Seeing Cycles
UMass Chancellor David K. Scott finds it useful to think about the degree to which American history is cyclical. When we interviewed him last fall for an article on the land-grant idea, he mentioned historian Arthur Schlesinger's idea of an oscillation between individualism and collectivism in the national spirit, with the latter enjoying a resurgence in roughly thirty-year cycles.
"And there's always a slogan for it," he added. "Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Johnson's Great Society." Both "a Kinder, Gentler Nation" and "a New Covenant," he said, could be seen as '90s versions of these appeals to the collective spirit in the early 1900s, the 1930s, and the 1960s. It's Scott's hope that we are indeed in an era of renewed interest in community, and that this interest can be channeled to strengthen and renew the university.
The Class of 1947 graduated fifty years ago this spring from a university that had been a college a month before, and that owed its new status in large part to their efforts. The students of that era were the products of the Great Depression and World War II- great collective traumas requiring great collective efforts. They were quite equal to the task of a year of activism.
Would they use the word "activism" for what they did? Would they appreciate a comparison of their year of respectful, if high-spirited, rallies and editorial-writing, leaflets and lobbying, with the rowdy, if non-violent, six-day occupation this spring of the Goodell Building by current UMass students, and with its unsatisfying and vituperative aftermath? Probably not, because the differences are so overwhelming and go so much deeper than deportment. The contest in 1947 was with forces external to the college, and joined on the college's behalf. The contest in 1997 was between students and the university. A hostile relationship between individuals and institutions is by now so much a part of our culture that it's hard to imagine it was ever otherwise.
The past is a different country. The class of '97 is ill-prepared by its culture to view, trust, or treat Bill Clinton and David Scott in the way the class of '47 viewed, trusted, and treated Franklin Roosevelt and Hugh P. Baker. But cycles of respect and indifference in our history show that, within limits at least, culture is malleable. It's up to us to try to mold ours.
The
Best for Less
The spectacular pile of icing on our cover is not the first such fiftieth anniversary cake that sculptor and art professor Pat Lasch has been commissioned to decorate. The first was for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. We're virtually certain she was better paid for that one, since this one was done gratis. We're also virtually certain that we've failed to pay minimum wage to graduate student Xiang-li Qin for the hours she spent building those beautiful, cake-crowning models of Old Chapel and the Du Bois Library. What can we say, dears, after we say thanks a million?
LOYAL TO THE SYSTEM
RE: "OUR UMASS" ["Exchange," Winter 1997] : My wife Geraldine and I graduated from UMass Amherst in 1947 and 1949. We ended up in Wisconsin where we have educated most of our eight children in the state university system: three at UW Madison and one each at UW satellites in La Crosse, Eau Claire, and Stevens Point. We currently have grandsons at UW Madison and UW Whitewater, and they are but the first of a long line.
The entire family has learned over the years that the
location of the campus doth not the school make. Our respect and allegiance
go individually and collectively to the University of Wisconsin system.
Charles B. "Chuck" Woods
'49
Grafton, Wisconsin
Chuck Woods is responding to our editorial expounding on why we often say "UMass" without adding "Amherst," intending no disrespect to our sibling "UMasses" elsewhere in the state.
HIGH NOTES, LOW NOTES
I READ WITH GREAT PLEASURE the piece on Professor Dorothy Ornest ["Hitting All the High Notes," Winter 1997]. I had the good fortune to study voice with her but only, alas, for a year. However, during my time as a student in the music department her utter professionalism and her concern for the academic, musical, and personal growth of her students stood as a shining example of what it means to be a teacher.
On a less enthusiastic note, I was disappointed to read
in the newspapers of how the March occupation of administrative offices
by agitators was handled. The fact that the administration "negotiated"
rather than summoning the constabulary and ejecting them forthwith sets
a terrible example, and will only encourage more such "aggrieved"
groups to indulge in similar tactics in the future.
Robert D. Ruplenas '67, '74G
Weymouth
IT HAS BECOME QUITE OBVIOUS that the present administration
has no intestinal fortitude. They proved that when 150 wet-behind-the-ears
kids were allowed to disrupt the campus for a week. They should have been
sent packing. Why should a few students be allowed to interrupt the education
of 23,000? It seems to me they were asking for even more discrimination.
The school already has women's studies, African studies, etc. anything
that separates one student from another. . .
John H. Talmage '50
Haydenville
MORE
MATH A LA MAG
THERE ARE QUITE A FEW interesting things about your readership survey ["Talk About Opinionated!" Winter 1997]. First, I am surprised that your mailing list is less than 15,000 (your sample comprising one-fourteenth of the list), since my class alone had over 4,000 graduates. Second, I am impressed that you fell into a common (almost universal!) statistical analysis error: reporting tenths of a percent on a sample of less than half a thousand. If 220 of 357 respondents read the mag regularly, that is 62 percent, not 61.5.
But best of all, I am perplexed that 0.01 percent of the 357 persons (exactly .0357 persons) report annual income over $200,000, while 0.02 percent report $150-199,000; this must represent either a novel accounting system or reverse cloning of some kind! Perhaps this was a proofreading error and should have been 1 and 2 percent respectively. The fact that nearly 12 percent of respondents have no annual income at all is disturbing; with no income, they still receive and read your mag, which must be quite a compliment to you and to the postal service.
Anyway, I did not receive the survey but do enjoy the
mag, read most of it regularly, keep it at least a few weeks, find it highly
interesting and generally excellent. I am male, still under sixty, alum.
Robert Roger Lebel '67
Glen Ellyn, Illinois
RE: THE READERSHIP SURVEY results in the Winter issue: apparently 1,050 were mailed out of 14,700 on the mailing list. Also, none of the question results total 100 percent seems to indicate at least 15 percent left them unanswered why is that?
I also question some percentages in the demographics section, e.g. "Income"; .01 percent in the $200,000+ group yields .0357 of a person! The "Age" categories are also "strange"; e.g., "Under 60" must mean 45-59.
Please send full results.
Richard M. Kennedy '57, '59G
Hamden, Connecticut
Thanks to Robert Lebel and Richard Kennedy for pointing out the potholes in our statistical reporting. Actually, the fact that none of the response groups adds up to 100 percent was deliberate; in each case, we omitted those who didn't respond to a particular question rather than inflate the percentages of those who did.
But both men are right about the "every fourteenth name" statement; it should be every 140th, since our mailing list now exceeds 140,000. Lebel is right about the proofreading error that added decimals and produced fractional, if affluent, persons; Kennedy (who headed his message "Lies, damned lies and statistics!") is right that our "Age" categories ("Under 60, Under 45, Under 30,") were strange. We meant what he deduced we did.
Again, we invite anyone interested to write for the full results or check them out on our web-site.
HOWLS ON ICE
In
the recent memoir, by "Uncle Max" ["The
Last Pond Party" by professor emeritus Maxwell Goldberg, Winter,
1997], your "snapshot of a snapshot" claims to be an 1880s view
of winter on campus: patently untrue not only with respect to the skates and
attire of the student "sports," but more certainly for the imposing
facades of Lewis and Thatcher halls which were constructed in the late 1930s
and occupied by freshmen in 1940 when my brother Edward '44 was housed there.
Those of us who knew MSC in the '40s, while thinning in ranks, nevertheless remain keen of mind and sharp of eye and can still spot a howler so delicious it brought a splendid smile to that beaming, kindly face of ole Max! There were giants in those days, truly, and not just because Professor Rand told us so.
As they say-thanks for the memories.
Eugene Putala '42
Clinton, New York
Max Goldberg's campus pond memories reminded us of a time when that body of water was used for something more appropriate than a wooden polo-practice horse named Prudence.
Our recollection has to do with a float that our AEPi fraternity built for the Homecoming parade in 1955. One brother came up with the idea of building a whale, which lent itself to all kinds of things our team should do to its football foe. Paul Marks '57 provided design and carpentry expertise. A gang of four in raingear "captured" a rowboat from a yard in nearby Hadley to lead the float and provide special effects. Mother Nature assisted by creating a wet, miserable Saturday. The combination enabled us to win first place in the competition.
As we savored the fun of winning at the fraternity house, someone reported that the whale that had been moored outside seemed to be moving. We ran to the door in time to see some Dartmouth College students "capturing" our pet. The race was on. Before it was over, the whale ended up in its environmentally correct space floating in the college pond.
We do not remember whether we actually won the game, but
we do tell a Whale of a Tale when we get together. While our memory cannot
compete with the seventy-plus years of relationship between Max Goldberg
and his '28 classmate Dutch Barnard, it does form a bond among another
group of UMass alumni.
Mathew Sgan '56, Newton
and Neal Keefe-Feldman '56, Beverly
BANDOHEAD DAYS
I WAS THRILLED to see Old Chapel on the Winter cover, yet stunned to see my home (Old Chapel) away from home (McNamara) away from home (Ashland) surrounded by scaffolding. "Yeah, what is up," I queried. I was active in the marching band all four of my years at UMass, and I spent far too much time at Old Chapel it became my personal center of the UMass universe, and still is ...
How even more thrilling was "Knucklehead Days"
by Elizabeth Luciano, whom I remember from the Collegian and the
Boston Globe. I understand how she sees campus through two lenses:
I can still see (and smell) the sheep down near the practice fields like
it was yesterday, and "Faces" downtown, and life before the new
engineering buildings. You know, I even have still pinned to my bulletin
board a piece written by Elizabeth years ago called "I Like Massachusetts."
And I once met her through a mutual friend Christy Innis, where are
you? at a band party at, where else, Old Chapel.
Walt Winchenbach III '87
Rochester, New York
"OLD CHAPEL'S GOT CRACKS IN ITS BELFRY" brought back memories of an incident that happened on March 17 fifty-six years ago.
I was returning from an early morning pheasant-crowing count in South Amherst (part of a study of the ring-neck pheasant conducted by State Fisheries and Wildlife), and as I drove down Pleasant Street I noticed a young fellow running towards campus.
I thought he might be late for an early morning class, so I stopped and said, "Hop in, I'll take you where you want to go." He said, "I'm late. I overslept and I have to play the Chapel bells at 8 a.m."
"No trouble," I said, "if you will play a couple of Irish songs, this being St. Patrick's Day."
That was the first and only time I ever heard Irish songs
played on the Old Chapel bells.
James McDonough SSA '39
Westboro
I READ WITH INTEREST "Old Dear Serious But Stable" [Around the Pond, Winter 1997]. Who was the maker of the Old Chapel Clock? Would this clock be called a tower clock? How was it wound in 1884?
I was glad to read that the Class of 1944 is restoring the clock.
Barbara (Bullock) Jones '56
Charlestown, New Hampshire
I
ESPECIALLY ENJOYED the article on Jane Yolen Stemple ["