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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 26, 1954)
* >„_-f •'wiA a . v Jfefihupnafft^ /{Author of “Barefoot Boy With Cheek," etc.) HOME, SWEET HOMECOMING A great number of people have been asking me lately, “What is Homecoming?” Yesterday, for example, as I walked from my house to the establishment of Mr. Sigafoos, the local lepidopterist where I had left a half dozen luna moths to be mounted — a distance of no more than three blocks — I’ll wager that well over a thousand people stopped me and said, “What is Homecoming?” Well, what with company coming for dinner and the cook down with a recurrence of breakbone fever, I could not tarry to answer their questions. “Read my column next week,” I cried to them. “I’ll tell all about Homecoming.” With that I brushed past and raced home to baste the mallard and apply poultices to the cook, who, despite my unending ministrations, expired quietly during the night, a woman in her prime, scarcely 108 years old. Though her passing grieved me, it was some satisfaction to be able to grant her last wish — to be buried at sea — which is no small task when you live in Pierre, South Dakota. With the dinner guests fed and the cook laid to her watery rest, I put out the cat and turned to the problem of Homecoming. F irst of all, let us define Homecoming. Homecoming is a weekend when old graduates return to their alma maters to see a football game, ingest great quantities of food and drink, and inspect each other’s bald spots. This occasion is marked by the singing of old songs, the slapping of old backs, and the frequent utterance of such outcries as “Harry, you old polecat!” or “Harry, you old rooster!” or “Harry, you old wombat!” or “Harry, you old mandrill!” All old grads are named Harry. During Homecoming the members of the faculty behave with unaccustomed animation. They laugh and smile and pound backs and keep shouting, “Harry, you old retriever!” These unscholarly actions are performed in the hope that the old grads, in a transport of bonhomie, will endow a new geology building. The old grads, however, are seldom seduced. By game time on Saturday, their backs are so sore, their eyes so bleary, and their livers so sluggish that it is impossible to get a kind word out of them, much less a new geology building. “Hmphh!” they snort as the home team completes a 101 yard march to a touchdown. “Call that football? Why, back in my day they’d have been over on the first down. By George, football was football back in those days — not this namby pamby girls game that passes for football today. Why, look at that bench. Fifty substitutes sitting there! Why, in my day, there were eleven men on a team and that was it. When you broke a leg, you got taped up and went right back in. Why, I remeln- ber the big game against State. Harry Wallaby, our star quarter back, was killed in the third quarter. I mean he was pronounced dead. But did that stop old Harry? Not on your tintype! Back in he went and kicked the winning drop-kick in the last four seconds of play, dead as he was. Back in my day, they played football, by George!” Everything, say the old grads, was better back in their day — everything except one. Even the most unreconstructed of the old grads has to iftlmit that back in his day they never had a smoke like today’s vintage Philip Morris — never anything so mild and pleasing, day in day out, art study or at play, in sunshine or in shower, on grassy bank or musty taproom, afoot or ahorse, at home or abroad, any time, any weather, anywhere. I take up next another important aspect of Homecoming — the decorations in front of the fraternity house. Well do I remember one Homecoming of my undergraduate days. The game was against Princeton. The Homecoming slogan was “Hold That Tiger!” Each fraternity house built a decoration to reflect that slogan, and on the morning of the game a group of dignitaries toured Fraternity Row to inspect the decorations and award a prize for the best. The decoration chairman at our house was an enterprising young man named Rex Sigafoos, nephew of the famous lepidopterist. Rex surveyed Fraternity Row, came back to our house and said, “All the other houses are building cardboard cages with cardboard tigers inside of them. We need to do something different — and I’ve got it. We’re going to have a real cage with a real tiger inside of it — a snarling, clawing, slashing, real live tiger!” “Crikey!” we breathed. “But where will you get him?” “I’ll borrow him from the zoo,” said Rex, and sure enough, he did. Well sir, you can imagine what a sensation it was on Home coming morning. The judges drove along nodding politely at card board tigers in cardboard cages and suddenly they came to our house. No sham beast in a sham cage here! No sir! A real tiger in a real cage — a great striped jungle killer who slashed and roared and snarled and dashed himself against the bars of his cage with mani acal fury. There can be no doubt that we would have easily taken first prize had not the tiger knocked out the bars of the cage and leaped into the official car and devoured Mr. August Schlemmer, the governor of the state, Mr. Wilson Ardsley Devereaux, president of the uni versity, Dr. O. P. Gransmire, author of A Treasury of the World’s Great Southpaws: An Anthology of Left Hand Literature, Mr. Harrison J. Teed, commissioner of weights and measures, Mrs. Amy Dorr Nesbitt, inventor of the clarinet, Mr. Jarrett Thrum, world’s 135 pound lacrosse champion, Mr. Peter Bennett Hough, editor of the literary quarterly Spasm, and Mrs. Ora Wells Anthony, first woman to tunnel under the North Platte River. ©Max shuiman, 1954 This column is brought to you by the makers of PHILIP MORRIS who think you would enjoy their cigarette. IF YOU Cm mm FROM TRADE TWO OLD tvmoAzjjueo for OME -TOO MAVEfOr READ. OfELLU Ata OLD « OOA LAAAAZIME for. FUKiUV BOOK'S ^ MA^AXlUeS The Battalion The Editorial Policy of The Battalion Represents the Views of the Student Editors The Battalion, official newspaper of the Agricultural and Mechan ical College of Texas, is published by students four times a week, during the regular school year. During the summer terms, and examination and vacation periods, The Battalion is published twice a week. Days of publications are Tuesday through Friday for the regular school year, and Tuesday and Thursday during examination and vacation periods and the summer terms. Subscription rates $9.00 per year or $ .76 pei month. Advertising rates furnished on request. Entered as second-class matter at Post Office at College Station, Texas under the Act of Con gress of March 3, 1870. Member of The Associated Press Represented nationally by National Advertising Services, Inc., at New York City, Chicago. Los Angeles, and San Fran' cisco. The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use for republi cation of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in the paper and local news of spontaneous origin published herein. Rights of republication of all other matter herein are also reserved. News contributions may be made by telephone (4-5444 or 4-7604) or at the editorial office room, 202 Goodwin Hall. Classified ads may be placed by telephone (4-5324) or at the Student Activities Office, Room 209 Goodwin Hall. BOB BORISKIE, HARRI BAKER Co-Editors Jon Kinslow Managing Editor Jerry Wizig Sports Editor Don Shepard, Bill Fullerton News Editors Ralph Cole ; ..City Editor Jim Neighbors, Welton Jones, Paul Savage Reporters Jo Ann Cocanbugher..... .Women’s Editor Battalion Editorials Page 2 THE BATTALION TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1954 The Recalcitrant Few Friday’s editorial concerning the stolen Baylor cub said it probably wasn’t an A&M student, “but the incident serves to illus trate a point—whenever something goes wrong, the Aggies are going to get blamed for it.” The editorial went on to ask A&M stu dents to watch their conduct both here and at other schools for that very reason. How ever, in a letter to the editors printed else where on this page, an Aggie student im plies that The Battalion is responsible for opinions the people of Texas have of our students. Since this is an accredited Associated Press member newspaper, we make an ef fort to print the news of Aggies involved in incidents, whether the students are victims of the incidents or are the cause of them. It is impossible for us to dictate the conduct of students anywhere. We can only report it. We prefer for them to behave like gentle men rather than like “a bunch of animals too wild to be allowed to attend the nicer, more refined colleges,” and the vast major ity of them do. It’s the small but unruly minority who create the bad impressions people carry away with them. They natur ally attract more attention. A man can stand on a busy corner pet ting a dog for an hour and few people will pay any attention to him. Let him kick the dog, however, and if the dog doesn’t bite him, some dog lover will poke him in the eye. At any rate, the majority of the witnesses will frown and have a bad impression of the man for his actions. Most Aggies conduct themselves like gen tlemen on this campus and on the others. Isn’t it better to try to guide the recalcitrant few than to make excuses for them on the grounds that some students in other colleges behave that way? Cadet Slouch by James Earle Letters to the Editors Editors The Battalion Gentlemen: Congratulations on your excel lent coverage of the “Purple Band Cap Affair.” I am sure that it will go down in history at almost as great an event as the Straw berry Incident aboard the USS Caine. It was with pleasure I not ed the continued trend of our col lege newspaper to take a rather sadistic delight in crucifying its own supporters. However, I am beginning to wonder just how much longer you are going to have the gall to treat A&M students in the manner in which you do. How do you think the people of Texas are ever going to have a better opin ion of the students of this college if you continue to announce in every issue that we are apparently a bunch of animals too wild to be allowed to attend the nicer, more refined colleges in this state ? I am beginning to wonder how it would sound if occasionally you shortened one of your lead articles on the terrible behavior of Aggies and let a few of your statewide readers have a good idea of what happens to an A&M cadet when he visits another campus. Perhaps they too would then say, as I do now, “How can you blame an Ag gie if he shows a little spirit of his own once in a while?” We are taught to have ah overwhelming pride in our school when we enter as freshmen, but how much pride can we continue to have in a school that seems committed to the policy of allowing its students to be as saulted, ostracized and insulted on every other campus, lifting its head only when we accidently try to act like men rather than little khaki robots ? In my three years on this cam pus, with the possible exception of the nights when the bonfire is be ing guarded, I have never seen an A&M student out looking for stu dents from another school with anything but a friendly welcome in mind. And yet, in these same three years, I have been attacked with a pistol on one campus, had to stand by and see my fiance in sulted by cordone of armed hood lums at another, had my car run off the road and into a ditch at a third, and finally, seen one of my best friends almost die from ex posure before they could get him to a hospital after the mauling he had received at the hands of some students of that fair school in the state capital. Some of the actions perpetrated by these supposed men were so disgusting and degrading that I could not in,all decency al low them to appear in print. How ever, the clincher came later when the entire incident found its way into the college paper complete with photographs! Behold, these thugs who almost killed an Aggie became campus heroes overnight! All of this because we wear a uniform and are set a little apart by it; because we know how to act like gentlemen, both away from our school and at it; because we can treat our guests, whomever they may be, like civilized human beings rather than threats to so ciety. I am ashamed, ashamed of this school I care for so much because she cannot see the plight of her own students in a fair light. I wonder what kind of men are run ning this college that they are content to stand by and see her students mistreated without lifting a hand in their defense because they are too busy watching out for the few like myself who have had a bcllyfull of being treated like dogs because of our college. Believe me, I am not advocating that we should go out and assault every student from every college that comes down here to play a game. That would only be sinking ourselves to their own rather stu pid level; but I do say that now is the time for this newspaper and the men in the high positions of this college to take the proper steps to see Roth that the people of Texas are made aware of the situation in their school system and that the administrations of our other colleges are forced to take more than a token measure of pun ishment for the benefit of the press (See LETTERS, Page 4) if You Don't Know Diamond*/ It Pays to Know SANKEY PARK Your Trusted Keepsake Jeweler PRESTONE SALE Wed. 27tli. - Times. 28th. - Fri. 29th $2.75 Per Gallon — AT — VINCENTS Gulf Service Station E. VINCENT ’46 3319 S. College Road Phone 2-5678 What’s Cooking 7:30- TUESDAY -Liberty County hometown club, coffee shop, MSC, organiza tional meeting. Saddle and Sirloin club, lecture room, A.I. building. Although it will conflict with Town Hall, it is a very necessary meeting. Pre-Med and Pre-Dent society, room 107, Biology Science building. 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