Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly [1959-1960]

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THE J

cott

FALL 1959 Vol. 38, No.
ALUMNAE QUARTERL

CONTENTS

Ann Worthy Johnson, Editor
Dorothy Weakley, Assistant Editor

Playwright's Progress ..... Pate Hale '55 4

Dear Mother So Far I Love It 6

The Young Intellectual Hollis Edens 8

Oak Ridge Comes to Agnes Scott

. Edwina Davis Christian '46 11

Prize-Winning Poets 12

Dr. Calder Discusses Race for the Moon .... 13

Class News Eloise Hardeman Ketchin 14

Worthy Notes 27

COVER:

Gayle Rowe '61, Richmond, Virginia, studies amidst falling
leaves beside Presser Hall. Photograph by Charles Pugh.
Frontispiece (opposite) : This shot of Investiture begins a
series this year on Agnes Scott traditions. Photograph by Kerr
Studios.

THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

Officers

Bella Wilson Lewis '34, President
Evelyn Baty Landis '40, Vice-President
Kathleen Buchanan Cabell '47,

Vice-President
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48,

Vice-President

Marybeth Little Weston '48,

Vice-President
Gene Slack Morse '41, Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson '38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin
House Manager

Dorothy Weakley '56,

Assistant Director of Alumnae Affair

Alumnae Trustees

Mary Prim Fowler '29

Catherine Wood Marshall LeSotird '36

Chairmen

Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn '38,

Class Council
Sara Frances McDonald '36, Constitutior
Mary Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Louisa Aichel Mcintosh '47, Entertainm.
Rose Mary Griffin Wilson '48, House
Jean Bailey Owen '39, Nominations
Virginia Brown McKenzie '47, Property
Jean Grey Morgan '31, Publications
Dorothy Cheek Callaway '29,

Special Events
Barbara Smith Hull '47,

Vocational Guidance

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year (November,
February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College
at Decatur, Georgia. Yearly subscription. S2.00. Single copy 50 cents. Entered
as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of
August 24. 1912. MEMBER OF AMERICAN AlUMNI COUNCIL

MISS CARRIE SCANDRETT CAPS A SENIOR IN THE TRADITIONAL OBSERVANCE OF THE INVESTITURE CEREMONY

Pi

aywri;

Progress

ROBERT P0RTERF1ELD

Proudly Presents

1959

Barter Theatre
Of Virginia

WORLD PREMIERE

VOICE OF THE WHIRLWIND

by Pat Hale

with

Mitch Ryan, Virginia James, William Corrie

Mon. June 29 thru Thurs. July 2

GIGI
Fri. July 3 thru Sat. July 4

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

by Edmond Rostand

with Mitch Ryan

A World Wide Success
Mon. July 6 thru Sat. July 11

Others To Be Announced

Handbill of premiere production of
Voice of the Whirlwind

Editor's Note: We asked Paf Hale to write
an article about her current play or about
being a playwright. She has done both in this
article. Pat has an option for an off-Broadway
production of "Whirlwind" this season and
asks us all to keep our fingers crossed. She is
currently in Abingdon, Virginia, at the Barter
Theatre, "ghostwriting" Robert Porterfield's
autobiography.

Playwrights are very popular
people, in the abstract. To be a
Young Novelist nowadays is a
tedious platitude, and it is a monoto-
nous cliche to be a Young Poet, but a
Young Dramatist, is somehow, re-
freshing, original, even a little bit less
unnecessary than his colleagues.
Everybody, from the highest-paid
stagehand to the lowest-paid actor,
knows that What Our Theatre Needs
Today Is More Good Playwrights.
Actors love us. (Is there a part in it
for me?) So do directors, costume
mistresses, scenic designers and
lighting technicians, because the play-
wright, second only to the producer,
creates jobs in the theatre. Commit-
tees are formed to give us a hearing,
like The New Dramatists Committee.
Off-Broadway beckons us with low-
budget productions of avant-garde
masterpieces. Lately the Fords have
taken us up. with Foundation to sub-
sidize us. As a playwright, one is be-
wailed in the breach, be-laureled by
mass meetings, and even allowed to
wax pompous in alumnae quarterlies.
Eventually, however, all this lovely
attention demands that one come for-
ward with three acts of a script.
Eventually, one does. Everyone is
curiously disappointed. They had ex-
pected, somehow, a full-blown genius.
Not getting it, they turn upon us in
anger and disillusion. Why can't we
be eloquent and true-to-life and Write
Big and build proper second act cli-
maxes and turn out exciting, contem-
porary, sexy, theatrical, commercial,
angry, star-vehicle Hits? Why are
there so many bad plays in circula-
tion? What This Country Needs Is
More Good Playwrights. Piles of our
unsolicited manuscripts collect dust
upon the desks of agents and pro-

ducers. Off-Broadway does revivals
bad Elizabethan melodramas wi
sufficiently lurid titles rather than ri
their $15,000 or $20,000 on the u
tried work of an unknown playwrigl
The New Dramatist Committee linn
its membership to 25. The Fords,
turns out, are only interested in pta
wrights with a couple of profession
productions in their background. A;:
Broadway, everybody knows, requii
a Name. The ladder of success a
pears to have several rungs missin

In spite of our well-advertisi
plight in America, I cannot in ;
realism envy my European colleague
Europe is a magnificent continent f
playgoing. But its very mass of class'
culture must prove an oppressi'
weight to the young dramatist. Whi
I was in England I saw, within o
week, two plays directed by Dougl:
Seale, one of Britain's eminent t
rectors. One was Shakespeare's Kit<
John, at the Stratford Memorial Tl
atre. The other was a new plat
Lizard on the Rock, done at Birmiri
ham's Repertory Theatre. King Joi
was brilliantly produced, with sta:
sumptuous settings and costumes, ai
world-wide excitement. Everyboi
was pretty happy that Shakespea
(in his apprentice period, God he
him, at the time of King John) car
through as well as he did. It w
terribly Early Shakespeare, to
sure, but how wonderful of the
Boy to provide us the excuse for sui
a spectacular production !

Lizard On The Rock, it seemed
me, had many of the faults of Ki
John turgid, lengthy dialogue, bo)
basticism, inept jumps from see
to idea. Yet it had, I thought, t
same things that made King Jon
exciting interesting people in

THE AGNES SCC

L.

t Hale, left, discusses her play with Dot
Camp (another young playwright) and
bert Porterfield, managing director.

3v Pat Hale '55

dents charged with stress, and a vi-
irant sense of theatricality. It was
weakly produced and seems to have
leen ignored. What This Country
Jeeds Is More Good Playwrights.

As a practicing playwright I resent
he overworked Shakespearean Anal-
ogy. "Shakespeare wrote two master-
deces a year; why does it take you
o long?" The Tennessee Williams"
Inalogy is bad enough. Nevertheless,

am tempted to make one point,
ihakespeare had an opportunity to
ee produced early plays that were
wkward, inept, and, if my First Folio
erves me correctly, occasionally bor-
ng. Why can't I? He got better. May-
I will too. I will defend passion-
tely the right of the new dramatist
o write a bad first play. And if this
rst play, or second or third or fourth
| fifth, has interesting people doing
nteresting things in a theatrical
ray, I defend his right to have it
reduced inept, pretentious, over-
mbitious, awkward or ever obscure
hough it may be. Plavwriting is a
ifficult, specialized art form, a pains-
akinglv acquired craft, and there is
io course or textbook half so good as

bored matinee audience.

My agent was trying to market
Voice of the Whirlwind" among the
ff-Broadway producers in New York
ast winter. He had little success. An
riginal script is hard to sell, because
n off-Broadway producer would
ather do a revival unless he can dis-
over a new Tennessee Williams. And.
aid my agent, someday he must be
old that he won't. To create a new
ennessee Williams takes directors,
leatres, actors, producers and. above
11, audiences. Providing them may
e expensive, and it may be embar-
assing, but it is unquestionably

LUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1959

The full cast of Voice of the Whirlwind takes a bow.

necessary, that is, if the theatre is
genuinely serious about bringing to
blossom all its budding young play-
wrights.

Actually, I have been luckier than
most. The first thirty years in thea-
tre, they tell me, are the hardest, and
though I still have nearlv twenty-six
to go, I've had two full-length plays
produced and several television
scripts. I started writing when I was
seven, but I was a junior at Agnes
Scott when I first realized I was des-
tined to be lost to the theatre. During
a playwriting course with Miss
Roberta Winter I wrote three one-
act plays, and then one of them,
"Words Without Knowledge,"' was
produced. I was so exhilarated by the
dramatic impact, the excitement and
immediacy, the sheer sense of theatri-
cality, of this new mode of writing,
that I knew I never wanted to be any-

thing but a playwright. So 1 sat down
and wrote to Mr. Robert Porterfield.
founding director of the Barter Thea-
tre of Virginia. Shakespeare and
Moliere and Ibsen, said I, had be-
come great playwrights because they
had great theatres for which to work
and write. As an aspiring dramatist.
I wanted such a workshop. How
about the Barter Theatre?

Being one of the great and gallant
gentlemen of the theatre. Mr. Porter-
field replied with a letter which I
still cherish. "Eugene O'Neill said if
you want to write for the theatre,
pick up a hammer and join one. I
want to give you that opportunity.
Bring your hammer." I brought my
hammer, and I got my name on the
program as Resident Playwright. I
swept the stage, painted scenery,

Continued on Page 13

There are moments when an actor becomes no longer an alien but a collaborator.

77?/^4e.x

o&^ ..."

J)eu %diw

For those of you who want statistics, here are a f
on Agnes Scott's new students as of September, 19;
when the College began its seventy-first acaden
session. There are 207 young women who are havi
their first experience of Agnes Scott this year; 198
them are Freshmen. 4 transferred from other colleges
universities and 3 are classified as "specials" not in t
degree program of the College. They came from 19 sta
in the nation and from China. Venezuela, the Belgi
Congo, Germany and France: those from the last tin
are Americans. The 207 new students form almost oi
third of a total student body of 647. Approximately oi
third of the Freshmen live in Inman Hall, one-third
Rebekah Scott Hall and one-third in "Main." Most alu
nae will recall living in one dormitory as freshmen wi
their classmates; today, freshmen live with juniors a
seniors in several dormitories. A member of the De'i
of Students" staff lives in each dormitory; her title as
serves in this capacity is Senior Resident. Each fresbni
has a Junior Sponsor and a Sophomore Helper and ea
is soon assigned to a Faculty Advisor.

a4**

-?7t.

/

PHOTOGRAPHS B\
JIM BRANTLEY

k

I fu 3 JJwi it. . ,

What these statistics cannot tell about new students are things
hat are basic to the kind of education Agnes Scott offers: the kind
pf person the new student is herself, reflecting the careful, thought-
ul, difficult process of selectivity which the Committee on Admis-
ions engages in constantly, and the way in which the numberless
esources of the College are brought together for freshmen during
heir first days, in a program known by the rather cold term "orien-
ation." There is surely nothing even cool about this program. The
/armth of all the people who make up the college community em-
races the new student as she takes tentative first steps on the campus
nd carries her through the seemingly intricate processes of registra-
ion and course selection, the impact of first classes, the constant
ncounters with persons new to her. This experience lays good
round work for the new student's whole career at Agnes Scott. It
i reflected best in the letters freshmen write home during their first
reeks at Agnes Scott, and would that we might print some of these,
hining through the few we've been privileged to read this fall is a
"ue image of the College being passed on to mother and father,
he worries that get home via the mails seem to be typical of fresh-
len anywhere: spending too much money, bedspreads which don't
latch curtains the roommate brought. The delights that get home
3em unique to Agnes Scott's kind of education.

^J^Lc^ ,

Tlie

YOUNG INTELLECTUA1

For young or old, the intellectiu

life, informed with heai

and conscience, promises tin

most for women in todays worh

By Hollis Edens

1ET ME assure you that I am fully conscious of being
honored myself today as I share the spirit of this
_J important day with the students. Agnes Scott Col-
lege stands for much that is meaningful in higher educa-
tion today. Those whom she asks to share her platforms
are always honored.

I want to address myself briefly to a subject that is
increasingly important these days, the role of the intel-
lectual in our modern America. It is fitting to dwell on
this topic here because of the lively intellectual climate
of this college. Equally important, today I must assume
that I am addressing the young intellectuals of this insti-
tution. You are being honored primarily for one quality
which you have demonstrated intellectual excellence
perhaps the one laurel an educational institution, above
all institutions, can claim as its peculiar prerogative. It
is true that we honor long and faithful service in our
colleges; we do not forget generous donors, nor should
we; and sometimes we even honor college presidents who
have survived. But primarily we seek out and reward the
ability to reason, to doubt and to ponder. To me, then,
you are young intellectuals and I will not quibble with
those who prefer a more precise definition. It is im-
portant, however, to discern the difference between in-
telligent and intellectual. You are intelligent through no
effort of your own. It requires conscious effort to be an
intellectual. A merely intelligent woman may be satisfied
with surface answers and with the techniques and for-
mulas to facilitate t! comforts of living. The intellectual

is concerned first with the dimensions of the mind, wi
creative thought, with noble ideas, with the enrichmt
of our cultural heritage. The intellectual who sets
herself the task of looking at her world clearly and ti
ing to understand it often will find herself peering in
the mist over the bow of the ship, while the rest of t
passengers are playing bridge on the stern unconcern
with the progress or direction of the ship.

Most of you who choose to accept that label may
of two minds about it. Before you came to college soi
of you were courted and sought after in a fashion ti
would have been unheard of a generation ago. After y
came some of you received further attention in the fo]
of special placement, independent study programs a
the like. Now you are enjoying a few more rewards. '
to some of you the whole pattern has been pleasant
not relaxing at least as you see it with one part
your mind.

Lonely Life

Doubtless, you have pondered deeply about all of tJ
special attention and some of you may have occasiona
wondered, is it worth it all? You recall that you ha
had to pay a price, not only in the time and the se
denial required to discipline and properly use yo
minds, but socially as well. As far back as high schc
you may have labored under another label to some
your casual classmates you were a "brain." Indeed, ev

8

THE AGNES SCC

an this campus you may have found resentment mixed
with admiration for your academic success. In short,
you may have wondered if it really is worth it. You may
lave asked, isn't it a lonely life being an intellectual ?

For a large part the intellectual pilgrimage of the
young student is one of loneliness. Seeking authentic
mswers to the mind's questions about the universe, striv-
ing courageously to enlarge the vision, uncomfortably
/entillating and sometimes blowing away comfortable be-
iefs do not invite convivial company. It takes courage
:o change, to be different, and sometimes you will wish
erribly to return to the simpler and more familiar truths.
But the mind cannot go back. Disciplined intelligence
,vill find its true integrity only in moving from the nega-
ive to the positive, in venturing into the unknown, in
rying to answer the questions that have always plagued
nen's minds. Such questions as. what is the common de-
nominator of men's minds, what do men and women
vant most at all times and in all places and conditions?
rhe intellectual seeks a point of eminence from which to
/iew such questions, a point which transcends the local
ind the present and views in perspective the universality
md timelessness of truth. Such point of eminence is
arely attained while attending a political rally, at a
:abin party on Saturday night or in watching a majorette
it the head of a marching band, however enjoyable such
sights and experiences may be. I suspect it will continue
:o be a bit lonely being an intellectual.

Impecunious Life

It has been suggested that the intellectual is not only
onely but also impecunious, that knowledge and insight
ire pursued for their own sake and that they have seldom
jeen financially rewarded. This point of view has been
:ncouraged by the oft repeated toast, "Here's to scholar-
ship and may it never be of any use to anyone." Indeed
he tradition is so firmly established that the salaries of
ollege personnel have only rarely violated it although
here are signs that the informed public is beginning to
understand that it is not necessary to be poorly paid to
>e an intellectual.

Aside from the question of material rewards, or the

ack of them, there is a genuine thrill for the individual

vho responds to the excitement of intellectual competi-

-ion, who enjoys engaging in creative conversation, who

s conscious of being intellectually awake. There is some-

hing to be said for the excitement of the game itself.

he real intellectual, like an athlete, is at his best when

e is flexing his muscles, and like the athlete he cannot

reak training without damage to himself. Traditionally

he daily exercises take place on a field of debate and

iscussion. You know the rules of the game. It is not

he slugging match of the dormitory where discussion is

onducted at the top of one's voice; it is always char-

cterized by the participant's willingness to say quietly

I don't know." To the keen player the game has endless

leasures, perhaps because no one ever really wins. In

act, the game never ends.

Before we wrap the cool wisp of snobbery about your

row and retire to the intellectual parlors for genteel dis-

ussions, let us take a further look. It is heady business

dmiring your own halo. Is it too much to suggest to

LUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1959

the young intellectual that her honors and her thrills
cannot be enjoyed apart from certain responsibilities?
This may sound like the monotonous refrain of a com-
mencement address. Yet, I must remind myself and you
that some things are repeated, however monotonously,
because they are true. Perhaps responsibility weighs more
heavily upon all of us now because our problems seem
so complex and are shared on such a world-wide basis.
We have had a vivid example of this in the recent visit
of the Soviet Premier. Responsibility, though sometimes
a wearisome word, remains with us whether we like it
or not.

Responsible Role

If you will permit a personal reference. I recall that
during my undergraduate days I was frequently baffled
by the repeated injunction to be responsible. It reminded
me of my earlier years of childhood when I was told,
all too often I thought, to be good. In later years I have
learned how difficult it is to define the responsible role
of the student leader, especially the intellectual leader,
on a college campus. And sometimes I have had sym-
pathy for the complaint of students who have been asked
too often to confine their criticism to the "constructive"
variety. I suspect that sometimes they were right when
they replied that this may be another way of saying
"'criticize but do not offend, do not suggest any change,
do not rock the boat." It is hard to be a young intel-
lectual and to believe you have discovered a segment of
virgin truth and then be restrained from giving it to the
world. Older intellectuals by and large have made the
rules and they are good ones. They operate under a
mandate to investigate fully, to bring understanding, as
well as criticism to bear upon human problems. The
reservations they have in permitting the same rules to
apply to young minds center on the word mature, and
this has no reference to chronological age but to a state
of mind. Let me illustrate. The young intellectual who has
prepared carefully a research paper representing the best
thought of a semester's work is likely to present the
judgment of a mature mind. Much time and thought and
weighing of evidence have gone into the production. All

Continued on Page 10

About the Author

Dr. Edens is president of Duke
University in Durham, North Caro-
lina. This article is his Honors Day
address at Agnes Scott, given Oc-
tober 7. Dr. Edens, a graduate of
Emory University (where he and
Agnes Scott's President Alston were
students together), holds graduate
degrees from both Harvard and
Emory Universities. He is also a
former vice-chancellor of the Uni-
versity of Georgia, and a member
of President Eisenhower's U.S. Ad-
visory Commission on Educational
Exchange.

Dr. Edens

Continued from Page 9

too often, however, the same student in a letter to the
student newspaper may dispose of the knotty problems in
college administration or state affairs on the basis of a
few minutes' reflection. In such an instance we have the
right to insist that responsibility cannot be slipped on
and off like a fall coat.

The exhilaration of being an intellectual may lead into
another pitfall. If the accumulation of knowledge and the
ability to reason do not inevitably produce good judg-
ment, neither do they inevitably produce personal initia-
tive. Not long ago a student complained to me that he
was not being sufficiently challenged in one of his classes.
He possessed high intellectual potential and had been told
as much from time to time. But it is fair to state that his
attitude was "well, here I am. I have brought my mind
to your campus. What are you going to do about it?"
I think we were trying to do a great deal about it but we
needed his help. He had not confided his boredom to his
instructor, from whom he could have received special
help, advanced reading lists and the stimulation of per-
sonal discussion. Indeed, the student had even failed to
explore the stacks in the library. I repeat that the obliga-
tion of the intellectual is to use his own mind as well as
the minds of his associates. Personal initiative, then, is
an ingredient which must go into the making of a young
intellectual.

Human Experience

This line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that the
young intellectual must break away from the isolation in
which she finds herself. To understand our society one
must range widely through its bypaths and have a grasp
of the ways of all of its inhabitants. It is possible for the
young intellectual, enraptured bv the heights she occu-
pies, to associate only with other exotic birds and observe
life at a great distance below her. If the intellect needs
exercise it also savors contrast and challenge. I think that
both are available on most campuses, but they also exist
far from the academic world. It is sometimes a surprise
to us to find lively and profound minds quietly struggling
with ideas in the strangest places, completely unaware
that we academics are carrying the world on our
shoulders. If one is to learn to like as well as serve the
masses, he will gather his data from the broad base of
human experience.

It would be follv to ignore the laboratory of a swiftly
changing new world. Need I more than suggest its ma-
terial advances? Not long ago a group of writers helped
Fortune magazine celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary
bv preparing a series of essays about the technological
advances we may expect in the next twenty-five years.
After noting the gains of the last century (which encom-
passed more technical and scientific achievement than
in the previous thousand years) , thev confidently pre-
dicted a future of sniraling wonders. The age of nuclear
power for a peaceable civilization is upon us. Born in
war and baptized in the fires of destruction, it is being
shaped for constructive purposes. They tell us that atomic
batteries for peaceful use will be commonplace bv 1980.
Small atomic generftors will be installed in homes for a
lifetime of use with.: <: charging. Gas, coal and oil will

10

then be devoted to chemical wonders. The sun, the tide:
and the winds will be harnessed beyond present expecta
tions. The briny waters of the ocean will be purified t(
make the waste areas of the earth blossom and new fooc
and chemical products will come from the seas. Ever
guided missiles and pilotless planes will carry peacetimt
loads in transcontinental flight. Electronic machines wil
compute, remember and record in the routine jobs nov
handled by people. Atomic equipment will take out mon
of the drudgery. Innovations will change the method o
doing things and new products will call for new techni
ques and new brainpower to supervise. In summary, then
is no element of material progress we know today thai
will not seem as a mere prelude to 1980 when we read
that date.

Now this rhapsody of progress contains some sombe
notes, not the least of which is, who is to manage thi;
new world? The demand for mental competence will be
vastly enlarged in the next twenty-five years. Is it too
much to expect, then, that we shall increasingly single!
out the intellectual in our society and put such scarci
abilities to work in the right places. It is hardly necessar;
to point out the advantages that are likely to accrue to
those who hold talents that will continue to be in shori
supply.

Finally, I should like to impose upon the intellectua
the responsibility to be concerned with character anci
with the development of heart as well as mind. Actuall;
by definition she is expected to deal with ethical questions 1
She is expected to ask, What is good? What is lasting
and what is ephemeral? One who wishes to develop ;
broad education is never far from moral stability, civiii
responsibility and social competence. I believe that wi
must be concerned with these things in a society thai
seems to have less time to devote to them. In her preoccuii
pation with intellectual competence, she who believes in
reason must ask, to what is this competence directed? II
this is preaching, let it be so. I do not retreat from ml
point.

Intellect and Character

I am reinforced in this view by the judgment of other
who have tried to examine the relationship between inn
tellect and character. Just recently, a study was under
taken to discover what qualities in different colleges com
tribute to the development of student character. A mas
of data and conjecture was collected. I was most imi
pressed by the "major conclusion" that was reached
namely: "that the conditions conducive to the developi
ment of character are in many ways the same ones whic
are conducive to good teaching and sound learning." In
deed, intellectual excellence and force of character wer
found, again and again, to be "inextricably interwovei
in the truly educated man."

In conclusion, then, I would like to recall with you th
words of William Jewett Tucker, written half a centur
ago:

"Be not content with the commonplace in character an
more than with the commonplace in ambition or intel
lectual attainment. Do not expect that you will make an'
lasting or very strong impression on the world througl
intellectual power without the use of an equal amount o<
conscience and heart."

THE AGNES SCOT

Thomas Stone, technician, in the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies' mobile radioisotope laboratory parked by

Agnes Scott's Science Hall.

OAK RIDGE COMES
TO AGNES SCOTT

By Ed

wma

Davis Christian '46

GHT students and four teachers at Agnes Scott Col-
*e are taking one of the first off-the-premises courses
the uses of radioisotopes offered by the Oak Ridge
stitute of Nuclear Studies.

The institute's mobile radioisotopes laboratory is parked
hind the Science Hall on the Agnes Scott College
mpus. It is the focal point of a two-week course being
lght by scientists from the institute. They are Drs.
T. Overman, Adrian Dahl, Elizabeth Rona, H. K. Ezell,
, Thomas Stone, Lee Bow man and Lowell Muse.
The laboratory is a 30-foot, bus type vehicle equipped
th laboratory sinks, air conditioning and a power gen-
itor. The scientists and technicians conduct laboratory
sions in the vehicle and give lectures in an Agnes
att classroom.

Radioisotopes the subject under study are by-pro-
fcts of the atomic energy process.

'They have opened up new avenues of investigation
every field of scientific endeavor," Dr. William J.
erson, chairman of the College's chemistry department,

said. He referred to their use as "tracers" of various
substances and activities in the body.

Agnes Scott is one of two Southern colleges the other
is Wofford College selected for the initial program. Dr.
Frierson said he understands the course will be evaluated
after the first two schools have been visited.

Faculty members taking the course are Dr. W. A.
Calder, professor of physics and astronomy; Dr. Julia
Gary, assistant professor of chemistry; Miss Nancy
Groseclose, assistant professor of biology, and Miss Anne
Salyerds, instructor in biology.

Students are Dorreth Doan, Becky Evans, Myra
Glasure, Kathryn John, Charlotte King, Warnell Neal,
Nancy Patterson and Martha Young. All the students are
seniors majoring in science.

Editor S Note: This article is reprinted by permission from The
Atlanta Journal of November 5, 1959. Edwina is a science writer for
the Journal.

IMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1959

11

PRIZE -WINNING POETS

Three alumnae poets speak to us in varying idioms -- and. win prizes

'Smiley" Williams Stoffel "44
won the 1959 Society Prize
of the North Carolina Poetry
Society with this poem which
has been published in The
Presbyterian Survey.

CEREMONY

I promised you to come when full spring made

Majestic shade

Of your encircling trees

And roses rioted on trellises

And garden wall.

In mind's forward flash I saw all these

And felt the welcome, ceremonial.

Unhurried, bountiful.

At last on this translucent day

Of bloom-abundant May,

I walk on velvet grass, look up at skies

Loved by your eyes.

And I, impoverished beyond belief.

Stand beside you at an opened door

Where you never were before.

Reception is now for you. abrupt and brief.

At last, at last I am come,
But to our most ancient home.

Janef Newman Preston

Marybeth Little Weston '48's
poem won second prize in
1957 Village Voice Poetry
l in New York City.

THE LONGING FOR GOD

Break upon me, Thou Mighty Sea !
Sweep in great waves across this empty shore;
With driving, surging fierce intensity-
Pulse with great power till I can bear no more.
Upon these burning sands let ocean flow,
This narrow shore be swallowed up in Thee,
By Thy eternal vastness let it know
The crushing weight of Thy immensity.
Leave no alternative to full submission.
No bit of shore untouched by swelling tide
Let every weight force from me full contrition
Till everything but Thee is swept aside.
This arrid shore waits, hungry for the sea.
let it again be overcome bv Thee.

Betty Williams Stoffel

Janef Newman Preston '21
is the winner oj the Society-
Prize of the Poetry Society of
Georgia for 1959. Her poem
is re-published by permission
from the Society's Yearbook.

THE MESSENGERS

All day each day crisp manila envelopes

freckle Madison Avenue and cross-town buses,

convey the bright ideas, rush proofs of the bright run

worlds of magazine, network and agency. Most

of the mercuries are thin legged boys with foolish smil

or shiny cuffed old men with old-country speech

or feet-dragging cripples with tragic faces

incongruity surpassing metaphors.

Yet a little sorrow of my own tags at the heels

of the messengers and the mockery

they hug to their ribs all unknowing.

I think how each day my proofs and messages

of love reach you by like ambassadors:

help that is frail, that comes on tardy feet,

and words that do not mirror the beauty

they are asked to take.

Marybeth Little Weston

12

THE AGNES SCO

PLAYWRIGHT

Continued from Page 5

3ulled the curtain, played a Roman
soldier in "Julius Caesar,'' and
vashed innumerable cocktail glasses
:or a production of "The Cocktail
5 arty." Also, I wrote plays.

Along about the third play, I en-
ered a contest. The Woodrow Wilson
Centennial Celebration Commission,
ponsored by the United States gov-
rnment and the State of Virginia,
wanted a play based on the life of
Voodrow Wilson. Delving into the
ubject, I found that Woodrow Wil-
on, far from being dishwater dull,
fas a man of deep passions and in-
3nse dreams, whose life, more than
ny other figure of recent times, fit
be pattern of the tragic hero. I
'rote "Hall of Mirrors" about the
aliant, doomed struggle which he
r aged for peace during the year
919. The Woodrow Wilson award,
hich I won, was production of my
lay and $750. On my passport I
sted playwright as my occupation
nd went to Europe.

The Play Itself

By the time I got back I had an-
:her play. "Words Without Knowl-
Ige," the play which inspired my
litial plunge into grease paint, had
mented and grown in my mind into
ree acts, with new characters, new
eas and events, and a new title
/oice of the Whirlwind." The basic
tuation is still there, for this is a
ay which has always been close

my heart. It is a play about the
rmoil stirred up in the family of
iel Andrews, a country preacher,
id his community when Sunday
ickson, a fiery, faith-healing re-
valist, pitches his tent in the West
irginia mountain town and tries to
iss a miracle. I was eager to see
staged from the time I first heard

read in a playwriting class. One
3ril morning I went over to th<
stor Hotel to have breakfast with
r. Porterfield, who was in New
Drk for the week, and read the
ay aloud to him. He was interested,
d wrote later for additional scripts,
it it was the following winter he-
re the play was put on his schedule,
nally, in June of this summer,
foice of the Whirlwind" became

my second full-length play to go into
production at the Barter Theatre.

It is supposed to be a pretty big
thrill for a writer to see live actors
with real eyes that open and close
get up on a stage and recite his
words. For me, the happiest time
comes when I am creating my plays
in the theatre of my imagination.
Then I can project and cast them to
my heart's desire, choosing among
Henry Irving and David Garrick and
Ethel Merman. (Will Kempe is cur-
rently taking the role of iJncle Sam
in my new comedy, "Uncle Sam's
Cabin." He is marvelous.) It is
frightening to relinquish to strangers
the children of one's fancy; painful
to be forced to expound and justify
their every word, and uncover the
secret springs with a banal line of
explanation. ("Hey, Will, what's the
line on this fellow, Hamlet? Naw,
nothing fancy, just a sentence or two,
something for the newspaper boys.")
Actors and directors are an infuriat-
ing and endearing people. They have
a deplorable tendency to think they
know more about your play and
how to write it than you do, but then
they turn around and do something
so marvelous and right and unex-
pected that you forgive them every-
thing. There are wonderful moments
in rehearsal when an actor's imagina-
tion leaps with yours and he becomes
no longer an alien but a collaborator.

Playwright and Audience

But the great thrill of production,
for me at least, is the audience. Dur-
ing and after the run of "Whirl-
wind" I was tremendously excited
by the response I had aroused in
people. Out of their sense of deep
concern, hot disagreement, sym-
pathy, identification or dissatisfac-
tion, they talked and wrote to me,
apologizing as strangers for their in-
trusion. But they were not strangers.
No one for whom Sunday Jackson
and Joel Andrews and Woodrow Wil-
son have taken on reality and im-
portance through me, no one with
whom I have shared my concern for
their lives and destinies, is a stranger
to me. Within the theatre, they have
become my friends. This is a play-
wright's greatest joy to discover
and create friends, out of his fierce,
unbearable passion for communica-
tion, in our crowded, lonely uni-
verse.

Dr. Colder

DR. CALDERDISCUSSES
RACE FOR THE MOON

Why do scientists want to go to
the moon? Only fifteen years ago,
during World War II, Dr. William
A. Calder, professor of physics and
astronomy, was doing work con-
cerned with developing torpedoes
that would destroy submarines. In
his work, he wished, as he often
said: "If only all of the energy and
time that is being consumed in this
project could be directed toward re-
search in astronomy rather than in
weapons to destroy mankind."

This wish seemed in the realm of
impossibility. "That is why today,
in this race for the moon," Dr.
Calder commented in a chapel talk,
"I can't complain; it's what I wished
for, so we might as well all enjoy
the race."

After discussing some areas of
scientific knowledge that could be
expanded by direct study of the
moon, Dr. Calder said:

"Today this contest between us
and the Russians is so unbelievable
as compared to the types of scien-
tific contest in the last war. It is too
good to be true that brains and facili-
ties are being used for pure science.
There is an honest exchange of
scientific ideas and information be-
tween the Russian and American
scientists. The scientists are not
going to start a war. In fact, if we
are not able to obtain world stability
through religion and morals per-
haps communication in scientific
matters could be a means to this
end."

JMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1959

13

\ \jKxa, . . .

'New Looks" Mark Several Spots on Campus this Fall

VTE IN August there was a fear in the minds of some
us who are year-rounders on the campus that the
>ors of the College might not be able to open for Agnes
:ott's seventy-first session. P. J. Rogers, Jr., whose title
Business Manager does not even remotely explain his
any functions and services for this campus, suffered
heart attack and just now, in late October, is in his
fice again for two hours a day. His staff, and many
hers, proved to have firm shoulders, in lieu of Mr.
)gers* ever stalwart ones, and the doors did get open
i time.

There are a few new looks on the campus which Mr.
jgers and his staff had completed this summer. The
d kitchen space in the rear wing of Rebekah Scott Hall
is been renovated for administrative offices, with a new
trance portico, and the parking lot adjacent to this
is paved and landscaped. This whole effort has made
r a pleasant feeling of space as one drives into the
mpus on Buttrick Drive.

The house on College Place long occupied b\ two
embers of the faculty. Miss Harn and Miss Omwake.
as practically rebuilt this summer to accommodate
ght students. Miss Harn and Miss Omwake purchased
house in Decatur last year and moved into their own
>me during the summer. Also renovated for use as a
ident cottage was East Lawn; this venerable old house
uld stand one more face-lifting how many times has
is been done in its many years? Most recently it had
:en used to house the department of education.
For returning students, perhaps the great change in
mpus buildings this summer was what happened to the
st wing of Rebekah Scott. In campus parlance we still
ie a term, even though 'tis anachronistic, "date parlor,
lere are several new, small date parlors now in this
ing of Rebekah. brightly painted and furnished, and
:ross the rear end of the wing are several booths and
tchen facilities. Also, President and Mrs. Alston coll-
ated the basement area of their home this summer
to an informal and cozy recreation room which
omises many good hours for students as they visit the
Istons.

The Alumnae House has new furniture and new in-
ibitants this fall. Four students are housed here for
e fall term: this is not easy living for them, in rooms

UMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1959

planned for transient occupancy, but ever resourceful,
they manage to create closet space literally out of thin air.

The new look in the Alumnae Office is addressing
equipment which to me and Dorothy Weakley is very
precious. We spent a great portion of the summer
months redoing almost 10.000 records on alumnae in
preparation for using the new equipment, part of which
has an electronic brain, and our only problem now is
that we have just human brains and have to learn to
feed the electronic one properly. The equipment was pur-
chased with funds of both the Alumnae Association and
the College, and other administrative offices on the cam-
pus use it. too.

A major area in which it will be of immeasurable
help is in serving the four regional vice-presidents of the
Alumnae Association as they serve individual alumnae
and alumnae clubs in their territories, which are set ac-
cording to alumnae population. Let me commend to
each of you the work that these four alumnae are carry-
ing forward in your behalf. They are a fresh link be-
tween \ou and the College. Let me also make one plea for
them: this time, instead of for money, it is for some of
your reading time. They and the alumnae office staff
will try to keep you not only informed but abreast of
happenings in several areas of the College's life, but this
must be done primarily by the written word reaching
\(iu. You will be hearing from them.

You will also receive the four issues of The Quarterly
this year, beginning with this, the fall issue. The maga-
zine won a national award for 1959, an honorable men-
tion for featured articles, from the American Alumni
Council, and I received this with joy. There are some
news items about the College which you should know and
which do not properly belong in a magazine article; the
Office of Public Relations is planning to issue two
Agnes Scott Newsletters this year, the first of which
will reach you after Christmas. You have already been
mailed a copy of Dr. Alston's report to the Board of
Trustees for 1959 and a copy of the 1959-60 Alumnae
Fund brochure, so.

Happy Agnes Scott reading this year.

27

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CLASS SCHOLARSHIP TROPHY

EACH YEAR on Honor's Day the Class Scholarship Trophy
is awarded to the class with the highest academic average
in comparison to the three preceding classes of the same
level.

The trophy was given by the 1956-57 chapter of Mor-
tar Board for the purpose of encouraging high scholastic
attainment within the classes.

The Class of 1960 won the cup for the first two years
and this year the Class of 1961 was honored.

WINTER 1960

-,v

What Can Chaucer
Say To Us Today?

See page 4

THE

colt

WINTER 1960 Vol. 38, No.
ALUMNAE QUARTER!/

Ann Worthy Johnson, Editor
Dorothy Weakley, Assistant Editor

CONTENTS Chaucer in Our Time . . Margaret W. Pepperdene 4

An Aristocracy of Competence . Wallace M. Alston 11

University Education and Modern Conditions

Bertrand Russell 14

Class News Eloise Hardeman Ketchin 18

Worthy Notes 27

COVER :

Designed by John Stuart McKenzie from line drawings of
Chaucerian characters by Paula Wilson '61. Frontispiece
(opposite) : A winter quarter tradition at Agnes Scott is the
visit of Poet Robert Frost. This photograph is a national prize
winner by Charles Pugh.

THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

Officers

Bella Wilson Lewis '34, President
Evelyn Baty Landis '40, Vice-President
Kathleen Buchanan Cabell '47,

Vice-President
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48,

Vice-President
Marybeth Little Weston '48,

Vice-President
Gene Slack Morse '41, Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson '38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin
House Manager

Dorothy Weakley '56,

Assistant Director of Alumnae Affairs

Alumnae Trustees

Mary Prim Fowler '29

Catherine Wood Marshall LeSourd '36

Chairmen

Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn '38,

Class Council
Sara Frances McDonald '36, Constitution'
Mary Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Louisa Aichel Mcintosh '47, Entertainme
Rose Mary Griffin Wilson '48, House
Jean Bailey Owen "39, Nominations
Virginia Brown McKenzie '47, Property
Jean Grey Morgan '31, Publications
Dorothy Cheek Callaway '29,

Special Events
Barbara Smith Hull '47,

Vocational Guidance

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year (November,
February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College
at Decatur, Georgia. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents. Entered
as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of
August 24, 1912. MEMBER OF AMERICAN ALUMNI COUNCIL

'

POET ROBERT FROST MADE HIS NINETEENTH ANNUAL VISIT TO AGNES SCOTT IN JANUARY

THE SQUIRE

CHAUCER

IN

Considerations of immediate
interest to us as teachers of
literature and of significance
to us simply as human beings have
made me want to share with you
some of my growing convictions
about Chaucer, about the teaching of
Chaucer in our schools, about our
individual reading of him for our
own personal pleasure, about the neg-
lect to which his poetry is some-
times subjected, and the reasons for
this neglect, and most of all, about
why we cannot now of all times allow
this neglect to continue. Let me say
here that I am aware of how strange
it must sound to you that I should
be recommending as especially mean-
ingful to our time the words of a
medieval poet, even one of the ex-
cellence and reputation of Chaucer.
No time ever seemed more removed
from that ancient age of the four-
teenth century than does our own,
and this is the very excuse given for
the merely token sophomore smatter-
ing of Chaucer's poetry, offered often
in translation, or for the frequent
omission from the current undergrad-
uate college curriculum of a course
in Chaucer. What could a poet of so
remote and barbaric an age offer
men of the twentieth century? The
stigma of barbarism, of supersti-
tion, of ignorance still enshrouds the
medieval poet. What he has to say

OUR

TIMI

is considered out of date and
relevant.

There are, of course, very real d
ferences between Chaucer s age an
our own, but that these difference
can be emphasized out of all propc
tion is also true. For, the differenc
are not so much in kind as they a,
in degree. The fourteenth centur
like the twentieth, was a time of gre
political, social, and economic u|
heaval. Long-established institutio.
were crumbling; new forms of ai
thority were pushing those reli
aside. England had had a pure'
agrarian economy, with the exceptio
of the few small towns controlled 1
the guild-merchants. Prices had Ion
been low, fixed by the guilds; bart<
still existed in rural areas whej
goods were usually exchanged ii
services. Population had remains
fixed within the manorial and fil
svstem, the serfs bound to their Ian
and the aristocracy bound to the|
fiefs. Government had been localize
in the manor, fief or shire; economi
pursuits were very much limited
the working of the land and attendai
services rendered the lord of tk
manor, to the few artisan skills coi
trolled by the guilds, and to militai
services. The tempo of life for maij
centuries had been slow, with not!
ing to disturb the social and econom
structure except occasional wars.

THE AGNES SCO

,

The differences in Chaucer's age and ours are in kind

rather than in degree. Here is a delightful analogy

of the two eras and a fresh appraisal

of that eternally amazing woman, The Wife of Bath.

By Margaret W. Pepperdene

AWINGS BY PAULA WILSON '61

But early in the fourteenth century,
: forces of change, germinating
ce the crusades, began to disturb
s whole economic, political, and
lial structure of life. By Chaucer's
le the population had begun to
ft from the land to the towns:
igue and war were forcing the
f from his land; the rise of corn-
ice, following upon the crusading
iod. had given birth to a new class
society, the merchant-trader, who
lit in hard cash, whose primary
)nomic motive was profit, and who
nanded from the king protection
im feudal entanglements and in
n supported the centralizing power
the monarchy with hard cash; the
ilds began to lose their control over
nufactured products; the nobility.

longer necessary to a king who
lid now pay hired troops, began
lose its restraining power on the
marchy and to find local govern-
nt slipping from its control. Men

all classes and occupations were
ng divorced from their old ways
life, from their old loyalties and
rsuits; the feudal system fell away
Eore a powerful monarchy ; agri-
ture changed radically, losing its
ttiomic power to commerce; and
ney replaced land as the economic
as of the society. With the shift-
; of population and the breakdown
traditional institutions came skep-

IMNAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1960

deism and immorality; the Christian
Church, weakened by poor leader-
ship and itself affected by the chang-
ing social structure, became a target
for criticism; England's Hundred
Years War with France, begun to
give added prestige to the monarchy
and to exploit the incipient ideals of
nationalism, increased the tempo of
life, the atmosphere of uncertainty,
and created a price spiral which
might be said to dwarf our twentieth
century spectacle of inflation.

The great struggle between ad-
herents of the old feudal order and
those of the newly centralized mon-
archy might easily compare with the
struggles in our own century be-
tween democracy and totalitarianism;
I he great economic eruption the
population movement from the land
to the towns and the growth of a
new urban class was proportionately

identical to the urban movement of
our century and the struggles of or-
ganized labor for legal recognition;
the rise of the merchant-trader was
at least similar to the rise of the in-
dustrial barons of the last century,
and perhaps even to the rise of large-
scale industry and the squeezing out
of small, independent business; the
Hundred Years War produced a ten-
sion and social disruption compar-
al'lr li> "in o\\ ii rriil in \ of hot ami
cold wars. New weapons of warfare,
made use of at Poitiers and Agin
court, probably altered warfare as
much in their day as the airplane
and atomic bomb have done in our
own. Moral degeneration follows in
the path of such changes in any age.
Skepticism with regard to traditional
religious beliefs characterized the

(Continued on Page 6)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mrs. Pepperdene, known to her friends as Jane, is mak-
ing a special place for herself on the campus as an
associate professor of English. She holds the B.S. degree
from Louisiana State University and the MA and Ph.D.
degrees from Vanderbilt University. At Agnes Scott she
teaches freshman and sophomore English courses plus,
for upperclass-students, courses in Chaucer and Old
English. This article has been edited from an address
she made in April, 1959, to a meeting of the Mid-South
Association of Independent Schools in Atlanta. For her
reactions to Agnes Scott, see her article published in the
Winter, 1958, Alumnae Quarterly "Impressions of Agnes
Scott."

f

i

Mrs. Pepperdene

88755

(Continued from Page 5)

THE CLERK

nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury in much the same way it did in
Chaucer's time, if we substitute in
modern times the attitude toward
Biblical authority in place of, in
Chaucer's time, the attitude toward
the authority of the Church.

Although I have over-simplified
the matter for purposes of compar-
ison, I do not think there has been
any serious distortion. Certainly
Chaucer's world was in as great a
state of turmoil as our own. Even
though the events themselves were
very different, and the ages widely
separated in time and in distance,
both the fourteenth and the twentieth
are centuries of noisy conflict; each
has its world-shaking crises, and men
of both centuries are shaken by the
turmoil surrounding them.

This backward LOOK at the age
of Chaucer perhaps has served
to dispel some of the remote-
ness many of us have felt in ap-
proaching the fourteenth century
poet. And it is important that this
sense of separation be recognized,
met, and dealt with, for it is only in
so doing that distortions are set
straight, misunderstandings cleared
up, perspective regained. It serves,
too, to suggest to us that the usual
reason for omitting Chaucer from
the curriculum of our schools or
from our own personal reading may
be no good reason at all. But, more
important, this look at the fourteenth
century has suggested to us that in-
stead of ignoring Chaucer, we might
have good reason to turn to him;
for, since we share with him an age
of tension and strife, he might speak
to us in a particularly meaningful
way. When we come to him on these
terms, we discover how basic our
need for him, for his vision of the
world and of man, really is. We come
face to face with our dangerous mod-
ern habit of measuring all truths, all
values, all realities in terms of man.
We realize that we have lost our his-
torical sense, that we do not any
longer concern ourselves seriously
with the ultimate destiny of mankind.
We see in tragic relief our preoccu-
pation with the relationship of man

to the world and time he is living ii
to the importance of the achievemen
of man, of his physical well-being, (
his conquest of nature as if md
were simply one of many equal na
ural forces striving for supremacy i
the natural world. We see how.
our worry about the problems
men, we have forgotten the problef
of man. Especially do we understan
more clearly the tragic plight of til
modern poet: his struggle again
capitulation to all the forces aroun]
him which would have him turn h
eyes to the scrutiny of mundane man
which would have him turn analys
and which would limit and obscui
his horizons of knowledge. We s
the responsibility of the poet to coi
tinue to see in a world which h<
lost the capacity for seeing. No on
has put this obligation of the model
poet more clearly before us than h
Professor Robert Jordan in a recei:
article in the Seivanee Revieiv. Speai
ing of this loss of vision in our tim
of the failure of the philosopher I
fulfill his traditional role as the or
who seeks to know ''what is", "th
things that are", "all things", and (
his tendency in our time to becorr
one who scrutinizes, subjects to clost
inspection and then fixes boundarii
to what is real and hence to wh,
will be seen, Professor Jordan stati
that the poet must replace the philo
opher as agent for the restoration
that vision which has been lost. TI
poet's task, he says,

... is to teach us to see, and I mean
to restore a capacity for seeing. It is
a task uniquely the poet's in our time.
No amount of inversion can ever elim-
inate it entirely from poetry without
entirely eliminating poetry. In the
bleakest moments the poetry keeps
breaking through. This is the ground
of our assurance that vision will not
utterly perish. And if one thinks of
poetry in its natural alliance with the
other poetic arts, the poetic task, may
be understood as a protreptic task
one that embraces the elements of
conversion and exhortation, as in the
Socratic mission. For what is most
needed now is a conversion, a 'turn-
ing toward' objective being. Nothing
didactic is wanted or needed except the
natural attraction of the poet's ob-
jectified vision, which is a kind of
invitation and indirect exhortation to
love and to praise. And this demands
no turning back to commitments either
'classical', 'scholastic' or 'romantic'. I
am speaking not of a time or a place

THE AGNES SCO

or a doctrine, but of an act, and one
which bears upon the full dimension
of human nature. It is not bound to
a culture but is found wherever man
is found and is the reason there can
be culture and tradition at all. Having
been abandoned by the other dis-
iplines, it is in the poet"s keeping.

A poet cannot allow himself to be
nbroiled in the crises of men but
ust seek to discover what is the
isis of man. He must search out
te meaning in all the manifestations

reality that present themselves to
en. Thus, may men be instructed to
lis large vision. Robert Frost, a bul-
ark against forces of disorder in
ur own time, in his current pub-
fehed interview with John Ciardi.
>eaks directly to our point:

A poem is a momentary stay against
confusion. Each poem clarifies some-
thing. But then you've got to do it
again. You can't get clarified to stay
so; so let you not think that. In a
way, it's like nothing more than blow-
ing smoke rings. Making little poems
encourages a man to see that there is
shapeliness in the world. A poem is an
arrest of disorder.

f^] haucer, both because he was

living in a time as socially dis-

S ' ordered as our own. and be-

tuse he sees man. not in the disorder

his mundanity but in the order of

s divinity, is a poet particularly im-

artant to our modern need for

sion. For Chaucer is concerned not

th those things which happen to

en but with the essential value and

e dignity of the human being. This

use of the dignity of man, of his

ntral and pivotal place in the whole

der of created being, breathes in

of Chaucer's poetry. It gives to
e men and women who move
rough his poems that complexity.
at extra-dimensional quality, that
forms all human life and expe-
ence. It accounts for that special
aracteristic of Chaucer, the detach-
ent with which he deals with the
arid he presents us. his willingness

set before us saints and scoun-
'els alike, neither exalting the for-
ier nor indicting the latter. Out of
e complex of his own experience,
rged in the heat of his powerful
lagination. he has brought these
:ople and these situations into

being. He is their maker, but once
made, they move themselves: they
are not manipulated. They work out
their own destinies in terms of that
which thev know themselves to be
and what thev hope they can become.
It is not that Chaucer does not care
about their failures, not that he con-
dones their sins: not that he looks
indulgently on their foibles, nor thai
he endorses their vices or virtues:
it is that ultimately he cares too much
to tamper with that which they are.

Nowhere in all of Chaucer's poetry
is this vision of man. of his capacities
in the complex of his limitations,
more apparent than in the Canter-
bury Tales, and in no member of thai
pilgrimage is this vision more ef-
fectively revealed than in his crea-
tion of the Wife of Bath, whom Kit-
tredge called "one of the most amaz-
ing characters . . . the brain of man
has ever conceived. There is no bet-
ter way to see how meaningfully
Chaucer can speak to us than by
looking with attention at this extra-
ordinary woman.

We have our first glimpse of the
Wife of Bath in the General Prologue.
Chaucer, the pilgrim-narrator, tells us

that he had taken lodgings on the
first night of his journey to the
shrine of Thomas a Becket at the
Tabard Inn. and that in th? relaxed
atmosphere of that hostelry he has
had the good fortune to meet up with
and be taken into the company of
pilgrims bound for Canterbury. In
the surroundings of informality and
conviviality, induced by the com-
fortable accommodations, good food,
and excited anticipation of the jour-
ney-proud travelers, the pilgrim
Chaucer has a chance to get ac-
quainted with his fellow travelers. It
is not hard to imagine him moving
from one pilgrim to another, or from
one group to another, saving just
enough to keep them talking, heed-
ing their speech, their mannerisms,
noting their affectations and afflic-
tions, surmising their prejudices, dis
covering their occupations, taking in
even the minute details of their dress.
Nor is it difficult to see him later
that night sketching out these first
impressions which he presents to us
as a sort of dramatis personae to his
drama of the pilgrimage. And a
tantalizing cast of characters he gives
us: a veteran knight just come from
a foreign campaign, and his son. the
handsome, fashionably dressed young
squire, "as fressh as is the month of
May:'" a genteel and courtly prioress:
a worldly monk, "ful fat and in good
poynt:" a wanton, if charming, friar
whose "even twynkled in his heed
aryght/ As doon the sterres in the
frosty nvght: ' an unscrupulous mer-
chant: a clerk, hungry-looking and
poorly clad: a wealthy, class-con-
scious franklin: a rough sailor: a
doctor, prospering from his nefarious
dealings with his apothecaries and
the fees he collected during the
plague: and. a wife of Bath. Even in
all this rich fare, the reader stops to
savor this last delicacy. The pilgrim
Chaucer's first encounter with this
woman that night at the Tabard must
have been something he would not
soon forget, and his portrait of her
is a masterpiece of restraint and con-
trolled statement, with the animal ex-
uberance of the Wife everywhere
straining for release. How this
woman loves to talk! The pilgrim

.UMNAE QUARTERLY , WINTER 1960

Chaucer has to make no effort to
draw her out, as he would, say, the
parson, the merchant or even the
monk. For, "wel koude she laughe
and carpe." She is from "biside
Bathe", from a small clothmaking
community just outside the walls of
the town and in the parish of St.
Michael-without-the-north-Gate ; and
she makes immediately clear to Chau-
cer, and to any of the other pil-
grims within earshot, that she is a
clothmaker whose professional skill
surpasses that of the famous weavers
of Flanders. Whether for her talents
as a clothmaker. for her fame in
other activities later to be revealed,
or simply from the force of her pow-
erful personality, she has taken unto
herself a position of importance in
her community: in church no one
dare precede her to the offering. Woe
be to anyone who should presume!
She lets it be known, too, that she is
familiar with more than just the
simple provincial life in her small
town, and that this is not the only
pilgrimage she has ever been on a
boast doubtless intended to intimi-
date those less knowledgeable mem-
bers of the company and to assert
her position in this new gathering.
She has made all the best tours of
the times: to Galicia, Bologna, Co-
logne. Rome and three times to Je-
rusalem. Variety has marked other
aspects of her life. too. She has had
five husbands, and. lest anyone think
therein lies a limit to her attraction
for men, "oother compaigne in
youthe." Indeed, most of her talk that
first evening at the Tabard, as later
on the pilgrimage, must have cen-
tered on love, and specifically on her
own love life which she was not
reluctant to reveal to even the most
casual acquaintance. Chaucer finishes
off his portrait of her as if in sum-
mary: "For she koude of that art
[of love] the olde daunce." And
while the Wife laughed and talked of
her travels and her loves, Chaucer
took in the salient features of her
appearance and of her dress. She is
a large, heavily built, coarse-looking
woman, bold of face and ruddy of
hue. Her most marked physical fea-
tures are her gap-teeth and her deaf-

8

ness. If other aspects of her character
have not already suggested to us the
sensuousness of her nature, her gap-
teeth would do so, for physiognomists
of that day regarded this physical
characteristic as a sign of boldness,
gluttony, and lasciviousness: and the
Wife herself, as she reveals later in
her own prologue, connects this fea-
ture directly with her amorous na-
ture. In dress, the Wife is a fashion de-
signer's nightmare. From the broad
buckler of a hat to her fine scarlet
hose, she is the most colorful, the
most conspicuous pilgrim of them all.

OUR first impression of the
Wife shows her to be all of
a piece, seemingly a very
simple, uncomplex person, a hearty,
bold, garrulous woman, frank in her
revelations about herself, fierce in
her sense of competition with others,
whether the challenge be in cloth-
making or in lovemaking. She is
boisterous, coarse, even vulgar, but
powerfully attractive to people around
her, clearly someone never to be over-
looked, more likely someone to
whom people will flock, a center for
noisy, if sometimes bawdy, good fun.
We do not see the Wife again until
after the pilgrimage has got well
underway in fact not until it is
over halfway to Canterbury. Under
the governance of that jovial master
of ceremonies and aspiring literary
critic. Harry Baillie, the pilgrims
have been matching stories in com-
petition for the free dinner promised
the best story-teller at the Tabard Inn
when the pilgrimage is over. The
Knight has told his tale of Palamon
and Arcite. a struggle between love
and friendship played out against a
background of the aristocratic world
of medieval chivalry; those delight-
ful rogues, the Miller, the Reeve and
the Cook, have turned the story-tell-
ing fest into a men's smoker with
their bawdy, if amusing, fabliaux;
the Man of Law and the Prioress
have moved the company to tears
with the touching stories of Constance
and of the "litel clergeon;" the Monk
has put his audience to sleep with
the weary recital of his tragedies;
and the Nun's Priest has roused their

sagging spirits with his delightful ai
count of Chaunticleer and Perteloti
It is the morning of the third da
out. The company has now achieve
that easy familiarity with one ai
other which marks the relationshi
of those thrown for a short time int
close physical proximity. Cut o
momentarily from their other con
mitments, temporarily uprooted froi
their normal pattern of life and th
role which they have made for then
selves in it, they have allowed then
selves a freedom and an intimac
with one another which ordinaril
they would deny even to their clos>
friends. This is the intimacy of shiji
board, the sense of isolation of mid
ocean. The Host calls on the Wife c
Bath. The drama of the pilgrimag
comes sharply into focus. The topi
which will absorb the pilgrims, whic
will give to the storytelling its ow
momentum is about to be introducer
And we are about to learn more c
the Wife.

She does not go immediately t
her story. Instead much to her fe
low pilgrims' delight (as well a
ours), she regales the company wit
her experiences in love and marriag*
all to the point that happiness in mar
riage depends directly on the wife'
being the head of the house. Thl
Wife is indeed "a noble prechour i
this cas", for she speaks from thl
experience of having mastered fiv
husbands, and these experiences shJ
frankly shares with her listeners
Those of her audience who woul
hold what are to her fallacious nc
tions about marriage, that is, tha
God has commanded a person I
marry but once, or that God ha
ordered man to lead a celibate life
she silences with arguments fror
Scripture that God has not forbidde:
bigamy, or octagamy either; an'
that God could never have com
manded all men to celibacy, else H
would be countermanding his orig
inal order to "wexe and multiplye'
and more important, He would b!
cutting off forever the source of sup
ply for virgins. The Wife admits hei
admiration for those who would seel
this thorny path to heaven, for thos
who would live perfectly, but sh

THE AGNES SCOT

Ids, "lordynges, by youre leve, that
11 nat I!" These arguments against
le institution of marriage itself out
F the way, the Wife turns to her

ain topic, the tribulation that is in
tarriage for incorrigible husbands
ho will not bend to the will of their
ives. And what a source of informa-
on she is on this subject! She be-
ins by describing her life with her
rst three husbands and her methods
i get them in hand. No longer can
le remember any one of them dis-
nctly, so she lumps them all to-
3ther: they were old, and rich, and

od good because they were rich
ad old and because they offered but
;eble resistance to her efforts to con-
ol them. She had mastered them by
er constant nagging, bv her merci-
es scolding, and by refusing to sub-
kit to their amorous attentions until
ney agreed to give her what she
anted a free hand in running the
larriage and possession of all their
orldly goods. She spends but little
me telling of her fourth husband,
ho gave her no end of trouble and
nguish. He had kept a paramour,
nd he seems to have spent a good
art of his time in London ; but she
aims to have made him jealous
ith her own "'wanderings by the
ay." That she made him jealous
ne might doubt: that she wandered
y the way, there is no question, for
hile he was in London one Lent she
jotted the attractive young clerk,
ankyn, and spent the early spring
lonths setting her cap for him.
7hen her fourth husband accom-
lodatingly died soon thereafter, she
as prepared for her fifth trip to the
Itar. The Wife, you can imagine,
r as always prepared for any even-

ality, but for none more so than for
le demise of a present husband as
he would say, "I holde a mouses

rte nat worth a leek/ That hath
ut oon hole for to sterte to."

I ankyn the clerk seems to have
been the hardest of all her hus-
bands to bring to subjection,
ut she must have loved him the
lost. He was twenty and she forty
hen they married and there is the
levitable comparison to be made

between the life that Jankyn led her,
and the life she had led her three
old husbands, for this time the shoe
was on the other foot. At any rate,
the Wife and Jankyn had a stormy
time of it for awhile. He beat her
and took delight in reading to her
by the hour from an anti-feminist
anthology about wives who brought
ruin upon their husbands. One night
the situation reached the breaking
point. Jankyn had been reading to
her about the havoc wrought by Eye.
about Clytemnestra s unfaithfulness
to Agamemnon, about the way Livia
and Lucilia poisoned their husbands
and of countless other deeds of wicked
wives. The Wife could take no more.
She reached over, tore three pages
out of his book, and pushed him into
the fire. He retaliated by giving her
such a box on the ear that she fell
unconscious to the floor. Thinking
she was dead, Jankyn prepared to
flee, but the good Wife came to in
time to prevent this catastrophe. Con-
trite, he knelt down to her, and she.
taking advantage of his position and
recent fright, made him swear to her
his willingness to be ruled by her.
He acquiesced, and she had him
where she wanted him.

With the account of her fifth mar-
riage the Wife's "long preamble of a
tale" ends. Even our sketchy presen-

When Paula Wilson '61 took Mrs. Pepper-
dene's course in Chaucer, she put her image
of the Wife of Bath in sculpture. Paula is an
art major and did the line drawings for this
article.

tation of this prologue has suggested
that our original impression of her
from the narrator's portrait in the
General Prologue is correct. She has
shown herself to be just the frankly
sensuous, coarsely belligerent, crude-
ly attractive person we had heard
about. Yet, there are hints of greater
complexity to her character to be
got from her candid address to the
pilgrims, and the implications to be
drawn from such hints she would not
necessarily want to reveal or even he
aware that she was revealing. For
instance, she tells us that she was
born under the conjunctive influence
of the planets Venus and Mars, and
to that circumstance of her birth she
attributes her near uncontrollable
amorousness, an attribution with
which no medieval astrologer would
quarrel. However, we can draw from
this revelation something else. We
can see it as suggesting a tension, a
conflict of emotions, a warring of
desires within the Wife which we
had not been aware of before. Some
years ago Root discerned what he
called a certain melancholy tone
in the Wife's prologue. ''She is
"haunted ". he said, "with a vague
suspicion that . . . her way of life
is not the right way." He gave no
reason for this melancholy other than
to imply that her immoral life had
made her sad and to note that ap-
proaching old age had increased this
sadness. I would agree that there is
an undertone of regret, of nostalgia,
which might be called melancholy, in
the Wife's prologue; her outburst.
"Alias! Alias! that evere love was
sinne" certainly implies that. But I
would identify this melancholy with
the inner tension hinted at in her
reference to the circumstances of
her birth. The story she tells lays
open to our understanding this ten-
sion, this source of her momentary
regret, if we would read it aright.
For what is merely a hint in the pro-
logue becomes in the story an out-
right exposure.

Her tale is set in the days of King
Arthur. A knight of King Arthur's
court meets a girl in the woods and
rapes her. For his deed he is sen-
tenced to die, but the Queen inter-

LUMNAE QUARTERLY WINTER 1960

venes, begs for his life, and the King
turns him over to her and to her
court to decide his fate. The Queen
promises the young knight his life
if he can, within a year and a day,
discover what it is that women most
desire and bring the answer back to
her court. The knight searches for
the answer without success until, on
his return journey to the court, he
meets an old hag who promises to
tell him what he wants to know if
he will in turn grant her the first
request she will make of him. He
agrees and they return to the Queen's
court where he gives the answer got
from the hag: that women most de-
sire sovereignty in marriage. He is
given his life and thinks himself
fortunate until the hag requires that
he fulfill his promise to her by marry-
ing her. He is disconsolate, but grants
her request. On their wedding night
he mopes, and she asks why he is
so sad, why he refuses to have any-
thing to do with her. And he answers
that it is because she is so old. so
ugly, and so lowborn. She replies that
she can change all that if he will do
as she bids, and then she preaches
him an excellent sermon on gentilesse.
When she is through she offers him
a choice: to have her old and uglv
and faithful to him. or voung and
beautiful and possibly unfaithful.
The knight leaves the choice to her.
The hag questions whether in so
doing he is giving her mastery over
him, and when he answers that he is,
she tells him that he shall have both
a beautiful and a faithful wife.

The theme of the Wife of
Bath"s story coincides with
her own view that happiness
in marriage depends on a wife's hav-
ing mastery over her husband. It is
consistent, too. with the character of
the Wife revealed both in the Gen-
eral Prologue and in her individual
prologue in that this desire for mastery
stems from her strong sense of com-
petition and her natural amorous-
ness. However, the details of the
story, its setting in an atmosphere
of romance and chivalry, and more
significantly, its long sermon on gen-

10

tilesse delivered by the old hag. with
whom it is obvious the Wife has
identified herself, seem incompatible
with the brazen character of the Wife
we have come to know. The notions
that true nobility is not a matter of
blood but of behavior, that real
gentleness is marked by humility,
graciousness, piety, and a respect for
oneself as well as for other people,
and that virtue is to be cultivated
and vice abhorred, are not ideas we
would expect to hear the Wife ex-
pressing. These sentiments, perhaps
unconsciously revealed on her part,
show a refinement of nature, a sen-
sitivity to real worth, and a response
to true beauty of character we had
not thought of the Wife as possessing.
Then we remember what we spoke
of as the undertone of nostalgia and
melancholy in her words to the pil-
grims, her reference to her horo-
scope, her lament that ever love was
sin. One does not need to go to the
length of Professor Curry to cast the
Wife's horoscope. As valuable as
such a study may be, it has the dis-
advantage of suggesting a kind of
mechanical quality to the perform-
ance of the Wife, of implying that
her stars, not she herself, direct the
course of her life. This sort of im-
plication would be an injustice to
the Wife and needless to say an in-
justice to Chaucer. She is painfull v
aware of the conflict of desires within
herself. For reasons beyond her con-
trol, for some inscrutable act of di-
vine ordination, she cannot be what
she wants to be: she must work with
what she has. She has within her
natural feminine desires and traits
a sensitivity to beauty, a refinement
of taste, a gentleness of nature, a
desire for attention and protection,
an imaginative response to the world
about her. We might go further and
suggest that it is entirely possible
that she would like to dress in soft.
frilly clothes, to be fragile and de-
pendent, maybe even to assume the
mild affectations of the lady Prioress
maybe even just to be a lady. But
she knows that this can never be.
These feminine desires are disguised
out of recognition by what she looks
to be. And so. the Wife of Bath has

done what all men must do if the)
are to realize themselves fully ai
human beings, if they are to achievf
any peace with themselves. I woulc
add that by peace I do not mean any
thing passive, for peace always im
plies a tension, a holding together, i
working of the will on intractabl
emotions. The Wife has fully ac
cepted the conflicting forces withir
herself, and, although she knows hi
the recesses of her own heart he
capacity for refinement of feeling
for affection uncorrupted by lust
for pleasure without wantonness, sh
has faced the unalterable fact tha
the grosser parts of her nature thi
ugliness of her body, the coarsenes
of her manner, the vulgarity of he
emotions make her finer instinct;
ludicrous. Realizing that she mus
be what she can be within the limita
tions of her complex nature, shr
boldly accepts her lot, holding in con
stant check that which she knows shr
cannot be, and being with all he
heart and mind that which she is
She can indeed say in triumph, "
have had my world as in my tymea
It is understandable that there ar>
moments of regret, of passing nos
talgia for what might have been. Ii
the intimacy of the pilgrimage o:
under the protective guise of a story
the Wife for a moment relaxes tha
rein by which she ordinarily goverm
herself, and that which has been hid
den comes fleetingly to view. We si
her for the first time in all the ricl
complexity of her humanity as sh>
laments that ever love was sin. Ann
we see her in all the dignity tha
belongs to man; for man, unless h/
is to be pursued forever by demon 1
of his own making self-pity, fals'
pride, egoism or despair must comi
to terms with his own nature, recog,
nize what he is. what his limitation!
are, and what within those limita
tions he can become. Only in thi
way does he integrate and direct hi
efforts, his affections, his whole being
This is the vision of man tha
Chaucer would have us contemplate
this is his invitation "to love and n
praise." This is his "stay agains
confusion" that speaks to all men o
of all time.

THE AGNES SCOT

Wallace M. Alston

AN ARISTOCRACY
OF COMPETENCE

President Alston offers us his ideas of the requisites
individuals must nave for leadership in our society,
in today's unstable world where relativities reign.

* *

1

L.

HJp-^'

&

Dr. Alston

JMNAE QUARTERLY ,

WINTER 1960

Professor John McMurray, of
the Lniversitv of London, calls
Plato's Republic "The fairest
and falsest of all Utopias. ' In this
remarkable writing. Plato develops
the analogy of the perfect man in the
perfect state. As he presents an analy
sis of the human mind, Plato finds
the rational or reasoning principle,
the spirit or will, and the appetite or
passion. This threefold division is ap-
plied to the commonwealth, which
Plato regards as analogous to. and
a sort of exhibition of. a good and
virtuous man. Plato classifies the
members of his ideal republic under
three divisions: counselors, or an
aristocracy of intelligence: guardians.
or the military: and artisans, the
common people.

One does not have much difficulty
finding the weak places in the Pla-
tonic scheme. There are. nevertheless,
some keen insights and some endur-
ing recognitions in the Republic. One
of the most important of these in

sights is that the commonwealth, the
world indeed, needs the leadership
of men and women of intelligence
an aristocracy of competence, if you
please. The best qualified people.
Plato insists, ought to be discovered,
commandeered, and given the oppor-
tunity to use their intelligence and
training for the common welfare.

We still need an aristocracy of in-
telligence^ not. of course, a petted
coddled little group whom we w ill set
free from ordinary responsibilities in

(Continued on next page)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Alston, minister, philosopher, theologian,
but, above all, beloved President of Agnes
Scott College, holds the B.A. and M.A. de-
grees from Emory University, the B.D. degree
from Columbia Theological Seminary, the
Th.M. and Th.D. degrees from Union Theo-
logical Seminary, the D.D. degree from Hamp-
den-Sydney College and the LL.D. degree
from both David and Elkins College and
Emory University. Such a listing of academic
honors tells nothing of the realness of the
man the wise, warm guide of Agnes Scott's
destiny.

n

DR. ALSTON (Continued)

order to show favor or preferment to
them. What we do need, however,
within the framework of our de-
mocracy, is to discover ways to
mobilize and challenge the folk who
are endowed and trained to think
an aristocracy of intelligence, if you
will, but one that is imbued with a
strong sense of social responsibility.

The word "aristocracy" has be-
come somewhat decadent and de-
crepit. As a matter of fact, it is a
good word, the virility and relevance
of which we might do well to recover.
It comes from two Greek words:
aristos, meaning "best," and kratein,
"to be strong." A true aristocrat is
one who, realizing endowment, de-
liberately offers himself in service to
others. Aristocrats have often been
despised or distrusted because they
have exploited their position, or
have held themselves aloof from the
needs of common people, or have
undertaken to dominate others, or
have simply used their cleverness to
make their own status secure. The
kind of artistocracy that we need
today within a democratic frame-
work is an aristocracy of competence
possessing a strong sense of social
responsibility.

Let me suggest some achievements
that would seem to be requisite in a
leadership that might deserve to be
known as an aristocracy of com-
petence within a framework of de-
mocracy.

I

For one thing, there is the
need for a strong sense of objec-
tive reality in a clay of relativi-
ties. Intellectual leaders generally
are quite unimpressed today by the
sort of realization that caused Arthur
Hugh Clough to write:

It fortifies my soul to know
That, if I perish, truth is so.
Platos philosophers, who com-
posed the governing group, were
recognized as authentic intellectual,
moral, and spiritual leaders by virtue
of their devotion to the world of
ideas, or forms. Their authority as
leaders was derived. They were quali-

12

fled persons, but they were instru-
ments through whom truth, goodness,
and beauty were mediated to the
common life of men.

Our intellectual and cultural cli-
mate is subjective and relativistic. It
is doubtful whether men will regard
truth as a sacred prize to be discov-
ered and as a trust to be valued and
shared, when truth is seen to be so
exclusively the creation of clever
people. Whether a thoroughgoing
relativism in ethics and religion will
result in a leadership imbued with a
strong sense of mission is quite
doubtful. Is truth made anew by
every generation, by each separate
individual, indeed? It matters little
how competent men and women may
be in their endowment and training,
if they determine that goodness,
truth, and beauty are merely values
that men project into the world; a
different sort of enterprise is pre-
sented from that envisaged by Plato
when he made his plea for an aristoc-
racy of competence.

II

Moreover, there is the
need for disciplined insight and
the ability to think in a day of
confusion. Some time ago Presi-
dent Ralph C. Hutchinson, of La-
favette College, wrote that a veritable
"cult of confusion" exists in Amer-
ica. Not only are people by and large
confessing bewilderment, but our
leaders themselves admit to a con-
fusion that is disconcerting, to say
the least.

The sort of intellectual guidance
that people require today must come
from men and women who know
what the facts in the various aspects
of learning are and who have a re-
spect for tested realities. Experimen-
tation is good, but it must not be
random and chaotic. There is good
sense in requiring that any man who
would become proficient in his field
should at least know what has been
done before he came upon the scene.
There is no virtue in mere novelty,
and those who are looking for short
cuts should definitely be discouraged
by their fellows in all fields that lay

claim to educational and cultural
leadership.

John Ruskin said a relevant thing
when he insisted that "the right to
own anything is dependent upon the
willingness to pay a fair price for
it." Creativity and originality come
not through novelty and the attempt
to by-pass the disciplines of intel-
lectual endeavor, but through per-
sistence, habitual and unremitting
labor, and through the conventional
channels. The only artistocracy of
intelligence that deserves general ap
proval and support will be one to
which the past with its accomplish-
ments is known, and one which ac-
cepts the necessity of hard work and
patient, painful intellectual endeavor.!

Ill

Then, poise and san>
ity in this day of intellectual,!
moral, and spiritual instability
constitutes a "must" for leaders
worthy of respect and loyalty,*
There are many indications in oun
contemporary scene of the unsteadi
ness and emotionalism of people. We
make a serious mistake if we assume
that most folk think logically ano
make decisions upon the basis of the
evidence pro and con that has beer
judiciously weighed. The fact is tha,
the average person thinks very little
if at all. He is a hero worshipper. H<i
is swayed by the tides of popular
sentiment and by the power of a per
sonality. He seems at times to movi
by "fits and starts."

William Temple, late Archbisho]
of Canterbury, made the observatioi
that our world is like a shop inti
which a mischief-maker has stole!
unobserved. The culprit changes th
price tags on the commodities so tha
cheap things are priced high and thl
really valuable things are price'
ridiculously low. The result is cod
fusion about values that has disas
trous results in every sphere of man'
life.

Leaders are sorely needed mei
and women who can speak clearbj
think logically, maintain perspective
chart a course of action, and inspii
confidence in those who look t
them for responsible direction.

THE AGNES SCO

[V

Finally, in a genuine
ristocracy of competence, there
rould be a sense of concern and
iability in a day of irresponsibil-

ty. There is, indeed, a liability of
he privileged, and nothing is more
mmediately important than a recog-
ition and assumption of this obliga-
ion by those who have been trusted.

Certain tendencies peculiar to
irivilege must be resisted by people
if unusual endowment. These ten-
iencies are subtle and have far-
eaching consequences.

For one thing, there is the ten-
dency of privilege to lead a person
o a false evaluation of himself. How
asy it is for a man to think more
ighly of himself than he ought to
hink indeed, to think himself to be
omething that he really is not at
11, when he stands in a place of
irivilege! If an individual estimates
imself on the basis of his money,
ir his inheritance, his brilliance, his
raining, his popularity, or the posi-
ion that he occupies, you can be
airly certain that he will not get a
irue view of himself.

This tendency of all forms of priv-
lege to inflate one's egotism would
>e more amusing if it were not so
athetic, and sometimes tragic, in its
onsequences. Pin a badge on some
eople and they are uncontrollable.
Jive them a little money, or elect
hem to the third vice-presidency of
omething or other, and Andrew H.
Brown, of "Amos 'n Andy" fame,
eems scarcely an extravagant carica-
ure of their condition. Take away
heir emoluments their degrees,
heir costumes, offices, and insignia
md they drop from the perch they
lave assumed with a dull thud.

An observer at the Nuremberg
rials made a remark that was quite
mpressive. He wrote that he had re-
liscovered something elemental at
Nuremberg: that man is just a man
ifter all, that he is what he is when
lis position is taken away from him.
vhen his medals and badges are
tripped off. The prisoners at Nurem-
>erg ungroomed, misshapen, unat-
ractive, and uninteresting obvious-

ly required brilliant uniforms, med-
als, attendants, and the glamorous at-
mosphere of position to make them
seem important and formidable. It is
the person who matters, not the trap-
pings and adornments.

Then, there is the tendency of priv-
ilege to shut a person off from the
needs of people all around him. Like
a great wall, tall and thick, one's priv-
ileged position shelters and protects
him from so much of the heartbreak
and hurt of the masses of humanity
that, unless he is careful, he will lose
touch with the bleeding world that
God has trusted him to succor.

While campaigning for Irish home
rule, William E. Gladstone, a priv-
ileged man if ever there was one,
said that the privileged people of
England had been on the wrong side
of every social issue for the pre-
ceding fifty years. That is a severe in-
dictment that ought to give us pause.
What was the matter with those
privileged Englishmen? Were they
malicious? I think not. Were they
stupid? I venture to say that some
of the most intelligent and com-
petent leaders that England has pro-
duced were among those privileged
people whom Gladstone indicted.
Why were privileged people of Eng-
land on the wrong side of every
social issue for fifty years in the
nineteenth century? If Gladstone was
right, it was due to the tendency of
privilege to form a wall around those
who belong to her, shutting out the
sights and the cries of human mis-
ery. It is one thing to read about
needy humanity in books or to see
human misfortune out of the corner
of one's eye as he goes on "slumming
expeditions," so-called. It is quite an-
other thing to face human misery, to
feel it, to have its weight on one's
heart, and to realize one's com-
plicity in and his responsibiity for it.

And there is the tendency of pri-
ilege to let a person off with only
a fractional part of the contribution
that he is capable of making. One of
the most subtle temptations that as-
sails a gifted individual is the tempta-
tion to get by with less than his best.
He can win applause by giving of
himself his time, money, and ability

in limited measure, since what he
contributes will overshadow the ef-
forts of one-talent people. By com-
paring himself with others and by
reminding himself that he is doing
as much as or more than they, the
privileged individual salves his con-
science while he continues to put
back into life only a fractional part
of what he is capable of doing and
far less than he takes out. There is
something selfish and unworthy
about a person who is willing to ac-
cept applause for that which costs
him nothing.

In his Inside U.S.A., John Gunther
reminds us that America is run by
its propertied class. Gunther does not
quarrel particularly with this situa-
tion, but he does make the emphatic
assertion that the failure of the priv-
ileged class is the greatest single im-
pediment to unity, and the chief
factor in our national life making for
discontent. If only our competent,
gifted, favored citizens understood
that "unto whomsoever much is
given, of him shall be much re-
quired!" Privileged people are held
accountable proportionately. There is
a liability of the privileged that must
be accepted if we are to have a vital
leadership that can lay claim to the
loyalty of people by and large.

This desire for an aristocracy of
competence is not an armchair aca-
demic matter. It should not be dis-
missed as a nostalgic yearning for
an impossibility. Plato's insight that
the commonwealth must be guided
by its best trained, most sensitive,
most responsible citizens, is an es-
sential if our democratic form of
government is ever to be made ef-
fective. The alternative is to increase
mediocrity and control by the inef-
ficient.

The initiative rests measurably
with educated and privileged people.
It is in large measure a matter of
attitude and inner spirit, of motive
and commitment. College men and
women could make the difference be-
tween hope and despair for our race.
An aristocracy of competence, bap
tized with humility and charged with
a sense of mission, could supply the
leadership now desperately lacking.

UUMNAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1960

13

BERTRAND RUSSELL

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

an

i

MODERN CONDITIONS

EDi cation is a vast and complex
subject involving many prob-
lems of great difficulty, f pro-
pose, in what follows, to deal with
only one of these problems, namely,
the adaptation of university education
to modern conditions.

Universities are an institution of
considerable antiquity. They develop-
ed during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries out of cathedral schools
where scholastic theologians learned
the art of dialectic. But. in fact, the
aims which inspired universities go
back to ancient times.

One may say that Plato's Academy
was the first university. Plato's Acad-
emy had certain well-marked objec-
tives. It aimed at producing the sort
of people who would be suitable to
become Guardians in his ideal Re-
public. The education which Plato
designed was not in his day what
would now be called "cultural." A
"cultural"' education consists mainly
in the learning of Greek and Latin.

*Copyright 1959, Editorial Projects for
Education, Inc., All Rights Reserved.

14

But the Greeks had no need to learn
Greek and no occasion to learn Latin.
\^ hat Plato mainlv wished his Acad-
emy to teach was, first, mathematics
and astronomy, and, then, philos-
ophy. The philosophy was to have a
scientific inspiration with a tincture
of Orphic mysticism.

Something of this sort, in various
modified forms, persisted in the West
until the Fall of Rome. After some
centuries, it was taken up by the
Arabs and, from them, largely
through the Jews, transmitted back
to the West. In the West it still re-
tained much of Plato's original po-
litical purpose, since it aimed at pro-
ducing an educated elite with a more
or less complete monopoly of political
power. This aim persisted, virtually
unchanged, until the latter half of the
nineteenth century. From that time
onwards, the aim has become in-
creasingly modified by the intrusion
of two new elements: democracy and
science. The intrusion of democracy
into academic practice and theory
is much more profound than that of

science, and much more difficult tc
combine with anything like the aim. 1
of Plato s Academy.

Until it was seen that politica
democracy had become inevitable
universal education, which is now
taken for granted in all civilizec
countries, was vehemently opposed
on grounds which were broadly aris
tocratic. There had been ever sinct
ancient times a very sharp line be
tween the educated and the unedu
cated. The educated had had a seven
training and had learnt much, while
the uneducated could not read o
write. The educated, who had :
monopoly of political power, dreadef
the extension of schools to the "lowe*
classes." The President of the Roya
Society, in the year 1807, considere<
that it would be disastrous if workin;
men could read, since he feared tha
they would spend their time readin
Tom Paine. When my grandfathe
established an elementary school ii
his parish, well-to-do neighbours wer
outraged, saying that he had d>
stroyed the hitherto aristocratic chai

THE AGNES SCOT

What sort of intellectual life must
today's colleges ana universities offer-
ana to whom? Britain's philosopher,
Lord Russell, here offers some answers.

Bertrand Russell

t of the neighbourhood. It was
itical democracy at least, in
dand that brought a change of
nion in this matter. Disraeli, after
jring the vote for urban working
1, favoured compulsory education
n the phrase, "We must educate
masters."' Education came to
n the right of all who desired it.

it was not easy to see how this
it was to be extended to uni-
sity education : nor, if it were,
universities could continue to
form their ancient functions.
he reasons which have induced
lized countries to adopt universal
cation are various. There were
nusiasts for enlightenment who

no limits to the good that could
done by instruction. Many of
se were very influential in the
ly advocacy of compulsory edu-
on. Then there were practical men
) realized that a modern State and
dern processes of production and
ribution cannot easily be man-
d if a large proportion of the
mlation cannot read. A third

group were those who advocated edu-
cation as a democratic right. There
was a fourth group, more silent and
less open, which saw the possibilities
of education from the point of view
of official propaganda. The impor-
tance of education in this regard is
very great. In the eighteenth cen-
tury, most wars were unpopular; but.
since men have been able to read the
newspapers, almost all wars have
been popular. This is only one in-
stance of the hold on public opinion
which Authority has acquired through
education.

Although universities were not di-
rectly concerned in these educational
processes, thev have been profoundlv
affected by them in ways which are.
broadly speaking, inevitable, but
which are. in part, very disturbing to
those who wish to preserve what was
good in older ideals.

It is difficult to speak in advocacy
of older ideals without using language
that has a somewhat old-fashioned
flavour. There is a distinction, which
formerly received general recognition.

between skill and wisdom. The grow-
ing complexities of technique have
tended to blur this distinction, at any
rate in certain regions.

There are kinds of skill which are
not specially respected although they
are difficult to acquire. A contortion-
ist, I am told, has to begin training
in early childhood, and. when pro-
ficient, he possesses a very rare and
difficult skill. But it is not felt that
this skill is socially useful, and it is.
therefore, not taught in schools or
universities. A great manv skills, how-
ever, indeed a rapidly increasing
number, are very vital elements in
the wealth and power of a nation.
Must of these skills are new and do
not command the respect of ancient
tradition. Some of them may be con-
sidered to minister to wisdom, but
a great manv certainly do not.

But what, you will ask, do you
mean by '"wisdom"? I am not pre-
pared with a neat definition. But
I will do my best to convey what I
think the word is capable of mean-
ing. It is a word concerned partly

ANAE QUARTERtY , WINTER 1960

15

with knowledge and partly with feel-
ing. It should denote a certain inti-
mate union of knowledge with ap-
prehension of human destiny and the
purposes of life. It requires a certain
breadth of vision, which is hardly
possible without considerable knowl-
edge. But it demands, also, a breadth
of feeling, a certain kind of uni-
versality of sympathy.

Unconscious Wisdom

I think that higher education
should do what is possible towards
promoting not only knowledge, but
wisdom. I do not think that this is
easy; and I do not think that the aim
should be too conscious, for, if it is,
it becomes stereotyped and priggish.
It should be something existing al-
most unconsciously in the teacher
and conveyed almost unintentionally
to the pupil. I agree with Plato in
thinking this the greatest thing that
education can do. Unfortunately, it
is one of the things most threatened
by the intrusion of crude democratic
shibboleths into our universities.

The fanatic of democracy is apt to
say that all men are equal. There is a
sense in which this is true, but it is
not a sense which much concerns the
educator. What can be meant truly
by the phrase "All men are equal" is
that in certain respects they have
equal rights and should have an equal
share of basic political power. Mur-
der is a crime whoever the victim
may be. and everybody should be
protected against it by the law and
the police. Any set of men or women
which has no share in political power
is pretty certain to suffer injustices
of an indefensible sort. All men
should be equal before the law. It is
such principles which constitute what
is valid in democracy.

But this should not mean that we
cannot recognize differing degrees of
skill or merit in different individuals.
Every teacher knows that some
pupils are quick to learn and others
are slow. Every teacher knows that
some boys and girls are eager to
acquire knowledge, while others have
to be forced into the minimum de-
manded by Authority. When a group
of young people are all taught to-

16

gether in one class, regardless of
their greater or less ability, the pace
has to be too quick for the stupid
and too slow for the clever. The
amount of teaching that a young per-
son needs depends to an enormous
extent upon his ability and his tastes.
A stupid child will only pay atten-
tion to what has to be learnt while
the teacher is there to insist upon the
subject-matter of the lesson. A reallv
clever young person, on the contrarv.
needs opportunity and occasional
guidance when he finds some diffi-
culty momentarily insuperable. The
practice of teaching clever and stupid
pupils together is extremely unfor-
tunate, especially as regards the ablest
of them. Infinite boredom settles
upon these outstanding pupils while
matters that they have long ago un-
derstood are being explained to those
who are backward.

Type of Instructor

This evil is greater the greater the
age of the student. By the time that
an able young man is at a university,
what he needs is occasional advice
(not orders) as to what to read, and
an instructor who has time and sym-
pathy to listen to his difficulties. The
kind of instructor that I have in mind
should be thoroughly competent in
the subject in which the student is

specializing, but he should be si
young enough to remember the d
Acuities that are apt to be obstacl
to the learner, and not yet so ossifi
as to be unable to discuss witho
dogmatism. Discussion is a very e
sential part in the education of n
best students and requires an absen
of authority if it is to be free ai
fruitful. I am thinking not only
discussion with teachers but of d)
cussion among the students thei
selves. For such discussion, the
should be leisure. And, indeed, li
sure during student years is of ti
highest importance. When I was
undergraduate, I made a vow thi
when in due course I became a le
turer, I would not think that lectun
do any good as a method of instri
tion, but only as an occasional stii
ulus. So far as the abler students a
concerned. I still take this view. Lt
tures as a means of instruction a
traditional in universities and we
no doubt useful before the inventi
of printing, but since that time th
have been out of date as regards t
abler kind of students.

Individual Ability

It is, I am profoundly convinced
mistake to object on democrai
grounds to the separation of abl
from less able pupils in teaching,
matters that the public considers i
portant no one dreams of such
application of supposed democrac
Everybody is willing to admit til
some athletes are better than othei
and that movie stars deserve mo
honour than ordinary mortals. Te
is because they have a kind of sk
which is much admired even
those who do not possess it. E
intellectual ability, so far from bei
admired by stupid boys, is positive
and actively despised; and ev
among grown-ups, the term "a
head" is not expressive of respe
It has been one of the humiliatio
of the military authorities of our til
that the man who now a days brin
success in war is no longer a gent
man of commanding aspect, sittj
upright upon a prancing horse, but
wretched scientist whom every mi
tary-minded boy would have bulli

THE AGNES SC(

Coming Attractions: Faculty Revue, Vintage I960

vhatever shape it may be by then good, we are
the long awaited Faculty Revue will have a one-
it stand in Presser Hall on April 9. 1960. Curtain time
:30.

his major production had its birth one balmy, spring-
rish day in the Spring of 1959 when, during a faculty
ting, members of the faculty interpolated among more
ust decisions a resounding aye vote to a proposal of
sident Alston's that the faculty undertake such an
ertaking.
'r. Alston presented this as the way the faculty might

help the campus campaign which would launch the
nsive financial drive scheduled for the College in
1-62; also, the student body had made both formal

informal requests to the faculty for a repeat per-
nance of the memorable and classic faculty revue,
ellbound."

'hus, with a unanimous vote of confidence in each other
r the record it would be noted that decisions made in
icultv meeting often have a healthv non-unanimity I
lty members had taken first steps toward their produc-

before Commencement: a veritable horde of commit-

were appointed and some of them had even met.

o make a confession, we are strictly inaccurate on the

ory of this faculty presentation, and there are prob-

many alumnae who can straighten us out please do.

Anyway, in our hazy way we gather that it was first done
during the years of World War II. as an informal skit to
raise funds for a war-time charity. Then in 1947 the skit
had been turned into a full-scale production, with a won-
drous script and amazing acting. Its title was '"Shell-
bound." In 1953. with a few script changes and a different
cast, "Shellbound II" burst upon the boards.

The 1960 variety of faculty revue will not be "Shell
bound III." There is a completely new script, built around
a new theme. The Writing Committee began its labors last
spring and worked during the long hot summer in Georgia.
Miss Margaret Trotter is chairman of this most vital com-
mittee and serving with her are Mrs. Jane Pepperdene.
Miss Laura Steele. Miss Dorothy Weakley. Mr. Timothy
Miller and Mr. Robert Westerveh.

As yet untitled (there is not a unanimous faculty de-
cision on this I and even if we knew what it will be
called, we are sworn to secrecy rest assured that the
Faculty Revue promises to be the most stupendous of
them all.

Every member of the faculty has some responsibility in
this mammoth job; to list them all would be impossible.
But some pre-thanks are due Miss Roberta Winter who is
performing the impossible by holding all the numberless
reins together, as Director. Come one. come all, to the
Faculty Revue. Vintage 1960!

oughout his youth. However, it is
for special skill in slaughter that
hould wish to see the '"egg-head"
pected.

Scientific versus Cultural

The needs of the modern world
e brought a conflict, which I think
Id be avoided, between scientific
jects and those that are called
ltural." The latter represent tra-
on and still have, in my country,
ertain snobbish pre-eminence. Cul-
al ignorance, beyond a point, is
pised. Scientific ignorance, how-
r complete, is not. I do not think,
self, that the division between cul-
al and scientific education should
nearly as definite as it has tended
become. I think that every scien-
c student should have some knowl-
*e of history and literature, and
it every cultural student should
/e some acquaintance with some of
basic ideas of science. Some
jple will say that there is not time,
ring the university curriculum, to
riieve this. But I think that opin-
i arises partly from unwillingness

to adapt teaching to those who are
not going to penetrate very far into
the subject in question. More spe-
cifically, whatever cultural education
is offered to scientific students should
not involve a knowledge of Latin or
Greek. And I think that whatever
of science is offered to those who
are not going to specialize in any
scientific subject should deal partly
with scientific history and partly with
general aspects of scientific method.
I think it is a good thing to invite
occasional lectures from eminent men
to be addressed to the general body
of students and not only to those
who specialize in the subject con-
cerned.

There are some things which I
think it ought to be possible, though
at present it is not, to take for granted
in all who are engaged in university
teaching. Such men or women must,
of course, be proficient in some spe-
cial skill. But, in addition to this,
there is a general outlook which it
is their duty to put before those
whom they are instructing. They
should exemplify the value of intel-

lect and of the search for knowledge.
They should make it clear that what
at any time passes for knowledge
may. in fact, be erroneous. They
should inculcate an undogmatic tem-
per, a temper of continual search and
not of comfortable certainty. They
should try to create an awareness of
the world as a whole, and not only of
what is near in space and time.
Through the recognition of the likeli-
hood of error, they should make clear
the importance of tolerance. They
should remind the student that those
whom posterity honours have very
often been unpopular in their own
day and that, on this ground, social
courage is a virtue of supreme im-
portance. Above all, every educator
who is engaged in an attempt to
make the best of the students to
whom he speaks must regard him-
self as the servant of truth and not
of this or that political or sectarian
interest. Truth is a shining goddess,
always veiled, always distant, never
wholly approachable, but worthy of
all the devotion of which the human
spirit is capable.

IMNAE QUARTERtY / WINTER 1960

17

\ \jKSL&. .

"April, April, lau^li thy girlish laughter,"

"Then, the moment after.
Weep thy girlish tears."'
S did poet William Watson once exhort the month
tpril. And we now exhort those of you who are mem-
; of reunion classes in 1960 to join us en the campus
first week end in April. Saturday. April 2.
t the risk of being repetitious, we will explain again

the reunion system which the Agnes Scott Alumnae
ociation uses, known as the Dix Reunion Plan, is

ly a mathematical computation allowing classes
bh were in school together to return to the campus
ther, in sets of four.

o, this year Dix reunion classes include 1893, 1894.
5, 1896! 1912, 1913. 1914. 1915. 1931. 1932, 1933.
4, 1950. 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1959. The Dix plan
? not provide for so-called "milestone" reunions, such
he tenth or twenty-fifth. These milestones celebrations
held at the pleasure of the class. This year the Class
910 will hold its fiftieth, the Class of 1935 its twenty-

the Class of 1940 its twentieth and the Class of 1950
enth. It so happens that the Class of 1950 is also
duled for a Dix plan reunion this year, so, to con-

you at greater length, we term this a "Milestone-
" reunion. Then, although the Class of 1934 is sched-

for a Dix reunion this year, they celebrated an im-
ant milestone last year, their twenty-fifth, and de-
id then not to hold another reunion so close on its
s. Does all of this explain any of the strange abra ca-
ra of the reunion plan we use?

his year the very first four graduating classes begin
ew reunion cycle; you will remember that Agnes
tt began in 1889 as Decatur Female Seminary. Thus.
Class of 1893, boasting two members, was the first
luating class, and one of the two members is the
lege's oldest living alumna. She was Mary Mack and
been Mrs. W. B. Ardery. Sr. for sixty-one years. Both
and her husband are ardent golfers, and in 1953 she

a trophy in a tournament plaved in her hometown.
E Mill, S.'C.
he second-oldest living alumna graduated in 1895.

v\NAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1960

is a class of five members. She is Miss Orra Hopkins,
younger sister of Dean Nanette Hopkins who came to be
"Lady Principal" in 1883. and she lives in the Hopkins'
hometown. Staunton, Va.

April, 1960. will also see the College launched on the
exciting seas of a financial campaign for four and one-
half million dollars. This task, which President Alston
terms a "stupendous one," begins in April with the mem-
bers of the campus community having their chance to
contribute and this is where all of Agnes Scott's cam-
paigns have begun, at home.

The fall issue promised you. in this column, happy
Agnes Scott reading this year. Please see page 23 for an-
other kind of reading. Both alumnae and the Faculty
Committee on Alumnae Affairs have suggested that
book-lists might be a helpful service from the College
to Alumnae. It seems wasteful of time and effort on
several persons' parts to print general book-lists, without
knowing in what areas you might like to have reading
suggestions from the faculty. So, since we had requests,
understandably, for books about the Civil War. we asked
Dr. Posey to weed out from the myriads published a few
outstanding ones. If any of you would like a similar list
in another area, please feel free to ask us for it, and we
will refer it to the proper faculty member.

May we here at the College send special salutes to
those of you who are celebrating Founders Day. either
at alumnae club meetings or in more informal gatherings.
We share with all alumnae Mildred Clark Sargent '36's
words to the Washington. D. C. alumnae last Founder's
Day: ". . . and looking back over twenty-three years and
three other colleges, I am aware that my education at
Agnes Scott was not specifically aimed in the direction
of linguistic, mathematical, scientific, or literary goals
so much as it was pointed toward life, preparation for
living in an ever-developing society, preparation for
enormous readjustments, expanding citizenship, service
and self-realization."

Avwu (oJ<*A.VArvgy C; ^sVlrV3-r*v. ' 3 %

27

The LibraJry A

Agnes S^ott College
pecatnar* Geor^^i

You are invited

ANNUAL MEETING

of the Agnes Scott Alumnae Association

and ALUMNAE LUNCHEON April 2, 1960

REUNIONS FOR

CLASSES OF 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1910, 1912,
1913, 1914, 1915, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1940,
1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1959

Calendar of Events

10:00- 11:00 a.m.

1 1:00 - 12:00 noon

Class Council Meeting
House.

I officers of all classes

Alumnae

12:30- 1:30 p.m.

1:30 - 7:30 p.m.
8:00 p.m.

"Operation Spaceshooting." President Alston presents, in
Presser Hall, a panel of faculty members and a student who
will project for alumnae exciting parts of Agnes Scott's pro-
gram for the future. Faculty members on the panel: Miss
Carrie Scandrett, Dean of Students: Mr. Ferdinand Warren.
Head of the Art Department: Miss Llewellyn Wilburn, Head
of the Physical Education Department; Miss Roberta Winter.
Associate Professor of English.

Alumnae Luncheon and Annual Meeting, Evans Dining Hall.
I All members of the Association plus non-members who are
having Class Reunions will receive an invitation.)

Reunion Classes Hold Their Special Functions.

Joint Concert, Agnes Scott College Glee Club and Brown
University Glee Club. Presser Hall.

Ferdinand Warren

SPRING 196

ties

n

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

A SPECIAL ISSUE: THE ALUMNAE 1960

THE

colt

SPRING 1960 Vol. 38, No.
ALUMNAE QUARTERL

Ann Worthy Johnson, Editor
Dorothv Weaklev, Assistant Editor

CONTENTS The Two-way Street for Alumnae and College

A Heroine's Journey

Mildred Davis Adams 6

The Alumnus A 11

Class News Eloise Hardeman Ketchin 2"i

Worthy Notes 33

COVER :

Spring at Agnes Scott means reunion time for alumnae. Here
are a group of reunioners, April 2, 1960, from the Class of
1910 to the Class of 1959, greeting each other in front of the
Dining Hall. Frontispiece, opposite, shows a faculty member
greeting alumnae. Photographs by Jim Brantley.

THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

Officers

Bella Wilson Lewis '34, President
Evelyn Baty Landis '40, Vice-President
Kathleen Buchanan Cabell '47,

Vice-President
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48,

Vice-President
Marybeth Little Weston '48,

Vice-President
Gene Slack Morse '41, Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson '38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin
House Manager

Dorothy Weakley '56,

Assistant Director of Alumnae Affairs

Alumnae Trustees

Mary Prim Fowler '29

Catherine Wood Marshall LeSourd '36

Chairmen

Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn '38,

Class Council
Sara Frances McDonald '36, Constitutioi
Mary' Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Louisa Aichel Mcintosh '47, Entertainmt
Rose Mary Griffin Wilson '48, House
Jean Bailey Owen '39, Nominations
Virginia Brown McKenzie '47, Property
Jean Grey Morgan '31, Publications
Dorothy Cheek Callaway '29,

Special Events
Barbara Smith Hull '47.

Vocational Guidance

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published jour times a year (November,
February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College
at Decatur, Georgia. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents. Entered
as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of
August 24. 1912. MEMBER OF AMERICAN ALUMNI COUNCIL

SS JANEF PRESTON '21 GREETS FORMER STUDENTS NANCY GRAYSON FULLER '58 AND NANCY HOLLAND SIBLEY '58

^.., ^V^'

Projected plans for the new Fine Arts building, to be located next to Presser Halt, include space for art studies and classrooms and for speech and dramatics.

A TWO-WAY STREET FCl

Thank goodness, there is no
composite public image of an
alumna as there is of an alum-
nus, the back-slapping, fifty-year-old
sophomore whose interest in books
is avid only for a book of season
tickets on the 50-yard line.

But it is frightening, in one sense,
that no such image exists. After over
a hundred years of higher education,
are educated women in our society
making so little impact that as alum-
nae we aren't even caricatured?
Would one answer be, or is this wish-
ful thinking, that there are so few of
us?

Another answer may be that as
alumnae we are unsure of our re-
sponsibilities to the very college that
made each of us push her own grow-
ing edge as a student, and in turn.
the college may be unsure of its con-
tinuing responsibilities to the women
it sought to help become whole
human beings. This problem is ever
a two-way street.

And it is this problem that I want
to explore, as Agnes Scott College
stands on the verge of the greatest

The Director of Alumnae Affairs looks at 1

undertaking in its 71 -year history.
Granted, of course, that I write from
a privileged spot: one of my pleas-
anter duties as director of alumnae
affairs is publishing this magazine,
so I may use these pages at my dis-
cretion. You may have back at me:
I promise to publish vour letters.

When I came back to Agnes Scott
six years ago. I wandered for many
days asking one question, "Who is
an alumna? ' The final answer I
found in the alumnae files in my own
office. Any person who registered at
Agnes Scott is an alumna, no matter
how long she remained in the college.
One alumna has said, "I went to
Agnes Scott in 1893. when I was
fourteen ; I cried for three days, then
Papa came and took me home and
I still get mail from the College!"
We are pushing the 10.000 mark,
but only about one-third of us are
graduates. The office has addresses
on almost 8,000 of us. to whom,
graduate and non-graduate alike, go
each year some 50,000 pieces of mail
the Quarterly, fund-appeal bro-
chures, newsletters. President Alston's

annual report, class letters, reunici
letters, materials for programs
alumnae club meetings, aside fro
correspondence with individual alun
nae. Thus does the College, throw
the Alumnae Office, discharge a pa(
of its continuing responsibility
alumnae, keeping alumnae informs
about Agnes Scott today.

My second question, after finds
the answer to who is an alumna, wa
is, and ever will be: "What is a
alumna?" There are no pat answe)
to this, and new ones come each yeai
there are ultimately as many answef
as there are individuals and oftel
the individual answers change!
was with a kind of delight that tf
realization came to me that I woul
never find my answer except as tit
daily living of each of us instruc
me.

President Alston says this, in muc
better terms, in his Annual Report t
the Board of Trustees for 1957. "Th
outreach and the impact oj the coi
lege must be cumulatively vital
Agnes Scott is to lay claim to greai
ness. Our careful program of selei

THE AGNES SCO'

ative location of the new Physical Education building is facing the tennis courts and athletic field. The present gymnasium will be entirely renovated for a student center

,UMNAE AND COLLEGE

<es oj the College to alumnae and vice versa

e admissions is basic. The students
o then go from our campus to
ldreds of communities throughout
; world are our product and the
lidity of our effort as a Christian
eral arts college is ultimately de-
mined by the value of their lives.
ie importance of Agnes Scott as a
liege cannot be estimated by num-
ring our alumnae: the number, of
urse, will always be relatively small.
)r can the contribution of this
stitution be measured accurately
;rely by determining the wealth or
3 renown of our graduates. The
:imate test is the intrinsic worth of
mes Scott students, here and after
liege days are over, in the homes
2y establish the professional and
isiness careers upon which they en-
| the church, civic, educational.
d social relationships that they
aintain. I am quite willing for
gnes Scott's contribution to be
asured in such terms; that it
ould be so measured is, at any rate,
evitable."

What we have in common, as
umnae. is that we are women (al-

though there were six little boys in
the grammar school that opened its
doors in Decatur, Georgia in 18891
and that we shared at Agnes Scott
the kind of liberal arts education
which Dean C. Benton Kline char-
acterizes as leading "students into
adventures of thought and understand-
ing" beyond horizons of their previous
training and experience." As alum-
nae we actually share only one com-
mon denominator, that of being the
female of the species, because how we
translate the liberating experiences
of an Agnes Scott education varies
in individual lives.

This leads us to our one great pit-
fall on the alumnae side of the two-
wav street between alumnae and their
college. This is our tendency to think
of Agnes Scott as it was when we
were students. We are prone to
want to cherish it and bind the mem-
ory of it as a kind of shining postu-
late of our own lost youth. We are
loath to recognize right and healthy
change within and about it. So. our
major area of responsibilities is to
learn, by every feasible means, what

Agnes Scott College, vintage 1960,
is like and what the Agnes Scott of
1970 should be like. Probably, we
are quite sound psychologically when
we hop into this particular pitfall.
The nomenclature mankind has
chosen to designate for his college.
alma mater, seems to me to be deter-
mined recognition of the child-parent
relationship inherent in any student-
college situation. And I'm sure that
this is even more evident among
alumnae of women's colleges and
more prevalent among women's col-
lege alumnae in the South. I fre-
quently hear Agnes Scott alumnae
ask, "Why didn't Agnes Scott teach
me such-and-such?"' in the same tone
of voice their own teenagers use to
ask, "Why don't my parents let me
do such-and-such?"

In turn, the pitfall on the College's
side of the street is the tendency of
the administration and faculty tow-
ard paternalism, rather than materna-
lism. in their relationships with alum-
nae. It is as difficult for a teacher to
"let" a student become an adult, or
for a college president or dean to

UMNAE QUARTERLY / SPRING 1960

- -^s^r -*--. +* i! r rn. t rf ' nrr t

0) VS^

The proposed new Dormitory, to be set on S. Candler Street facing the Infirmary, will at long last provide adequate housing tor all boarding studei

recognize an alumna as a mature
human being twenty years after col-
lege as it is for a father to '"let" a
daughter grow up and marry that
boy who but yesterday gawked and
blushed in his presence.

I'm glad to report that, at Agnes
Scott, these pitfalls are rapidly being
filled up, not avoided. The great
financial campaign which we've
launched will not only undergird
Agnes Scott's educational program
but will have untold fringe-benefits
in the paving of these holes, in the
increased mutual understanding of
the responsibilities of alumnae to
their College and of the College to
alumnae.

This will be a most different kind
of campaign for most alumnae who
can recall others in the past. The
key to this lies in two words, alum-
na leadership. The College is turning
not to friends, parents, or even our
stalwart alumnae husbands, but to
alumnae as individuals and collec-
tively, for campaign leaders. Five
of the members of the overall steer-
ing committee for the campaign are
alumnae, and as 1 write this, the

College is selecting an alumna as
campaign chairman in each of the
approximately 45 geographic areas
where there will be organized solici-
tation.

During the campaign, the College
will attempt to discharge its respon-
sibilities to alumnae leaders by pro-
viding us with careful, thorough state-
ments of the needs of Agnes Scott,
with guidance in the techniques of
campaigning which will be both
fundamental and fun. The campaign
brochure, which all of you will re-
ceive, is as excellent a statement about
Agnes Scott's stature as I have ever
beheld. There is a movie being made
now about the College which is
geared for alumnae eyes and hearts.

Within the next eighteen months,
all alumnae will have the opportunity
to discharge part of our continuing
responsibility to Agnes Scott by our
thoughtful contribution to the cam-
paign. A goal of 4 1 /o million dollars
is, of course, a stupendous one for
the size of Agnes Scott. But it is not
stupendous for the standing of Agnes
Scott in our society, which we, its
product, must maintain and enlarge.

This goal is the last lap of the c
leges 75th Anniversary Developmei
Program, to culminate in 1964.
Alumnae Fund, which is the college
annual giving program, will not,
course, be operated during the cai
paign period ; you can make a pledi
in the campaign payable as y
designate. And your pledge can I
fleet the liberal arts education
action, using your best judgment (
what portion of your own resource
each in your own situation, you ca
give to further the sort of educatk
you once shared.

The contributions from alumni
to the College through the Alumn;
Fund have helped immeasurably
bring Agnes Scott to its present plat
of 8th in the nation among women
colleges in endowment value. Ari
mistake me not: I am well aware th
the $5.00 contribution to the Aluij
nae Fund often means juggling
household budget for many alumna
The alumna's responsibility now is
stop thinking in terms of a token, (
perfunctory gift and to plan wisely an
intelligently for her support of Agm
Scott in its most crucial campaigi

THE AGNES SCO

Mildred Davis Adams '38

A HEROINE'S JOURNEY

An alumna tells us now the psychic journey

we must all take began for her in the

magic of words at Agnes Scott.

\E have heard a great deal
Ise last years about Myth and Man.
jut the journey of the hero. Amid
modern treatments, in the arts,
Oedipus, Orpheus, Job, Gilgamesh,
cretia and Tarquinius, Promethe-

and Sisyphus, Joseph. Faust, and
n Juan, and amid criticism steeped

Freudian or Jungian psychology
i in the branches of anthropology
i philosophy which illuminate the
steries of man as a symbol-making
imal, it is hard to realize that only
ew years ago James Joyce's Ulysses
d T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland
filed and annoyed many readers,
ligion and the arts from the begin-
lg of human history, we realize,
ve been symbolizing mans pro-
jndest experiences in the universal
ychic journey toward self-know-
and self-fulfillment: the ad-
utures of what Joseph Campbell
s called '"the hero with a thousand

But what about Myth and Women?
hat about the Journey of the Hero-
3? Surely half the human race is
t supposed to be excluded from full
rticipation in religion and the arts
d the experiences which they sym-
Hize? I wonder if the custom of
ing the masculine form "man" for
e general meaning, and the domin-
ice of men as the central figures in
ost of the great heroic myths, does
t sometimes obscure what I feel is
essential truth about women: that
e psychic journey to which the my-
ical Hero is called is our journey,
o.

Not that women today would den)
or belittle, as earlier Bluestockings
and Suffragettes sometimes did, the
important physical, emotional, and
social differences between men and
women; we are more likely to rejoice
in them. But deep down, surely, men
and women are the same. Whether
we would wish it or no, the human
predicament, which in the West has
so persistently been experienced as a
tragic one. is woman's predicament,
too.

If it were not so. would the hearts
of girls and women have been stirred,
as I know mine has been, by the
great symbolic expressions that have
come our way since childhood
poems, plays, stories, music, painting,
sculpture, architecture, and various
combinations of these as in the Cath-
olic Mass. in opera, in ballet?

I am not thinking primarily of
girls' and women's responses to Ven-
us, Diana, and other female deities
or to Mary the Mother of Jesus or
other female saints. It was not Mary
but Jesus who said, and not to men
only, "I am the way ... no one
comes to the Father, but by me."
Whatever else the story in the Gospels
is, surely it is one more story to
some of us the richest, the most dra-
matic, and the most beautiful of a
hero's journey, the long, passionate
quest for self-knowledge and self ful-
fillment. True, some of us believe that
this man was also God. But even for
Christians, or perhaps especially for
Christians, it is a human journey on
which Jesus urged his disciples to

follow him: a departure from the
ordinary, the merely conventional
and formal, the superficial; a search
not only with the mind but in ones
whole experience, through solitude
and loneliness, despair, death, and
Hell; at last to resurrection, ascent
into Heaven, and a seat on the right
hand of God. And what woman who
has reached middle age or even, say,
the age of thirty, has not had in
love, in friendship, in illness, in grief,
in childbirth flashes or insight into
the truths contained in that story
and its images of the slain God and
the open tomb?

Individual men and women not
content merely to exist have al-
ivays had to grope and fight
toward self-knowledge and self-fulfill-
ment. Growth to maturity has never
been an easy, casual, or superficial
process. The very earliest human
records attest that struggle. Years
and years ago men climbed and swam
and crawled to almost inaccessible
caves and there painted on the walls
animals still vibrant with the paint-
er's awful experience of creative
power within and without him. In
primitive tribes the rites de passage,
often preceded by arduous training
and commonly including torture,
help the individual at crucial mo-
ments in his passage through life to
know himself and play his part in
relation to his society and its gods.

In the great cultures which com-
bined to produce the western-human-

(Continued on Page 8)

UMNAE QUARTERLY / SPRING 1960

(Continued from Page 7 )

istic-Christian civilization that we
like to call our own. family and com-
munity, through rich traditional
symbols, trained the young person in
his growth toward a mature personal
and communal life. The Jew had
Temple and Synagogue, law, ritual,
and the rich library of his Scriptures
history, drama, song. myth, and
legend, and the prophets" denuncia-
tions, exhortations, and visions. The
classical Greek knew the Homeric
epics practically by heart, partici-
pated in the great religious-civic
festivals for which Aeschvlus. Sop-
hocles and Euripides wrote their
plays, and saw every day the statues
and temples which helped make
Athens the school of Hellas.

The Roman learned from his father
proper worship of the deities of
hearth and farm and to emulate men
of courage, simplicity, faithfulness
to the given word, and self-discipline:
he was trained by such rich symbo-
lism as Virgil's Aeneid and August-
us' Ara Pads toward a new ideal
of dedicated citizenship. In the rich
synthesis of western medieval Chris-
tendom, though lives were usuallv
short, brains unschooled, rats and
germs ubiquitous, nevertheless prince
and peasant alike were ushered into,
through, and out of life as members
of a living Church.

With the Renaissance, men and
women were nourished not only in a
Christian religion still full of vitality
but also in an exhilarating classical

humanism. True, there was confu-
sion and conflict: many an individual
felt rent asunder by the apparently
incompatible values of Christianity
and humanism. But for the conflict
there was. if not solution, at least
passionate expression, communica-
tion the knowledge, for artist as
well as common citizen, that he was
not alone. It was not Shakespeare's
fellow playwrights or professional
scholars and critics, but all sorts and
conditions of men ( and women ) who
packed the theater to share the be-
wilderment and the tragic struggle
of Macbeth. Hamlet. Othello and
Lear.

What about our own society
U.S.A. 1960? Isn't that
perennially difficult growth
to maturity harder than ever?
Though such things cannot be ac-
curately weighed and measured, isn t
the personal journey to self-knowl-
edge and self-fulfillment perhaps
more exhausting, more lonely, more
fraught with pain and confusion, less
illumined b\ joy now than ever be-
fore?

If this is so. why is it so? To draw
upon Mr. Paul Tillich. it is because
our world has. in general, lost "the
dimension of depth. ' We live on a
flat plane, in the "horizontal dimen-
sion." We move rapidly through
days, hours, moments packed with
activities: we deal constantly with
things, and we measure our actions
and our relations with things in terms

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mildred Davis Adams is back in the United
States this spring, at Columbia University, on
leave of absence from teaching at the Beirut
College for Women in Lebanon. Her husband,
John, teaches at Americcn University in Beirut;
Mildred brought their two children, Branwen
and Brayton, home with her and they are
staying with her mother in Jacksonville, Fla.
The Adams have taught at Washington Uni-
versity, in St. Louis, end at the American Uni-
versity in Cairo, Egypt. Two other Agnes Scott
alumnae are on the staff with Mildred in
Beirut, Jeanne Addison Masengill '46 and
Frances Markley Roberts '21.

Mrs. Adams

of "bigger and bigger,'' "faster an
faster: ' with our fellow human being
we congregate, we adjust, we intei
act, but only on the surface. One
powerful symbols present themselve
to eyes blind and ears deaf to thei
meaning. We might almost seem i
danger of becoming things ourselve
in the world of things we have crea
ed. For to be human. Mr. Tillic
says, one must live in another d
mension, "the vertical dimension.'

And he believes that it is religiou
experience through which, and onl
through which, a man becomes fulll
human. Such experience may be d(
scribed as "'ultimate concern." Whe
a man or woman stops for a momer
in the bustling of ordinary superficia
life and puts to the universe, witj
an impassioned cry, with his wholi
being, the ultimate questions, "Wh
am I? Why am I here? What am
to do?" he is asking, according t
Tillich. religious questions. Whei
instead of trying to forget the "ud
setting experience." or get over it, hi
continues to ask these questions m
gently, even if he believes in no Got
to whom to address them, his life
a religious one: the man is in th
process of becoming human.

Clearly, this religious quest is thl
old Heroic Journey described i
slightly different terms. In organize'
society, through verbal and otha
symbols the very invention and usi
of which distinguishes us from th
other animals, individuals have aj
ways helped each other in that diffl
cult personal growth. Indeed, if
society merely helps its member
solve their economic problems an|
fails to help them know who they au
and what their lives mean, it fail
to survive.

So, even now when the quest
particularly difficult, there an
signs that men and women
not easily give up their humanit;
Contemporary poetry, drama, fictioi
painting, sculpture, music, the danC'
some branches of philosophy, th
Church, as Tillich points out, voic
the fervent protest and question an
record individual experiences in tl
passionate search. The sharp sens
of personal loss with which thousanc

THE AGNES SCO

if readers heard recently of the
leath of Albert Camus attests that
ill is not yet lost.

The quest is perhaps harder for
fomen than for men, we are servant-
ess women, busy with housework,
hild-rearing, Scouts, Sunday school,
TA, propagandized if not brain-
washed into the "horizontal" cults
i youth, beauty, togetherness, ma-
srial comfort, and security, enter-
ained by the rubbish of show-busi-
ess. But even now. and even for
/omen, the quest is still possible.

And here is where the alumna's
elation to her college becomes im-
ortant beyond all measure. If a girl
r woman has it in her to live heroi-
ally ( yes, let's use the word, though
dth a very small "h" ) , not postur-
ig as a heroine of melodrama, not
aunting herself as the female equi-
alent of the popular notion of
fietzsche's Superman, but simply
iving herself courageously, however
mited or gifted she may be, to life-
>ng quest for self-knowledge and
laturitv; if she has it in her to do
lis and if her college is what it
rould be, the college can help her
3 perhaps no one else and nothing
!se can, to translate dream into
:ality.

How can it do this? How does
gnes Scott do this?

I cannot answer systematically. I
o not think Agnes Scott or any
:her college does it systematically.
ut my sharpest memories of my col-
ge, those that even now, when I am
renty-odd years removed from that
impus, make the pulse race or stop
together, are of words their
mnds, the faces of those who spoke
lem, or their look on the page, the
nages they conjured in a flash then
i they do now. By this magic Agnes
:ott worked upon us.

And how those still echoing words
id the men and women, dead or
ive, who spoke them, all invited and
ired us to a life in the vertical di-
ension. to make the universal psy-
lic journey of myth and man. We
ouldn't have called it that then.

r N the great bare hall of the gym-
nasium, her tiny body quivering
g in the long sea-green dress, even
:r unrulv gold-streaked brown hair

vibrant with life, Edna St. Vincent
Millay spoke her poems to us. and
we who knew nothing of poetry
heard, deep inside us, ourselves
speaking :

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night . . .

] know I am but summer to your heart . . .

1 know. But I do not approve. And 1 am

not resigned.

Just before Christmas my freshman
year a Dr. Poteat appeared among
us and lectured in chapel. Only three
of his words ring in my memory
now: Plato . . . ladder . . . love. But
the vision! Christmas was not the
same that year. Nothing has ever
been the same. 1 had never read a
line of Plato then, but there it was
and there it has remained: a ladder
stretching from ray world of excit-
ing, confusing, frustrating, transient
objects, far far up until its narrow
top vanished in pure Light, Love,
Truth, Goodness. Beauty which were
all somehow One and Eternal, and on
this ladder, not Jacob's angels, but
men and women ascending and
(how wonderful! how terrifying!)
myself among them.

It was not only on special occasions
and by visitors that the spell was
cast. Quietly, daily, too potent to be
thwarted by lessons in grammar,
vocabulary, outlines, dates and causes
and results of wars, even by the
memorizing of a thirty-page classifi-
cation of the animal kingdom, the
magic of words was working in class-
room and library. For a plain, clum-
sy freshman straight from Main
Street, what sisterhood with plain,
clumsy Maggie Tulliver in her strug-
gle in her web of provincialism, what
tears when Maggie drowned in the
Floss, what comfort to learn that at
least her author did not!

For a sophomore straining and
panting her way "From Beowulf to
Thomas Hardy," what bewilderment
and awe. what pity, what terror for
herself before Lear going mad on
the heath:

. . . the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there.

And what pain and satisfaction there
was in having to order her vague
responses: "Is Lear a Tragic Hero
as Aristotle defined the Tragic
Hero?"

In my junior and senior years (the
initiation over, the Rubicon crossed I
the journey continued on a new level
and in a goodly fellowship with
Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley :

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.

"Yes." my heart sang in counter-
point, '".... our dawn . . . and to be
young is very heaven."

Even Tennyson (whom we could
not forgive for his seventeen years
engagement I had his moments:

. . . and tho"
We are not now that strength which in old

days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we

are. we are
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate, but strong

in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

And Browning: a dozen of us fell in
love with Robert Browning one year,
leaped from our couches, married
him. and lived in Italy with him
happily ever after:

This world's no blot for us
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means

good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

By my senior year, with the rum-
ble of an imminent world war in our
ears. Arnold was close to us. and
Carlyle's fire and thunder defied
those of war.

Even from other languages the
word came through: Phaedra's agony
. . . Voltaire's outcry on the Earth-
quake at Lisbon . . . Balzac's Rastig-
nac. looking down on Paris and
crying. "A nous deux maintenanf'
. . . Cvrano's nose (that struck
home! ) and his plume . . . Virgil's
Dido. magnificent, compassionate
(non ignara Jiwli miseris succurrere
disco), a goddess among women,
but Dido. too. destroyed by love.
("Then is it so? Why? Why? and
if it is, how can we manage?")

Did all these words, heard so
deeply, remembered so long,
merely reverberate in an en-
capsulated little world, my private
inner world or the little world of the
campus? No! not then, not ever!
What they spoke from and about and
to was life itself. Yes. they invited us

UMNAE QUARTERLY / SPRING 1960

to knowledge, but to a knowledge of
the world and of ourselves which they
assured us comes only through ener-
getic, impassioned experience, even
experience of "'the abyss.

When I was at Agnes Scott as a
student, those four years were full
of living, of academic and non-
academic experiences constantly en-
riching each other, although common
sense frequently warned that one
could not do everything, ever, and
certainly not during the college years.
To distinguish sharply between edu-
cation and life was as impossible for
some of us then as it is now. A single
example will illustrate. Secure and
well-fed in our bright, warm college,
some of us, as sophomores, were
shaken into painful awareness of the
misery of the grim 1930's around
us by a sociology teacher, an Amos
of liberalism whose book on the
tenant farmers was called Tenants of
the Almighty. Our roast chicken and
"heavenly hash" stuck in our throats !
Within weeks, as helpers of young
theological students, who already had
a mission-chapel there, we had plung-
ed into the Atlanta slums. I remem-
ber particularly the evangelical serv-
ice each Sunday night in the little
church which was crowded with our
friends, all sorts of what Nietzsche
called the "botched and bungled" of
mankind: we played the piano and
helped lead the singing of hymns.
(That was the hard thing: "Love
Lifted Me" was such excruciating
music! )

UT7^ : -" S '

|~1 that w<
-A- still in I

some might say, "but
\as at Agnes Scott.
the nest. What about
later, in the big adult world out-
side?" That is just the point. There
is no real break. What woman, if she
is honest and sane, can point any-
where in her self to a "break" be-
tween girl and woman, between stu-
dent and alumna? And if the collge
is, as we have assumed it is, not
land and buildings, but people, where
is the break between college and the
world ?

Of course the girl leaves the
campus: the location and the pattern
of her actions change: so does the
membership in the campus communi-
ty. If her education in college has

been chiefly the acquisition of facts
and skills, and if she has been under
the delusion that these were equip-
ping her for life, she will, indeed,
poor thing, suffer a kind of break if
not a complete breakdown though
some of the facts and skills acquired
at college perhaps more easily than
elsewhere are not to be sneered at.
But if, in a college like Agnes Scott,
she has been awakened to some aware-
ness of the mystery, the beauty, and
the terror of life, has felt called to
explore it and has, passionately, said
yes to that call; if she has, there,
been guided, trained, supported in
the first part of her journey, there
should be. must be. no break.

In new work, new friendships, the
choice of a husband, the making of
a marriage and a home, in the bear-
ing and rearing of children, perhaps
in struggles with poverty, illness,
exhaustion, in the effort to keep in-
formed and to participate in com-
munity and world affairs, in travel-
ing or living in far corners of the
world in all her experiences earlier
facts and opinions may have to be
revised, earlier skills improved and
new ones added. But the Truth once
apprehended, the Way once entered
remain, to be explored by the woman
in those adult experiences as no girl
at college can explore them.

And the great symbolic sources of
light and strength for the journey re-
main, to be tapped as no girl can
tap them: the religion and the arts
of all ages, including our own. Hop-
kins has said this well:

The world is charged with the grandeur

of God.
It will flame out. like shining from shook

foil . . .

Sometimes, if among the unwash-
ed dishes and the television com-
mercials the vision grows dim (No!
I am not St. Joan/Nor was meant
to be . . . apologies, Mr. Eliot) or
if one simply wants to, it's good to
go back, as I did for three days early
in March this year. Buildings,
grounds, books, equipment all are
exciting. But more exciting, to me:
the magic is still at work. I didn't see
Edna Millay. But I saw and heard
an electrifying visiting scholar and
teacher. Mile. Bree, from New York
University, lecture at convocation

and, in French, lead a seminar on
Camus. I talked with one student who
was writing a paper on Tom Jones'-
do you remember that rejection ol
snobbery and pedantry, the affir-
mation of the heart and the whole
life? I talked with another who was
wrestling with paradox in John
Donne. I saw five students act a little
plav based on one of Oscar Wildes
fairy tales: not Sophocles or Shake-
speare, but even there, a glimmer.
The magic is at work, the fountains
are flowing, apparently more abund-
antly than ever.

The next article

provides a neic look

at and, we trust, the

beginning of neiv

attitudes toward the

products of

American higher

education. Prepared

by a group of

alumni magazine

editors, this special

report ivill reach

2,900,000

fdumni/ae

this spring.

But, if in one sense we never realh
leave, in another we cannot really
stay. Alma Mater that she is, our col-
lege creates life in us. nourishes,
teaches, guides, and sustains us, re-
ceives us home again and again, bul
urges us. always, out and away.

10

THE AGNES SCOT 1

THE

ALUMN US

A

AImAH BEARDEN, JON BREN'NEIS

As student, as

alumna or alumnus: at

both stages, one

of the most important persons

in higher education.

a special report

a

Salute . .

and a

declaration of
dependence

This is a salute, an acknowledgment of a partnc
ship, and a declaration of dependence. It is direct
to you as an alumnus or alumna. As such, you a
one of the most important persons in American educatii
today.

You are important to American education, and to yo
alma mater, for a variety of reasons, not all of which m.
be instantly apparent to you.

You are important, first, because you are the princip
product of your alma mater the principal claim she c;
make to fame. To a degree that few suspect, it is by
alumni that an educational institution is judged. And ft
yardsticks could more accurately measure an institutioi
true worth.

You are important to American education, furth
because of the support you give to it. Financial suppc
comes immediately to mind: the money that alumni a
giving to the schools, colleges, and universities they on

tended has reached an impressive sum, larger than that
ceived from any other source of gifts. It is indispensable.

But the support you give in other forms is impressive
id indispensable, also. Alumni push and guide the legis-
tive programs that strengthen the nation's publicly
ipported educational institutions. They frequently act

academic talent scouts for their alma maters, meeting
id talking with the college-bound high school students

their communities. They are among the staunchest de-
nders of high principles in education e.g., academic
eedom even when such defense may not be the "popu-
r" posture. The list is long; yet every year alumni are
iding ways to extend it.

ro the hundreds of colleges and universities and
secondary schools from which they came, alumni
are important in another way one that has nothing
do with what alumni can do for the institutions them-

selves. Unlike most other forms of human enterprise,
educational institutions are not in business for what they
themselves can get out of it. They exist so that free people,
through education, can keep civilization on the forward
move. Those who ultimately do this are their alumni.
Thus only through its alumni can a school or a college
or a university truly fulfill itself.

Chancellor Samuel B. Gould, of the University of Cali-
fornia, put it this way:

"The serious truth of the matter is that you are the
distilled essence of the university, for you are its product
and the basis for its reputation. If anything lasting is to
be achieved by us as a community of scholars, it must in
most instances be reflected in you. If we are to win intellec-
tual victories or make cultural advances, it must be
through your good offices and your belief in our mission."

The italics are ours. The mission is yours and ours
together.

Alma Mater . . .

At an alumni-alumnae meeting in Washington,

members sing the old school song.

The purpose of this meeting was to introduce

the institution to high school

boys and girls who, with their parents,

were present as the club's guests.

THE ALUMN US A

Alumnus + alumnu;

Many people cling to the odd notion that in this

The popular view of you, an alumnus or alumna,
is a puzzling thing. That the view is highly illogical
seems only to add to its popularity. That its ele-
ments are highly contradictory seems to bother no one.

Here is the paradox:

Individually you, being an alumnus or alumna, are
among the most respected and sought-after of beings.
People expect of you (and usually get) leadership or in-
telligent followership. They appoint you to positions of
trust in business and government and stake the nation's
very survival on your school- and college-developed
abilities.

If you enter politics, your educational pedigree is freely
discussed and frequently boasted about, even in precincts
where candidates once took pains to conceal any educa-
tion beyond the sixth grade. In clubs, parent-teacher
associations, churches, labor unions, you are considered
to be the brains, the backbone, the eyes, the ears, and the
neckbone the latter to be stuck out, for alumni are ex-
pected to be intellectually adventurous as well as to ex-
ercise other attributes.

But put you in an alumni club, or back on campus for a
reunion or homecoming, and the popular respect yea,
awe turns to chuckles and ho-ho-ho. The esteemed in-
dividual, when bunched with other esteemed individuals,
becomes in the popular image the subject of quips, a can-
didate for the funny papers. He is now imagined to be a
person whose interests stray no farther than the degree of
baldness achieved by his classmates, or the success in
marriage and child-bearing achieved by her classmates, or
the record run up last season by the alma mater's football
or field-hockey team. He is addicted to funny hats deco-
rated with his class numerals, she to daisy chainmaking
and to recapturing the elusive delights of the junior-class
hoop-roll.

If he should encounter his old professor of physics, he is
supposedly careful to confine the conversation to remi-
niscences about the time Joe or Jane Wilkins, with spec-
tacular results, tried to disprove the validity of Newton's
third law. To ask the old gentleman about the implica-
tions of the latest research concerning anti-matter would
be, it is supposed, a most serious breach of the Alumni
Reunion Code.

Such a view of organized alumni activity might be dis-
missed as unworthy of note, but for one disturbing fact:
among its most earnest adherents are a surprising number
of alumni and alumnae themselves.

Permit us to lay the distorted image to rest, with the i
of the rites conducted by cartoonist Mark Kelley on t
following pages. To do so will not necessitate burying t
class banner or interring the reunion hat, nor is therej
need to disband the homecoming day parade.

The simple truth is that the serious activities of orga
ized alumni far outweigh the frivolities in about t
same proportion as the average citizen's, or unorganiz
alumnus's, party-going activities are outweighed by 1
less festive pursuits.

Look, for example, at the activities of the organic
alumni of a large and famous state university in the Mi
west. The former students of this university are ofH
pictured as football-mad. And there is no denying that,
many of them, there is no more pleasant way of spendil
an autumn Saturday than witnessing a victory by t
home team.

But by far the great bulk of alumni energy on behalf
the old school is invested elsewhere:

Every year the alumni association sponsors a reco
nition dinner to honor outstanding students those wi>
a scholastic average of 3.5 (B + ) or better. This has prov
to be a most effective way of showing students that ao
demic prowess is valued above all else by the institute
and its alumni.

Every year the alumni give five "distinguished teac
ing awards" grants of $1,000 each to professors select
by their peers for outstanding performance in the clas
room.

An advisory board of alumni prominent in vario
fields meets regularly to consider the problems of I
university: the quality of the course offerings, the calib
of the students, and a variety of other matters. They r
port directly to the university president, in confidenci
Their work has been salutary. When the university
school of architecture lost its accreditation, for exampl
the efforts of the alumni advisers were invaluable in ge
ting to the root of the trouble and recommending mea
ures by which accreditation could be regained.

The efforts of alumni have resulted in the passage |
urgently needed, but politically endangered, appropri
tions by the state legislature.

Some 3,000 of the university's alumn i act each year ;
volunteer alumni-fund solicitors, making contacts wil
30,000 of the university's former students.

Nor is this a particularly unusual list of alumni accon
plishments. The work and thought expended by the alun

umni-or does it?

group somehow differs from the sum of its parts

ELLIOTT EKWITT, MAGNUM

Behind the fun

of organized alumni activity in clubs, at reunions lies new seriousness
nowadays, and a substantial record of service to American education.

of hundreds of schools, colleges, and universities in
;half of their alma maters would make a glowing record,
ever it could be compiled. The alumni of one institution
ok it upon themselves to survey the federal income-tax
ws, as they affected parents' ability to finance their
ildren's education, and then, in a nationwide campaign,
essed for needed reforms. In a score of cities, the
umnae of a women's college annually sell tens of thou-
nds of tulip bulbs for their alma mater's benefit; in
?ht years they have raised $80,000, not to mention
tndreds of thousands of tulips. Other institutions' alum-
e stage house and garden tours, organize used-book
les, sell flocked Christmas trees, sponsor theatrical
nefits. Name a worthwhile activity and someone is
obably doing it, for faculty salaries or building funds or
udent scholarships.

Drop in on a reunion or a local alumni-club meeting,
id you may well find that the superficial programs of

yore have been replaced by seminars, lectures, laboratory
demonstrations, and even week-long short-courses. Visit
the local high school during the season when the senior
students are applying for admission to college and try-
ing to find their way through dozens of college catalogues,
each describing a campus paradise and you will find
alumni on hand to help the student counselors. Nor are
they high-pressure salesmen for their own alma mater and
disparagers of everybody else's. Often they can, and do,
perform their highest service to prospective students by
advising them to apply somewhere else.

The achievements, in short, belie the popular image.
And if no one else realizes this, or cares, one group
should: the alumni and alumnae themselves. Too
many of them may be shying away from a good thing be-
cause they think that being an "active" alumnus means
wearing a funny hat.

PA/i! &** WINreRHAVeN.'

Why they coir

^ TOA8ULA/r YAK

'-.iS Pes' td*?(K

TO SEE THE OLD DEAN

n TO RECAPTURE YOUTH

Aawe y<nu J<fpe W

TO DEVELOP
NEW TERRITORY

FOR AN OUTING

f/jt. was /'*. *y c/a-ff, >*f

/

TO RENEW
OLD ACQUAINTANCE

TO BRING
THE WORD

<1CK^ The popular view

TO PLACE THE FACE

t%a& yeu. Aa.ue. y/s&n, oJktus yov*-

TO IMPRESS THE OLD PROF

//<> wa>K+f fi <fo Sampi/ivi -fin-
fa's Olp Stt&OL/ -

U/AJO* &y U MEM MALL, iaj?

TO CONTRIBUTE
MATERIALLY

TO FIND MEM HALL

Me says Aes a. WAT &QDTHE&

TO BE A "POOR LITTLE SHEEP" AGAIN

Money !

Last year, educational institut
from any other source of gifts. Alumni suppo

Without the dollars that their alumni contrib-
ute each year, America's privately supported
educational institutions would be in serious
difficulty today. And the same would be true of the na-
tion's publicly supported institutions, without the sup-
port of alumni in legislatures and elections at which
appropriations or bond issues are at stake.

For the private institutions, the financial support re-
ceived from individual alumni often means the difference
between an adequate or superior faculty and one that is
underpaid and understaffed; between a thriving scholar-
ship program and virtually none at all; between well-
equipped laboratories and obsolete, crowded ones. For
tax-supported institutions, which in growing numbers are
turning to their alumni for direct financial support, such
aid makes it possible to give scholarships, grant loans to
needy students, build such buildings as student unions,
and carry on research for which legislative appropriations
do not provide.

To gain an idea of the scope of the support which
alumni give and of how much that is worthwhile in
American education depends upon it consider this sta-
tistic, unearthed in a current survey of 1,144 schools,
junior colleges, colleges, and universities in the United
States and Canada: in just twelve months, alumni gave
their alma maters more than $199 million. They were the
largest single source of gifts.

Nor was this the kind of support that is given once, per-
haps as the result of a high-pressure fund drive, and never
heard of again. Alumni tend to give funds regularly. In
the past year, they contributed $45.5 million, on an annual
gift basis, to the 1,144 institutions surveyed. To realize
that much annual income from investments in blue-chip
stocks, the institutions would have needed over 1.2 billion
more dollars in endowment funds than they actually
possessed.

A nnual alumni giving is not a new phenomenon on
L\ the American educational scene (Yale alumni
* -* founded the first annual college fund in 1890, and
Mount Hermon was the first independent secondary
school to do so, in 1903). But not until fairly recently did
annual giving become the main element in education's
financial survival kit. The development was logical. Big
endowments had been affected by inflation. Big private
philanthropy, affected by the graduated income and in-

heritance taxes, was no longer able to do the job alon
Yet, with the growth of science and technology an
democratic concepts of education, educational budge
had to be increased to keep pace.

Twenty years before Yale's first alumni drive, a pr
fessor in New Haven foresaw the possibilities and looke
into the minds of alumni everywhere:

"No graduate of the college," he said, "has ever pa
in full what it cost the college to educate him. A part oft!
expense was borne by the funds given by former ben
factors of the institution.

"A great many can never pay the debt. A very few ca
in their turn, become munificent benefactors. There is
very large number, however, between these two, who ca:
and would cheerfully, give according to their ability
order that the college might hold the same relative pos
tion to future generations which it held to their own."

The first Yale alumni drive, seventy years ago, brougl.
in $11,015. In 1959 alone, Yale's alumni gave more tha
$2 million. Not only at Yale, but at the hundreds of othi
institutions which have established annual alumni func
in the intervening years, the feeling of indebtedness ar
the concern for future generations which the Yale pr
fessor foresaw have spurred alumni to greater and great
efforts in this enterprise.

and money from alumni is a powerful magnet:
L\ draws more. Not only have more than eighty bus
-* -^ ness corporations, led in 1954 by General Electri
established the happy custom of matching, dollar for do
lar, the gifts that their employees (and sometimes the
employees' wives) give to their alma maters; alum
giving is also a measure applied by many business me
and by philanthropic foundations in determining ho
productive their organizations' gifts to an educational h
stitution are likely to be. Thus alumni giving, as Gordc
K. Chalmers, the late president of Kenyon College, m
scribed it, is "the very rock on which all other giving mu
rest. Gifts from outside the family depend largely soro
times wholly on the degree of alumni support."

The "degree of alumni support" is gauged not by do
lars alone. The percentage of alumni who are reguk
givers is also a key. And here the record is not as dazzlin
as the dollar figures imply.

Nationwide, only one in five alumni of colleges, un
versities, and prep schools gives to his annual alumi

*ived more of it from their alumni than
education's strongest financial rampart

ind. The actual figure last year was 20.9 per cent. Allow-
g for the inevitable few who are disenchanted with their
Ima maters' cause,* and for those who spurn all fund
jlicitations, sometimes with heavy scorn, j and for those
horn legitimate reasons prevent from giving financial
id, the participation figure is still low.

r "W" "thy? Perhaps because the non-participants imag-
iV/%/ ine their institutions to be adequately financed.

* (Virtually without exception, in both private and
ix-supported institutions, this is sadly not so.) Per-
aps because they believe their small gift a dollar, or
ve, or ten will be insignificant. (Again, most emphati-
illy, not so. Multiply the 5,223,240 alumni who gave
othing to their alma maters last year by as little as one
ollar each, and the figure still comes to thousands of
dditional scholarships for deserving students or sub-
antial pay increases for thousands of teachers who may,
t this moment, be debating whether they can afford to
antinue teaching next year.)

By raising the percentage of participation in alumni
ind drives, alumni can materially improve their alma
laters' standing. That dramatic increases in participation
in be brought about, and quickly, is demonstrated by
le case of Wofford College, a small institution in South
Carolina. Until several years ago, Wofford received
nnual gifts from only 12 per cent of its 5,750 alumni,
hen Roger Milliken, a textile manufacturer and a Wof-
)rd trustee, issued a challenge: for every percentage-
oint increase over 12 percent, he'd give 51,000. After the
umni were finished, Mr. Milliken cheerfully turned over

check for $62,000. Wofford's alumni had raised their
articipation in the annual fund to 74.4 per cent a new
ational record.

"It was a remarkable performance," observed the
jnerican Alumni Council. "Its impact on Wofford will
: felt for many years to come."

And what Wofford's alumni could do. your institution's
umni could probably do, too.

* Wrote one alumnus: "I see that Stanford is making great prog-
iss. However, I am opposed to progress in any form. Therefore I
n not sending you any money."

t A man in Memphis, Tennessee, regularly sent Baylor University
check signed "U. R. Stuck."

In her fund reply envelope, a Kansas alumna once sent, without
)mment, her household bills for the month.

memo: irom

fi

to

Wives
Husbands

Women's colleges, as a group, have had a unique
problem in fund-raising and they wish they knew how
to solve it.

The loyalty of their alumnae in contributing money
each year an average of 41.2 per cent took part in 1959
is nearly double the national average for all universi-
ties, colleges, junior colleges, and privately supported
secondary schools. But the size of the typical gift is often
smaller than one might expect.

Why? The alumnae say that while husbands obviously
place a high value on the products of the women's col-
leges, many underestimate the importance of giving wom-
en's colleges the same degree of support they accord their
own alma maters. This, some guess, is a holdover from
the days when higher education for women was regarded
as a luxury, while higher education for men was consid-
ered a sine qua non for business and professional careers.

As a result, again considering the average, women's
colleges must continue to cover much of their operating
expense from tuition fees. Such fees are generally higher
than those charged by men's or coeducational institutions,
and the women's colleges are worried about the social and
intellectual implications of this fact. They have no desire
to be the province solely of children of the well-to-do;
higher education for women is no longer a luxury to be
reserved to those who can pay heavy fees.

Since contributions to education appear to be one area
of family budgets still controlled largely by men, the
alumnae hope that husbands will take serious note of the
women's colleges' claim to a larger share of it. They may
be starting to do so: from 1958 to 1959, the average gift
to women's colleges rose 22.4 per cent. But it still trails
the average gift to men's colleges, private universities, and
professional schools.

EKICH HARTMANN", MAGNUM

for the public educational institutions,!

a special kind of service

Publicly supported educational institutions owe a
special kind of debt to their alumni. Many people
imagine that the public institutions have no finan-
cial worries, thanks to a steady flow of tax dollars. Yet
they actually lead a perilous fiscal existence, dependent
upon annual or biennial appropriations by legislatures.
More than once, state and municipally supported institu-
tions would have found themselves in serious straits if
their alumni had not assumed a role of leadership.
A state university in New England recently was put in
academic jeopardy because the legislature defeated a bill
to provide increased salaries for faculty members. Then

the university's "Associate Alumni" took matters intc
their hands. They brought the facts of political and aca
demic life to the attention of alumni throughout the state
prompting them to write to their representatives in sup
port of higher faculty pay. A compromise bill was passed
and salary increases were granted. Alumni action thu
helped ease a crisis which threatened to do serious, per
haps irreparable, damage to the university.
In a neighboring state, the public university receive
only 38.3 per cent of its operating budget from state an(
federal appropriations. Ninety-one per cent of the uni
versity's S17 million physical plant was provided by pri

The Beneficiaries:

A -

Students on a state-university campus. Alumni support is proving
invaluable in maintaining high-quality education at such institutions.

te funds. Two years ago, graduates of its college of
;dicine gave $226,752 for a new medical center the
rgest amount given by the alumni of any American
edical school that year.

Several years ago the alumni of six state-supported
stitutions in a midwestern state rallied support for a
50 million bond issue for higher education, mental
alth, and welfare an issue that required an amend-
snt to the state constitution. Of four amendments on
e ballot, it was the only one to pass.

In another midwestern state, action by an "Alumni
mncil for Higher Education," representing eighteen
tblicly supported institutions, has helped produce a SI 3
illion increase in operating funds for 1959-61 the most
nificant increase ever voted for the state's system of
gher education.

>j ome alumni organizations are forbidden to engage
^ in political activity of any kind. The intent is a good
9 one: to keep the organizations out of party politics

and lobbying. But the effect is often to prohibit the alumni
from conducting any organized legislative activity in be-
half of publicly supported education in their states.

"This is unfair," said a state-university alumni spokes-
man recently, "because this kind of activity is neither
shady nor unnecessary.

"But the restrictions most of which I happen to think
are nonsense exist, nevertheless. Even so, individual
alumni can make personal contacts with legislators in
their home towns, if not at the State Capitol. Above all,
in their contacts with fellow citizens with people who
influence public opinion the alumni of state institutions
must support their alma maters to an intense degree. They
must make it their business to get straight information
and spread it through their circles of influence.

"Since the law forbids us to organize such support,
every alumnus has to start this work, and continue it, on
his own. This isn't something that most people do natu-
rally but the education of their own sons and daughters
rests on their becoming aroused and doing it."

i 1

j!

1 1 j

- ">- " - ^ Ml

a matter of Principle

any worthwhile institution of higher education,
L\ one college president has said, lives "in chronic
- *- tension with the society that supports it." Says
he Campus and the State, a 1959 survey of academic free-
Dm in which that president's words appear: "New ideas
ways run the risk of offending entrenched interests
ithin the community. If higher education is to be suc-
:ssful in its creative role it must be guaranteed some pro-
ction against reprisal. . ."

The peril most frequently is budgetary: the threat of
}propriations cuts, if the unpopular ideas are not aban-
:>ned; the real or imagined threat of a loss of public
'en alumni sympathy.

Probably the best protection against the danger of
:prisals against free institutions of learning is their
umni: alumni who understand the meaning of freedom
id give their strong and informed support to matters of
lucational principle. Sometimes such support is avail-
}le in abundance and offered with intelligence. Some-
mes almost always because of misconception or failure
> be vigilant it is not.

For example:
An alumnus of one private college was a regular and
;avy donor to the annual alumni fund. He was known to
ive provided handsomely for his alma mater in his will,
ut when he questioned his grandson, a student at the
d school, he learned that an economics professor not
ily did not condemn, but actually discussed the necessity
>r, the national debt. Grandfather threatened to withdraw
1 support unless the professor ceased uttering such
iresy or was fired. (The professor didn't and wasn't. The
)llege is not yet certain where it stands in the gentleman's

m.)

When no students from a certain county managed to
eet the requirements for admission to a southwestern
liversity's medical school, the county's angry delegate to
b state legislature announced he was "out to get this
ly" the vice president in charge of the university's
edical affairs, who had staunchly backed the medical
hool's admissions committee. The board of trustees of
e university, virtually all of whom were alumni, joined
her alumni and the local chapter of the American

Association of University Professors to rally successfully
to the v.p.'s support.

When the president of a publicly supported institu-
tion recently said he would have to limit the number of
students admitted to next fall's freshman class if high
academic standards were not to be compromised, some
constituent-fearing legislators were wrathful. When the
issue was explained to them, alumni backed the presi-
dent's position decisively.

When a number of institutions (joined in December
by President Eisenhower) opposed the "disclaimer affida-
vit" required of students seeking loans under the National
Defense Education Act, many citizens including some
alumni assailed them for their stand against "swearing
allegiance to the United States." The fact is, the dis-
claimer affidavit is not an oath of allegiance to the United
States (which the Education Act also requires, but which
the colleges have not opposed). Fortunately, alumni who
took the trouble to find out what the affidavit really was
apparently outnumbered, by a substantial majority, those
who leaped before they looked. Coincidentally or not,
most of the institutions opposing the disclaimer affidavit
received more money from their alumni during the con-
troversy than ever before in their history.

IN the future, as in the past, educational institutions
worth their salt will be in the midst of controversy.
Such is the nature of higher education: ideas are its
merchandise, and ideas new and old are frequently con-
troversial. An educational institution, indeed, may be
doing its job badly if it is not involved in controversy, at
times. If an alumnus never finds himself in disagreement
with his alma mater, he has a right to question whether
his alma mater is intellectually awake or dozing.

To understand this is to understand the meaning of
academic freedom and vitality. And, with such an under-
standing, an alumnus is equipped to give his highest serv-
ice to higher education; to give his support to the princi-
ples which make-higher education free and effectual.

If higher education is to prosper, it will need this kind
of support from its alumni tomorrow even more than in
its gloriously stormy past.

deas

are the merchandise of education, and every worthwhile educational institution must provide and
guard the conditions for breeding them. To do so, they need the help and vigilance of their alumni.

ROLAND READ

Ahead

The Art

of keeping intellectually alive for a lifetime
will be fostered more than ever by a
growing alumni-alma mater relationship.

Whither the course of the relationship betweei
alumni and alma mater? At the turn into th|
Sixties, it is evident that a new and challenging
relationship of unprecedented value to both the institui
tion and its alumni is developing.

If alumni wish, their intellectual voyage can be
continued for a lifetime.

There was a time when graduation was the end. Yov
got your diploma, along with the right to place certaii
initials after your name; your hand was clasped for ai
instant by the president; and the institution's busines
was done.

If you were to keep yourself intellectually awake, th*
No-Doz would have to be self-administered. If you wen
to renew your acquaintance with literature or science, m
introductions would have to be self-performed.

Automotion is still the principal driving force. Tin
years in school and college are designed to provide m
push and then the momentum to keep you going witl
your mind. "Madam, we guarantee results," wrote a col
lege president to an inquiring mother, " or we return
the boy." After graduation, the guarantee is yours td
maintain, alone.

Alone, but not quite. It makes little sense, many edu
cators say, for schools and colleges not to do whateve
they can to protect their investment in their students
which is considerable, in terms of time, talents, an(|
money and not to try to make the relationship betweei,
alumni and their alma maters a two-way flow.

As a consequence of such thinking, and of demands
issuing from the former students themselves, alumni
meetings of all types local clubs, campus reunions art
taking on a new character. "There has to be a reason anc
a purpose for a meeting," notes an alumna. "Groups tha
meet for purely social reasons don't last long. Just be
cause Mary went to my college doesn't mean 1 enjo?
being with her socially but I might well enjoy workinj
with her in a serious intellectual project." Male alumn
agree; there is a limit to the congeniality that can be main
tained solely by the thin thread of reminiscences or smalli
talk.

But there is no limit, among people with whom theiil

i new (challenge,

a new relationship

lucation "stuck," to the revitalizing effects of learning,
ae chemistry professor who is in town for a chemists'
inference and is invited to address the local chapter of
e alumni association no longer feels he must talk about
)thing more weighty than the beauty of the campus
tns; his audience wants him to talk chemistry, and he is
lighted to oblige. The engineers who return to school
r their annual homecoming welcome the opportunity to
ing themselves up to date on developments in and out
' their specialty. Housewives back on the campus for
unions demand and get seminars and short-courses.
But the wave of interest in enriching the intellectual
ntent of alumni meetings may be only a beginning,
ith more leisure at their command, alumni will have
e time (as they already have the inclination) to under-
ke more intensive, regular educational programs.
If alumni demand them, new concepts in adult educa-
>n may emerge. Urban colleges and universities may
:p up their offerings of programs designed especially for
e alumni in their communities not only their own
jmni. but those of distant institutions. Unions and
vemment and industry, already experimenting with
aduate-education programs for their leaders, may find
iiys of giving sabbatical leaves on a widespread basis
id they may profit, in hard dollars-and-cents terms, from
: results of such intellectual re-charging.
Colleges and universities, already overburdened with
idling as well as other duties, will need help if such
earns are to come true. But help will be found if the
mand is insistent enough.

Alumni partnerships with their alma mater, in
meeting ever-stiffer educational challenges, will grow
even closer than they have been.

Boards of overseers, visiting committees, and other
rtnerships between alumni and their institutions are
oving, at many schools, colleges, and universities, to be
annels through which the educators can keep in touch
th the community at large and vice versa. Alumni trus-
ts, elected by their fellow alumni, are found on the gov-
ling boards of more and more institutions. Alumni
without portfolio" are seeking ways to join with their
na maters in advancing the cause of education. The

representative of a West Coast university has noted the
trend: "In selling memberships in our alumni associa-
tion, we have learned that, while it's wise to list the bene-
fits of membership, what interests them most is how they
can be of service to the university."

Alumni can have a decisive role in maintaining
high standards of education, even as enrollments
increase at most schools and colleges.

There is a real crisis in American education: the crisis
of quality. For a variety of reasons, many institutions find
themselves unable to keep their faculties staffed with high-
caliber men and women. Many lack the equipment
needed for study and research. Many, even in this age of
high student population, are unable to attract the quality
of student they desire. Many have been forced to dissipate
their teaching and research energies, in deference to pub-
lic demand for more and more extracurricular "services."
Many, besieged by applicants for admission, have had to
yield to pressure and enroll students who are unqualified.

Each of these problems has a direct bearing upon the
quality of education in America. Each is a problem to
which alumni can constructively address themselves, indi-
vidually and in organized groups.

Some can best be handled through community leader-
ship: helping present the institutions' case to the public.
Some can be handled by direct participation in such ac-
tivities as academic talent-scouting, in which many insti-
tutions, both public and private, enlist the aid of their
alumni in meeting with college-bound high school stu-
dents in their cities and towns. Some can be handled by
making more money available to the institutions for
faculty salaries, for scholarships, for buildings and equip-
ment. Some can be handled through political action.

The needs vary widely from institution to institution
and what may help one may actually set back another.
Because of this, it is important to maintain a close liaison
with the campus when undertaking such work. (Alumni
offices everywhere will welcome inquiries.)

When the opportunity for aid does come as it has in
the past, and as it inevitably will in the years ahead
alumni response will be the key to America's educational
future, and to all that depends upon it.

alumni-
ship

j,

ohn masefield was addressing himself to the subject
of universities. 'They give to the young in their impres-
sionable years the bond of a lofty purpose shared," he
said; "of a great corporate life whose links will not be
loosed until they die."

The links that unite alumni with each other and with
their alma mater are difficult to define. But every alum-
nus and alumna knows they exist, as surely as do the
campus's lofty spires and the ageless dedication of edu-
cated men and women to the process of keeping them-
selves and their children intellectually alive.

Once one has caught the spirit of learning, of truth, of
probing into the undiscovered and unknown the spirit
of his alma mater one does not really lose it, for as
long as one lives. As life proceeds, the daily mechanics
of living of job-holding, of family-rearing, of mortgage-
paying, of lawn-cutting, of meal-cooking sometimes
are tedious. But for them who have known the spirit of
intellectual adventure and conquest, there is the bond of
the lofty purpose shared, of the great corporate life
whose links will not be loosed until they die.

This would be the true meaning of alumni-ship, were
there such a word. It is the reasoning behind the great
service that alumni give to education. It is the reason
alma maters can call upon their alumni for responsible
support of all kinds, with confidence that the responsi-
bility will be well met.

THE

ALUMN us j

A

The material on this and the preceding I
pages was prepared in behalf of more than 35(
schools, colleges, and universities in the Unitec
States, Canada, and Mexico by the staff listec
below, who have formed editorial project
for education, inc., through which to per
form this function, e.p.e., inc., is a non-profi
organization associated with the America!
Alumni Council. The circulation of this supple
ment is 2,900,000.

DAVID A. BURR

The University of Oklahoma

GEORGE J. COOKE

Princeton University

DAN ENDSLEY

Stanford University

DAN H. FENN, JR.

Harvard Business School

RANDOLPH L. FORT

Emory University

J. ALFRED GUEST

Amherst College

L. FRANKLIN HEALD

The University of New Hampshire

CHARLES M. HELMKEN

Saint Johns University

JEAN D. LINEHAN

American Alumni Council

MARALYN ORBISON

Swarthmore College

ROBERT L. PAYTON

Washington University

FRANCES PROVENCE

Baylor University

ROBERT M. RHODES

Lehigh University

WILLIAM SCHRAMM, JR.

The University of Pennsylvania

VERNE A. STADTMAN

The University of California

FREDERIC A. STOTT

Phillips Academy (Andover)

FRANK J. TATE

The Ohio State University

ERIK WENSBERG

Columbia University

CHARLES E. W1DMAYER

Dartmouth College

REBA WILCOXON

The University of Arkansas

CHESLEY WORTHINGTON

Brown University

CORBIN GWALTNEY

Executive Editor

HAROLD R. HARDING

Assistant Secretary- Treasurer
*

All rights reserved; no part of this supplemen:
may be reproduced without the express per
mission of the editors. Copyright 1960 b;
Editorial Projects for Education, Inc., Rood
411, 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washing
ton 6, D.C. editorial address: P.O. Box 5653
Baltimore 10, Md. Printed in U.S.A.

!

\ \jKxj^ . . .

HOME IS WHERE THE CAMPAIGN IS

JSIDEM-Emeritls McCain thinks that every student
eration at Agnes Scott sin mid have the experience of
tieipating in a financial campaign, and he is fond ot
iniscing ahout such former efforts,
his spring, the very atmosphere on the campus is im-
d with campaigning, as the College launches its great-
effort. Dr. McCain also thinks that one of the College s
ipaign strengths is that we've always begun at home,
this is true again: members of the college community

contribute first toward the goal of S4.5< )().()()() I tin
ipus campaign goal is $75.000 1. and only after that
I the campaign go to members of the Agnes Scott
ilv beyond the campus, alumnae, parents, friends,
lewellvn Wllburn "19. head (if the department of phy-
il education, and Mary Hart Richardson "60. president

ortar Board, are co-chairmen of the campus cam-
gn. They head an organization which encourages and
Ides I but does not put on artificial pressures! an in-
idual to make a thoughtful, intelligent contribution in
port of Agnes Scott's special brand of liberal arts edu-
ion.

lut no mundane description of the campus campaign
anization can tell alumnae about the spirit pervading
President Alston embodies this spirit, and from him
s more "catching" than the virus bug most of the
ipus community has entertained this spring. As I
te this. I have just returned from the kiekoff luncheon,
vondrous affair held in the gymnasium, where the
uineness of feeling for the College, not silly sentimen-
ty. hit me with almost physical impact.
rom the campus, the campaign goes on the road and

eventually reach approximately 45 geographic cen-
. where an alumna will be campaign chairman,
ween now and June 30. campaigns will be held in
kttanooaa, Term.. Mrs. Sarah Stansell Felts "21. chair

man: Memphis. Tenn.. Mary C. Vinsant Grymes I Mrs.
Herman. Jr. i '46. chairman: Nashville, Tenn.. Anna
Landless Cate (Mrs. William R.I '21, chairman: Colum-
bia. S. C, Mary Ellen Whetsell Timmons (Mrs. James I
"39. chairman: Greenville. S. C. Marjorie Wilson Ligon
(Mrs. Langdon S., Jr. I '43. chairman: Raleigh. N. C.
Ruth Anderson O'Neal (Mrs. Alan S. ) '18, chairman.

Alumnae and their husbands living within a radius of
fift\ miles from each center will be invited to a special
dinner given by the trustees of the college and the area
chairman. Dr. Alston will speak, and a new movie about
the college, in color, will be shown.

Meantime, the campaign hasn't quite swamped the
campus as Agnes Scott heads towards the 71st Commence-
ment. The campus campaign uses a space rocket as its
theme, and another indication that we re living in the
jet age was the request from two students to the faculty's
Committee on Absences that they he allowed to return to
college three days late in order to spend their spring
holidays in Paris!

Blackfriars, May Day Committee, and Dance Group
are combining talent and forces this spring to present a
special production of Sophocles Electro. This event is
being called a May Festival, and there will be two per-
formances, on the evenings of Mav 13 and 14. in Presser
Hall.

For the Class of 1960. each of whom we will welcome
into the ranks of alumnae, the speaker at the Bacca-
laureate service on June 5 will be John F. Anderson, Jr..
from the First Presbyterian Church in Orlando. Fla..
and the Commencement address on June 6 will be made
bv George V. Allen. Director. I nited States Informa-
tion Agency.

MNAE QUARTERLY . SPRING 1960

35

//,3S /,//'<* J/t&'VoJ

MURAL SHOWS PROJECTED CAMPUS, 1964

For several months, art students under the direction of Ferdinand
Warren, have worked on this mural, a flat map of the campus showing
locations of permanent buildings, present and projected. The mural
hangs now in the Dining Hall and will eventually hang, perhaps, in tbe
new Fine Arts Building.

SUMMER 1960

ties

-

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

Margaret Mead asks

IS COLLEGE COMPATIBLE

WITH MARRIAGE?

see page 10

THE

COtt

CONTENTS

Eg

SUMMER 1960 Vol. 38, No.
ALUMNAE QUARTERL1

Ann Worthy Johnson, Editor
Dorothy Weakley, Assistant Editor

Campus Compendium 4

On Being an Alumna .... Bella Wilson Lewis 8

Miss Mell Retires 9

Is College Compatible with

Marriage? Margaret Mead 10

The McKinney Book Award 15

"The Devil to Pay" 16

A Southern Point of View . . Eliza King Paschall 18

Ideas for/from Ideal Clubs .21

Class News Eloise Hardeman Ketchin 22

Worthy Notes 35

COVER:

Landshoff, staff photographer for Mademoiselle magazine,
was on campus this spring taking shots of Agnes Scott
students in fall fashions. His color picture on the cover shows
students in the latest rain apparel. Frontispiece, opposite, con-
cludes this year's series on Agnes Scott traditions Com-
mencement. Photograph by Jim Brantley.

THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

Officers

Eleanor Hutehens '40, President

Doris Sullivan Tippens '49, Vice-President

Kathleen Buchanan Cabell '47,

Vice-President
Sarah Frances McDonald '36,

Vice-President
Marybeth Little Weston '48,

Vice-President
Gene Slack Morse '41, Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson '38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin
House Manager

Dorothy Weakley '56,

Assistant Director of Alumnae Affairs

Alumnae Trustees

Bella Wilson Lewis '34

Catherine Wood Marshall LeSourd '36

Chairmen

Guerry Graham Fain '56

Class Council
Jane Meadows Oliver '47, Constitution
Mary Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Louisa Aichel Mcintosh '47, Entertainmen
Mary Reins Burge '40, House
Jean Bailey Owen '39, Nominations
Virginia Brown McKenzie '47, Property
Dorothy Cremin Read '42, Publications
Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn '38

Special Events
Susan Coltrane '55

Vocational Guidance

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year (November,
February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College
at Decatur, Georgia. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents. Entered
as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of
August 24, 1912. MEMBER OF AMERICAN ALUMNI COUNCIL

PRESIDENT ALSTON CONGRATULATES SENIOR AS DEAN KLINE ANNOUNCES GRADUATES.

Hear ye, hear ye, here's your chance to read
about the campus campaign in this

CAMPUS COMPENDIUM

and about assorted activities, vintage 1959-60

from academic achievements to the

first ''off-campus" dance

THE AGNES SCO

p

V^ape Canaveral had nothing on
^.gnes Scott this spring. For two
veeks a space rocket was abuilding,
ising a cord of wood, a ton of tinfoil
nd gallons of pink-water launching
luid. As always, Agnes Scott's capital
unds campaign was started on the
ampus.

True to its tradition, the Agnes
scott community felt that it must
lemonstrate its commitment to the
7 5th Anniversary Development Pro-
gram before it went to a single off-
ampus person for support. W. Ed-
vard McNair, director of public re-
ations and development and diligent
Dverseer for the campaign, gives us
i progress report:

For many weeks a faculty-student
ommittee, under the joint chairman-
hip of Llewellyn Wilburn '19 and
vlortar Board President Mary Hart
lichardson '60. worked on the plans.
V goal of $75,000 was set, and a
ipecial brochure from President Al-
ton to parents requested them not to
ontribute through their daughters
nit to save their participation until
heir particular geographical area
vas organized.

The motif this time was shooting
or the moon, and on April 5 a gala
:ount-down luncheon was held in the
;ymnasium when "Project 75 Grand"
vas launched. For two weeks the
ampus was busy with "campaign
ictivity." Seventy-eight workers un-
ler the leadership of class and fac-

kLUMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

Top right: President Alston, Chairman of the
Board Smith, and Professor Emeritus McKin-
ney concoct campaign launching fluid.

Center: Nancy Edwards '58 is the person be-
hind the publicity at Agnes Scott.

lower right: Rocket and campus campaign
ready to be launched at campus community
luncheon.

ulty chairmen reached everybody in
the student body and on the faculty
and staff with the opportunity to
participate.

The response was an overwhelm-
ing success. At the Victory Convoca-
tion on April 20, it was announced
that the goal of $75,000 had been
oversubscribed by 40% and that
the final campus total was $106,451.

An anonymous donor had made
available four challenge gifts of
$1,000 each to be added to the total
of the class or classes scoring best in
a competition in each of the follow-
ing categories: (1) largest single gift,
(2) total dollar volume, (3) highest
percent of share givers, and (4) best
imagination and skill in promotion.
When the results were announced,
the junior class had registered the
largest number of share givers (gifts
of $50.00 or more per student) , and
the sophomores had taken top place
in all the other categories. Of the
total. $51,581 was pledged by the
faculty and staff.

Then on May 5 the campaign
moved to alumnae, parents, and
other off-campus friends. The first
area dinner was in Memphis, Tennes-
see, under the leadership of Man
Catherine Vinsant Grymes (Mrs.
Herman) '46. The group at this din-
ner had the pleasure of witnessing
the premier public showing of "Quest

(Continued on next page)

At her reception. Mine. Pandit invites Jane Pepperdene and Jerry Meroney to visit India.

CAMPUS COMPENDIUM Continued

for Greatness," Agnes Scott's new
sound and color film.

The second area dinner was in
Chattanooga on May 9, under the
direction of Mrs. Sarah Stansell
Felts '21. Then in the following
week on four consecutive evenings
dinners were held in Nashville, Ten-
nessee; Columbia, South Carolina;
Greenville, South Carolina; and Ral-
eigh, North Carolina. President Al-
ston spoke at each dinner, and
"Quest for Greatness" was shown;
however, each event was distinctive
and different from its counterpart in
other areas. For example, in Colum-
bia, the tables were decorated with
beautiful arrangements of roses
grown by an Agnes Scott son-in-law,
Dr. S. L. Bumgardner, husband of
Keller Henderson Bumgardner '53,
and appropriately in each arrange-
ment was one lovely pink Catherine
Marshall rose. In Greenville the
chairman had notepaper available so
that any who desired might then and
there drop a note to Dean Emeritus
S. G. Stukes who at the last minute
was prevented from attending the
dinner. Mr. Hal L. Smith, national
chairman of the campaign and chair-
man of the Agnes Scott Board of
Trustees, attended the Nashville din-
ner and spoke briefly. In Raleigh,
Ruth Anderson O'Neal (Mrs. Alan
S.) '18 used the college colors in
the decorations for the Elizabeth
Room of the Sir Walter Hotel where
the dinner was held, and in Chatta-
nooga, students from Chattanooga

High School provided music while
dinner was being served. So one
might go on. Each meeting was a
delight to experience.

Many thanks go not only to the
three chairmen already mentioned
but to the other four who have also
rendered great service to the col-
lege: Anna Landress Cate (Mrs.
William B.) '21 and Florence Ellis
Gifford (Mrs. John P.) '41 in Nash-
ville, Mary Ellen Whetsell Timmons
(Mrs. James M.) '39 in Columbia,
and Marjorie Wilson Ligon (Mrs.
Langdon S., Jr.,), '43 in Greenville.

As this account is written, all the
areas except one are in the midst of
their solicitation. Early reports are
encouraging, and it is hoped that by
the end of June each area will have
completed its work with success. One
area, Chattanooga, has finished its
solicitation and has gone over the
top on its goal!

During September, October, and
November the campaign will move
to twelve more centers, and in the
first five months of 1961 twenty ad-
ditional areas will become involved
in Agnes Scott's great Seventy-fifth
Anniversary Development Program.
Moreover, the Atlanta effort will be
launched in February and carried
forward in March.

Thanks to the loyal work of many,
the campaign has had a fine begin-
ning. Agnes Scott is confident that
this loyalty and devotion will be a
recurring pattern in every area to
which the campaign goes.

Pandit India's Answer

Believe it or not, things other tha;
The Campaign have occurred thi
year at Agnes Scott. Students ani
faculty need some special prais
for their academic accomplishment
achieved along with the campaigr
From Nancy Edwards '58, the Co^
lege's competent assistant director o
public relations, who directs Agne
Scott's publicity program, we'v
gathered campus news for alumnat

Lecture Association, which, by thi
way expands next year and become
Lecture Committee, brought to Agne
Scott Mme. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandi
India's High Commissioner in Lor
don, sister of Prime Minister Nehrt
She was the first woman to be electe
president of the United Nations Ger
eral Assembly, and her lecture wa
primarily a plea for better undei
standing between East and Wesl
She said that India was misundei
stood because East and West do nq
think alike ; the Western mind "want
everything in black and white, but th
Asian sees shades." She summed u]
rather well the difficulties of U. S.
Indian relations by her commen
that "we are badly explained to eac
other." And she stressed that India'
international obligation was, to hei
ever to serve as a "bridge" betwee:
the divided East and West.

Liberal Arts, Anyone?

Faculty members from Agne
Scott and 28 other liberal arts col
leges have been invited by the Dar
forth Foundation to participate ii
a Campus Community Workshoi
at Colorado Springs. Representing
Agnes Scott will be Dean C. Bento:
Kline, Dr. Mary L. Boney (Bible)
Dr. Miriam K. Drucker (psychology)
and Dr. Ellen Douglass Leyburi
(English) . The heart of the work
shop will be a series of seminars oj
educational problems. Areas to b
explored by the Agnes Scott facultJ
are the liberal arts curriculum, evalii
ation, values, counseling, contempoi
ary issues, humanities, social sciences
and scientific ideas. Exciting convei
sations about those subjects hav
been held by many faculty member
here during the spring, and thos
who attend the workshop will brin:

THE ASNES SCOT

lis more ideas. The Quarterly will
report on this for alumnae next year.

Speak Louder!

Even the Board of Trustees has
nade decisions on matters other
han campaign plans they've spent
ong and fruitful hours on the latter.
\X their May meeting, they approved,
ipon the recommendation of the
Academic Council, the establishment,
it long last, of a Department of
Speech, which is news to brighten
learts of alumnae who've wanted
his. The work in speech has some-
imes been lost academically in the
vork of the English Department,
liere will not be a major in speech,
mt this move will better recognize
his portion of the fine arts in the
iberal arts curriculum. Dr. Roberta
Winter and Miss Elvena Green are
he two faculty members in the new
epartment.

Garlands of Laurels

The gathering of academic laurels
as seemed the special province of
le Class of 1960 judged even by
le "normal" Agnes Scott standards
i this basic area of life here. There
r ere 15 members of the class elected
) Phi Beta Kappa, the largest num-
er we can recall. And over 25
;niors did independent study in as
lany areas. One of these, Suellen
everly, from Charlotte, N. C, chair-
lan of May Day Committee, literally
nmersed herself this year in Sopho-
es' "Electra" (she said that she read
te play at least 60 times) and acted
5 consultant for its magnificent pro-
uction this spring by Blackfriars
id Dance Group, in lieu of tradi-
onal May Day.

And the Class of 1960 has re-

ceived particular academic recogni-
tion in the numerous awards made
for graduate study. Woodrow Wilson
Fellows next year are Joanna Flowers,
Kinston, N. C, Elizabeth Lunz,
Charleston, S. C, and Martha
Thomas, Asheville, N. C. Joanna also
received a Fulbright scholarship and
will use this to study German litera-
ture at the University of Tuebingen,
Germany. Elizabeth will be at Duke
University, doing graduate work in
English. Martha, who was awarded
the Woodrow Wilson fellowship at
the end of her junior year, will be at
Bryn Mawr next year doing grad-
uate work in classical languages and
literature. She was the Stukes Schol-
ar this year in the Senior Class and
has received a special award, the
only one given in the nation, of a
grant for summer study in Europe
given by Eta Sigma Phi, honorary
classics society, and she is attending
the American Classical School in
Rome, Italy. Two other Fulbright
scholars are Mary Hart Richardson.
Roanoke, Va., who will have a year
at the University College of Wales,
Akerystwyth, studying modern Welsh
literature, and Anne Whisnant.
Charlotte, N. C, who will do ad-
vanced work in French literature at
the University of Lille. France.
Shannon Cumming. daughter of
Shannon Preston '30, Nashville,
Tenn.. has been awarded a graduate
assistantship in biology' from Wash-
ington University, St. Louis, Mo.,
and Martha Young, daughter of
Annie Whitehead '33. has received
the same type of award in chemistry
from Pennsvlvania State University.
Charlotte King. Charlottesville, Va.,
will enter medical school in the fall

on a 4-year scholarship at the
Woman's Medical College, Philadel-
phia, Pa.

Activity Potpourri

Following a national trend, four
students plan to spend the junior
year abroad next year. Nelia Adams,
Willow Springs, N. C. and Sue Ami-
don, Woodbury, Conn., will study in
Munich, Germany, through a pro-
gram sponsored by Wagner State
University, Detroit, Mich. Edith
Hanna, daughter of Virginia Sevier
Hanna '27, Spartanburg, S. C, will
be in Scotland continuing work in
her major field, biology, at the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh. Ann Gale
Hershberger, Lynchburg, Va., a
French major, will be in France on
the Sweet Briar College Junior-Year-
Abroad Program.

Student activities ranged from the
first "off-campus" dance for Agnes
Scott to a petition to Georgia's 125th
General Assembly. The dance, spon-
sored by the Junior Class which gave
up its annual "Junior Jaunt" for the
campaign's sake, was held and held
beautifully at an Atlanta hotel. The
petition states, in part: "We, the
following 426 students of Agnes Scott
College, 28% of whom are residents
of 41 counties in Georgia, respect-
fully urge the Senate and the House
of Representatives to do whatever
is necessary to assure the uninter-
rupted operation of the pubic schools
of all Georgia. As citizens, future
parents and teachers, we are con-
vinced that continuous public educa-
tion is essential to the intellectual and
emotional well-being of all the people,
adults as well as children, and to the
economic health of the state."

Ellen Douglass leyburn, Miriam K. Drucker, Mary L. Boney, C. Benton Kline will dissect liberal arts colleges in summer workshop.

L

\i

^

Bella Wilson lewis '34.

The Alumnae Association's immediate
past-president presents pleasing discourse

ON BEING

AN ALUMNA

A,

..gnes Scott Alumnae live in
places like Los Angeles, New Or-
leans, Garden City, New York, Win-
netka, Illinois, Seoul, Korea. London,
the Belgian Congo, or Decatur, Geor-
gia. We write about the Far East
for the N. Y. Times, we do Public
Health work in Iran, we practice law
in Washington, D. C, we do medical
research at Duke, we teach high
school English in Tucker, Georgia.
Like many other educated women to-
day, we engage in housewifery, car-
ing for families, educating children,
and we participate actively in church
and community affairs.

Diverse as we are, what do we have
in common as alumnae? Each one of
us, whether we intend to or not, in-
terprets Agnes Scott to our com-
munity. We stand for quality educa-
tion. We have worked under dedi-

8

cated teachers who jolted us out of
our complacency, forced us to do
some thinking for ourselves, encour-
aged a life-long love of learning.

Does Agnes Scott still keep up its
high standards, we wonder, as we
feel ourselves far removed from
campus life. Because we are caught
up in family, professional and com-
munity life, we find answers to this
question coming to us chiefly by mail,
with only an occasional glimpse of
a faculty member, or a quick trip
back for reunion. Even though we
are away from "the sheltering arms"
we can keep up to date on what hap-
pens at Agnes Scott because of the
lines of communication kept open by
fellow alumnae. Every year a group
of them give part of their time to
join forces with professional staff
members to see that we get current

news of our friends, articles to stun
late our thinking, and real lif
glimpses of the College. These alurr
nae represent us. Because of gee
graphic limitations some of us can
not take our turn on the Alumna
Board or take part in local alumna
club activities, but even those of u
who live in Alaska get mail! W
have a chance to ask questions o
offer suggestions to our regional vice
president, or our class president, a
well as to the office staff or alumna
president. The mail comes to as we.
as goes from the Alumnae House

Informed interpreters

Our representatives on the Alum
nae Board work with the office stall
to keep us intelligently informed in
terpreters of Agnes Scott. During th
past two years these representative
have done some reflecting on jus
what their years at Agnes Scot
meant to them as individuals. Thei
have done all they could to leari
about the present day work of thl
College. They have renewed contaci
with professors they enjoyed and me
some of the new ones; they have re
turned to the campus to hear Madam
Pandit or Robert Frost, or to se
Blackfriars' version of "Electra," o
to hear Mr. McDowell play; the
have looked up students from thei:
home towns or invited their room
mate's daughter to dinner. The
have juggled their schedules of home
job, and community work to atten'
meetings to make policies, to discusi
problems of communication; the
have written letters many with pen
sonal notes; they have planned del
tails for Alumnae House improve
ment, party food for freshmen o
vocational information for students!
If they happened to be vice-pres:
dents, they broke away from job
and families to come to the campu
for orientation. They talked witi
faculty and administration and hai
a chance to meet in person some o
the present generation of "Scotties.
Each one of these volunteers ha
given to her particular job the ski]
and imagination that is hers. "UnlikJ
most volunteer workers," says oui
nominations chairman, "these peopl
do not have to be drafted they ari
glad to serve if they can possibl '

THE AGNES SCOT

range to do so." What a delight
is to work with people who have
ch enthusiasm, initiative and dedi-
tion! They are truly our repre-
ntatives, for we are the same kind

people. In the approximately
rty-five areas organized to present
nes Scott to the public in this
mpaign year, we are the intelligently
rormed interpreters of the College
our community, serving with the
lie dedication as our represente-
es on the Alumnae Board.
Why do we keep on being inter-
:ed in Agnes Scott? Private colleges

more and more dependent on
Dse who believe in the kind of
ucation they provide. Since we can
are intimately in the work of only
few institutions giving education

high quality, we naturally feel
lawn to one we know well one
(rich continues to develop the
lalities we value without losing the
tangibles we cherish.

Heaning of "private college"

Perhaps the words "private col-
j;e" are too impersonal. To us the
iollege" is the individual girls who
mpose the student body and the
:n and women who guide their de-
lopment. We are concerned with
lat the College enterprise means to
h one of them as a person, and
th what each of them in turn will
;an to countless others whose lives
;y will touch in the future.
But after all, the real reason for
r interest lies deeper still. It is not
st a general interest in education,
tell the truth, we continue to be
:erested in Agnes Scott because we
nply cannot help it! We cannot
rget the high spiritual and intellec-
il stimulation that surrounded us
d sometimes penetrated. We can-
t forget that Agnes Scott was a
ace which helped us to "express
d live up to the special excellence
at is in us." We cannot help want-
to have a share in continuing and
panding for others the kind of
perience that has done so much to
ape our own lives.
Who are we who are Agnes Scott
lmnae? What is it that binds us
gether? "Through our great good
rtune, in our youth our hearts
re touched with fire."

Dr. Alston presents Dr. Mell a gift from faculty friends.

MISS MELL RETIRES

Miss Mildred Rutherford Mell retired at Commence-
ment after 22 years as professor of economics and
sociology. But, as Dr. Alston says, the campus is not
really losing her, since she will be close by at her home
in Decatur. For the last four years Miss Mell has served
as Chairman of Lecture Association, bringing to Agnes
Scott such outstanding people as Sir John Gielgud, Mar-
garet Mead (see p. 10J , Madame Pandit, Arnold Toyn-
bee, the Canadian Players, and "our own" Robert Frost.
Miss Mell says, "Looking back, I'd say I enjoyed the
excitement of getting suitable lecturers and keeping them
happy as much as I enjoyed their talks."

So, what could be more fitting to honor Miss Mell
than the establishment of the Mell Lecture Fund? Presi-
dent Alston announced recently that the College had set
up this fund to provide an annual lecture alumnae may
designate campaign contributions to the Mell Lecture
Fund.

The 1960 Silhouette is dedicated to Miss Mell, with
these words:

The embodiment of intellectual achievement and dignity
Discerning direction of Lecture Association
Presenting social and economic theories

Challenging advanced students to continue work in
new wide open fields
Leaving Agnes Scott a tradition of and heritage of
a meaningful search for knowledge

JMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

Anthropologist Margaret Mead
came to Agnes Scott to lecture
in 1956. She is America's best-
known woman scientist, a pro-
lific writer, world traveler, and
fascinating delineator of native
culture both at home and
abroad. Dr. Mead holds a de-
gree from Barnard and two
from Columbia. She is now as-
sociate curator of ethnology of
the American Museum of Nat-
ural History, New York, and
adjunct professor of anthro-
pology at Columbia. A past
president of the World Federa-
tion of Mental Health, she is
current president of the Amer-
ican Anthropological Associa-
tion. After reading this article,
you might like to peruse some
of her ten books. Coming of
Age in Samoa is now a classic,
and two published in 1959 are
An Anthropologist at Work and
People and Places.

r he answer is a resounding, unequivocal No!
mrticularly for women in our culture today,
"he problem Dr. Mead propounds asks

IS COLLEGE COMPATIBLE
WITH MARRIAGE?

^LL OVER the United States, undergraduate
, marriages are increasing, not only in the
unicipal colleges and technical schools, which
i.e for granted a workaday world in which learn-
g is mostly training to make a living, but also on
e green campuses once sacred to a more leisurely
irsuit of knowledge.

Before we become too heavily committed to this
end, it may be wise to pause and question why it
is developed, what it means, and whether it en-
mgers the value of undergraduate education as

have known it.
The full-time college, in which a student is free
r four years to continue the education begun in
rlier years, is only one form of higher education.
;chnical schools, non-residence municipal col-
ics, junior colleges, extension schools which offer
eparation for professional work on a part-time
d indefinitely extended basis, institutions which
ilcome adults for a single course at any age: all

pyright 1960 by Editorial Projects for Education, Inc. All
hts reserved.

of these are "higher," or at least "later," educa-
tion. Their proliferation has tended to obscure our
view of the college itself and what it means.

But the university, as it is called in Europe
the college, as it is often called here is essentially
quite different from "higher education" that is
only later, or more, education. It is, in many ways,
a prolongation of the freedom of childhood; it
can come only once in a lifetime and at a definite
stage of development, after the immediate trials
of puberty and before the responsibilities of full
adulthood.

The university student is a unique development
of our kind of civilization, and a special pattern
is set for those who have the ability and the will
to devote four years to exploring the civilization
of which they are a part. This self-selected group
(and any other method than self-selection is doom-
ed to failure) does not include all of the most
able, the most skilled, or the most gifted in our
society. It includes, rather, those who are willing
to accept four more years of an intellectual and

(Continued on next page)

JMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

11

Is College Compatible with Marriage?
Continued

psychological moratorium, in which they explore,
test, meditate, discuss, passionately espouse, and
passionately repudiate ideas about the past and the
future. The true undergraduate university is still
an "as-if" world in which the student need not
commit himself yet. For this is a period in which
it is possible not only to specialize but to taste, if
only for a semester, all die possibilities of scholar-
ship and science, of great commitment, and the
special delights to which civilized man has access
today.

Once in a lifetime freedom

One of the requirements of such a life has been
freedom from responsibility. Founders and admin-
istrators of universities have struggled through the
years to provide places where young men, and
more recently young women, and young men and
women together, would be free in a way they can
never be free again to explore before they settle
on the way their lives are to be lived.

This freedom once, as a matter of course, in-
cluded freedom from domestic responsibilities
from the obligation to wife and children or to hus-
band and children. True, it was often confused by
notions of propriety: married women and unmar-
ried girls were believed to be improper dormitory
companions, and a trace of the monastic tradition
that once forbade dons to marry lingered on in our
men's colleges. But essentially the prohibition of
undergraduate marriage was part and parcel of
our belief that marriage entails responsibility.

A student may live on a crust in a garret and
sell his clothes to buy books; a father who does
the same thing is a very different matter. An un-
married girl may prefer scholarship to clerking in
an office; as the wife of a future nuclear physicist
or judge of the Supreme Court or possibly of the
research worker who will find a cure for cancer
she acquires a duty to give up her own delighted
search for knowledge and to help put her husband
through professional school. If, additionally, they
have a child or so, both sacrifice she her whole

intellectual interest, he all but the absolutely es
sential professional grind to "get through" anc
"get established." As the undergraduate yean
come to be primarily not a search for knowledge
and individual growth, but a suitable setting foi
the search for a mate, the proportion of full-tim<
students who are free to give themselves the foui
irreplaceable years is being steadily whittled down>
Should we move so far away from the past tha
all young people, whether in college, in technica
school, or as apprentices, expect to be married andi
partially or wholly, to be supported by parents anc
society while they complete their training for thi;
complex world? Should undergraduates be con
sidered young adults, and should the privileges anc
responsibilities of mature young adults be theirs
whether they are learning welding or Greek, book
keeping or physics, dressmaking or calculus!
Whether they are rich or poor? Whether they com
from educated homes or from homes without sucl
interests? Whether they look forward to the im
mediate gratifications of private life or to a wide
and deeper role in society?

Learning -\- earning
As one enumerates the possibilities, the familia;
cry, "But this is democracy," interpreted as treati
ing all alike no matter how different they may be
assaults the ear. Is it in fact a privilege to be givei
full adult responsibilities at eighteen or at twenty
to be forced to choose someone as a lifetime mati
before one has found out who one is, oneself 1<
be forced somehow to combine learning with earn
ing? Not only the question of who is adult, anc
when, but of the extent to which a society force
adulthood on its young people, arises here.

Civilization, as we know it, was preceded by J
prolongation of the learning period first biologi
cally, by slowing down the process of physical mai
turation and by giving to children many long, lorn
years for many long, long thoughts; then socially
by developing special institutions in which younj
people, still protected and supported, were free t<
explore the past and dream of the future. May i
not be a new barbarism to force them to marry s<
soon?

12

THE AGNES SCOT

"Force" is the right word. The mothers who
vorry about boys and girls who don't begin dating
n high school start the process. By the time young
3eople reach college, pressuring parents are joined
jy college administrators, by advisers and coun-
elors and deans, by student-made rules about ex-
lusive possession of a girl twice dated by the same
>oy, by the preference of employers for a boy who
las demonstrated a tenacious intention of becoming
i settled married man. Students who wish to marry
nay feel they are making magnificent, revolution-
ry bids for adulthood and responsibility; yet, if
ne listens to their pleas, one hears only the re-
ited roster of the "others" schoolmates, class-
nates, and friends who are "already married."

Parental fears prevalent

The picture of embattled academic institutions
aliantly but vainly attempting to stem a flood of
undergraduate marriages is ceasing to be true. Col-
ege presidents have joined the matchmakers. Those
vho head our one-sex colleges worry about trans-
ortation or experiment gingerly with ways in
-Inch girls or boys can be integrated into academic
fe so that they'll stay on the campus on weekends.
Recently the president of one of our good, small,
beral arts colleges explained to me, apologetically,
We still have to have rules because, you see, we
on't have enough married-student housing." The
nplication was obvious: the ideal would be a
ampletely married undergraduate body, hopefully

a time not far distant.

With this trend in mind, we should examine
)me of the premises involved. The lower-class
tother hopes her daughter will marry before she

pregnant. The parents of a boy who is a shade
antler or more interested in art than his peers
3pe their son will marry as soon as possible and
3 "normal." Those who taught GI's after the last
?o wars and enjoyed their maturity join the chorus

insist that marriage is steadying: married stu-
3nts study harder and get better grades. The wor-
ed leaders of one-sex colleges note how their un-
irgraduates seem younger, "less mature," or
"nore underdeveloped" than those at the big co-

ucational universities. Thev worry also about

the tendency of girls to leave at the end of their
sophomore year for "wider experience" a simple
euphemism for "men to marry."

And parents, who are asked to contribute what
they would have contributed anyway so that the
young people may marry, fear sometimes con-
scioush .mil sometimes unconsciouslv thai tin-
present uneasy peacetime will not last, that depres-
sion or war will overtake their children as it over-
took them. They push their children at ever younger
ages, in Little Leagues and eighth-grade proms, to
act out quickly, before it is too late the adult
i beams that may be interrupted. Thus they too con-
sent, connive, and plan toward the earliest possible
marriages for both daughters and sons.

Undergraduate marriages have not been part of
American life long enough for us to be certain
what the effect will be. But two ominous trends can
be noted.

One is the "successful" student marriage, often
based on a high-school choice which both sets of
parents have applauded because it assured an ap-
propriate mate with the right background, and be-
cause it made the young people settle down. If not
a high-school choice, then the high-school pattern
is repeated: finding a girl who will go steady, dat-
ing her exclusively, and letting the girl propel the
boy toward a career choice which will make earlv
marriage possible.

Breadth of vision losses

These young people have no chance to find them-
selves in college because they have clung to each
other so exclusively. They can take little advantage
of college as a broadening experience, and they
often show less breadth of vision as seniors than
they did as freshmen. They marry, either as under-
graduates or immediately upon graduation, have
children in quick succession, and retire to the
suburbs to have more children bulwarking a
choice made before either was differentiated as a
human being. Help from both sets of parents, be-
gun in the undergraduate marriage or after com-
mencement day, perpetuates their immaturity. At
thirty they are still immature and dependent, their

(Continued on next page)

UMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

13

Is College Compatible with Marriage?
Continued

future mortgaged for twenty or thirty years ahead,
neither husband nor wife realizing the promise that
a different kind of undergraduate life might have
enabled each to fulfill.

Such marriages are not failures, in the ordinary
sense. They are simply wasteful of young, intelli-
gent people who might have developed into differ-
entiated and conscious human beings. But with
four or five children, the husband firmly tied to
a job which he would not dare to leave, any move
toward further individual development in either
husband or wife is a threat to the whole family. It
is safer to read what both agree with (or even not
to read at all and simply look at TV together) , at-
tend the same clubs, listen to the same jokes never
for a minute relaxing their possession of each other,
just as when they were teen-agers.

Such a marriage is a premature imprisonment
of young people, before they have had a chance to
explore their own minds and the minds of others,
in a kind of desperate, devoted symbiosis. Both
had college educations, but the college served only
as a place in which to get a degree and find a mate
from the right family background, a background
which subsequently swallows them up.

The second kind of undergraduate marriage is
more tragic. Here, the marriage is based on the
boy's promise and the expendability of the girl.
She, at once or at least as soon as she gets her
bachelor's degree, will go to work at some second-
ary job to support her husband while he finishes
his degree. She supports him faithfully and be-
comes identified in his mind with the family that
has previously supported him, thus underlining his
immature status. As soon as he becomes independ-
ent, he leaves her. That this pattern occurs between
young people who seem ideally suited to each other
suggests that it was the period of economic depend-
ency that damaged the marriage relationship,
rather than any intrinsic incompatibility in the
original choice.

Both types of marriage, the "successful" and
the "unsuccessful," emphasize the kev issue: the

14

tie between economic responsibility and marriag
in our culture. A man who does not support him
self is not yet a man, and a man who is supportec
by his wife or lets his parents support his wife i
also only too likely to feel he is not a man. The 1
GI students' success actually supports this posi
tion: they had earned their GI stipend, as men, ii
their country's service. With a basic economic in
dependence they could study, accept extra hel]
from their families, do extra work, and still bJ
good students and happy husbands and fathers, j
There are, then, two basic conclusions. One i
that under any circumstances a full student life i
incompatible with early commitment and domestil
city. The other is that it is incompatible only unde
conditions of immaturity. Where the choice ha;
been made maturely, and where each member oi
the pair is doing academic work which deserve!
full support, complete economic independeno
should be provided. For other types of studen
marriage, economic help should be refused.

Meager intellectual life

This kind of discrimination would remove thi
usual dangers of parent-supported, wife-supported
and too-much-work-supported student marriages
Married students, male and female, making ful
of their opportunities as undergraduates

use

!

would have the right to accept from society thi;
extra time to become more intellectually competen
people. Neither partner would be so tied to a part
time job that relationships with other student
would be impaired. By the demands of high scholar
ship, both would be assured of continued growfll
that comes from association with other high-calibe
students as well as with each other.

But even this solution should be approachec
with caution. Recent psychological studies, espe
cially those of Piaget, have shown how essentia
and precious is the intellectual development of th
early post-pubertal years. It may be that any do
mesticity takes the edge off the eager, flaming
curiosity on which we must depend for the greal
steps that Man must take, and take quickly, if hf
and all living things are to continue on this earth

THE AGNES SCOf

Miss Preston shows Miss McKinney a student
book collection in the library.

"...BRING ME
SOME IDEAS"

Competition for the

1960 McKinney Book Award

uas as keen as Miss McKinney's mind.

liss Mary Louise McKinney, professor emeritus of
English, now 92 years old, said recently to a beloved
riend and former student. Janef Preston '21. "Janef.

ill you bring me some ideas?" With a twinkle in her
ye and her voice she reported that she'd recently read
lis quip: "People with minds talk about ideas; people

ithout minds talk about people."

It was to honor Miss McKinney and her vitality of
lind (see p. 5 ) . expressed even yet through her vora-
ious reading, that the McKinney Book Award has been
stablished at Agnes Scott. It is given annually for the
est collection of books made by a student, judged by a
acuity committee. This year seven collections were en-
ered in competition, and judging was difficult. The
ooks must be "owned" with the heart and mind as well
s physically, as revealed in the interviews each con-

testant has with the judges. The 1960 award went to
sophomore Peggy McGeachy (sister of Lila McGeachv
Ray '59 ) .

Miss Preston makes arrangements for the award each
year, and she would like to suggest that alumnae who
may be particularly concerned with the fostering of good
reading designate a portion of their campaign contribu-
tion to the McKinney Book Award Fund. The cost of
books has risen sharply what hasn't? since 1932 when
the award was first given. Also, Miss Preston would like
to be able to recognize good collections other than the
winning one with second or third place prizes. Miss Mc-
Kinney has kept the records of students receiving the
award; there are three blank years she'd like to fill; if
any of you reading this should remember, please write
the Alumnae Office:

ear

Winner

Honorable Mention

332

Virginia Prettyman

34

1946

Marybeth Little '48

333

334

1947

Angela Pardington '47

335

1948

Hunt Morris '49

936

Julia Sewell '39

1949

Kate Durr Elmore '49

337

Elizabeth Warden '38

1950

Camille Watson '52

338

Mary Anne Kernan

38

Ann Worthy Johnson '38

1951

Ellen Hull '51

339

Henrietta Blackwell

'39

1952

Caroline Crea '52

WO

Carolyn Forman '40

Frances Breg '41

1953

Belle Miller '53

Nicole Giard '41

1954

Caroline Reinero '54

341

Pattie Patterson '41

Elaine Stubbs '41

1955

Vera Williamson '56

Claire Purcell '42

1956

Betty Sue Kennedy '58

342

Anastasia Carlos '44

Mary Olive Thomas '42

1957

Lea Kallman '58

343

Laura dimming '43

*Sara Jean Clark '46

1958

Nancy Kimmel '58

344

Shirley Graves '46

Ceevah Rosenthal '45

1959

Frances Broom '59

Frances DuBose x-46

1960

Peggy McGeachy '62

345

Marie Beeson '47

Virginia Bowie 45

Beth Daniel '45

*Dece

sed

*Ruth Simpson '46
Angela Pardington '47

Martha Stowell '50

Mary Lee Hunnicutt '52

Sally Sanford '59
Esther Thomas '61

.UMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

15

/

FHINK

v visit to a naval base in the South Pacific features a chorus of hula doners

Faculty Play

'THE DEVIL TO PAY"

Unique dramatic production reveals
faculty of hidden talents

te drama opens with the crowning of "Maybe" Queen Scandrett.
vord bearers W. Edward McNair and C. Benton Kline wait gallantly
rule Laura Steele receives the crown from crown bearer Henry

tobinson.

A beatnik coffee house has
among its clients dancers
George Hayes and Kay
Manuel.

jurists on the moon, under the chaperonage of Miss Gaylord, meet an
nexpected visitor Air Force officer Timothy Miller.

William G. Cornelius plays the role of a dis-
satisfied college professor who sells his soul
to the devil.

17

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Someone recently said about Eliza:
"She's redoing the world and rearing three children, too she
needs help!" She, Suzanne, 13, Jon, 11, and Amy, 9, are living
in a make-do world at the moment while their home is being
rebuilt fire destroyed it in late April, just a year after her
husband, Walter Paschall's death. Eliza has accomplished
myriad things since graduating from Agnes Scott (Phi Beta
Kappa), but her main contribution is speaking out for her
community Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., the World. This article
is reprinted from the May, 1960 Atlantic Monthly.

Quibble you may with the inevitability

of integration but not with the quality of

this literate, trenchant statement of

A Southern Point of View

By Eliza King Paschall '38

I

T is common practice among Southern spokes-
men to refer to the "Southern point of view.''
Our capitol in Atlanta resounds with speeches
which say that all Georgians agree. And it is al-
ways stated or implied that what they all agree on
is that our present system of a legally racially
segregated society is best.

With the threat of closed public schools, it has
now become "realistic" to admit that, though there
may still be doubt as to the jurisdiction of the
U. S. Supreme Court over the state of Georgia,

18

we should act as though the jurisdiction were leg;
rather than shut down all our schools. It has b
come "courageous" to accept token integratic
rather than have our children denied schools. A 1
this realism and this courage, it is made quite clea
go against the Southern point of view.

I am a Southerner. From my point of view, n^
only does the U. S. Supreme Court have jurisdi
tion over Georgia, but the school decision was
correct one. Our schools are separate but not equa
and even if they were, legal racial segregation lit

THE AGNES SCO

io place in a democracy. It is a hangover from
lavery. Historically it can be explained in the
south, but it cannot be justified from my Southern
)oint of view.

Justification by comparison

I am tired of justification by comparison. "Bui
t is really so much worse in the North. Look at
Chicago. And what about South Africa?" I do not
.et my standards of morality by what others do,
n the North or in Chicago or in South Africa. I
et them by what I believe in my heart, and I do
relieve in my heart that segregation is a disease that
nfects all parts of a being, human or political. It
s a germ from which I should like to protect my
children as much as possible, regardless of its
'irulence in other places.

My Southern point of view cannot accept the
irgument that a school board increases its effec-
iveness in administering a law by ignoring it until
'orced to obey by a court order. "They had to wait
mtil court action, and they had to contest the suit,"

am told. Why? I do not see that reluctance to
nforce the law necessarily increases public sup-
sort for those who are finally forced to abide by
he law, or that it increases respect for other laws
mong adults or among youths.

"Realistic liberals"

I have heard these officials defended by those
ho "do not believe in segregation either" on the
srounds that ignoring the law is a necessary polit-
ia\ move, presumably to gain support of diose
itizens who prefer that the law be disobeyed. The
mplication is that the majority of citizens fall into
his category. But I believe that there are many
Southerners who expect their public officials to
onor their oath to uphold the Constitution of the
Jnited States.

I do not agree with the "realistic liberals," who
aily play the game which has as its primary rule:
"0 be influential you must stay in the group. What
nfluence do we have if we constantly yield to the
pressure of "This is not the time. It would cause
rouble"? Above all else, the group says, one must
iot cause trouble. The chorus goes like this: "We

would have no objections, but others might. We
might lose members. We might lose business. We
might lose an organization." They never seem to
consider that by positive action we might gain a
soul, and there are many lost souls in the South
today.

I resent the time and effort this problem which
we create for ourselves takes from constructive
efforts to solve more demanding problems that
are not of our making. At every point in the life
of the community, these questions rise to plague
us. Shall we admit Negroes? Where could we
meet? Whom would we offend? The easy way out
is to say that the Negroes prefer it this way. and
that they do not want to come to our affairs. I do
not presume to know die minds of any group of
citizens. No doubt many Negroes would not be
interested. But I would let any citizen choose to
participate or not according to his interests, not
according to law or class.

Let me list from my personal experience a few
examples of the dilemma facing liberals.

Personal experience

We have elected a Negro to the board of educa-
tion, but it is difficult for civic groups to arrange
meetings at places to which all members of the
board may be admitted. The resources of a state
educational institution are at the disposal of
citizens in planning community projects if only the
white population of die community participates.
A United Fund agency has a fine International
Club, where foreign students are invited to come
and meet American students. Negro students are
invited if they are from foreign countries, but not
if they are Americans. In this instance, American
birth seems to be a liability.

A local civic group interested in international
affairs votes to affiliate with a national organiza-
tion, a member of the national board of which is
a local resident. He is also a college president and
a Negro. He is expected not to attend local meet-
ings. ( He hardly would have time anyway, inas-
much as he travels a great deal representing our
country on foreign missions.)

(Continued on next page)

LUMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

19

A Southern Point of View

Continued

And what about private lives? There is no law
that I know of regulating whom I may have in my
home, but here in the South one always wonders
about what the neighbors will think. "Will they
understand?" Understand what? That I like some
people and not others, but not on the basis of the
color of their hair, or their eyes, or their skin?
That I want my children to have an opportunity
to know other Americans, as well as visitors from
India, Pakistan, Germany, and Australia? At our
local, integrated Unitarian-Universalist Church,
my child has a Negro classmate with whom she
has developed a strong friendship. The friend's
father is a university professor, honored in his
profession, chosen to assist in the planning of the
1960 White House Conference on Youth. But when
his daughter comes to see my daughter, they do not
go to the corner drugstore. I am not sure what
would happen, and so I keep making excuses when
asked point-blank, "May we go?"

"You are too sudden," I am told, "Don't try to
change things overnight." Eighteen sixty to nine-
teen sixty: "sudden"? Nineteen fifty-four to nine-
teen sixty: "deliberate speed"? Our spokesmen say
that others do not understand our problems. What
is there to understand in a plan to give up all
schools rather than admit one Negro child to one
"white" school? Substitute "Hungarian and Rus-
sian" for "Negro and white," and would we call it
democracy? Substitute "Jew and German" for
"Negro and white;" would we call it democracy?

No matter how big our other problems are, we
evidently feel that none is as great as accepting
the fact of certain children's sitting down together
to leani.

"Liberty and justice for all!"
In a federal court I listened to the judge an-
nounce that, by his order, henceforth there were
to be no more white and Negro schools in Atlanta.
But the fact remains that all the Negroes are as-
signed to certain schools and all whites to other
schools, and all the teachers end up in the same
fashion. Even as we talk of possible desegregation,

20

we speak in terms of a Negro child's asking for 1
transfer to a "white" school, though the judge ha;
said there are no specifically white schools anj
more.

Week in and week out, at luncheon meetings
we salute the flag and pledge "liberty and justice
for all." We do not have to meet the eyes of the
Negro waiters, who are standing in the back, foil
our eyes are looking forward at the flag.

Vicious circle

While we meet and eat, we are likely to endorse
crash programs to improve the facilities and the
treatment of our mentally ill, who are increasing
in numbers each year. Yet how can we avoid splil
personalities, delusions of grandeur, flights fron:
reality as individuals when we indulge in them aa
a society?

I have sat in the gallery of the state capitol anc
listened to the governor (several governors, in
fact) and the legislators repeat, like a broken re
cord, "We will never never never " And
have wondered, What are they afraid of? Is it jusl
habit? Do they think this is what is expected o:
them by die people? And do the people, hearing
their officials, think the safe thing to do is to repea
after them, each following the other, round and
round like a dog chasing his tail?

Another Southerner

I am weary of the chase. I can no longer live
with my own silence. I am tired of wondering wha
the neighbors will think. I would declare to the
whole world, including my neighbors, that fron
my point of view democracy is a serious and won-
derful thing, that it must be lived as well as believed-
in, that the game of "I don't mind, but I though
you did" is a vicious circle that binds and restricts
and stunts minds and hearts, that if to thine own
self thou art not true, thou canst not then be true
to any man.

There is another Southerner whose view I would
accept as my own. That Southerner is George
Washington. The words are "Let us raise a stand
ard to which the wise and honest can repair." The
standard is the Constitution of the United States

THE AGNES SCOTI

IDEAS

FOR/FROM

IDEAL

CLUBS

During the past year programs.

projects, and plans among

alumnae clubs have shown

remarkable progress, with

increased interest and

participation. The four regional

vice-presidents of the Alumnae

.ssociation are largely responsible

for the success of this work in

the approximately thirty-five

ubs. These officers not only have

assisted established clubs in

program planning and

organization, but have fostered

and worked tirelessly with new

clubs. Special kudos and

ppreciation go to Marybeth Little

Weston "48. Kathleen Buchanan

Cabell '47, Caroline Hodges

Roberts '48, and Evelyn Baty

Landis '40 regional

ce-presidents of the Agnes Scott

College Alumnae Association.

UMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS From coke parties to tours of the campus . . .
Baton Rouge and Chattanooga invite prospective students and their mothers
to a tea and show slides of the campus . . . Birmingham entertains prospective
students at a coffee during the Christmas holidays when the current students
could join them . . . Charlotte and Lynchburg plan a send off party in September
for all students, using upperclassmen as speakers . . . Marietta brings prospective
students for planned visit to campus . . . Shreveport honors prospective and
current students with a tea during holidays.

PROGRAMS From fashion shows to tours of food plants . . . Anderson,
S. C, Greenville, S. C, and Nashville, Term, plan Founder's Day programs using
records, slides, and tapes from Alumnae Office . . . Atlanta Club has series of
meetings using "Quality Education" as theme, including a tea honoring Agnes
Scott's Quality Education faculty . . . Southwest Atlanta Club entertains hus-
bands and families at annual picnic . . . New Orleans and Baton Rouge have
joint meeting with Dr. Walter Posey as speaker . . . Birmingham hears alumna
trustee Mary Wallace Kirk '11 . . . Columbia, S. C. celebrates Founder's Day
with Miss Leslie Gaylord as speaker . . . Decatur schedules varied programs
including a fashion show by an alumna and a lecture by Agnes Scott's astronaut.
W. A. Calder . . . Hampton-Newport News, Va. invites regional vice-president
Kathleen Buchanan Cabell '47 as their Founder's Day speaker . . . Jacksonville
invites husbands to dinner meeting and hears Ann Worthy Johnson . . . Los
Angeles turns out in large numbers to hear Dr. Ernest Colwell, president of the
Southern California School of Theology and husband of Annette Carter Colwell
"27 . . . Alumnae in New York area give bon voyage party for Dr. Catherine
S. Sims . . . Richmond has Lila McGeachy Ray '59, former president of Student
Government, speak at luncheon meeting . . . Westchester-Fairfield plans a field
trip through General Foods. Inc. kitchens in Whites Plains and employee Rowena
Runnette Garber '29 speaks . . . Washington, D. C. plans Founder's Day lunch-
eon with Dr. Sims as speaker . . . J'' alley Club of Virginia makes great plans
for meeting with Dean C. Benton Kline and snowstorm cancels all.

PROJECTS From rummage sales to tours of West Point . . . Atlanta-Decatur
Club sponsors benefit bridge and contributes $50 to Alumnae Fund . . . Atlanta
Northside Club publishes first yearbook that included directions to all meeting
places as well as club roster . . . Atlanta Southwest Club sells Easter eggs and
contributes $10 to Alumnae Fund . . . Charlotte makes donation of $27.50 to
Alumnae Fund . . . Decatur contributes 350 from dues for use in furnishing the
Alumnae House . . . New Orleans has rummage sale and adds $160 to their
scholarship fund . . . ft ' estchester-Fair field sponsors trip to West Point, sells
Williamsburg candles and soap and increases scholarship fund $70.

PROGRESSIVE STEPS from meetings with Emory alumni to organization
of two alumnae in Wyoming . . . Boston and vicinity alumnae get together for
a luncheon and come up-to-date on the College with records, viewbooks, etc.
. . . Greensboro, N. C. organizes its own club and has Miss Scandrett as
Founder's Day speaker . . . Houston, Tex. forms a club and immediately after-
wards issues a newsletter to alumnae in the area telling plans . . . Lincoln, Neb.
alumnae join the Emory alumnae for a meeting . . . Orlando and Winter Park,
Fla. plan tea to meet Director of Alumnae Affairs . . . Schenectady, N. Y.
alumnae plan a luncheon on their own . . . Tampa-St. Petersburg have very
successful Founder's Day meeting . . . two alumnae in Wyoming (250 miles
apart) meet and seek to find others in the West to join them.

21

L

\ LcnX^UB

The Gentle Art of Being Tolerant of Intolerance

The morning mail, on the day I was reading proof on

za King Paschall '38's article, (see p. 18 1, brought

:opy of a letter to her from Helen Ridley Hartley '29,

th a cover note to me. Helen suggests that a poll of

imnae on the integration issue would produce ma-

ial for "a lively, spirited article for the Quarterly.

doubt there would be some squawks." I'm very

tiling for her letter to start such a poll, or at least

start a flow of comment on Eliza's article.

Helen, writing to Eliza from her home in West Palm

iach, Fla., says, "It concerns me that more is not

ling done in this moral crisis by those who are not to

frrow your phrase, lost souls. If the intelligent, liberal,

oral, educated minority don't come forward to set an

[ample to the benighted, where is leadership to come

om? Most of us do what little we can . . . But it seems

me we who had the advantages of an education that

is (we are always telling each other) superior to most

intellectual and moral quality we have a clear obli-

tion in the matter. If. as a body of educated women,

s mostly agree that segregation is indefensible, it

ould be known. Think of the boost to the cause of

tegration if such an announcement could be made. If

;'re not agreed, then we'd better do a little missionary

}rk among our own.

". . . An issue of such importance in contemporary
mthern life should not be brushed under the rug by
jch as we,' do you think? It's a challenge we can't
ick and still lay claim to leadership among Southern
lieges.

"I was proud to be an Agnes Scotter after reading
mr article."

With my own integrity at stake, I cannot, personally,
fute this because I am another Helen, or Eliza, in this
sue. But one of the dangers besetting those of our ilk
becoming intolerant of intolerance. I know alumnae
ho are staunch segregationists, but I cannot write from
eir viewpoint because I have not shared their inner

experience. I would be most happy to publish their
statements, not for the sake of controversy itself but
because one of my heart's desires is to see this maga-
zine become truly a journal of opinion.

As Eliza points out in her article, one besetting sin
for the South is having all the problems of human exist-
ence overshadowed by one. It saps the sort of psychic
energy we should be using to crack other knotty ones.
Margaret Mead's article in this issue (see p. 10), certainly
delineates one which is of concern to educated women
in our culture today i.e. to Agnes Scott alumnae. What
did you think of it?

Another area of concern for us, and one closely geared
to that of Margaret Mead, is what kind of person the
college graduate of 1960 is. In a series of articles Betsy
Fancher. a reporter for The Atlanta Constitution, at-
tempts a composite answer. She interviewed seniors in
several Georgia institutions of higher learning, and her
writing is both discerning and exciting. She describes
the average graduate as apathetic, full of fear of com-
miting himself/herself, to anything or anybody since
he/she hasn't learned how to care, facing life with the
attitude that the best job is the one with the most fringe
benefits. But Betsy finds, on some campuses, "a small
core of the concerned, who this year have been operating
quietly and decisively in the intellectual catacombs, work-
ing beneath the surface of utilitarianism, conformity
and apathy, to widen the vision and embolden the hearts
of 'the docile generation.' " About Agnes Scott students
she says:

"And in a bull session at Agnes Scott College, a group
of senior girls talk of passing on to their children: 'an
openness to many experiences; the fact that you can love
without trying to change: that the wise man knows he
does not know; that every human being has the right

to be respected."

^^rvr^or^. >*

UMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1960

35

z&.

/XJ-

<L5yes-s

1959-60 ALUMNAE FUND REPORT

1930 36%

1931 .... 43%

1932 26%

1933 29%

1934 26%

1935 36%

1936 36%

1937 33%

1938 41%

1939 39%

Above is the percentage of contributors by classes, based on the number of living graduates in
each class. Bold face type indicates top class in each decade.

Number of Contributors 1,677 (23%)
Graduates . . . 1,480 (40%)
Non-Graduates . 197

Total Contributions . . $17,219.75
Unrestricted $14,047.75
Restricted . 3,172.00

3

88-"\5

I FOR REFERENCE

Oo Not Take From This Room

IWfflfl

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