially useful facts that we are about? It would seem to de pend—the prevailing atmosphere surely is not one of intellectu ality. There are some who have sparks of serious scholarship, oth ers who sport intellectual pretsn tions. In the main, however, we are not seekers after ageless Truth so much as after grades and a diploma and a "good” job. The males must look forward to service in the armed forces, a somewhat disquieting thought in the middle of this no-so-cold war. In us, you see, is not the flame of chauvinism, avante garde lib eralism; nor do we swallow gold fish, or espouse causes. There is, among us, a lack of unbridled enthusiam for any thing, it seems. Terhaps the world is too much with us. Per haps we read of Malenkov, and the atom bomb, and the New York vice trials, and our illu sions are “down the drain,” to use a current campus col loquialism. Conventionality is perhaps our outstanding attribute. We are orthodox, and aren’t desirous of setting the world on fire. We , know it Is already burning, so we just hope the somewhat tenu ous status quo will remain extant long enough for us to get de grees. Wendell Wilkie once said: “If a man isn't a radical at 20, there's something wrong with his heart; if he is at 30, there's some thing wrong with his head.” Somehow, we seem to have con founded Mr. Wilkie's aphorism, for we are not radicals, nor is there anything basically amiss in our hearts. We have only the outward stamp of maturity, and it is a hothouse product of trou bled times. Our outward calm en ables us to face what is hard impassively, if not with genuine understanding. Meanwhile, we spend our tigie in various ways. We study. We drink coffee at the Student Union and Taylors. We go to picnics, to house dances, and to movies. Among us, to be “pinned,” or engaged to be engaged, is a mark of social prestige, of having made the team. This pinning is a rela tively new sort of custom. Per haps it is one more reflection of our desire for certainty in all things. Are we degenerate, and pro miscuous? Not any more so, probably, than they were in the 1920s or 30s. If we are, our trans gressions are performed quietly, with little adolescent pride in Knowing About Life. We've known for a long time, so the thrill of the forbidden has been removed from sex. * The climate at Oregon has been subtly changed through deferred living. There is more homogeneity because most of us lived in dormi tories, at least for a year. This is not to say that social strata have been abolished, for they have not. The Greeks, as they have long been, are the hard core of the campus. They get the “best*’ girls, and the top activity jobs, and generally represent the University. Extra-curricular activities are not In general favor. Few strive to be “wheels,” Or “Big Men and Women on Campos..” Most are more pragmatic, and say: "If I'm going to spend that much time, I want to get paid for It.” So they work in kitchens, or lumber mills, or jerk sodas, Or mow lawns, be cause the cost of education Is high, and taxrldden parents can’t bear the whole burden. pregon is not a large school, with its enrollment of about 4, 000. The atmosphere seems friendly, to us who know it. Somehow, we have acquired a reputation as a "snob school,” and a "country club." This is largely unfounded, at least in 1953. The postwar influx of seri ous veterans is gone, but our stu dents come mainly from the state’s high schools- normal kids, most of them, who don't have any, axes to grind, or want to live fast and loose. They drink, many of them, but not to excess, and largfly be cause they enjoy it. Drinking, to them, is not a ritual, or a show of defiance. Two years ago, beer was removed from the campus, which action probably has not de creased its consumption one bit. The campus is also something else; it is a number of exclusive little worlds. In each professional school, in some more than others, there is a way of life, a unique flavor. Taken as a whole, the Univer sity represents an attempt, a se rious try, for something better in man. Where it fails, it does not fail miserably. Graduates are prepared to fill their toles in so ciety with adequate knowledge of ■ its rules, which is perhaps all one may' ask of a state uni versity. TWO VIEWS (DIVERGENT) OF A THING CALLED TAPPING By Bob Funk, Emerald Columnist It was the all-campus picnic, and she had just put a slight stain of potato salad on the two-millionth or so paper plate. She was part of a jolly good-time, good-food assembly line that reached from Thirteenth Street northward into a group of mothers. She was, as were all the members of the food line, a member of a Woman’s Honorary. First there were three Traumas in uniform, then a member of the Woman’s Pastime Poetry Club, and then our heroine ixieeu, uiesseu m au un-me-snoui der blue formal with an I Eta honorary emblem emblazoned across the bodice, which was of gathered tulle with suspended Rhinestones. There was a lull in the eating and procuring of food, and from about a half-mile to the north, in the vicinity Of the Royal Court and Sometimes Music platform, came the whine of a public address system. The member of the honorary caught her breath, and across the rows of food lines fifty other I Etas also caught their breath, which caused a considerable dis turbance around that area. From the distance a soft female voice, veiled with Junior Prom fatigue, said “the members of the Satur day Night Dignity Group, senior women’s honorary, will now tap ..and from the manhole in front of Friendly there emerged the president of the Dignity Club, parrying a bouquet of Calla lillies and wearing “My GPA” perfume. Behind her marched sixteen other Dignity ladies, carrying perfume atomizers full of hy drogen gas. The band, in the dis tance, began playing “Land of the Empire Builders,” hesitat ingly. The Dignity Club members wound in and out of the crowd, at tempting to spot tappees. From the center of the group a young wom an waved the Gerlinger Cup, which was full of lemonade, and shouted “here I am girls.” They surrounded her solemnly (Dear winner of the Gerlinger Cup: when we wrote this we didn’t know who you would be, lady, honest); as the fourteenth member filed past, she raised her atomizer and sprayed the Gerlinger Cup Winner with gas. The fifteenth member struck a match to her, and she shot into flame. The sixteenth member wept happily. Everyone cheered. “Dignity Club taps Leemoan Gruck,” the public address system said. The I Eta member stood at her post, straining with every muscle. Perhaps it was for nothing, she thought, that she had climbed to this pinnacle of activity points. Who else had been more imagin ative, more aggressive, on sub committee for forced sales for the I Eta Icky sale her freshman year? Who else had risen during Trauma meeting her sophomore year and said, “I think this year we should do something real nice?” Several cheers rent the air as more junior women blazed into the Dignity Club, and among that number were several of the I Eta faithful. The I Eta Of course, it’s all a matter of opinion whether the tradi tional rigmarole of Junior Weekend means anything. Some say it’s important—oth ers just laugh. Take, for ex ample, these two discussions of a senior women’s honorary —one in fact, the other fancy. The Editor member stood trembling, and a ’ tear fell into the remains of the potato salad. And then, suddenly, there was a sudden (good word, sudden) blare of music from the band, and the trees parted over her head and the sun fell upon her. The crowd parted, and the ladies of Saturday Night Dignity Group tripped lightly over the lawn. The I Eta member held her breath. Her eyes were fixed upon the Dignity President. Her mouth was slightly ajar; a fly flew in, and then out again, landing finally in the salad. The Dignity Club came onward, onward, and wound once, twice, three times about her. In the distance she could hear her mother singing “Hail, hail, the Gang’s all here,” and her so rority sisters singing “Anchored in Quadruple Eta.” And as the twelfth member passed by, our hetoine felt the blast of hydro gen gas. Ecstatically, she saw herself put to flames. The public address system was announcing her arrival on Olympus. She stood there, crying happily, until they brought the fire ex tinguisher to put her out. By Members of Mortar Board When the black-garbed Mortar Boards wind their way through the picnic Saturday afternoon to tap new members, they will be performing - one of their last official functions of a busy year. Behind this simple process of presenting outstanding junior women with the traditional red rose is a long and thorough process. As Mortar Board is a national honorary, each woman who is selected for mem bership must have the qualities by which each Mortar Board member in every cnapter nas Deen cnosen— scholarship, leadership, and service to the University. The process of selecting new members for Mortar Board Is a careful and thorough one. When the Mortar Boards begin to scan the lists of outstanding women, they consider not only what they know about each girl, but also what deans, department heads, and campus leaders have to rec ommend. If possible, no avenue of student participation is over looked. When the lists are complete, the affirmative plan of voting goes into operation. By this system, no one is “black-balled.” The whole process is a positive one—positive discussion and positive voting. When any girl receives a unani mous vote, conducted by secret ballot, she is declared elected to membership. The course of each girl’s cpllege career is carefully taken into con sideration. One of the firjgt points is the scholastic record, for schol arship is one of the three prime requisites. The minimum require ment is .3 above the campus aver age for the past five terms. This year, each girl considered had to have at least a 2.872. In outstand ing cases exceptions of a .1 were permitted. The second criterion is leader ship. To qualify each girl had to have shown definite signs of cap able leadership, ability to handle responsibility by herself. Contrary to a common misconception, Mor tar Board ia not a collection of * presidents. Leadership ability is probably most frequently evidenced by election to a position of president, but being a president of some organization is not itself a quail- ’ fication for the senior women’s honorary. The ability to lead is „ found in those who may not hold the "top spot," and Mortar Board has sought to recognize this. " The third necessity is service to the University. Thia does not' mean a girl must have kept busy for three years in a large number of campus activities. The activities of the girls, whether they be in several fields or in only one or two, should add up to some de-’ finite accomplishment that is N credit t