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From the same people who brought Yale undergraduates soybean burgers comes the Durfee Sweet Shoppe. The Department of Dining Halls has spent $10,000 to transform the Durfee Buttery—formerly a crumbling grease splotch in the Old Campus—into a cheery ice cream parlor with a “Gay nineties” decor. The jars contain 80 varieties of candy, nuts, health food tidbits, and, of course, penny bubble gum.
You'd be amazed at the number of complaints I’ve received from people about the whole question of students and faculty crossing at the corner of Grove and College Street, where there is an established WALK sign that people seem to disregard totally. About ten years ago we tried a method that worked, though it was very offensive. We stationed two campus policemen there, one at each corner with a bullhorn, and when someone started across, the bullhorn would blare at them and they'd be sent back to the corner. Of course it lasted as long as the policemen stood there with the bullhorns.
If your local newspaper is on its toes, it probably carried a feature about Kenneth Wolf, the 12-year-old boy who was starting his sophomore year at Yale. Kenneth is a short, chubby musical genius, who does sideline work in chemistry and orated for ten minutes on political theory to the rest of a Government 10 class before the instructor arrived. He spoke sentences at six months and played Liszt at 22 months and hopes to get his PhD by the time he’s sixteen. He wanted to come to Yale to study because Paul Hindemith, of the School of Music, was on the faculty. The University was a little upset but finally said okay. So far, everything’s fine. Kenneth lives with his mother out on Ellsworth Avenue, but eats his lunches in Jonathan Edwards. He wears a ski cap, checked flannel shirts, and large, floppy rubbers. Most of the 15-year-old freshmen in Jonathan Edwards say they don’t know what the hell Yale’s coming to these days, but it doesn’t bother Kenneth any. He isn’t very much impressed with Yale anyway, or so he told the papers.
Those who were listening at their radios last night caught the Yale musical clubs at St. Louis. The announcer was heard to say in his deep voice that “the Yalses” would now be turned loose on the elements and sure enough, came scampering across the many commonwealths from St. Louis the spirited “We Meet Again Tonight” curtain-raiser which 50 years ago thrilled the hearts of girls who are now toasting their feet by electric devices and don’t care very much whether the boys are meeting again or not or whom they meet.
We give in this issue a symposium of articles bearing on Freshman Year at Yale which, we think, will be exceedingly interesting and enlightening to our readers, whether they have sons at Yale today or not. That one-quarter of the newcomers this year are sons of Yale men is not unexpected; the “curve” of attendance by sons of Yale families has been steadily mounting and, we are informed by the statisticians, should rise slowly until probably one-half of the Freshman Class are sons of Yale graduates. [See “The Birth of a New Institution.”]
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