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ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY

111111111111111~1r1mm11i1~ 111111111111111 3 1696 01138 1108 The St. John's

I Volume 11, Issue 4 Annapolis, Md. and Santa Fe, N.M. APRIL19B4]

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St. John's has produced two national second place winners in six-wicket cro­quet, but they may not be around much to help when the college plays Navy in the nine-wicket version of the game this spring.

The two juniors - Tom Campbell, of Yazoo City, Miss., and David Weitzel, of Carlisle, Pa., emerged second best in the nation in the 1984 national collegiate Doubles Croquet Championship Match in West Palm Beach, Fla., after winning three successive games but forfeiting top honors to Harvard, 8-16.

Making up Team II of the St. John's four-man contingent to Florida, they defeated Harvard in one game, 22-9, Wellesley, 15-12, the University of Flori­da, 12-9, and then lost to Harvard, 8-16.

By beating Florida 13-12 in the losers' bracket finals, St. John's II played Har.

Todd Reichart photo

• l vard in the tournament final, but lost 21-9 to that college, which put the St. Johnnies in second place.

(See Campbell P. 4)

Annapolis to new vice-pr~sident

Looking to the long term needs of the college, the eastern campus is launching a major expansion of its development program.

As a first step, it is in the process of selecting a new vice-president for college advancement with the choice expected to be announced this spring.

The new vice-president, who will have responsibilities only on the Annapolis campus, will be the first of two to four

(See Fund Program P.

Robert S. Fitzgerald, American poet· whose translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey are read at St. John's, will be commencement speaker 27 when the Annapolis campus graduates the largest class of seniors since the New Program began in 1937.

Altogether there are 98 seniors this year, a number so large that in order to handle oral examinations of their senior essays, the college has scheduled them for evenings, mornings and Saturdays. The number of seniors who will actually receive diplomas will not be known until classes conclude.

With a brass ensemble providing pro­cessional and recessional music, com­mencement will be held at 2 p.m. under the Liberty Tree unless rain forces it inside to Key Auditorium. It will be followed by a champagne and strawberry reception at the home of President and Mrs. Edwin J. Delattre.

Baccalaureate will occur at 10 a.m. in the Great Hall. As a new Commencement Day feature, luncheon will be available in the college dining hall for families of seniors for a small fee.

The May Cotillion is scheduled for May

REBECCA WILSON Here it comes again, clucking its

and lamenting life at St. John's, scolding its way up the steps of McDow­

cliche passed off as observation of the college,

unexamined. and repeated as it works its way every year or so into reports and new stories.

The cliche is this: St. John's is an ivory tower shut off from the "outside world," uninvolved, indifferent to political events, isolated, even dealing as some visitors recently put it, with a "limited range of ideas."

Ivory tower, need it be noted, is usually referred to in the pejorative sense. It's a cliche that raises some questions.

If St. John's is an ivory tower, is that · necessarily bad? What actually goes on

here that brings the "outside world" in? Are St. John's students in fact more isolated than those at other schools? Or is there some substance of truth in that cliche?

"Is St. John's too isolated for what?" Dean Samuel Kutler asked. "Does it mean our students are too isolated for their own good or for the country's good? If it's the latter, I doubt it."

"Do our graduates become monks and hermits?" he demanded to know.

If St. John's 4,500 alumni include a monk or two count Mr. Kutler noted former students choose

•

ROBERTS. FITZGERALD

12 and Reality Weekend for May 19. Mr. Fitzgerald is Boylston professor of

rhetoric and oratory, emeritus, at Har­vard. He was named to that chair in July, 1965, after it had been vacant since the death of Archibald MacLeish.

(See Poet to speak P. 3)

to enter law in large numbers, a profes. sion, he observed, that is identified with the political life.

Everyone agrees that, because of St. John's heavy academic program, most students coming here make a deliberate choice to give up some part of the world

(See Is St. John's P. 8)

J. Winfree Smith, A SEARCH FOR THE LIBERAL COLLEGE, The Beginning of the St. John's Program, St. John's Col­lege Press, $11.

Winfree Smith, a tutor at St. John's College since 1941, has written the first history of the college's foundation and early development. The period covers basically the first 21 years of the col­lege's history, including the deanships of Scott Buchanan and Jacob Klein.

Mr. Smith tells the story of the found­ing of the college with admirable verve, clarity and concision. The principal aim of the work, and one of its achievements, is to trace the history of the idea of ~~. John's as a liberal college in an :;ttempt to understand what has been its impact

its members and the (See Smith book P. 3)

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Page 2 THE REPORTER APRIL 1984

£[1Jill ™LI~ D

~&~¥ £[}:!] Clli w~~lr BETSY BLUME and BECKY WILSON

1966 1!<'"" 111""'" was married to Ellen·

'84) in a· marriage that took place 18 at St. tius Loyola Church in New York City.

1970 John Dean writes: "I'm still a profes­

sor at the University of Paris, although recently I've branched out to work as well for the American College in Paris." .

Last sum:mer John was director of the USIS's American Literature and Ameri­can Studies Program in Hungary, and the summer before, he studied at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Workshop in Michigan.

"Recently, I've been publishing fiction, most recently in Weirdbook. Academan­iac publishing also continues apace."

1975 Betsy Blume must be one of the most

efficient- people in the world. After writ­ing her share of the Alumni Notes; she wound up duties here as director of alumni activities on March 2 preparatory to taking two months maternity leave, · went home and promptly went into labor, and the following day delivered by Caesa­rean section a six pound, 15 ounce boy,

' Michael David Blume, Jr. Parenthood will bring some .reverse

role playing. Betsy expects to be baek in her office on schedule, and Michael will do the day-time parenting, taking care of young David. as: be will be called, while he continues to write novels.

la'l6 Army Reserve Pfc. Jacqueline Blue

Wilson has completed her basic training at Fort Dix, N.J. Jackie is now versed in drill and ceremonies, weapons, map reading, tactics, military courtesy, mm. tary justice, first aid and Army history and traditions. Let us know what comes next, Jackie, before you make colonel..

SF '76 How are you addressed by mail if

y~u've decided to retain your name after marriage, as Captain Nancy Galloway has done? At a brunch for alumni who had worked in the telephone campaign~

The Reporter Rebecca · Wilson, editor; Laurence

Berns, Besty Blume, Thomas Parran, J. Winfree Smith, Eliott Zuckerman, advise· ry board.

The Reporter is published by- the Public Relations Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, president. · ·

Published five times a year, in Febru· ary, April,_ June, September and' Novem~ ber. Second-class postage paid ··At Annapolis, Md.

USPS 018·750

she and her husband, Lt. Col. John Ross, were laughing about some of the ways members of their family have answered that mother-in-law sends

· letters addressed to "Occupant"·; . her sister, to "Ross and Galloway, Inc." That

1, 1981. Both the Air Force. She

ence and he in manpower.· 1978

took place John are

in intellig-

In v1:~1:.m u1:1 we heard from- Caroline who asks us to print the following:

in a cafe · Sene-

a beer and is plastered,

, _ . on the wall across the street. I'm on tour here with this band, ·saraba, that some of you have heard about!'

Saraba, which plays African-influenced rock, with Latin and jazz motifs, hcis·won the Berlin Senate Rock Competition and various other laurels.

"I'll be back in Berlin in February, 1984, and any old friends who are or w,ill be in Europe should drop a card if tl~ey want to visit. We. tour a ·1ot in Switzer­land, Holland, Italy, and Germany, so perhaps we could connect somewhere. Anyone feeling envious about the travel­ing needn't bother - the sight-seeing is limited to smoky clubs, cold concert halls and hotel rooms. Sometimes it's a nice life·. It suits me, however."

Caroline's address in Berlin is: Kott­busser Str. 15, 1000 Berlin 36, Germany; phone (011-49-ao) 612-6185.

1978 Rita and Pom Collins are spending a

certain amount of time clowning around - literally - despite his medical studies which wind up in May at Georgetown Univer.sity in Washington. During an elective period of study, he is earning class credit in Thailand, assisting for six weeks at a refugee camp until the middle of this month when he is scheduled ·to return. He and Rita are waiting to find out where his transitional internship will take him - to Spokane, Wash., Roanoke, v·a., or to the District of Columbia. (These days it's all done by matching· needs through a computer.)

Rita is serving as a program coordina­tor in community health and education services in Arlington, Va., County Red Cross Chapter. That means she can teach first aid, coronary pulmonary resuscita­tion, baby sitting, child care for new parents, and clowning~ Yes, clowning. As part of its volunteer program, the chap­ter teaches clowning so that volunteers can entertain shut~ins in nursing homes, hospitals' and day care centers, Both Collins have taken the course and are now Augu8te clowns, the traditional sort you see in the circus, as contrasted with mimes. Rita entertains in red wig with·

. red nose; and tall Porn,· in a blue wig and blue beard, has an act in which lie plays

. a dumb comic to the straight man oLa .small, peremptory 10-year~olq,:clowt ··

1979 st1;. A note from Karen Wachsml\hJ.el~:;

that-. she is now enrolled in a master''B program at Juilliard, studying conduct­ing. We wish her all the best.

1981 Peter Gilbert is enrolled in Samuel

Johnson's old college, Pembroke, at Ox-( Continued on p. 10)

oth campuses to conduct week-long · programs

If Harvey Goldstein has his way, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Class of 1959 will have a week-long celebration.

Mr. Goldstein hopes that a week-long Alumni Summer Institute on the Annapo­lis campus will serve as the centerpiece for a reunio,n of class members. The first since the mid~ 70s, it is scheduled for the ,week o~ June 10 with tutorials, seminars and p~rties planned. Details will be .coming in the mail from Annapolis alum­ni director Betsy. Blume.

· Meanwhile, similar week-long summer programs for alumni have been sched~ · uled for the last two weeks in and the first week in August on the Santa Fe campus.

Among there will Torn Simpson, John Robert Bart, Dean Hae:e:a.rd. Glenn Freitas and Grey

Sam Larcombe, Santa Fe alumni direc- · tor; said that tentatively being planned for preceptorials and seminars are ses­sions· on Goethe, classical physics, the Bible, possibly contemporary .Latin American. thought, modern women writ­ers, and Sophocles. Opera schedules· will be sent those requesting them. Baby sitting services may be arranged.

In Annapolis, Hugh McGrath and Mari­lyn Douville will co-lead the week's seminar on Henry IV and alumni will be. able to see a productio11 of Henry \t" at the

Folger Shakespeare Theater in Washing. · ton. The Alumni Office will arrange transportation.

The Annapolis faculty also will include Samuiel Kutler, Barbara Leonard, Harry Golding and Elliott Zuckerman.

. Total expenses for the week will be $200 in Santa Fe and $250 in Annapolis. Interested alumni should. be in touch with the two alumni directors;

Alumni attending homecoming . tember may make hotel reseru~tinnc

number of hotels in ,.,.,.,,, .. J~V'"" should ask for the bloc rooms reserved

St. John's College. Early reservations advised. The area code is 301.

with cut-off dates. the are:

Climat de France, 224-4317, by Septem­ber 7; Hilton Inn, 268-7555, .by September 7; Holiday· Inn, 224-3150, by August 31; Maryland Inn, 263-2641, by September 7, and Thr-Rift Inn, 224-2800, by August 21.

Iri addition, bed and breakfa~t accom, modations in private homes, yachts and · historic inns may be obtained through Sharp-Adams, 269-6232, an agency estab- · lished by St. John's alumna Cecily 0.

. Sharp-, '64.

Schneiders gi1:Je U.S. concerts Mark Schneider, '73, has been back in·.

this country this year. ond a concert tour with his wife, Elizabeth.

.. Among Denmark's most sought-after yo"ung musicians. Mark, a pianist, and Elizabeth, a violinist, constitute the Duo Gracino, a name which honors the violin maker who lived from about 1685 to about 1726 and who made the violin Mrs. Schneider uses.

Their first tom in the United States was in 1981, when they played at St.· John's. They made their New York debut in February at the New School, playing a · program oi Bach, Mozart, Debussy and Carl Nielsen.

Their tour this year also included

performances in Boston, Buffalo and· Louisville. _ _ . _ c _ ...

Mrs. Schneider has been a teaching assistant at the Royal Danish Conserva­tory of Music since 1978 and has held a solo-desk position with the Royal Danish Orchestra since 1980·. · Mr. ·Schneider has performed with leading.string quartets in Denmark and given lecture-concerts at a number of Danish schools.

In 1971 he started a concert series in Copenhagen which has presented many · Danish and internationally known musi­cians. Earlier, in ·1976-77, he had .given recital tours in this country.

The Schneiders . are the parents of. a daughter, Hannah, who is now one year old.

Mark and Elizabeth Schneider are among Denmark's most sought after young performers.

l

I Ii. r1

( omnnue!CI. from P. 1)

Writing in an understated, sometimes humorous but always sympathetic style, Mr. Smith describes the origins in Scott Buchanan's earlier teaching and writing of the ideas which led to the program and the gathering together of the men who saw the opportunity to establish that program at a virtually bankrupt liberal arts college in 1937.

Mr. Smith provides a detailed and often gripping account of the complex events and motivations which led to the founding of the college, the struggle to preserve it from annexation by the Navy, and the complex reasons that led Barr and Bu­chanan to abandon the college and a potential large endowment in an ulti-. mately futile attempt to establish a new institution outside Annapolis.

WRITING FROM personal knowledge and careful research, Mr. Smith is able to bring these now far off events into vivid focus. But this is also a history of the ideas embodied in St. John's as much as the men and events who formed the college, and Mr. Smith never loses sight of his main objective which is to explore the possibilities that are inherent in an educational institution of this kind, not as a matter of theory but as an historical experience.

The timing is important. One guesses that it would have been impossible for Mr. Smith to have written this account, say in 1960, when be was much closer in time to the events. Much of the book's quality was undoubtedly made possible by the opportunity which Mr. Smith has had to live, .teach . a.nd write in the program for an additional two decades.

One of the most striking things that comes out of this history is the continuity of the new program. Scott Buchanan, by theory - and perhaps more important by tempel'.ament - would have been in­clined to pull the program up by the roots every two or three years. Mr. Smith makes it clear that he credits Klein's service as dean and Mr. Weigle's as president as preserving and stabilizing the college, but that be also believes that the program has been preserved because the community which it serves has found that it works sufficiently well to maintain the affection and support of several generations of scholars in the face of a world of very different academic institu­tions and of rapid change.

The chief strength of Mr. Smith's history, however, is that it addresses in various ways the values, successes and failures of the program itself. There can be no question that Mr. Smith has long been a firm supporter of the ideas and practices that were established in Annap. olis in 1937 and are followed in Santa Fe in 1984.

HOWEVER, HE has some reservations about these ideas and practices which color his narrative and give depth and insight to his book. The whole idea of the program, as he says came from Scott Buchanan, although it was of course elaborated by Barr and others, including Mr. Smith, into a coherent plan for learning in a liberal community.

Buchanan was indeed a charismatic, even mesmerizing, personality who many remember as their greatest teacher. Yet Buchanan's thinking, as Smith with some sympathy points out, had messianic, often ·conflicting, strains that made it difficult for him to provide leadership in

llJ~l'U~ 3

The bookstore threw an autograph signing party for Winfree Smith. Waiting their turn are, from left, Lydia Sparrow, Alexandra Mullen and Susan Price. Todd Reichart photo

a sustained, college-building effort. Bu­chanan, . as someone remarked, thought that all 18-year-old boys were angels and that they could learn or understand anything.

Jacob Klein's observation that some of them have essentially appetitive natures was a necessary counterbalance:· Indeed, it is clear from· Smith~s hisfory that by the middle 40's Buchanan, perhaps driv­en by Utopian perfectionist ideas and emotions, was no longer able to deal with the problems of a small struggling insti­tution in a wartime society, and the move to Massachusetts was as much an escape as a new departure. Barr left with him because, as Mr. Smith says, he "could not dispense with the help of Buchanan in continuing the program" either at St. John's College or otherwise.

Mr. Smith's description of the years of consolidation under Mr. Klein and Mr. Weigle is particularly interesting to this writer who graduated in 1948.

THESE WERE years of sustained, responsible reexamination of most as­pects of the program in the light of experience: the much vexed role of the laboratory in a liberal curriculum; the encounters with foreign languages; the coverage of a broad range of materials

as opposed to exploration of a few matters in depth; skill acquisition versus dialectical inquiry; the proper function of the St. John's tutor, and so forth.

Mr. Smith's book suggests but does not answer the questions about ultimate val­ue that must be continually asked by any community of learners if it is to live and prosper. One way of posing this question is to compare the program to another ideal.

Does a relatively generalized, non­historical, non-specialized dialectical in­quiry into selected "great books" togeth­er with related and supporting but also necessarily quite· general and non-spe­cialized work in language, mathematics and the laboratory always provide the best road to making a free person; or, to make one of many possible comparisons, can the concentrated, specialized mas­tery of a difficult field in which one becomes familiar in depth with its histo­ry and scholarship, and practices its study, exposition and ultimate mastery under conditions of excellence be a better road?

ONE RELATIVELY optimistic answer might be to say the best students at St. John's will get a better beginning educa­tion there than at all but a very few

places in the Western World, and that medium students, while not so patently benefiting from the program, are at risk in having their lives changed in ways that offer possibilities for freedom, and that the poor student may well be injured by St. John's and can be better off in a middling electives program at a "good" liberal arts college.

Struggling with such questions, the c.ollege will be greatly aided by the searching look into its origin which ·Mr. Smith's elegantly written book provides. He recognizes the danger that a program which has so little changed over 46 years of existence may become ossified, that the elements in the tradition which vital­ize it could be lost, and concludes:

"The sobering recognition of these dangers, while it almost certainly will not enable St. John's College to avoid them altogether, may nonetheless help it in the performance of its task of freeing the human intellect."

The book is available through the St. John's College book store for $12, includ­ing postage and handling. Its writing was assisted by contributions from Eugene Thau, '47, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation and the Joseph H. Hazen Foundation.

Poet to speak at commencement May 27 (Continued from P. 1)

Mr. Fitzgerald's career had included journalism as well as poetry. His first book, Poems (1935), was published soon after he finished a year and a half of reporting for the New York Herald Tribune, and his second, A Wreath for the Sea (1943), came out when he was leaving Time magazine for service in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

When he returned to Time after World War II, he also served as poejry editor of the New Republic and as an instructor at Sarah Lawrence College and at Prince­ton. His third book of poems, In the Rose of Time, appeared in 1956.

Beginning in 1953, Mr. Fitzgerald lived in Italy with his family for eleven years, interrupted by occasional teaching ap­pointments in this country. He taught writing and literary criticism at Notre

Dame, the University of Washington, Indiana University, and Mt. Holyoke College before returning to Harvard as a lecturer in 1964.

Admired as a skilled translator of the Greeks, he has put into English Homer's Odyssey and Iliad and Sophocles' Oedi­pus at Colonus and, with Dudley Fitts, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Sophocles' Anti­gone, and Euripides' Alcestis. He also has translated the verse plays of Paul Valery and the "Chronique" and "Oiseaux" of St. John Perse.

He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952 and the Shelley Memorial Award in 1955. In 1957 he received an award of the National Institute of Arts and Let­ters; in 1959, a Ford Foundation grant for creative writing; and in 1961, for his Odyssey, the first Bollingen Award for Translation.

A second Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded him in 1971. In 1972 he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and in 1973 an Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship.

Born on October 12, 1910, in Geneva, N.Y., Professor Fitzgerald grew up in Springfield, Ill. He received his bache­lor's degree in 1933 from Harvard after having spent his junior year at Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1962 he was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in 1963, a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. His translation of the Iliad received the first Harold Morton Landon Award for the translation of poetry. Emeritus at Harvard as of July, 1981, he published his translation of Virgil's Aeneid in September, 1983.

ampbell, 2nd place in al

reach each

(Continued from P. 1)

The singles players, Mr. Campbell and James Hapner, Hillsboro, Ohio, junior, along with the St. John's I doubles team - Mr. Hapner and Alex Huemer, Hills­borough, Calif., junior - did well enough to give St. John's third in the overall national collegiate standings.

Also taking part in the competition were players from Princeton, Barnard, Smith and Brown.

Earlier in the academic year a team of four from St. John's won the U.S. Croquet Association's Southern Regional Croquet Championship after defeating the Univer­sity of Virginia by a point in competition at Pinehurst, N.C.

Manning victorious mallets there were Mr. Weitzel, Mr. Huemer, Mr. Hapner and Mr. Campbell, who were presented a seven-inch tall silver cup by the U.S. Croquet Association with each receiving smaller individual cups.

Tapping croquet balls in 70-degree sun­shine at the Palm Beach Polo and Country Club, the St. John's players -at this more recent game were playing on a professional croquet court of a breed of bent grass an eighth of an inch high.

As compared with the usual ne1ghtior­hood game, they were oairtic:im1tiruz highly developed form of croquet much more involved and competitive than the more loosely structured, nine-wicket cro­quet played at St. John's in last c:m1ncr'~ game with Navy.

SIX-WICKET CROQUET involves more strategy and ball patterns of interest,.according-to. Mr. Weitzel.

"It's the difference between checkers and chess," he said.

it's got so we'll come up with the best possible team.'' he said.

The tournament will be held once again at St. John's.

This year, as its members start prac-

Croquet to count toward blazer

The Great B.J., as John Ertle, imperial wicket of the Croquet Club, likes to call Bryce Jacobsen, has agreed.

And it is up to "his imperial wicket­ness," as Mr. Jacobsen likes to refer to this Lakewood, Ohio, senior, to work out the details.

Groquet is being recognized by the athletic director. Games are sponsored

the library, which maintains the ... ... u'«<"u;;1. sets, but Mr. Ertle has persuaded

acobsen that players' participation in this game should count toward a point system under which St. John's communi­ty members earn athletic blazers.

In Mr. Jacobsen is leaving it up to Mr. to develon a set of

"I

a library -sponsored

Santa Fe juniors Michael Picone and Linda Sullivan at the Junior Prank Day Last year's game with the Naval Acad­emy resulted in a visit to St. John's of Sandy Kavden, Harvard political science

As the weather improves, Mr. Weitzel is seeking a professional croquet court in this area, saying that.so far he has been unable to find one witl:Wi a 5()..mile area outside a private home in Easton .

"Paunch Pad." Behind them is a silver "rocket" fusilage. Ari Latham photo

''T'h w: s ff' k professor and the U.S. association's vice-.I. j e r 0 ng tu ma es president in charge of collegiate croquet.

. She encouraged students to consider

the right sort of day in SF ~~r~~ga!~~c~~ro~~erious version favored

Tentatively, he is considering the possi­bility of organizing a St. John's Croquet Association as distinguished from the 1

more informal St. John's Croquet Club, to indicate its members are playing croquet in accordance with the U.S. Croquet Association rules.

Santa Fe campus students who thought they might put in a day of serious study February 21 were thinking the wrong stuff~ , .

About 9:30 a.m.. well into the day's first classes, trumpets• and kazoos res~~ tively . rang and tooted thro.ugb class­rooms and down dorm halls,

They heralded Junior Prank day, the one time in the academic . year when juniors officially disrupt classes and any­thing else they can think of.

The Prank Day, subtitled "The Wrong Stuff," earned two large front-page pho­tos in Santa Fe's daily newspaper, The New Mexican.

Linda Sullivan, who, costumed as "Moon Maid," floated through various extracurricular activities, explained the day's maneuvers:

" 'Moon Maid' isn't my real name, but it will do for a working name. And I'm not stating what galaxy I'm from for security reasons.

"First, we rushed into the halls and counted down: FIVE-FOUR-THREE­TWO-ONE THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, EVERYBODY TO THE GREAT HALL," she said, her antennae bobbing.

"There we had a multi-media presenta­tion to trace the history of a guy named Bruce, who knew he was different from the start. He thought he'd be an ideal candidate for the St. John's Space Pro­gram. We followed his training, which

.. included such things as lifting copies of Kant on barbells and reading upside

. Because of the difference between six down, dissecting a cat, things like that. and nine-wicket croquet and because

"Then the astronauts came in for their these players may be participating again press conference. We had students Ralph in Pinehurst, they are unlikely to partici­Roybal, Jan Conlin, Susie Berger, John pate in the next game with Navy.

In Florida, the standings on scores, double elimination format, were:

· Doubles Baldy, Evan Nicholas and Rebecca · Meanwhile, John Ertle, imperial wicket Weibe as Chuck Yeager,. not quite an of the St. John's Croquet Club, has astronaut," she said. · . announced. that he intends to seek the St. John's· I - Barnard. 15-8; Harvard

Next, students poured out of Petersen . · most ·skilled players available. with which II, 11-13; Brown II. 13-16. Student Center to a plaza near· the frozen to repeat last year's victory against the Sl John's IJ - Harvard, 22-9; Welles­Nina S. Garson Garden· and Refiecting ~~~~l Academy. , . . . ·. . it':ley, ~5-12; Florida, 12-9; Harvard I, 8-18; Pool, where Bruce Johnson a.nd Hoski I m sure Navy s commg at us with ail ·~,flor1da, 12-9; Harvard. 9-21. Schaafsma were spray-painting the fin: . SJC fees to exceed $11,000 ishing touches on a towering silver rocket at the "Paunch Pad." Frantic· frisbee flings filled the Near Earth Atmosphere, as the space cadets drank their fill at the Keg of Wisdom.

"This is supposed to be such a serious place," one student was.heard to mutter, just before kicking a soccer ball into the plaza.

A scavenger hunt, an 11 All-American" lunch (hamburger and hot dogs), Sputnik cocktails, a dart-throwing contest, mural drawing, face painting, and Tee-shirt printing filled the rest of the day. Raw Fish, a band composed of St. John's students and alumni, played a marathon set all afternoon.

A 9 p.m. party "in celebration of success of St. John's Space Training Program" welcomed "press, politicians and all assorted aliens." '

Miss Sullivan, in cryptic off-earth style, summed up the day's events: "It was a success.''

Total fees at St. John's next year will come to $11,150.

The Board of Visitors and Governors has approved a 14.6 per cent jump in tuition, from $7 ,200 to $8,250. Board and room will go up $200 from a total of $2, 700 this year to $2,900 during the 1984-85 academic year.

A study of 14 schools that share St. John's applicant pool reveals their aver­age fees this year are $11, 795. St. John's next year will be slightly below that.

In a letter to· students and parents, President Delattre said the college at­tempts to break even on housing and meals. Tuition represents one form of income the college applies to educational and other general expenses of the col­lege.

"At the present time, state and federal moneys are not increasing for independ­ent higher education," he said. "Gifts and rental income are, but at a modest rate.

"We limit the amount of income we spend from the endowment because we must put some earnings into principal as a safeguard for the future. Over the years, we have tried to keep the tuition portion of educational and general expen­ses at or near 60 per cent of the total, or, put in another way, to maintain the price of education (tuition) at about 60 per cent of the cost (the amount St. John's spends per student from all sources of income).

"The increase for next year conforms to these principles ... "

Mr. Delattre said both he and the St. John's board are committed to providing as much financial aid to students as the college resources permit and to providing fair compensation for the faculty and staff.

"Our budget projections overall enable us to fulfill these commitments within a prudently balanced and controlled budget which includes the tuition increase."

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APRIL 1984 THE REPORTER Page5

Hugh McGrath retiring after 35 years at SJC One anticipates certain consequences:

a clouding of the glass, a dulling of the sheen, a certain loss of elegance on campus. Hugh McGrath is retiring from full-time teaching at St. John's College.

After 35 years with the college, he will leave after commencement, taking with

. him his brilliance, his fine British actor's. presence, his wit, his memorable . voice and his insights into poetry for it is with poetry that Mr. McGrath is most closely identified on campus. The campus will be poorer by a thousand anecdotes.

One thinks of Mr. McGrath reading Shakespeare on Sunday afternoon play reading sessions in the library's King William Room or, eyes mischievously alight, leaning over during a faculty meeting to quote to a colleague a parody of Hiawatha - "That's why he put the fur side Why he the skin side· outside, Why he turned them inside outside"· - or delaying his return home to assist a fellow tutor or student in understanding a particular line of poetry. Overhearing him read poetry in French, a listener pauses, spell-bound, outside his classroom.

Years ago, probably during the late fifties, in a program in the Great Hall, this writer heard Mr. McGrath recite Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," an old-fash­ioned poem, dated by today's standards, but one he made altogether convincing and right with his powerful and moving reading.

"His. lecture on 'Cimitierre Marin,' ('The Cemetery by the Sea') by Paul Valery was one of the very finest in my memory," Brother Robert Smith said. "To have had Hugh available in the coffeeshop and to be able to ask questions about poems is something none of us will forget."

ST. JOHN'S TUTOR ELLIOTT Zucker­man has credited him with mastering "every subtlety of the French poems -and the English poems, too."

And it also will be poetry that will bring Mr. McGrath back to St. John's. Next year he will. lead a faculty study group · in reading the poetry of William Blake and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

A "Liverpudlian," Mr. McGrath came to St. John's in 1948 with a degree from the University of Liverpool and with additional language studies in London, Paris and Dijon. He had met his Ameri­can wife, Barbara, while she was study­ing drama with the Royal Academy in London, and it was through her that he learned of St. John's. Her brother-in-law, James Martin, had been a faculty mem­ber and assistant to the president during the early days of the New Program.

Since then he has served on the In­struction Committee and such campus committees as the Prize Committee. This year, because he is one of those faculty ·

·members most articulate about the pro­gram, he is a member of the Faculty Self-Study Committee assisting in the reaccreditation process. ·

He has taught all levels of the language program, serving frequently as a lan­guage archon, and the first three years of the mathematics program. He has taught the first and, when it existed, the sopho­more year of the laboratory program.

From time to time he has lectured, giving the lecture on the library steps when it was rededicated in October, 1969. He has spoken on Plato's Gorgias, The . Brother's Karamazov, and on one occa-

. sion, he gave the dean's traditional open­ing Friday lecture. He has charmed audiences in Annapolis and Santa Fe with his poetry reading.

Dean Samuel Kutler and Joseph Cohen of the Annapolis faculty, both alumni, remember one lecture they heard as

HUGH McGRATH

underclassmen on what it means to be a student - a talk Mr. Kutler recently asked him to repeat but one which has been lost.

AN. ACCOMPLISHED actor, Mr. Mc­Grath played the title role in a campus production of Charles Williams' Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury and the part of Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1. His appear­ances have been traditional at the col­lege.wide Christmas party when he has joined former librarian Charlotte Fletch­er and St. John's tutor Winfree Smith in a comic skit, A. E. Housman's A Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, always a smashing hit that grows, if anything, funnier and better with the years.

Fotir years ago he had the audience roaring its appreciation when he sang "The Road to Mandelay" during a facul­ty musical comedy, Perils Before Swine.

Mr. McGrath is known for his polished and witty toasts, his playful wit in general, his entertaining anecdotes, for speech more graceful than most.

"I guess probably the most remarkable thing that has impressed me about Hugh, when sitting in on some of his language classes or during conversation with him outside of class, is his tremendous reper­toire of literary examples," ·-David Ste-. phenson, a fellow tutor, said.

"That means that he has an ability to find all kinds of extraordinary words. He has a wonderful sense of playing with a sensitivity and enjoyment of sounds and a knowledge of how they go together and how they play off against one another.

"He can reach into a storehouse of examples of writing from Shakespeare to

·Baudelaire which illustrate what he has to say as the result of his extensive "reading and memory, and he takes an obvious delight in unique examples of prose and poetry, rhetoric and logic, as ways in which we can express some­thing."

With it, Mr. Stephenson said, express­ing. a view shared bY faculty members, comes an "extreme gentleness and kind­ness and willingness to help."

Clearly, not every word, of course, will do for Mr. McGrath.

"When I think back on his junior language class, I think of his unending search for the right word," Valerie O'Connor, Annapolis senior, said of him.

"HE WOULD SPEND 10 or 15

minutes seeking the proper way to trans­late a word, insisting that it be right for tragedy and that we not just be thinking in terms of street English."

She recalled another quality Mr. Mc­Grath sought. "I really liked his way of eliciting boldness," she said, thinking back to those occasions when he encour­aged his class with an "I wish you would be bold.''

Leslie Jump, Westminster, Md., senior, finds him "fascinating" as a te~cher. "He knows an amazing amount of things about poetry and literature," she said, mentioning al~o his knowledge of etymol­ogy and linguistics.

Miss Jump represents the second gen­eration in her family to under Mr. McGrath. Her mother, Janet Beamer Jump, '56, was also a student of his. Another admirer, Pierre Gagnier, Annap­olis senior, describes him as "one of the most entertaining tutors I have ever had."

Revered by alumni, Mr. McGrath two years ago was made an honorary mem­ber of the Alumni Association.

St. John's has changed most noticeably in two ways since he came to the college: in size and with the addition of women. Mr. McGrath said the small enrollment in 1949 - 195 students - allowed him to be "pampered."

"When I came to the college, it was less than half its present size. Conse­quently I had seminars during. those early years with Mr. (Simon) Kaplan, Mr. (Richard) Scofield, Mr. (John) Kief. fer, and finally, last but far from least, Mr. (Jacob) Klein," Mr. McGrath said, referring to some of the major figures of that era. "I was highly pampered."

"That came along with the general way of treating new tutors. We were put in seminars with more experienced tutors and given scope ·for observation of the best college had to offer. Of course, with tutorials, new tutors were thrown straight into them and left to fend for. themselves, though· they could derive considerable help from auditing tutorials and the counsel of senior tutors."

PAMPERED THOUGH he was, Mr. McGrath believes the way new tutors are treated today is probably a change for the better, with much more thought going into their welfare during the early years of their instruction. In addition to audit­ing courses, they now have by way of additional assistance study programs and archon meetings.

Despite the misgivings surrounding the entry of women in 1951 (a Class Day speech gloomily referred to Anthony being "unmanned by Cleopatra," Mr. McGrath recalled), he said it had been interesting to see how little had changed in seminars and tutorials as the result of their entry. "I suspect that in character and temperament there may be differ­ences, but in intellect, I don't see any," he said.

He·believes the college must still steer between its particular Scylla and Charyb­dis - pedantry and empty headed talk -and currently may be taking · a more conservative course.

Mr. McGrath said that Winfree Smith's depiction of Scott Buchanan in his book about the New Program suggests that the programs' first dean was somewhat an­archical. That view of the college could be seen as an extreme.

·"The other extreme is a sort of con­servatism," he said. "Mr. Kaplan once quoted Mr. Buchanan as saying that what the college should aim at is a competent dilettantism .. I suppose one might say we are placing much more stress on compet. ence and less on dilettantism. We have to steer a middle course. There's a perpetu-

al danger that the college will sink into one or the other."

HIS EXPERIENCE with the Reaccre­ditation Committee leads him to believe there is no essential change in the college. "We are still resistent to the idea of a curriculum which permits the col­lege to plan and predict outcomes, to place stress on competence and have something measurable." . His wish for the St. John's of the future

is a scholar's and a teacher's .wish. He had just been reading George Eliot's Middlemarch and was thinking of it in connection with Callicles in the Gorgias. "I'.ve been thinking about Mr. Brooke, who had a 'glutinous' mind~ and no matter what topic came up, turned out to have gone in for it at one time 'up to a point.' "

It sometimes seems as if edncation is very good up to a ·Mr. McGrath observed, and after that, as Callicles said, it becomes "unmanly."

"We can require a great deal of relief," Mr. McGrath went on. "Education can be very trivialized. It's as if we say we have done a spot of thinking, and now we can go out for a beer. We need some means for keeping our spirit zealous. while there are so many competing interests.''

Mr. McGrath will have no trouble in keeping his mind zealous as he retires. "There are just so many things, too many things," he said as he anticipates the crowding of his day. For one thing, he is considering learning Russian so he can read Dostoevsky in the original.

He will be enjoying a new house newly completed this spring on part of the . grounds of his former residence overlook­ing the Severn and Chesapeake Bay. There will be more time off for his children: Peter, a senior editor with Newsweek; Brian, a marketing analyst in Canada with a sporting goods manu­facturer, and Barbara, an artist with a Philadelphia advertising agency. His grandchildren include Peter's son and Brian's daughter.

DESCRIBED BY former Dean Edward Sparrow as a "splendid colleague and teacher," Mr. McGrath has always been admired by other tutors for his skills in leading seminars.

"He has a way of doing what we really · want and that is to ask something about the text which will lead the discussion in all sorts of directions," Mr. Stephenson said.

"I think that he can state a question or statement about the text that inspires the students to pursue his own answers about it. That way he adds fuel to the fire rather than ending the discussion. He is a model of a seminar leader in that re­spect."

David Starr had always wanted. to co. lead a seminar with Mr. McGrath, think­ing he could learn something about teach­ing with him. This year he ·has that opportunity. "It turns out that the secret I thought I had to have was not a thing he had but the man himself," he found.

"Long ago, on a summer's day in the rose garden of the McGrath's former house on Wilson Road, Hugh spoke with deep respect of the sophistication of the Platonic dialogues," his long time friend, . former dean Curtis Wilson, said.

"The word 'sophistication' has its- de­graded meanings, but when combined with humaneness and gentleness be­comes our very first defense against degradation and distortion of the mean­ings that matter. Hugh McGrath is a defender of these meanings, a knight of our-Round Table, and one ofthe gentlest, most humane, most courageous, and most sophisticated of them all."

~ . .f::

The new Polity stereo is surrounded by a group that includes, lower comer and proceeding James Hyder, who aei;ig11ed Pausie, Doug and T. Ward Joa·mson.

•

by JOHN ROSS, '69 "The main reason that most colleges

have alumni associations is to support the football team, What, does St. John's offer its alumni in pla&e of football?"

That question from Vernon Derr, '44, · Boulder, Colo., is a slight exaggeration, but it does identify the problem ad­dressed by the Alumni Association board during its recent meeting on the Santa Fe campus.

The board met on January 21 to conduct its current business, leaving time on Sunday morning for an open discus­sion of the association's goals and direc­tives.

In the last two or three years, the association has grown from an almost exclusively Annapolis-centered group to one with branches and activities across the country. In order to evaluate the organization's activities, it has become important to have a commonly under­stood definition of the association's pur­poses.

Quring the discussion, John van Doren, '47, Evanston, Ill., suggested that most organized groups of alumni exist to provide two things for their colleges -new students and money. St. John's alumni ought to add a third item to that list, he said, in the form of an interest in the ideal of liberal education that is central to the St John's program.

That third item - the ideal of liberal education - was picked up by Robert Bart, '57, tutor and former dean

"I'm excited that groups of alumni are

Todd Reichart photo

continuing the work of the college. In a very real sense the alumni are independ­ent of the college itself. If the ~ampuses disappeared, the goals of college would continue in its alumni."

This was echoed by Harold Morgan, '68 SF, Albuquerque, N.M., who described St. John's as a "frame of reference" for its alumni - a common experience that is worthy of support.

THERE WAS LITTLE disagreement about the association's governing philoso­phy, but considerably more about the form of the organization. Alumni activi­ties range from seminar and lecture programs for professional groups, high school students, and St. John's alumni to picnics, parties and other social gather­ings on the campuses and among the chapters.

As the association's president, David Dobreer, '44, Alhambra,. Calif, pointed out, "The college has only become aware of the alumni in the last two years. There used to be only one point of contact in a geographical area, but now there are real, active groups of alumni. We've come a long way in a short time, and as yet, I don't think either we or the college knows exactly what to do about it."

The association's quest for definition will continue (probably endlessly, consid­ering that we are, after all, Johnnies). At the board's next meeting on April 28 in Annapolis, John van Doren will propose a statement of goals for organized alumni, out of which a set of criteria will evolve for evaluating specific activities.

Last fall the Student Polity stereo system reached a crisis stage.

Breakdowns in the had JJrni:; ut"u

the Polity for years; components \Vere frequently in need of repair or ,.,_.TI,,_,,., .. ._

ment, or were simply missing. sys­tem had often been damaged inadvertently by students who lacked the expertise to handle it properly.

These problems ended when the stu. dents returned from summer vacation last semester to discover they had no stereo at all. Except for a damaged (but repairable) pair of speakers, all its components had been fatally damaged or lost.

In the spring of 1983, then polity president Michael Henry, '83, now of Voorhees, N.J., had decided that some-thing needed to be and Jam es Hyder, Columbia, senior, of. fered to

Mr. Hyder's qualifications included the extensive technical experience and skills he had gained from for years at Howard CoimnmTitity Columbia as an technician. With Mr. began designing a stereo system.

"I WANTED THE new system to be flexible and of very high quality, of course, but also as rugged and n..,,,_.,,...,,.,u as possible," Mr. Hyder said. He was taking into account the fact that the stereo is frequently moved from building to building as parties demand, and not always as gently as might be wished.

To do this he specified that the ment be housed in c:ases such as are by musicians and technicians to transport their expensive and delicate instruments and electronic equipment.

Although the preliminary design and pricing were finished before the end of the 1982-83 academic year, funding was not immediately available. A large fund­raising effort was begun, therefore, shortly after the start of the fall semes­ter.

Not including the $700 Klipsch speak­ers, purchased two years earlier with monies raised within the Polity and from the Delegate Council, the new system

Art Lathant • • JOins cainpus

Art Latham has been named Santa Fe campus' public information officer, Mar­sha Drennon, director of college advance­ment, has announced.

Mr. Latham, 39, is a veteran of eight­and-a-half-years in daily newspaper and two years in public relations work.

He was most recently science writer for The Los Alamos (NM) Monitor, which covers Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was reporter, special sections editor and features writer for The. Santa Fe New Mexican for more than four years, and was feature writer for Cocoa Today, the Gannett publication on which USA TODAY was modeled.

He also worked for The Fort Lauder­dale News, Fla., The Greensboro Daily News, N.C., and The Sandusky Register, Ohio.

From 1976-78, he was press officer for The Lost Colony, America's first outdoor drama, Manteo, N.C.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina Journalism School, Mr. Latham served two years in the U.S. Peace Corps in the Marshall Island, Micronesia. He is a member of Sigma Delta Chi, a society of professional journalists.

He lives in Santa Cruz, N.M.

APRIL 1984

would cost $3,000. Jaggie Lamplighter,

and Lev freshman, charge of the fund on campus. They received contributions of $5 each from more than half the individual members of the Polity, total­ling $1,100.

Gifts from alumni of $1,000, a $550 contribution from the Delegate Council, $250 from surplus Reality '83 funds, and a $100 addition by the Film Club, of which Mr. Hyder is the president, made up the rest. ·

Meanwhile, after scouring the Balti­more-Washington-Annapolis area to de­termine the best prices on the spe:cif:ied equipment, Mr. Hyder settled on Vene­man Music and Sound in Rockville, with the thought that, especially for purposes, it would be best to deal with a single supplier.

The equipment was ordered in and in the meantime Til"im:1tPlV.IHVni:>ri

stereos were used for SHORTLY BEFORE the Christmas

break the custom-built road cases ar­rived from California, the final items to be received. Mr. Hyder time over the vacation installing in its two cases: the tape decks had to be mounted on specifically-built shelves, the delicate turntables and the mixer had to be fastened in their case, wheels had to be added to the other case, the whole system had to be wired and jack panels had to be so that the components in each case could be electronically interconnected for use.

Security for the new was priority, of course, and is outfitted chains and padlocks - a system worthy of the Pentagon. But physical security is not the end of it.

To safeguard its equipment and help organize parties, the Polity several years ago established an appointed position called the Son of Bacchus. Because these duties are now more than one person can comfortabll7- handle, the Son of Bacchus has become the Society of Bacchus, which acts as a sort of technical and security squad.

Its members include Mr. Hyder, Ward Johnson,'Robert Sallion and Charles Rob­erts, all of the Class of '85, except Mr. Hyder, who graduates this year.

BESIDES BEING responsibe for un­locking the stereo and setting it up at parties, members train students to serve as disc jockeys for this relatively sophis­ticated system. An important aspect of security for the new system is that only those who have taken the training - and any student may take it .... are permitted to operate the equipment.

"They only need a few hours training, and we had some people who already had some experience working at jobs in radio stations and discotreques," Mr. Hyder said.

With two direct-drive turnables, two cassette decks, and a disco-style mixer, the stereo can play continuously at par­ties with no interruptions. The sound quality from the 80-watt-per-channel Crown amplifier is excellent. It's work­ing. The DJs, as they are familiarly known, know what they are doing.

"Everybody seems very happy," Mr. Hyder said of what's happening at par­ties these days. Everyone is.

Chris Nelson elected Christopher Nelson, SF '70, of Arlington

Heights, Ill., will fill the unexpired term of James Stone, '55, of Arlington, Va., on the Alumni Association board. He was elected to the board at its January meeting in Santa Fe.

-____ J

L1984

A C above A, please

nossible for a pyramid to sound a C or for an icosahedron and

a dodecahedron to harmonize together? Are Euclid's five solids '"'"'~'"'"" ... " of a of own geometric h::i1rhiP·t'~t1nn singing?

At St. College a student is on the way to finding out.

Now for those of you who are interested in the practical application of science -making your kitchen or your car run more - reading here.

Whether geometric shape possess. es its own acoustical model pattern is a purely academic problem for Martin Marklin, St. Louis, Mo., junior, who won

for the best laboratory last year's commencement and

who is now seeking to perfect his results in the Naval Academy's physics laborato-

sU1'ticientt1y ,....., . .,..,,,,,,,.,,,,,i to make a

for a time to research. When facilities

insufficient. he was able to at the Naval Academy

make possrn1e a more between sound and

MR. MARKLIN DID not course, to find the so-called are hollow, singing the chorus from Ninth when he first

wo1rki1uz on this project. he was looking for was the

characteristic sound emitted by each - perhaps a single tone on the

musical scale - a search he first con-ducted seeds into a membrane covering a of each solid.

All of his current work is preliminary to his long term goal: solving the wave eQttations of the solids. It is an experi­ment that probably has never been done.

As far as the Naval Academy's Dr. Samuel Elder is concerned, he believes that the question of harmony in the solids is interesting philosophically.

According to this professor of physics, the notion that the spheres were harmoni­ous existed among the ancients, a view supported in subsequent centuries with the concept of nature's harmony as reflecting God's plan. Kepler used the phrase, "Harmony of the Spheres," in his "Harmonics of the World."

Later science became viewed as more fragmented, but Dr. Elder said that particularly with the advent of Einsteini­an physics and the search for the unified field theory, science today is being viewed as more rational.

"The university of harmony in science is an old idea that has come back," he said.

NOW IN THE SECOND phase of his work, Mr. Marklin is conducting his experiment by implanting in each solid a half-inch large speaker and a microphone one millimeter wide to find the modes of oscillation of each shape.

These can be translated into frequen­cies which are heard as pitches.

"The speaker is powered by a frequen­cy generator, and the microphone picks up the frequency with which the air resonates," Mr. Marklin explained.

If the sounds are found to be ultra sonic, the recorder on which they are taped can be slowed down to make the pitch audible.

Dr. Elder, who is working closely with Mr. Marklin, is permitting him to use the Naval Academy's anechoic chamber, which in reality is a padded, walk-in icebox. It removes all sound reflections from the wall and simulates the free field

TH RE~PORTER

conditions found in space. Mr. Marklin's project grew out of a

music tutorial paper he wrote for Wye Allan brook.

"It was some months ago that I was first introduced to the study of acoustics, and undoubtedly the most fascinating phenomenon of this science was the harmonic overtone series of a vibrating string,'' he said.

"While I was pursuing these small whole number ratios, I recollected seeing

'

Todd Reichart photo

them before in my geometrical studies. For I had discovered in Euclid's Thir­teenth Book for at least three of the five regular solids, the edges were relat­ed in square to the diameter by small whole number ratios. What a beautiful coincidence.''

In light of their relationship, he decided to to make audible harmonies by means of the five regular solids.

MR. MARKLIN IS the first student to receive a $1,000 grant from the college to

r In a month of April foolery, with the senior prank ahead, the Mortimer

Adler prank behind, the King William Players will present the most April foolery and prankish of all mystery plays: Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound.

A nonsensical parody of such dramas as The Mousetrap, which the players gave last year as a scholarship benefit for St. John's students, this production April 14-15 will have the same purpose. Proceeds will go to the Caritas Society's Rosalie Blaul Scholarship Fund.

With a corpse on the floor and the requisite maid dusting off the furniture, the mystery-comedy will be staged at 8: 15 p.m. in the Great Hall. Tickets for the play, which will be done in the round, may be purchased at the door for $4. Seating will be limited to about a hundred seats on both Saturday and Sunday nights.

The body, stepped upon and ignored during the evening, is played with long suffering by Steven Singer, Providence, R.I., junior. The playbill lists the maid, Mrs. Drudge, as a player somewhat grandly named Elizabeth Windsor. It would be a mistake perhaps at this point to reveal that performer's real identity.

The drama centers in part on two drama critics observing, comment. ing upon with varying degrees of introspection, and entering into the action of a London play. Don't expect it to have any logical sequence. It makes about as much sense as all the nonsense patter Tom Stoppard invented for a card game: "I huff." "I ruff." "I bluff.'' "Twist." "Bust." "Check." "Snap." "How's that?" "Not out." "Double top." "Bingo."

The play is verbally brilliant and originally conceived. Directed by Khy Daniel, it was well received when it was performed earlier in the year. "Delightful," wrote the reviewer for The Capital. The cast that helped to make it so includes, besides Miss Windsor and Mr. Singer:

Page 7

Flaumenhaft

Harvey Flaumenhaft, Annapolis tutor, will be on leave next year as a constitu­tional fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He has received an NEH tb edit a book he has written on Hamil-ton. It deals with the central role of administration in the political thought that informed Hamilton's contribution to America's founding.

In addition, Mr. Flaumenhaft will con­tinue an examination of the intellectual sourc~s of the entf~rprise of which the Hamilton work was a part: looking at the roots of the new view of science that went hand-in-hand with the new science of politics in the 17th and 18th centuries.

~~~--~------------~~~--~--------~

finance a scientific project. Jokingly he attI_'ibutes it to the fact that the college was favorably disposed toward him for

under a $2,600 budget he and Her1edLct. Annapolis senior, admin­

istered last summer as "Febbie Dad and Mom" - assistants in the summer fresh­man program.

Talented in several Mr. Marklin is a skilled artist, who wants art design and architecture for a while leaving St. John's.

He also is a performing magician and from time to time gives magic shows. This year he is one of three students in

of Reality, a series of events culminates in St. John's weekend

involving mock Olympic games. Mr. Marklin is serving as a student

aide in St. John's print shop this year and previously served in the mailroom for two years. A well known personality on campus, he enlivened the college last summer with visits to offices wearing a white jacket and straw hat _decorated with a bandana in Caribbean style, bring­ing coffee and donuts to staff members.

Moon, Matthew Whedon; Birdboot, Christopher Junker; Simon Gas­coyne, Alexander Huemer; Felicity Cunningham, Marie Benedict; Lady Cynthia Muldoon, Kate O'Malley; Major Magnus Muldoon, John Fitzmaur. ice; Inspector Hound, Michael Cresswell, and the Radio Announcer, Warren Buss.

"Elizabeth Windsor" is Mrs. Drudge and John Fitzmaurice Major Magnus Mui· doon.

Todd Reichart photo

Pages THE REPORTER APRIL 1984

Is St .. John's College really all that isolated? (Continued from P. 1)

when they enroll. As a condition of education, it's a sacrifice that has its parallels elsewhere, in pre-medical pro­grams, in engineering schools, among philosophy and literature majors, at mu­sic conservatories.

Serious students at St. John's, particu­larly those· who also want to take part in some campus activities, believe they don't have much time left over.

"St. John's doesn't encourage an out­side interest .in polities," according to Claiborne Booker, Richmond, Va., senior, former Student president who worked at one time on behalf of the election of Governor Charles Robb of Virginia.

"THE REASON IS that the St. John's program is so all-encompassing, you don't have time to worry about crises on a day-to-day basis. Students certainly are aware of bits of information - the State of the Union address, or how the arms talks are going, or the invasion of Grena­da - ·but from the standpoint of active, constant involvement, most of St. John's students aren't particularly interested in that."

But then, he added, uMundane political events are not -as intellectually stimulat­ing in the way that events andJdeas at St. John's are."

"I don't think we are more isolated than other colleges," according to Karl Walling, editor of the student Gadny, who went to the University of Maryland before coming here.

"You see various kinds of students. Some never consider reading a paper; some see several papers a day. There are a lot of things you sacrifice when you come to a school like St. John's. It's a necessary evil, and I do mean neces­sary."

But there are a number of links with the "outside" world that suggest that if isolationism was ever a major character­istic of the college, in 1984 it is not.

Two years ago Mr. Walling introduced a weekly "News in Brief" column in The Gadfly, a column dealing with national and international news.

"I think the majority of our readers don't read it," he- said, "but I also think it's read by a large body who don't want to go thumping through the ·newspaper every day." · •

In blending comment on the St. John's program and ·the "outside" world, that paper has. begun to make an important contribution. In a story on the student weekly, The Publick Enterprise writes:

"It offers a running weekly summary of national and world events. It presents refreshing new reviews - of films 40 years old and texts 2,500 years gone. It ·has been running in series the full content of an intellectual Army colonel's lectures and essays on 'The Continuing Relevance of Clausewitz' from the stand­point of a professor of strategic studies at the Army War CoHege .... Where else can you find a senior Army professor tying an 18th-century Prussian general's in­sight to the reasons why the U.S. screwed up in Korea and Vietnam?"

The Political Forum is headed this ·year ·by Peter Green, New York City senior, who has spent his two most recent summers internin.g with the Washington office of The New York Times and with the mayor's office in New York. It brings a number of speakers to the campus.

WITH MEETINGS held with a fairly consistent degree of regularity, some times once a week, some times once a month, depending upon the availability of speakers, speakers customarily are heard by 30 to 60 students. The largest

Michael Crawford, Brockport, N.Y., freshman, and Linda Hamm, Flushing, N.Y., sophomore, in charge of a voter registration drive among students, discuss what's necessary with Roger Lowe, Natchitoches, La., sophomore, in the plaid shirt, and J.D. Whitestone, Alexandria, Va., sophomore, at right. ·

recent meeting, which drew 120, was given by the People for the American Way, an organization which works against book burning and other forms of censorship. Several years ago a talk by CIA director William Colby filled the Key Auditorium.

Students have heard a Marxist, an anarchist, the New York Times White House correspondent, a couple of wom­en's rights speakers, several on the nuclear freeze movement, one by the superintendent of the Naval Academy on the education of midshipmen, one by Harry G. Summers, Jr., for whose book - "On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War" - Mr. Walling had done some research.

Seth Cropsey, '72, now director of policy for the Voice of America, was another speaker.

"The Political Forum is quite active with good speakers on good subjects although it could have more Democrats, u

Mr. Booker said. "It provides St. John's with a remarkably intimate understand­ing of complex political problems. And I think it's been enormously successful partly because of the smallness of the group."

"There are always one or two newspa­pers floating around at breakfast,'' Mr. Green said. (It's a number he feels is sufficient because not all St. Johnnies make it to breakfast.) In the hall outside the coffeeshop, a Washington Post dis­pensing machine does a ·lively daily business.

In the library, newspapers receive such a heavy reading that on weekends "the place looks like a pigpen," according to librarian Kathryn Kinzer, who assigns to student aides the constant job of reas­sembling and refolding papers.

"If we ever have to close the library for a,ny reason, students are standing outside waiting for the newspapers," Mrs. Kinzer said.

Because of the demand, during the twice yearly "call-ins," when the ·library is closed, she sends newspapers to the coffee shop.

The library subscribes to the The Washington Post, The New York Times,

The Christian Science Monitor, The Balti­more Sun, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, L 'Espresse, Manchester Guardi­an, London Observer, and the review sections of The London Times. It gets several news magazines including Time. '.fhe bookstore makes Newsweek availa­ble:,

"The Economist is the one that is particularly used," Mrs. Kinzer said. "Many, many people love it. Several students who have gone into foreign service thought it was the one that best prepared them."

She is one of those persons who believe that the college years are not necessarily those in which one is most involved in current affairs.

"I think students here are interested in newsworthy events in about the same proportion as those at similar schools," Mrs. Kinzer said, adding that she did not believe college provides a particularly propitious time for a great deal of involvement. ("When I was in college, I· thought Adlai Stevenson was a character in an O'Henry short story.")

There are -other indications. Late this winter Linda Hamm, Flush­

ing, N.Y., sophomore, and Michael Craw­ford, Brockport, N.Y., freshman, attend­ed the .first national Student Conference on Voter Registration at Harvard spon­sored by a coalition of political and public interest groups and· the student­based Public Interest Research Group.

On their return they launched an inten­sive registration campaign on campus with the help of volunteers from the Political Forum. Miss Hamm reported that St. John's was one of 14 of Mary­land's 40 institutions of higher learning represented at the conference.

"JOHNS HOPKINS and the Naval Academy were not represented," she reported. "These are schools that are not considered isolated. The community col­leges, which are less isolated in their day~to-day life than private colleges, also failed to send delegates."

Internships provide opportunities for a number of students to assist in areas in which they gain political experience. A number of students receive

Todd Reichart photo

each year during the Maryland General Assembly when they work 20 hours a week at a grass roots level for legisla­tors, doing research, answering mail, sometimes presenting legislative testimo­ny. There are six St. Johnnies interning during the current session.

Last summer two students who are now juniors - Jason Walsh, of Newport, R.I., and Renee DuRand, of Mount Airy, Md. - served as interns in the Baltimore mayor's office. Other internships provide valuable experience of other sorts.

Mr. Walling, who is also a news aide for The Washington Post's Annapolis office, held an internship last summer with the Smithsonian's Wilson Quarterly. Alexandra Mullen, Cohasset, Mass., sen­ior, interned with the Massachusetts gift. ed children's program; Ralph Stengren, Mt. Pleasant; Mich., sophomore, was an· intern at the Dumbarton Oaks archives in Washington, and three students interned at the Maryland Hall of Records. This is not to speak of summer jobs in general.

Marianne Braun '58,director of career counseling at the college, sees the situa­tion from a number of positions: from her own professional one, as an alumna, as mother of two St. John's students, and as an Annapolis resident.

"Students are not isolated from the standpoint of citizenship in Annapolis," she said. "They live and work throughout the city.''

Altogether 119 students, or a little over a fourth of the student body, live off campus, and a number have jobs in Annapolis. The Student Employment Of­fice works closely with Annapolis resi­dents desiring part-time help.

"THERE IS SOMETHING called over­stimulation," Mrs. Braun said. "If our students tried to be involved in a whole -lot of things, it would . be detrimental to their education. I see the.demands of the program. If there is isolation, it's defensi­ble."

With a full program of drama, sports, and other activities at St. John's, Mrs. Braun said she would not want to see

(See time P. 9)

L 1

t omecoming .......... • our ·spea symposium

Participants in a Thursday symposium, the first of a series of four Bicentennial events marking next fall's homecoming, have been announced by J~ck Ladd Carr, '50, chairman of the 200th anniversary celebration of St. John's Charter of 1784.

With seminars to be moved to Wednes­day and Classes dismissed that day, the symposium is scheduled for 8:15 p.m. in the Key Auditorium on the Bicentennial theme: "Liberty and Liberal Education: St. John's celebrates the 20oth year of its charter and re-examines the conditions of its existence."

Open to the public, it will be held in the Key Auditorium and be followed by a question period in the Conversation Room.

Mr. Carr said speakers were chosen to represent three of St. John's constituen­cies - faculty, students and alumni -with a representative of St. John's sister college, Washington College, in Chester­town, Md., as a fourth participant.

Washington was founded in 1782 and constituted with St. John's, until 1791,

•

(Continued from P. 8) much more activity added. And she

out that the limitations imposed are for only nine months. "Students go out in the summer and mix with other

" Tambra Leonard, Columbia, Md., jun­

ior, would probably agree. In the past she has worked for ERA, in a political campaign for a state delegate, as a Young Democrat,. as a canvasser for a Citizen/Labor Energy · Coalitfon, and she has taken part on one occasion in an anti­nuclear disarmament procession.

Recently she went to. Washington on a one~time-only basiS to ··jQin,,.a peaceable demonstration staged by Greenpeace, which attempts to save the eco-system of Antarctica and is largely identified with the save-the-whales movement. General­ly, she says, because she is student, she doesn't seek out such efforts, but if they come her way, she may choose to take part. For the most part she is inactive, waiting for a commencement that will free her to be more engaged;

What relative isolation there is at St. John's, if it does, in fact. exist, does not worry Eva Brann, a senior tutor on the faculty.

"Of course, we're in a certain sense an ivory tower because we are preparing people to: do a thoughtful job in the world," she said~ "No one stopS students from reading newspapers or engaging in political activity. Of course not. But the notion that it's the school's business to enter into topical discussion is entirely contrary .to the notion of learning as a preparation for acting.

"IT IS PRECISELY our business to draw the students' attention and to ab­sorb them into an activity more funda­mental than current political questions: namely, to take some time out of their lives to think before they go out to act. It seems to me a mistake. in considering the economy of human life to imagine one can mix reflection and participation easi­ly, and certainly the very young can't do it. I think our political community owes its young four years of leisure."

Oddly enough, she said, the conse. quence of the college's not pushing stu. dents is that the quality of political interest she sees manifested in the Politi­cal Forum is "exceedingly high."

"The usual notion of social concern as eviBced by students is that it shows itself

thefirst University of Maryland. Symposium participants will be Eva

Brann, representing the faculty; John Van Doren, '47, the alumni; Todd Rei­chart, Orangeville, Pa., junior, the stu­dents, and Dr. Robert Fallaw, associate professor of history at Washington. Pre­siding will be Dean Samuel Kutler.

Miss Brann, who has lectured widely and represented St. John's at a number of conferences on liberal education, is the author of the book, Paradoxes of Educa­in a Republic, an inquiry into dilemmas arising out of citizenship education in the United States.

Mr. Van Doren is associate director for the Institute for Philosophical Research and vice-president of the Encyclopedia Britannnica. He formerly taught history and English at Brandeis and Boston Universities and at Smith College.

Although interested primarily in the sciences, Mr. Reichardt has made educa­tion and its relationship to political life a particular interest. He has written a recent paper on John Locke.

in demonstrative action," she said. "It seems to me much better that the activi­ty should wait until it is rooted into a community and can be truly effective."

Jonathan Tuck, who is in his fifth year of teaching with the college, said that when he was a student at Columbia College, his whole life was surrounded by the college and, aside from his family, he did not know anyone not associated with it.

"It seems to me to be typical of the college experience to be closed off some­what," he said.

"The real difference is that our college is small, and our curriculum is purpose­ful, and there is not the same kind of random variety and pluralism in what we're trying to do that you find at a large state university with lots of different purposes - a sort of microcosm."

Most of the faculty, he believes, are men and women who came here, usually in their 30s, after prolonged experience in academic life not spent at St. John's. It is against this background that they view the college.

"The way we talk in the coffee shop and at faculty meetings makes everyo~ alert to the possibility of. .dangerous provincialism, and that awareness is probably the best protection against it. One of the things I admire about ·the college is its self-consciousness and the honesty with which we go about our · business here."

DOES THE TYPE OF education thwart students in their career?

It did not stop Brad Davidson from becoming an Annapolis City Council member at age 25. (Being a graduate in itself, he said parenthetically, helped in his election because "most people in Annapolis have a great deal of respect for St. John's.")

"What St. John's did was to allow me to move much more quickly ahead tha.n others," he said. "It helped me a great deal. The most important skill it taught me was the ability to communicate and to express thoughts and ideas. If there is a school that teaches that better than St. John's, I have never heard of it."

Nor did former Dean Robert Goldwin, at one time an education consultant for the White House and now with the American Enterprise Association, suffer. Coming out of the Army to the college at age 24, he found entering an "ivory

•

In addition to teaching at Washington, Professor Fallaw is its director of Ameri­can Studies Program~ He has written recent articles on the Chesapeake inva­sions of 1779-1781 and on Mahlon Dicker­son, a New Jersey governor.

Also scheduled for homecoming week­end are a program of 18th century music September 21 by the M;uilyn Neeley Piano Trio from the University of Mary­land and Charter Day on Saturday, with a procession from the State House of dignitaries, alumni, faculty and students to the college for a talk under the Liberty Tree.

In honor of its long friendship with the college, St. Anne's Church will honor clergymen who have graduated from St. John's during a special service at 11:15 a.m. on September 22 in which the Rev. J. Winfree Smith will preach the sermon for alumni.

Luncheon at 12 noon Sunday will re­place the usual brunch. It will be held at the home of President and Mrs. Delattre.

tower" something of a· relief. He says he has based his whole career on what he learned at St. John's. "For me, it was like a vocational school. I got my training for my work at St. John's."

Harrison Sheppard, '61, now a senior attorney with the San Francisco Regional Office of the Federal Trade Commission, believes St. John's helped "immeasura­bly in my profession."

"No other form of undergraduate edu­cation is better for· the study of law," he said.

"In St. John's tutorials and seminars you learn to look beyond the facts to underlying considerations. It is policy considerations that give rise to rules of law. To understand conflicting claims, you have to look beyond facts to princi­ples, and that is precisely what the St. John's education equips a student to do." . TED BLANTON has recently returned . to his hometown of Salisbury. N.C., to practice. law after serving for two and a half years as legislative assistant to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York: and for Senator Robert Morgan of North Carolina. Earlier he had' served· as a writer's. assistant for Ray Price, .author of W:Jth. Nixon. . · While believing. that St. John's educa­tion is not "practical" in the usual sense and that it ·may take some graduates· time to get on their feet, he believes "it gjves a much larger field of vision when you are thinking about political matters.

"As much as anything it is a prepara­tion for life in the broader sense since you spend four years with other men and women attempting to discuss questions that have always meant the most to men, and that is always a priceless gift to have."

Becky Zlotoff is chapter president

Becky Soloff Zlotoff, '75, is the new president of the Alumni Association's Southern California Chapter. She suc­ceeds Robert J. Bienenfeld, SF '79, of Santa Monica.

Mrs. Zlotoff resides at 458 19th Street in Santa Monica, where, outside the alumni chapter, she concentrates on motherhood. She and her television writer husband, Lee, '74, have two children, Jacob, five, and Celina, four.

e9

AA plans to double size

The Alumni Association has decided to launch a national campaign to double its dues paying membership.

Board members voted to hold such a drive during their January board meet. ing in Santa Fe when Sam Larcombe, director of alumni activities in the West, pointed out that there had never been such a campaign.

"But there has never been such a national association," he said as alumni offices on both campuses prepared its first mailer on the effort.

That will come in the form of a letter accompanying bylaws to be mailed this spring that emphasizes the multiple ser­vices extended by the association. Fol­low~up work will be done through associa­tion chapters.

Mr. Larcombe said that dues will not be increased from the present $10 for alumni who have been out of school for more than four years. Dues for new graduates will be $2.

Franciscans stage ...

St. John's alumni from both campuses helped Santa Fe campus fund-raisers in San Francisco during a two-day tele­phone campaign in February.

Santa Fe's Marsha Drennon, director of college placement, and Sam Lar­combe, director of alumni activities and community relations, assisted volunteers in a phone campaign originating in the law office of Tom Carnes, '52.

"We raised a total in pledges· · for the campaign," Mrs. Drennon said. "I'd like to especially thank Alice Carnes, who organized the volunteers and office space in San Francisco."

Bay Area volunteers included Laird Durley, SF '83, George Elias, '71, Grant Fr·anks, '77, Mary Mary Feldman, SF '83, Virginia Seegers Harrison, '64, Tom Hoo­ver, SF '70, Robert Sperber, '50, and John Wekselblatt, '63.

Eva Brann to lead forum discussion

Annapolis tutor Eva Brann will serve as a seminar leader in the Hickory Humanities Forum to be held at the Lineberger Center of the Lenoir-Rhyne College· in Hickory, N.C., on May 9.

During this academic year she bas spoken on ''Politics and the Imagination'' at . Wake F<>rest University, addressed alumni in . the San Francisco and Los· Angeles Chapters on ''Intellect· and Intui­tion,,. and -visited the Whitney Young College of Kentucky State University and St. John's University in Minnesota, where she spoke on "What Is· the Good of a Liberal Education?"

·High schools have honors seminar

The Alumni Association is continuing its honors seminars for high school stu­dents.

Mark Habrel, chairman of the Honors Seminar Subcommittee, said its purpose is three-fold: to aid student recruitment, to serve as part of the continuing educa­tion of alumni, and to provide an educa­tional challenge for high school students.

Becky Zlotoff, '75, of San Marino, Calif., is serving as national coordinator. David Doremus, SF '78, of Dallas, Tex., is working with documents associated with the program, David Schiller, '62, of Charlton, Mass., with communications, and Cindy Rutz, SF '82, of Chicago, is serving as committee secretary .

Among the last acts of Julius Rosen­berg's life was to drop into the St. John's Development Office to check some letters going out over his signature as co­chairman of the 1983-84 Alumni for the Liberal Arts Annual Fund. The following day, January 18, he died at age 68 of a heart attack in downtown Baltimore. Up to the last St. John's was a principal concern.

The news shocked members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, meeting in Santa Fe, who adopted a resolution endorsed by the Alumni Association board that afternoon. It tells part of the reason Julius Rosenberg meant so much to the college.

"Resolved, that the Board of Visitors and Governors had learned with sadness of the death of Julius Rosenberg, alum­nus of the Class of 1938, and long-time friend of the college.

"Julius was a member of this board · from 1972 to 1979. He was director of

development in Annapolis from 1968 to 1972, where his many achievements in­cluded the founding of the Caritas Society

More (Continued from P. 2)

ford University where he is completing a second bachelor's degree, this one in theology.

Under a two-year program, he was working with Bishop Kallistos Ware of the Greek Orthodox faith during the eight-week, January Hilary term, study­ing the New Testament and patristics. During Trinity Term, which begins this month, he will study the wisdom litera­ture of the Old Testament and Reforma­tion theologians.

As a student, Peter is spending a "vast" amount of time reading and writing. Instead of don rags, he under­goes "collections," one with an oral review with faculty members and the other a written examination to evaluate the level of his knowledge.

GI 1981 Sylvia Jones has a new position. She

has become. executive director of the Prince George's-County Parks and Rec­reation Foundation, a job with a wide variety of responsi~lities, as various as working with historic properties to help­ing arrange community fishing trips. Sylvia enjoys working in this neighboring county with its modern technology-Old South character. A speech pathologist by training, Sylvia helped raise funds among Graduate Institute alumni during the recent alumni telephone campaign in Annapolis.

SF 1982

and the Friends of St. John's College. "Julius served the college widely in a

large number of volunteer capacities, including several terms .on the board of the Alumni Association, of which he was treasurer from 1965 to 1967. Julius was tireless in his work for St. John's, partic­ularly with alumni and friends, helping immeasurably to establish the successful, annual fund program of the. Annapolis campus.

"In 1976, the Alumni Association honor­ed Julius with the Alumni Award of Merit.

"At the time of his death, Julius was a retired executive of the Associated Jew­ish Charities. The many service organiza­tions which benefited from his work included Maryland Planned Parenthood, the Annapolis Fine Arts Foundation, Big Brothers of America, and the Society for the Relief of Russian Jews.

"The board mourns the passing of this truly irreplaceable member of the St. John's family. His extraordinary service, devotion to St. John's, and tireless energy were an example and an inspiration of

otes Joshua McDavid will be admitted to the

University of North Carolina Medical School this fall. He is currently in Japan ·studying the Japanese language and medicine. After his graduation, Josh received a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship for 1982-83.

GI 1982 An item in the New York "Daily News"

brings us news of Judith Collins, who recently was given an award for her civic participation in the Hispanic community by La Tribuna, a New Jersey-based publication.

Judith has been teaching m the Hispan­ic areas of Bushwick and Williamsburg for the last 18 years. She is also a member of the Esclabon Cultural His­pano Americano (the Spanish-American Cultural Link).

1983 Evelyn Cronin, who is studying at

University College-Cork on a Rotary Foundation International Scholarship, writes that she is taking a few Irish courses - folk dancing, folklore, ethnog­raphy and Cork's short story writers -along with medieval art and iconography, ancient Greek and French. With only two people in the Greek class, she couldn't resist the opportunity to study the New Testament, the Apology, and Lysia's Speeches. During her mid-winter holi­days, Lyn managed to get to Paris, Venice and to Italy. "I haven't got Dante out of my blood."

In Memoriam Class of 1923

Robley J. Hackett Class of 1926

Jiri F. Vranek Class of 1928

Donald B. Grove W. Royce Hodges

Class of 1929 Frank H. Kaplon Patrick D. Keating George H. McMurray George W. Owings, Jr. Ernest M. Wood

Class of 1930 J. SprighUey Kelly

Class of 1931 Gordon J. McLean ·

Class of 1933 C. Gilbert Hill, Jr. G. Dugan Johnson

Class of 1938 Julius Rosenberg

Class of 1939 B. Johnson Todd

Class of 1940 Warren W. Clements

Class of 1951 Robert L. Parslow

· Class of 1952 Kenneth R. Henneberger

Class of 1960 Leonce G. Evans Edwin B. McGee

Class of 1969 Charles H. Reinike

the highest sort to all

Mr. had been assistant paign director the Associated Charities and Welfare Funds 1980 with the of his :ruur-.w1ear period as St. director ment.

After retiring he continued. the agency three months out and as a volunteer one at AJC office and at the Associated Place­ment and Guidance Service.

His death occurred during a of vohm.teer AJC in Baltimore.

After leaving his St. rejoined the AJC as n:u·T.nmP exf~U1tiwe

director of the Baltrnmre cmnm1tt.:~ Soviet and director. A later full-time member of the as.E1oc1tatt~o paign staff. From 1946 1951, Rosenberg served as assistant dir4e<:U>r Baltimore's Jewish Bie: Brother Sister League.

A native of Russia, Mr. came to Baltimore as a child. He ed Baltimore Polytechnic In.mtute ad was a 1934 graduate of Baltimore College. During his early years he was a youth leader and basketball coach in the old Jewish Educational Alliance.

Following his retirement he was honor­ed by a reception attended by JOO penoos and given by B'nai B'rith in Annapolis.

He is survived by his wife of ff rears. the former Pearl Crook. and two grand­children. His son, Murray Rosenberg. died in 1969. In honor of his memory SL

.-Johp's is renaming its Murray Rosenberg Scholarship Endowment Fund the Jufim and Murray Rosenberg Scholarship En­dowment Fund. Memorial contr.ilmliom may be sent to it in care of the Almapolis Development Office.

Mrs. Rosenberg wishes to thaok an alumni and friends who hue remem­bered her during the period following Ill'. Rosenberg's death.

Letter to Editor

Greek trip has one, two places

The Alumni Association's second trip to Greece is :fiDed with the possibility of one or mo places still available, Carolyn E. I..eeu:wmbuqh. •ss. coordinator, has an­DIRIDCed.

UD.like the make-up of last year's passenger list.. this year"s·grvup~of .... 30wiH;.;; mdDde a handful of students, for some of whom this may be a commencement gift. The trip to Greece that begins with a11 uwemight flight from 'New Vorlr June 1 _ and mndndes June·· 22 - is· open to the great.er St. .John's family - alumni, frimds,, parents. faculty and students. Interested persons should write Mrs. Leeuwenborgh at 294 Jefferson Rd .• Princeton,, N.J .• 085t0.

Writer urges eastern hooks To the Editor:

Many thanks for publishing Chela \Jell-. er Kleiber's response to Thomas smn:t•s disinclinations to see great boob of the East included in the St. John's prngnm. (February, 1984, September. Im .• respec­tively.)

On the basis of opinion, butt.rened ~the experiences of study at SL John's in a traditional school in India (IC;dal~e­tra), within the same ten years, I agree with Ms. Kleiber most whol~,, and venture to offer the following modest beginning:

(A and Bare seen as a Seminar series,, in which a set of works are read and discussed in tandem; C might be a single seminar, a pair of seminars. or a w~ of language tutorials; D might be a Single seminar.)

A. Selected Plotinus, selected Plato (e.g., Ion, Phaeao, Meno}, selected Slwl­kara (e.g., Upadesasaba.sri,, Vivekachudamani}, Bhagavad Gita.

B. Iliad - Mahabharata (abridged) Odyssey - Ramayana

C. On the construction of written bn­guage (a comparative study of Sanskrit and Greek)

* If the Winthrop Sargeant traaslalioa were used, the Gita could be used llere as

weD,, or alternatively. since this transla­tion the devanagri-script text, tramli.teration. word-by-word grammati­cal ma1)'m and translation. In addition, for a \Jest.em scholar's experience of Ea.stem classics, why not invite Winthrop Sargeant to give a Friday lecture!

D. 'Three Stands of Development in Voeal Music: Indian and Western mono­

\Jest.em polyphony and harmony. To suggest this is only to restate what

lb. Kleiber has said well: that the time is Jong since past when any of us. least of an the St. John's community, can afford to remain so insular. To do· so is to define "'"tibenl arts" in a way that mocks the ootioB 1iberaL

And,, in :response to Mr. Storck's argu­ment that Eastern classics cannot be UDdentood without familiarity with East­ern mltures. I would support Ms. Klei­ber"s position with the addition that the Eastern dassics proposed above deal wilb. subjects of common concern to the entire hUDlan family. quite transcending _,. caltaral distinctions: the absolute, die hero. the nature of language, "sa­cred., and ••secular" artistic expression.

Georgia Cushman (Class of 1957)

APRIL 1984 THE REPORTER Page 11

Introducing the board

official also

. is the emcee in the ·Adler encyclopedia salesman.

Todd Reichart photo

is is your life, Mr. Adler'

As a superintendent;- Peter R. Greer runs an 8,200-student school system in Portland, Me., where his accomplish­ments include establishing a junior great books program.

It's a system that includes programs for Laotian, Khymer, Afghani, Cuban, Russian and Vietnamese students· and a 5,000-student adult education program.

Now a mexnber of tne' Board of Visitors and Governors ·Committee, :br. Greer before joining the Portland school system was the·associate director ofthe National

Faculty at Concord, Mass. Previously he had been a teacher for seven years in pub.lie schools in Ipswich,. Mass., and at Berlin, N.H., and an instructor with the of New

_ and North Shore College in Beverly, Mass.

Dr. Greer still continues to teach. With a bachelor's and a master's in history from the University of New Hampshire -his doctorate is in education from Boston University - he abandons his role as a superintendent and becomes an instruc­tor for one period of history each week at one of Portland's.. high schools.

To familiarize himself more fully with the pedagogy at a first grade level, last September he was an intern-teacher in one of Portland's first grade classrooms.

With an impressive record of major achievements in Portland, Dr. Greer has

been featured in Time magazine and in The WallStreet Journal.

He is the authpr of a number of articles and a frequent speaker. Last summer he was cited by Secretary of Education Terrel Bell as part of the National Secondary School Recognition Program.

Dr. Greer serves on the board's Admis­sion Committee.

Mortimer Adler, with a big orange. button on his lapel, stalked across the Key Stage, slapped his briefcase to the froor as applause swept a crowded audi­torium, and then launched into his annual Friday night lecture.

Now audiences have ·learned that his lectures will be interr.upted. Seniors planned this year's prank for St. John's 81-year-old "Uncle Mort" as a take-off on "This is your life" television show.

Fund program to expand

The button he was wearing read "I only came foflhe prank:" They had been selling like hotcakes in the lobby as a senior benefit.

And there was a prank, of course. It isn't true· that there bas been one every year since 1937. ·Hank Braun, '59, of Annapolis, was recalling that there were none when he was an undergraduate, but sometime during the 60s, despite the fact that America's philosopher-at-large had leai;ned to keep lectures to a c~sp hour, they were.revived. (The first one in 1938 came after an overly long lecture.)

New York has its· own news letter

Using as its logos the college seal fretted by the New York skyline, the New York Chapter has become the first one of the Alumni Association to issue a news­letter: SJAANYC newsletter.

It is being edited by P. Janee Jacobs, '71, and Rick Campbell, '81, with its first issue carrying news of coming events and of individual alumni along with a letter from President Edwin J. ·Delattre.

Circulated· to New York alumni, par­ents and friends, it will be published about half dozen times a year and become the official channel of communi­cation between the chapter and New York area alumni.

On April 30 Dean Robert Neidorf of the Santa Fe campus will lead a discussion of Plato's Phaedo in the Princeton Club. Members also will hear a performanee-of

. Bach's "Unaccompanied Third Suite for ------Cello" by Annabelle Boffman, daughter

of Dr. Irwin Hoffman, St. John's board member.

Seminars that will mark the June 23 picnic of New York alumni will include Plato's Apology and Crito, led by ML Delattre, Shakespeare's King Lear, led by Sam Kutler, and Genesis, led by Winfree Smith. It will be held at the hc;n::ne of .Francis Mason, '43, in Rye.

" 11 ~ L i·'

Written by James Hyder, who also served as the emcee, the- show b'egan with interviews with Mortimer Adler's parents, aged 116 and 104, living in Brooklyn - Nancy Mease and Phil Peter­son - in which his mother complained that as a child he talked so much -"about forms first, and ethics later on" - that the only way they could quiet him was to "turn off the lights and leave the room." ·

That became the refrain in interviews with his high school teacher, Pedro Martinez-Fraga, a former student,.. Marie Benedict, and an Encyclopedia Britanni­ca editor, John Ertle. Adrian Trevisan appeared on stage in swimming trunks as . Mr, Adler's physical education teacher at Columbia, where Mr. Adler bad failed to graduate because he ·failed swimming. Mr. Adler received his doctorate there in 1928, but did not get his bachelor's until 1983. ... Mortimer who?" the swim teacher

asked. Mr. Ertle, playing the Britannica edi­

tor, complained that Mr. Adler had wanted to have the entire A volume dedicated to Aristotle.

(Continued from. P. 1) new professional staff members and of supporting clerical staff that would be added in the East. The vice-president will oversee a program that will be expanded to include staffing for an annual funds program, foundation and corporation so­licitations, and planned gifts.

At present fund raising is handled primarily through President. Edwin J. Delattre and Ann Cruse, director of development. Assisting with the alumni fund raising is Betsy Blume, director of alumni activities. .

In effect, the program.will institutional­ize certain fund raising aspects of the college in much the way they are system­atically incorporated into the develop­ment plans of most American colleges. It will enable President Edwin J. Delattre to work with individual major donors and to give priority to those aspects of fund · raising where his office is considered essential.

NOT ALL THE NEW staff members will be added at one time. Rather, once the. new vice-president is in place, the additions will be made in the manner he or she believes to be most constructive.

In addition to fund raising, the. vice. president will be responsible for alumni, publications and public relations efforts.

"Can you believe that? 'He even had a The new development program was . thousand-page manuscript ready! He worked out over a matter of months by

started to.read it at a production meeting President Delattre, Mrs. Cruse. and the­one mornmg, ~nd around 3;3o or s? that Development Committee of the Board of afternoon we fmally couldn t take it. any Visitors and Governors, headed by John more. So· we got up, t~ned off the hg~ts Dendahl, of Santa Fe, who is also vice­and left the room. Ithmk he kept readmg chairman of the- board. Lending his for. another· couple o,~ .hours before he- -s-upport has been board Chairman John noticed we were gone. E. Robson, of Chicago,

Mr. Hyder concluded by telling the As one example of the need to increase audience that th·e s~ntors had maintained staffing, college officials point out that a tradiUQn of Jnterrµpting the lecture studies reveal that 90 to 95 per cent of all with what they called a prank. endowment gifts to non-profit institutions

"These pranks have never failed to be come through some form of planned or witty, tasteful, and well-received. So, as estate gifts, such gifts as bequests., life we have seen, Mortimer Adler is a man insurance policies, residential or com. who has dedicated his life to bringing mercial property and charitable annui­illumination to the people around him. ties. And without fail these people have taken ·with the expansion of its staff, the his light and left in the dark.'' college anticipates more extensive work

~ ' I~: ( [-: '. '• r ~ .1 .. ,) ; • ~:i .I;

on planned giving opportunities for friends of St. John's. ·

At the January board meeting board members stressed the fact that the effec­tiveness of the program will be subject to an on-going evaluation. including a care-· ful reappraisal of the· first two years of its implementation. Sharing that respon­sibility will be the Development and Finance Committees and the Budget Sub Committee.

APPLICATIONS AND resumes from­candidates for the nationally advertised vice-president's position were scheduled to be in by. March 16-. Named to. the vice­presidential search committee are Presi­dent Delattre, Dean·samuel Kutler, form­er dean Edward Sparrow, college treasurer Jeri Rhodes, and Geoffrey Comber, director of the Graduate Insti­tute.

A representative of the Board of Visi­tors and Governors is scheduled to- take part in the final week of interviews.

The announcement of the opening states that the responsibility of the vice president will be: · "To formulate, recommend, and imple­ment plans and programs for college advancement in fund raising, alumni- · activities, publications and· public rela­tions, including matters of staffing, budg. ets, volunteer programs and records.· The vice president works with the president on gift solicitations and manages. or supervises programs in annual, capital and deferred giving. 11

·

The Development Committee's report to the board at its January meeting said that funds raised for the college go to a number of areas for its 'operation includ­ing compensation, financial aid, the li­brary, faculty development and the physical plant.

In discussing the need to raise more _ funds for financial aid, it said that if St. John's maintained the status quo in its financial aid program., making no changes and adding no programs in any· other part of the college, deficits in the · total current operating budget could be expected to rise to $629,000 by 1988-89.

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A symphony by Annapolis composer Douglas Allanbrook - Num-ber Five for Brass Orchestra - will be the Irish Radio

4 and 5 on Irish national radio.

The the sea-son for Orches-tra when it is r"U>1•fnv•mg>6'1

4 by the Annapolis Brass "tuunt:L.

A member of the Annapolis faculty, Mr. Allanbrook was heard in keyboard performance of his own music and that of Bach before the San Francisco and Los Angeles Alumni Chapters in separate concerts in mid-Ma1

On March 17, Mrs. Allanbrook, also an tutor, addressed the Stanford

Music."

Instead of Parents' _ call this

Parents.

on the topiC, Giovanni's

Parents will be able to see two of them, according to Mary Lee Wielga, Alexan­

Va., junior, and Michael Kessler, Annapolis senior, who are chairing the weekend.

The King William Players were divided over which play to represent - James Thurber's A Thurber Carnival or Shake­speare's Twelfth Night - so they settled the question by deciding to do both.

The first will be presented at 8:15 p.m. Saturday, May 5, in the Key auditoruim and the second at 2:30 p.m. the next day. The Shakespearean comedy will have an outdoor setting at the French Monument. If it rains, it will be staged in the Great Hall.

With swing dancing marking the stu­dents' own parties this winter, David Weitzel, dance archon, thought that rath­er than having a waltz party, particularly with the spring cotillion a week away, parents might like to dance to the big band music of Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. Dancing will begin at 10:30 p.m. in the Great Hall.

Because readini:?:s for the last several

ER RTER

The Santa Fe campus is nrg>n'.l'l"ill'HJ'

assist Chicago schools as the in the nation to a idea in American em.icauon.

It is contained in the Paideia Pr1u1f11(;!::11

manifesto Mortimer ler, St. John's and closely identified with the New Program 1937. Published in 1982 after discussions with figures in education, it argues that all citizens in this country have a right to be educated equally.

To achieve this equality, Mr. Adler proposed to eliminate electives in schools and to establish the same ulum for all students from all levels of ability. The program would not be for the exceptionally bright.

The Chicago Board of Education has selected four schools to begin a three-

Parents' Weekends have been of a liter­ary nature, Miss Wielga and Mr. Kessler have selected Plutarch's Cato, the Younger for discussion at seminars from 10 a.m. to 12 noon Saturday. Parents who do not find Plutarch accessible in their own hometowns may write to the college for copies of the selections.

Requests should be addressed to Par­ent's Weekend. Price will be $1.25.

With a lecture yet to be announced scheduled for Friday, Saturday's sched­ule also will include a picnic, walking tour of Annapolis, a Collegium Musicum, softball games, and a reception at the home of President and Mrs. Delattre. Invitations with more details will be on the way shortly. ·

The immensely entertaining Thurber Carnival is a series of playlets that contains such small gems as "The Uni­corn in the Garden," "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," "The MacBeth Murder Mystery" and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." John Sellers, Arlington, Va., freshman, will play the day-dream­ing Mitty, successively the invincible Navy bomber commander flying through 135 mile winds, the supremely polished

year experiment based on the ideas. this summer, St. John's will

t .. !l;n1nct 15 of the 60 teachers who will staff the

bringing them to the Graduate return in the summer

of 1985 when a second of 15 and administrators arrive

there. J. Delattre has

arr·an:gernexn a "landmark in schools."

:stepnc:m R. Van Luch­ene, director of the Institute who will oversee the orol:!ram in Santa Fe, said he and members will go to Chicago times during the 1984-85 academic year to review the work of the schools and to assist with the program of on-going

and brilliant performing an op-eration in the the dashinl:! and cool-headed war nr1c~nn1:.r

Edith Updike, assisted by Ruth Frame, will direct A Thurber Carnival. Members of the cast will be:

David Ray Morgenstern, John Fitzmaurice, John Sellers, John Shaugh­nessy, Andrew Peltier, Rebecca Korn­bluh, Terri Luckett, Annastasia Kezar, and Alexandra Kambouris.

Directing Twelfth Night will be Jacque­laine Robnolt. Price will be $1 for parents and members of the college community and $2 for townspeople. The cast will be:

Olivia, Jessica Lee; Viola, Yolanda Rivera; Maria, Siobahn Murphy; Orsino, Matthew Whedon; Sebastian, Alex Hue­mer; Sir Toby Belch, Chris Junker; Sir Andrew Aguecheek, John Fitzmaurice; Feste, the Clown, Chris Stokes; Malvolio, John Wright; Antonio, Steven· Brower; Fabian, Warren Buss; Sea Captain, Rob­ert Williamson; Valentine, David Tap­pan; Curio, Brett Surprenant.

Dancers will be Marlis Decker, Judy Hammett, Beth Morris, and Felicity Ladd. Singers will be Celeste Denucci, Marjorie Kaplan, and Mary Kay Ogden.

L 1

Todd Reichart photo

teacher preparation. Lynn Stinnette, coordinator of the

project, will spend four weeks this sum. mer in Santa Fe observing the nrncr .. '.lm

Besides Mr. the which worked with among its members such figures as Jacques Clifton Fadiman, Leon Botstein, and two St. John's alumni: John Van Doren, '47, senior fellow for the Institute for Philosophical Research and executive editor of Great Ideas who is joining the St. John's Board of Visitors and Governors in and Charles Van Doren, '46, associate tor of the Institute for Philosophical Research and vice-president for the En­cyclopedia Britannica.

In Chicago, Dr. Ruth B. Love, superintendent of schools, said high schools and two elementaI ChOSen tO participate in the nflnt nrMV"!Hn

will serve as "magnets,'' dents from all over Chicago who n'.lV"fif'in'.lto in the "'""''"'"''""'

""""'"'"m of at the school level will

build upon our present curriculum but will place special emphasis on books," Dr. Love has program there.

"In addition, students will foreign language, participate in art, music and drama. Instruction in natural sciences, history, geography, lit­erature, and mythology will be expanded.

"FURTHERMORE, learning through discussion will become a required compo­nent of each student's learning experi­ence. Students will learn not just from textbooks and a teacher who tells, but also from whole, great books and from a teacher who asks questions and guides discussions.''

Saying that the proposal is "the most recent thrust in the debate over the issues of intense specialization in educa­tion," Mr. Van Luchene noted that at St. John's, teaching and learning have been guided by many of the principles in the Paideia Proposal for the last 45 years.

Mr. Van Luchene said officers of St. John's already have begun discussions with school officials in New York on a similar but smaller project.