Category: Kent State University

When I actually had a lot going on my life, when new events were occurring, I didn’t have the time, or take the opportunity, to write about them. In high school, when my daily life was boring, I wrote comments about how it was boring – or I doodled to fill up otherwise blank pages. Life at Kent State University was very different. My diary for the 16-month period of September 1953 through December 1954 had less than a dozen notations. Yet those months covered more new activities than I had encountered in all of my previous eighteen years.

First, there was my life in Stopher Hall, one of the two residence halls on campus for men. Although the gender ratio for all of the students was equal, there were many more dorms for women than there were for men. KSU was known as a “commuter college.” Since Youngstown was some fifty miles east of Kent and Cleveland was about the same distance north of the campus, it was possible for most students to drive daily from their hometowns in northeastern Ohio to attend classes, especially if they had scheduled them for only two or three days a week.

I was among the few who did not commute. In fact, I rarely went home, except for breaks between the four “quarters” of the academic year. It was only during these breaks that the campus truly closed down. I often attended summer school, the “fourth” quarter, and was able, during my four years at Kent, to earn two degrees: B.S. (with a major in chemistry) and B.S. in Ed. (with an emphasis in the sciences and mathematics at the secondary level.)

At the beginning of my freshman year, I shared a room with Eugene Kalal, who came from Rocky River, Ohio. He usually went home on weekends. He was a bland roommate; I remember very little about him. The space we shared was a typical dorm room, with bunk beds which Gene and I took apart, since neither of us wanted to sleep on an upper bunk. There were two wardrobes for folded and hanging clothes; two study desks with wooden chairs; a single, wooden, yet comfortable, padded armchair for reading; and a shared bookcase; we each had two shelves. Our illumination came from one window, a ceiling light, and our individual goose-necked desk lamps for late studying after one or the other of us went to bed.

The best part of our room was that it was opposite the drinking fountain for our top-floor corridor. Not only did we have direct access at all hours to cold water, we also were available for drop-in visitors, since we usually kept our door open. The corridor restroom was also across the hall from us, offering us ready access to the communal toilets, sinks and showers, as well as a knowledge of the best time to use them, given the morning rush for getting ready for breakfast and classes, and the evening preparation for bed.

My second focus was a place appropriately called the Hub, the campus-wide location for meals, and, more important, for coffee breaks between classes. It was a challenge to see how many chairs could be placed around a small, four-sided table for coffee drinkers. The Hub was the center for both commuters and campus residents at all hours of the day. It was part of the Student Union building with its lounges, meeting rooms and game rooms. Commuters made use of the lounges for midday study or naps. Dormitory residents had their own lounges, used mainly in the evenings while their commuter colleagues had to work at paying jobs in order to afford attending the University.

Although I had a scholarship that paid for tuition and fees, I did need to work to provide for other costs. Fortunately, I was able to work in the reception office, or front desk, at Stopher Hall. My main task was answering the telephone and connecting callers with one of the phones located in each of the resident lounges on the three floors of the dorm. Anyone passing by a ringing phone was expected to answer it and shout down the corridor to summon the guy being called. When there was no response, I’d take a message and put it in his personal mailbox. Each evening, I had plenty of time to study between attending to calls and talking with semi-drunk students returning from one of the town bars. What with classes, late night studying and time spent in the Hub, there was little left over for keeping a diary. It was better to live life than merely to record it.

The purpose for going to college is to learn, to take courses in new subjects which stimulate you and educate you. Nevertheless, the major goal is to gain knowledge and information you can use to get a good-paying job after you graduate. Of course, I had those objectives, too, but the courses I remember six decades later are the ones in which I had fun.

I no longer recall what specific subjects I encountered or when I encountered them. I did test-out of standard English for my freshman-year. My high school public speaking classes gave me a foundation for composition and grammar. Four years of Latin in high school were beneficial for an understanding of nouns and verbs; of subjects, objects, and indirect objects; and of compound sentences. As a result, I was able to take courses on short stories and theater that were more enjoyable than freshman English might have been. For many years, my favorite past-time was reading short stories and plays instead of long novels. American and European history courses were highly interesting. I wish I had taken more lectures in ancient history and medieval studies.

Among my favorite courses was a senior-year elective in “comparative linguistics” in which I saw the connections among Sanskrit, Greek and Latin as they evolved into the Romance and Teutonic languages. I can still vaguely recall “Grimm’s Law.” My only formal, foreign language was German, taught by Professor Meinke, one of the few KSU instructors whose name my memory holds from the late 1950’s. As a result of comparative linguistics, Latin and German – and much to the chagrin of the foreign language department at Cornell – I was able later to “audit” French and pass the reading exam for my second language requirement in graduate school. Meinke’s special course in scientific-German was of great help in passing my first-foreign-language exam.

As a chemistry major, I had the requisite courses in general, qualitative, inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry. Biochemistry had to wait until I majored in it for my doctoral degree. Along the way I also had fundamental courses in physics and in mathematics. I managed to get A’s or B’s in all of them; the only C-grade I received was for a special offering in “chromatography” – a new chemistry technique taught in my senior year when I was dating my future wife and spending more time with her than I did in a chemistry laboratory.

Among the many biology courses I took, my favorite was endocrinology. Later, during my doctoral years, I used this subject for a “minor” – with my “major” in biochemistry. In order to fit everything in that I needed for my undergraduate science degree, I usually carried between eighteen and twenty hours each quarter. I spent much of my four years at Kent State in the lecture rooms and laboratories of McGilvrey Hall. However, my main deficits are in the Earth Sciences, which were also located within the confines of McGilvrey. (I also missed out on anything related to Economics.)

In addition to the B.S. degree, I wanted to earn a B.S. in Ed. and devoted hours to educational classes, with many in developmental and behavioral psychology. I remember, with gratitude, Dr. Gerald Read who taught me both educational philosophy and how to think. During his first several classes, he would discuss a major approach to education and convince me that this approach was, indeed, the way I wanted to teach. He then followed with lectures on how what he had previously said made no sense. Next, he would offer views on another educational approach, which was far superior, until he tore that one apart during the following classes. After multiple build-ups and teardowns, I recognized the need to develop my own educational philosophy incorporating parts of all of what he had taught.

Now, THAT is what education is all about!

Given that I usually enrolled for the maximum number of academic hours I could take each quarter, it’s difficult to believe I had any time for a social life – one in which I sought fun and fellowship with other students. But I did. I was determined to succeed in this new endeavor, since I never did in high school. I seldom got to bed before midnight, not because I was out carousing, but rather because I stayed up to study when I returned from the Hub or another college hangout, early in the evening. It’s fortunate I had learned to exist with a minimal amount of sleep.

I admit I had great difficulty getting out of bed and to a fast breakfast and still attend an eight o’clock chemistry lab. To help, I plugged my desk lamp into my clock-radio and pointed the bulb towards where I expected my head would be at six-thirty in the morning, when the radio alarm turned on and I was tempted to smash the snooze button into oblivion. A quick use of the facilities across the hall from my room revived me enough to get to the cafeteria downstairs. McGilvery Hall was within a reasonable walk from the dorm.

Midmorning, the Hub offered a caffeine restorative. Coffee and a couple of cigarettes did the trick. Yes, I did start to smoke in my freshman year at Kent State. I continued the habit for the next 45 years. I was not alone; the Hub’s atmosphere held more nicotine than it did oxygen from early morning until late evening. Worse venues were the bars, although they usually did not begin the exchange of breathable air and un-breathable fumes until seven in the evening.

During my freshman year, I found the locations of the Rathskeller and the Venice to be reasonable walking distances from the campus. My alcoholic drink of choice was a Seven-Seven – a highball, consisting of a shot of Seagram’s Seven Crown whiskey diluted with ice and 7-Up. I learned to nurse them, drinking one over several hours. The other consumable was 3.2 beer – the usual, legal alcoholic beverage sold in Ohio at the time. A draft or bottle could last a couple of hours. Of course, there was always ginger ale, which looked more potent than it actually was and cost less than any other drink. I could easily get away with 15 cents for the ginger ale and 25 cents for a pack of cigarettes: Pall Mall or Kent (deluxe 100 with filter). My friends were fans of Chesterfield or Lucky Strike! Later, once I had joined Delta Upsilon, my hangout became Rocky’s, the bar where my new fraternity brothers drank, a place that the guys from Stopher Hall seldom visited.

Actually, my visits to the Rathskeller, the Venice, and Rocky’s were limited mainly to Friday or Saturday nights. The Hub was the usual meeting place; I seldom went to the Captain Brady, the hangout for fraternity and sorority members, until my sophomore year at Kent.

Given how often I attended movies while in high-school (three or four times a week), it’s strange I seldom went to them in downtown Kent. After all, I did have to give up something to find time for study in the evenings. In my early years in college, I did not get to many athletic contests.

Everyone had to take classes in physical education to meet graduation requirements. Mine were tennis, bowling, golf and archery; my favorites were ballroom and folk dancing. These last two were the only ones I actually participated in afterwards. Intramural sports were for other guys, not for me.

And what about “dating?” This was certainly a social activity outside my scope during high school. It took great effort to learn about it in college. My freshman year was often spent with friends from the dorm; they, too, seldom dated – unless it was when they went to their hometowns on the weekends. I did manage to find a few young ladies in my sophomore and junior years who might accompany me to significant campus dances. Experimental kissing and touching did occur – but not as frequently as fiction, on or off the screen, might portray for the fifties. Such events merit individual commentary for specific interactions, recorded elsewhere in these reflections. The same is true for comments about other individual friends and our relationships. Their numbers are better than any I could have anticipated from my high-school years. And that is the real marvel of my life at Kent State. I truly did have a happy social life. Finally!

The usual “religious crisis” came during my freshman year at Kent State. I had continued to attend mass at St. Patrick’s, the local parish on North Depeyster Street. This was also the gathering place for the KSU Newman Center, although special events were held on campus in the Student Union building. The Newman Center was the focus for Catholic college students, not only here but at practically every secular, academic institution in the country. Although the Centers now include every part of the spectrum for Catholic education, in the ‘50’s the emphasis was on social activities for young adults, a continuation of the CYO events of high school. Here young Catholics found fellow Catholics for dates, especially if they did not stay in either a fraternity house or an on-campus residence hall. At the beginning of the year, I went to Newman with guys from Stopher as often as I could.

I believe the name of the Newman chaplain was Father Dom. I wished he were more like Saint Dominic, although, at the time, I knew very little about either the saint or his followers. Advanced instruction in the faith was minimal. There were few, if any, discussion groups or ways to learn more about what it meant to be a Catholic in the years following the Second World War and the Korean conflict.

I had questions. Fr. Dom did not provide answers. Whenever there was an occasion for a religious discussion or Q&A, he had only one, standard response to all of the questions I attempted to raise. His answer: “Well, you have to believe that if you want to be a Catholic.” It was not until years later, after I had entered into my own, personal study, that I realized all of the questions I had raised had been answered a thousand years previously by the brothers of Saint Dominic, scholars like Thomas Aquinas, to say nothing of Augustine who had come nine centuries earlier. There were few modern questions that had not been addressed by the Church throughout its 2000 years of history, but the answers to them were avoided in order to accommodate the major problem, the “heresy of modernism,” which had prevailed in academe prior to Vatican II.

And so, as my freshman year progressed, I began to drift away from the formal Church. If some friends wanted to attend mass and the time was not inconvenient for me, I’d go to St Patrick’s. But as the college years passed, I became a lapsed Catholic.

At the same time, I did remain a cultural Catholic. Christmas and Easter continued to have religious meanings. If asked, I would respond that I was a Roman Catholic. I did not attend services offered by any of the many Protestant denominations or fellowships found at Kent State, even though I was invited to do so by friends who continued to be active participants in them.

My sense of morality continued to exist in a Roman Catholic mode. It would be difficult, however, to distinguish what was Catholic and what was merely a conservative-American sense of how a college student really should behave, one that was not necessarily consistent with the fictionalized view of what they did. Hooking-up, binge-drinking, engaging in deviant sexual-behaviors and using opiate drugs were still in the distant future. Even marijuana and LSD had to wait until the late 60’s to be part of the college scene. The Silent Generation was well underway during my years at Kent State.

The positive result of being a lapsed Catholic of the fifties, if it can be seen as positive, is that I was able in 1958 to marry in the Congregational Church and be “excommunicated.” My return to being a practicing Catholic awaits another time period in my life.

I first met Carl when we were in the National Forensic League during high school. He was from Revere in Akron and had taken first place in about every speaking event in which he participated during his junior and senior years in the NFL. I considered him far above me in talent and accomplishments. Needless to say, it was a tremendous surprise when I saw him during my first days at Kent State. He was in the communal bathroom shared by our corridor in Stopher Hall. My opening words were something to the effect: “Good God, you’re Carl Oglesby, aren’t you!? What are you doing here?” His amused return confirmed my suspicion. Our friendship continued to grow throughout the next three years, along with our friendly rivalry.

His roommate was Ray Tabello, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, with whom he was in a constant, heated debate; Ray usually lost, as had every debater in Northeastern Ohio who had crossed verbal swords with Carl. Later that freshman year, during spring quarter, Carl and I became roommates, along with Alexander (Al) Kennedy, a chemistry major from Cleveland, who lived on our common corridor. We shared a “triple,” the only one, located at the dead-end of the fourth-floor wing. Our common adventures during our freshman year call for in-depth descriptions, but, for now, a feeble summary is needed for Carl.

Oglesby was the brightest guy I met at Kent State. In his fourth year, he left the University before his graduation and went to New York City to become a Bohemian actor, a playwright and, later, a political activist. He returned to the academic scene in the 1960’s, in Ann Arbor, where he completed his degree at the University of Michigan. At the same time, he was one of the founders of the Students for a Democratic Society, a young-adult activist group opposing the Vietnam war. He was an early visitor to Cuba and wrote about his experience there during the formation of the Castro era. He also wrote a book about the events relating to the National Guard shootings of KSU students on May 4, 1970.

At Kent State, Carl was an outstanding dramatic actor; his lead in The Crucible was magnificent in its believability. He was not handsome in any classical sense; he was tall and lanky; the results of acne significantly marked his face. But his voice was sublime. For Christmas, 1953, I had received a reel-to-reel tape recorder which Carl often used, especially if Al and I were out of the room. Carl was devoted to the poetry of T.S. Elliot and, for years, I saved the tapes he made of Alfred Prufrock. I later transferred his readings to cassettes but, unfortunately, I lost them during one of my cross-country moves. He also made color-pencil drawings; I have lost them, too.

Carl was the first atheist I ever met. We spent many midnight hours taking about religion and philosophy, of which he knew much, while I remained his neophyte. Al usually slept through our discussions, with a pillow over his head. Carl was the one who caused me to pose the questions I did for Father Dom to answer, which, as I said, he never did. If only Thomas Aquinas had been able to join Carl and me!

Our friendly rivalry in a public forum came when we were juniors. I was Parliamentarian of the Student Government Association and had become a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity (more later.) Carl was vehemently opposed to “Greek societies.” He formed a group, called appropriately, The Macedonians, which he wanted to have recognized as being equal to Greek-letter fraternities. Our opposing views were carried extensively in the Kent Stater, the student daily. I think we both had exasperated fun in the process.

Once Carl had left Kent, our paths did not cross at the same time. However, strangely enough, they did parallel one another, perhaps in a somewhat fate-determined manner. Carl taught writing and politics at Dartmouth College several years after I was there as a postdoctoral researcher in its School of Medicine. When Carl died in 2011, I learned that he was residing in Amherst, Mass., where he had also been on the faculty, twenty-odd years after I had lived there. He left his literary achieves to the University of Massachusetts, where I had once been Associate Graduate Dean for Research. We had journeyed from Kent State to Umass, but at our own paces and along our own pathways.

The Beanie is probably the first memory a Kent State alumnus recalls in later years, at least it is for those who matriculated in 1953. Each Frosh wore a cap of blue and gold, with a small brim, to all classes and events for a time that seemed like forever but was probably only a few weeks. The one restriction in the activities for a Freshman, which may have lasted for the entire year and, perhaps, for what seemed like the rest of his academic life at the institution, is that he could not step on the University seal beneath Prentice Gate, the main pedestrian entrance to the campus.

The next recollection for all students, and visitors, too, was the Hill, itself. The buildings for the major liberal arts composed the crown for the hilltop, with the Admin building at its center. All of the structures were covered with classical ivy, which burned red in the fall along with the trees covering the hillside down to Rockwell Library. I, myself, burned up piles of calories as I crossed the campus between classes, plowing through leaves in autumn, snow and slush in winter, and squads of squirrels and chipmunks in spring and summer. Did I really step on one of those chipmunks as it scrambled across the stairs leading from one level of the campus to another? Certain memories say I may have, but I was never really sure.

As intended, freshman year at Kent was a transition from my life in Niles, from a life of uncertainty to a life of a different uncertainty, but one which was much more fun to experience. The classes were not any more difficult than in high school; however, the faculty was more knowledgeable about the subjects they taught, and wittier in their presentations than those I once endured at McKinley. Fellow students were more competitive now than they had been before; they also were more friendly and social than they had been in my previous life. Not knowing the failings of others in the past, they were open to new relationships. This was true even for those who continued with me from McKinley to KSU.

George Davies was a very pleasant carryover from the past, although we saw less of one another at Kent. Bob Wick lived in Stopher Hall but on a different corridor, which made it seem more like residing on other planets. Our conversations in the dorm lounges were far between, but, when they occurred, were as deep as those we had enjoyed in high school. Martha Smith also attended Kent, but our classes and lives never overlapped. Diane Lapolla also was enrolled at Kent; we dated a few times, mainly if she could not find someone else to accompany her to an on-campus dance. The four of them (George, Bob, Mart, and Dee) went back to Niles more often than I did. We continued our friendships but traveled different paths.

Dorm life was a salvation for me. It provided me with a ready-made group of potential friends, even buddies. I enjoyed my time between classes, playing card games, such as Hearts, or engaging in long sessions of Monopoly. We all had the opportunity to make fake money, even if the real stuff was not readily available to most of us who came from working, middle class backgrounds in northeastern Ohio. The modest income I needed for daily existence came from my working on the desk at Stopher Hall, as well as from being a chem-lab assistant during the daytime, when I mixed reagents for class experiments and helped monitor what other students might be doing and prevent them from blowing up the lab.

A personal transition occurring for me was my hair style. In high school I had a lot of it, arranged in massive waves piled high in a pompadour shape. Indeed, my high school yearbook photograph is now an outrageous hoot! It was toward the end of my freshman year that I finally opted for a crewcut. The short, scalp-showing result was ultimately accepted by my mother. My friends and I did not take as long to conclude that the difference it made in my appearance was an improvement; I was now a “college man” and did not stand out in a crowd of them. I had finally transitioned from Niles McKinley High School to Kent State University. I had also transitioned from a non-social life to one with many friends, an even more magnificent transition.

For a Texan, a “smoker” is the major equipment required for barbequing beef brisket, pork or chicken in order to imbue the meat with a unique flavor. For a collegian in the 1950s, a “smoker” was the opening event for the “rush” season prior to joining a fraternity. I attended several smokers my freshman year at Kent State. Perhaps, this was one of the reasons I began to smoke cigarettes. Fortunately, it was not necessary for participants to inhale cigar smoke.

The smoker offered a semiformal opportunity to meet potential fraternity brothers and to compare the lifestyle of different Greek-letter societies. I attended several smokers offered by the groups in which I had an interest. It was soon obvious to me I wanted to become a member of Delta Upsilon. However, with rushing being a two-way street, the DU’s were not interested in my becoming part of them. I did not receive a “bid,” an invitation to enter a pledge period with them. I had no idea why I had not been offered a bid, but I did not accept one from any of the other fraternities I had rushed. I was stubborn; it was ΔΥ or nothing.

I was not sure why I was that interested in this particular fraternity, to the exclusion of all others. I did like the guys I had met at their smokers and hoped I might become close friends with them. The group, itself, was well known on campus. The House provided significant members for basketball, swimming, and diving. Many were well-established in collegiate government and in other campus groups. Delta Upsilon, itself, was also unique, I learned, as an international Greek-letter society. The brotherhood had been among the first social fraternities established in New England (1834.) However, it was not, as all others were, a “secret” society. Members had no special handshake nor closed initiation; they identified themselves as a “non-secret” Greek-letter fraternity.

During the fall quarter of my sophomore year, I was determined to join DU. Once again, I went to smokers sponsored by other fraternities and received several bids, but none from DU. During the winter quarter, beginning in January 1955, I once more made the rounds of smokers, but in a more limited manner. Jack Gordan, my roommate at the time, went with me to DU, the only smoker he attended. On January 26 the bids were released. One of them was from DU. I accepted the bid; Jack who had never rushed a fraternity previously, also received a bid and became a pledge with me.

The following summer, in August, I learned about what had happened during the final rush days of January. Lucy, a pin-mate of one of my closest DU brothers (actually, my “big brother”) and I attended summer classes. She told me, over a brace of “seven-sevens” one late night at Rocky’s, of the fateful discussions that were held about me during a January Chapter meeting.

There had been a huge argument. Many brothers weren’t on speaking terms for days afterwards. No wonder one of them, who later became a close friend, looked at me so strangely my first week of pledging. He must have expected I should have two heads!

Two of the leading DU’s, who had been against me previously, now orated for two hours. Many of the Chapter members were annoyed. They divided into two camps; evidently, I had some friends there, after all. Finally, the two who had been against me, agreed not to “blackball” me. It seems that both of them, who were of Italian heritage, were concerned that by accepting me, the fraternity would give the appearance of being too “Italian” and suffer in future recruitment.

Strangely, one of the traditions of the local fraternity was the annual “WOP-Harp” picnic! At this spring event, each brother, voluntarily taking a side in a beer-baseball battle, added an “O” either to the end or the beginning of his last name. In this game, the player had to chug a beer at each base before advancing to the next. Girlfriends continued to supply cups filled with brew at each stop. By the time the game ended, well before the ninth inning, the besotted players would enter into a free-for-all, resulting in every brother being dumped into the lake where the picnic was routinely held.

I never did understand how my Italian name, once more, played out in my destiny. But according to Lucy, after I was accepted as a pledge, there was no further dispute about my joining Delta Upsilon. Although other pledges were discussed for blackballing during the process, I remained immune.

Several times, over the years after graduation, I have attended reunions with the group during Kent’s Alumni Homecoming Weekend. Unfortunately, DU has gone the way of many fraternities and no longer has an active chapter at KSU. Nevertheless, I still have fond memories of those happy days of the fifties when I established bonds of brotherhood with those who are dedicated to Dikaia Upotheke, Justice our Foundation.

In medieval days, the path to knighthood had stages. First, you were a squire; you learned about the brotherhood, what to do when you were finally dubbed a knight. Actually, the process, itself, had little to do with the result; it merely provided servitude along the way, stuff that had to be done but knights didn’t want to do it. An internship for becoming a physician follows the same model. In a fraternity of the fifties, the process from initiation as a pledge to activation as a brother, took three months out of my college life, from the end of January to the end of April of my sophomore year. It began with the rite of initiation.

Thirteen of us gathered as pledges in the Chapter Room, a central site in the fraternity House, used for small meetings, conversations, quiet studying and, often enough, card playing. As we pledges gathered, the active brothers began to sing in the adjoining living-room. The panel doors separating the two rooms slid back. In the opening stood a table with a large candle with the Delta Upsilon insignia embossed on it. Chuck Miller, the DU President, faced us; the singing brothers were lined along the walls of the living-room, illuminated by that single candle.

Nervous and perspiring heavily, I did not really hear any of the words of the vows we read out loud to the assembly. Chuck called out our names and gave each of us a pledge pin, except me. Instead of giving me a pin, he returned my bid card! I was stunned. After the lights came on, I quickly exchanged the card with him for an actual pledge pin that one of the other brothers affixed to my shirt. After handshaking and welcoming, the “Actives” went downstairs to the large meeting-room in the basement, while we pledges met in the Chapter Room with Dan Patridge, our pledge-master, who instructed us on our duties as neophytes.

There were things we could not do. We could no longer enter the Chapter room unless given special permission; we could not step on the fraternity seal in the entrance hall. We had special information to learn for every meeting, at which time we would be tested on it. We had to obtain the signatures of all the Actives for our pocket-size pledge-books. We would have special work-details to do. We had house duties which must be finished before 3:30 p.m. every day and signed for by an Active in those pledge-books. As our turn came up, we had wake-up duty from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m. and errand duty from 8:00 p.m. until midnight. We were allowed two rings to answer the phone, if we were on the main floor, three rings anyplace else. For doing something wrong (really whatever an active didn’t like) we received demerits; for providing a service we’d get merits. They, too, were recorded in our pledge-books. If the demerits outweighed the merits, pushups might be called for. Our meetings were to be every Monday night at 7:30. Tonight’s meeting ended, and we pledges were off to Rocky’s for beers.

On Friday the Actives and pledges were scheduled to have a date party at the House, but the social card had not been submitted to the office of the Dean of Men in sufficient time to allow girls to be in the House for a party. Instead, there was a stag party. I went there about eight o’clock and had a good time doing nothing. I still felt a little out of place, but at least I was being accepted socially. However, in the long-run, I did enjoy myself, watching TV, talking, drinking 3.2 beer, and playing ping-pong.

The following week we had election of officers at our pledge meeting held, with permission, in the Chapter Room, at the same time that the Actives met downstairs. At tonight’s meeting, I was elected treasurer for our small group, without any idea of what expenses we might have or where the money would come from.

At the end of the meeting, we formed a circle with our arms crossed and with hands joined, while we sang “Hail Delta Upsilon,” a song we had to learn during that first week of being a pledge. There was a feeling of closeness I had never experienced before. This was, I finally realized, the reason I had to join this brotherhood. I couldn’t leave it now. Some six decades later, I still feel the warmth of that circle.

Almost by definition, college boys are gross. The definition of a “pledge banquet” may not be dissimilar. For most people, a banquet is a formal, elegant dinner, often followed by speeches, many of which can be boring. There was nothing boring, however, about medieval banqueting halls where gorging was done to the accompaniment of jugglers or other rollicking entertainers. A pledge banquet resembles its medieval model.

One evening in mid-February, a few weeks after my initiation as a pledge, our fraternal gathering began very pleasantly and socially. The Chapter held a party for the pledges of several sororities – Delta Gamma, Alpha Chi Omega, Chi Omega and Alpha Xi Delta. I had a lot of fun and met some nice ΔΓ pledges. After the mixed party had ended, the Actives gave us pledges our own “banquet.”

We had been requested to bring old clothes with us to the party. I’m glad I did. The buildup was psychological. With hints, we were told how horrible the rest of the evening would be. These meager hints inadequately explained the conditions for the actual event.

At midnight, the Actives removed our watches, rings, and glasses. Our shoelaces were draped over our necks. We were marched into the darkened basement where we usually ate dinner and the Actives held their weekly meeting.

My myopic eyes could make out few forms. We were led around a table in the meeting room. The pledges were instructed to shout: “We crave food.” We got it – food? Our orders were taken, either steak or spaghetti. I requested the latter, without meatballs, since it was Friday. I shouldn’t have bothered; it was all the same. The served substance was brown and fluid. Over it, was poured a chartreuse sauce which smelled like paint. The beverage was a robin’s egg blue.

One of the more fun-loving Actives sat at the head of the table. He was wrapped in a protective sheet and wore a cullender on his head as a crown. As we stood looking at our repast, he read a story about men lost in the desert. At various times during the reading, we were required to eat and drink while our hands were bound behind us with the shoelaces we had once carried. The stuff tasted exactly like vomit. What a chemist they must have as chef! It really wasn’t the taste so much as the lumps that bothered me! I, however, did not swallow any. I smeared it around my mouth and dumped half of it under the paper plate. But I couldn’t fake the drink. I chugged three glasses of something that someone poured into my mouth. Some of my pledge brothers were not so fortunate. What was going down met what was coming up.

Finally, it was over. The banquet had lasted less than half an hour, but it seemed like it should have been all night. Afterwards, we were forced to clean up the mess. It was then we learned what the recipe was. The entree consisted of boiled Mother’s Oats seasoned with garlic and spices. The sauce was green food coloring in water. The smell? Who knows? The drink was colored buttermilk.

Having endured this experience, I felt a lot closer to eleven of the pledges; one of the older ones had managed to avoid the event. (He was later called before the active chapter to explain his absence.)

The banquet had served its purpose: bringing a dozen individuals into a single unit through shared adversity. After wrapping my smelly, food-spotted clothes in newspaper, I went to the all-night diner with the other pledges for coffee and donuts! We were crazy but happy. We were becoming a pledge-class.

College years were ones in which strange events became part of my life. Things happened that were totally different from any I had encountered in high school and would never have expected, given the limited social interactions I had back then. One of them began in a very unanticipated way.

It was midweek when my pledge class had been called together for an evening work-session to prepare the House for a weekend rush party. Fraternities seemed to be constantly desiring to expand memberships. As a result of the winter smoker, we had become pledges only a month ago, but we were now part of the spring season for recruitment. My class was required to get the House ready for the event.

Our work started about 10:30 p.m. We cleaned the House from top to bottom. I, like fellow pledges, tried to get out of doing some of the work, or at least, to find something that was not too energy demanding. About 2:00 a.m. Jerry Lange, the house-manager, sent me out for newspapers to line the cupboards. I was returning from the J&E all-night diner when Chuck Ramsey, one of the Actives, yelled to me from a car he was driving. I stopped.

Suddenly three other Actives rushed toward me from the idling car. There wasn’t much use in my running. The four of them shoved me into the car and blindfolded me. Off we drove. We passed the greenhouses on the edge of town (the blindfold had been placed rather haphazardly) and I was lost. Finally, after many bumps, we stopped.

I was led out of the car. I heard nearby crickets; we were definitely in the country outside the town of Kent. I was told not to remove the blindfold until I heard the motor start up. Then I was to remove it and walk down the road at my right until I came to Jack Hinley, a fellow pledge, who was tied up. The car drove off; minutes later I found Jack and untied him.

The moon was bright so walking wasn’t too bad. But why walk back to Kent; what other way was there? The trucks that passed wouldn’t stop. Finally a car with a somewhat drunken driver squealed to a stop. He gave us a ride into Brimfield. There we found a telephone. The actives had taken my money but Jack had a dime. We called the House in hopes that a pledge would answer. Ed Burley, our pledge-class president, finally did, after a struggle with one of the Actives who had been in the car with me. Jerry finally allowed one of the other pledges to come for us; he claimed he needed our help to finish cleaning the House.

Our fellow pledge finally found Jack and me. My only problem was: Why, while we were walking for an hour, did Jack have to keep singing, “Boomerang?” (“What can I do? Why can’t I come back to you? Just like a boomerang … boom, boom, boom-erang … right back to you …”)

We worked until 4:30 a.m. and polished shoes until 5:30 a.m. Then we marched through the House, singing. The Actives didn’t appreciate our recital. I then went to the Diner for coffee. I had wake-duty at 7:00 a.m. and saw no point in going to bed.

The strain didn’t show until that afternoon when one of the Actives told me he didn’t like the parody script for the rush party he had asked me to prepare. I was to write another one. For some reason I felt like crying. I almost de-pledged right there. But that would have never gone over. I wrote a new script which he turned down in favor of the first one. That evening we didn’t use either one.

But we did use our best smiles as we drank beer at Rocky’s. Afterwards, a “cut session” was held to determine who should be invited for another smoker. The session lasted much too long. I saw the Actives in all their oratorical glory, even though we were merely pledges and had no inclusion in the decisions made. And then I went to bed. Exhausted, but happy.