Newspapers / Salem College Student Newspaper / Nov. 18, 1949, edition 1 / Page 2
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Pape Two THE SALE MITE November 18 2>eo4> editor . . . I feel that the short letter to the editor printed in the Salemite last week, concerning the privilege of juniors having cars, omitted many reasons revelant to the question. First of all, I should like to point out that over half of the present juniors are taking courses leading to a teaching certificate. In one of these courses, Education, observations in the citv schools are required for both sem esters. These schools are scattered over the city and necessitate the use of taxis at the present time. A few junior cars on campus would greatly facilitate transportation matters. There are also a number of juniors, about- twenty, who take golf out at Reynolds Park as a part of the school physical education pro gram. The girls involved would certainly like to be able to use a car to go and come from golf—a round trip of six miles accord ing to the taxi meter. The main reason we would like the privilege of cars, other than reasons pertaining to aca demic pimuoses, is for trips home for the week end and holidays, and for trips around town. This privilege would not only benefit the jun iors, but the sophomores and the freshmen as well. Underclassmen would have more chances for rides home and for rides uptown. Travel ing home on the bus or train is time-consum ing, expensive, and extremely inconvenient. This is also true of riding the bus uptown. The tim-^ wasted could be spent more profit ably. I’m sure a girl is going to think twice be fore she uses one of her precious nights out tor a fifteen minute excursion to the Toddle House. We believe that few juniors would have cars on the campus at any one time. Further more, few, if any, juniors have cars of their own. Thus they would hardly be able to keep a ca^ at Salem for longer than a couple • of weeks in succession. If juniors should be allowed to have cars on camuus I do not believe the privilege should be restricted to Dean’s List students. When a girl has reached the junior class, she must have, by virtue of staying in school twm years, gained some sense of judgement and' discrimination. She is capable of knowing, without yielding to the impulses of her less mature underclassmen years, how much time she can spend off the campus without letting her studying and campus activity suffer. She is now taking courses in her chosen major and minor and she is interested in them. Perhaps any regulation allowing juniors to have eavs should have reservations attached to it that the senior privilege does not. We feel that if we should obtain the privilege, our parents should specify to the deans where we may and may not travel in our cars, whether ■ we may or may not drive at night, and any other reservations the administration might find it advisable to require. Clara Belle LeGrand Acti Attempts Dramatics Drives Director Mad by Sybel Haskins and Winkie Harris Activitus came back to school in September bubbling with enthusiasm. She was going to be a teacher in the not-too-distance-future. To help in her work she elected to take a course, “The Art of Acting,” in which she could learn to dramatize the subject she was planning to teach, Spanish. After six-weeks of note-taking, she discovered that one of the require ments in the course was a project. Then one day, she discovered that her project was the female lead in “Omlet,” or However you may like your eggs,” by the great 17th century playwrite. Activitus read the play and emerged from its covers with a new light in her eyes. Cornell, Hayes, Bernhart, Me! Play practice was scheduled for 6:15 every night . At 6:10 Acti was behind the wings, ready to make her entrance. At 9 o’clock she was still ready to make her appearance. In the mean time, she had found out that she was responsible for building certain parts of the scenery such as a tree twenty feet tall which was to be purple and yellow. “It has to look anything but real,” she was told. Acti had to begin construction of the tree by searching in an under ground basement for some beaver board. That was the only available place where such equipment could be stored. By the fight of a candle and with the aid of three rats, two cock roaches and every helpful spider, she was’able to locate the board. Then she had to scrape the dirt off. She had begun sawing with her toenail file, when someone called, “Cue,” Acti rushed upstairs only to trip over three prone members of the cast who and carefully walked back out again, constantly aware of her audience, and at the same time, living her role. Acti started to go back to her for gotten tree, but was stopped and told that she was to pull the curtain for the next scene. She was filled with new importance. “Watch how you pull that curtain, though, you’ve got to drag it slowly so it won t collapse completely, so the gaps can’t be seen from the audience and so that it will come together in the middle. And don’t let there be any noise!” Acti nodded. The scene ended and Atic pulled the.’ rope for the curtain. Suddenly there was a huge crash. Acti looked up to see a stage revealed to the world and the entire cast of forty .buried under forty yards of ragged cloth. Our hero’s head was poking out of one of the holes. But the show' had to go on and Atic was mercifully sent back to the basement to saw on her tree. She was called back in a while for her scene in Act II, Acti went over her lines. She knew them perfectly. It w'as 10:10 and once more she stood ready to make her entrance. The cue came, she walked out, opened her mouth—■ “Cut” came the voice of the director. “Let’s do the first part of that scene over again,” Acti slunk dejectedly behind the curtain. Three more attempts on her part to say her line resulted in “cut.” Acti decided to go backstage in one of the two dress ing rooms and rest. She walked in one, but there wasn’t room even to sit on the floor because of a bridge game. She squeezed herself through the two inch space back of the stage scenery and tried to get in the other dressing room. The costumes for the play took up all the room in there. had already said their lines. a *• c n j • i i , The time had come. Acti walked hat to bS/r ‘ on stage carefully picked up a book ° . a (Continued on page five) Joseph Smith Reviews The Woman In White’’ a by Joseph Smith The nineteenth century was a period in w'hich such a voluminous output of literature took place that anyone studying it is likely to over look an author of merit who has been obscured by his more popular contemporaries. This seems to have been the case with ’Wilkie .. lani Collins, author of numerous novels | the mind of a genius? Countprsco brilliant. He formulates a fool proof plan for advancing his own evil designs, involving the lives of several innocent people and meets his downfall, ironically enough, on account of the dne human weak ness which he allows to possess him—love. A corpulent giant with Most ’cuts never the chance to study under progs e educ^tT id system. Most students ant to . ;ost r'udc ■ will eagerly tell you what wroir . h the v' h is that they do study under. Many t chers s.-’y that they would welcome the .iportir to tr c’l a more progre.iwiYe manner, 'owever, f you s'’: them why they don’t do some thing about it, they start hemming and hawing and ' Iking : .;:it th' rs that be”" who lay down the law. Just as if it w'ere blasphemous to raise their Dices in f vor of change in “v/hat has already been done.” /-t Salem, for instance, there are a few teachers who do what they can to lift the drudgery 'rom the i 'ork rcQuircd from their students, but I iiave ahvays been afraid to talk about a teacher who makes his courses interesting lest somehow the in teresting part would have had to be stopped. Art History, for example, gained a reputation as a boring subject. Most students took it either because course in the field --r-s required or because it had ’so gaineil a re: v i as a crip. However, from the first day, Mr. Barker made it clear that there is no reason why art (of all things) has to be dull, and has done his ‘unorthodox best’ to keep it from being .dull. Until this year I have had to write ‘book reports’ for parallel reading—an uftenlightening procedure at Rest. I could have been knocked over with the pro verbial feather when Dr. Todd said that reports on parallel reading would be made in conference. Such a report takes more of a teacher’s time, to be sure, but a teacher who doesn’t want to give the time shouldn’t be teaching. A student takes a course because he hopes to learn something in the field, not because he likes the way it is being taught. Is a student ordered to take a cer-. tain course as he is in the Army? Then why should the teacher feel that he has the right to force the student to learn it or embarrass him for not pre paring a lesson ? Norman Jarrard and one time collaborator of the great Charles Dickens. Like so many Victorian writers, Collins saw a measure of popularity during his lifetime and then went into an al most total eclipse which has lasted, to some extent, to the-present day. Little is known about his life other than that he was born in London in 1824 and died there in 1890. The rnost important fact about .Collins is that he may be said to haVe created the modern mystery novel, Iri 1861 The W o m a n in White appeared and it is in this novel that Collins first successfully uses a device which is at once re vealing and absorbing. This device, for which Collins has suffered some criticism, consists of• presenting the thread of the narrative through the minds of each of the characters concerned, each character throwing a different light on the situation at hand and revealing at the same time, almost better than simple narration can, some startling facts about himself. In the hands of a poor wi iter such a device can com pletely destroy the unity and in tegration of the plot; the result of Collins’s effort is a kaleidoscopic picture of intrigue and masterful characterization. One particular character created by Collins deserves special atten tion. I have reference to Count Fosco, the ingenious villain in The Woman in White. In Count Fosco, Collins has succeeded in creating a superman who actually has all the .attributes of a living person. Ac complished in philosophy, art, liter ature, chemistry, and music, the in imitable Fosco possesses a criminal IS so well depicted that he is sure to live and breathe throughout the pages of the book in which he appears for all who will read it • nor will the reader be likely to for get the Count once his acquain- tance has been made. The other book for which Col lins is chiefly remembered is The Moonstone, considered the first detective novel written in the Eng lish language and most assuredly one of the best ones. Here again the author has shown his deft hand with the evolving of ' complicated plots and character studies The story concerns the disappearance of a famous jewel (the Moonstone) and the unfortunate events which follow as a result. The compli cations of the story are manipu lated with such skill that the reader is always aware of the situation even though it has undergone, num erous changes at the hands of the characters. Wilkie Collins was not a writer with a social purpose; he wrote primarily to entertain, and that is exactly what these books do. Per haps the best compliment that can be paid him is to mention that his friend Charles Dickens, who was his fellow worker for awhile, was inspired by this association to write n® T'VT*'" of Edwin Drood. Collins was a prolific writer (my set of his works con tains thirty volumes) a’nd while sonie chaff undoubtedly comes out with the gram, the two novels dis cussed above are not only worth while as entertaining tales but. are truly works of art of their kind- Sa/emi How those girls find time to do it all w ’ii never know! We mean those practice teat ers we’ve had for the past seven weeks Th definitely belong to a race of superwoiu*^ For example: Last week thev had SIX weeks exams and a chapel program at Salem. If remember our college days in the dim' distant past, either one of those constituted a fnH --vich6rs They came up every day with the best less on week’s tvork. Not so our student teache est k plans, eye catching bulletin boards, and ori ginal, workable ideas for persuading our littl' darlings to become literate citizens. We don’t know how they’ve done it—certainly not in the 'time it takes to jump into lipstick and nylons in the morning. We appreciate the splendid work done bv these girls. No effort has been spared in do^ ing a really good_ job in trying out methods instilled in education courses. A lot of reco nition should be given these future teachers for the unlimited time spent in preparation Fine work has come out of long hours of planning and tireless effort. Griffith Teachers OLdxUete? All of us have probably read something about the squabble over unification of the armed forces. It has been of special interest to the writer, for the study of naval history is one of my chief hobbies. It is from the naval point of view that I consider the pro blem. I First, it is admitted that some sort of cen tralization in the national defense is desirable. Economy of administration alone is a great factor in favor of unity. Second, the role of the aircraft carrier has been subjected to criticism. I personally am inclined to favor carriers. I will give my reasons. The carrier is mobile. Land bases are fixed. In order to_ destroy either type of aviation potential it is necessary for a foe to locate it. Since a land base is fixed,.it is relatively easy to find. Locating an aircraft carrier is not such an easy matter. A foe could quite possibly strike all of our land bases at one blofiu However, the laws of chance make it relatively impossible for him to locate a number of aircraft carriers at one time. They would be deployed over the oceans of the world. Of course, once located a carrier is highly vulnerable' to a number of methods of attack. This is admitted. The fact most heavily in favor of the car rier is that a number of them could not be wiped out in one strike. In short, let us not put all our eggs in one basket. There is place for both land and carrier based aircraft. Let both sides realize this fact. Many seem to thing that the Navy has be come obsolete. It does seem, however, that the days of battleships and cruisers are over. Destroyers are still vital, for it now appears that the submarine has come into its own. In fact, many go so far as to say that the sub marine is, now the chief naval weapon. This may well be the case. The role of the carrier seems in doubt. The late controversy has. been unfortunate, but perhaps it has had one good effect. It has brought to the public eye a matter of vital importance to all of us. An informed public IS essential for the survival of democracy. Robert C. Gray There will be no Salemite issue next week because of Thanksgiving vacation. Publica tion will be resumed December 9. ®()e Salemite uimauie rosco possesses a criminal as such, students of English liter’ mind , that is as diabolical as it is ature should not negket them Published every Friday of the College year by the Student body of Salem College Downtown Office—304-306 South Main Street Printed by the Sun Printing Company Lower floor Main Hall OFFICES Subscription Price—$2.75 a year EDITORAL DEPARTMENT Editor-in-Chief Dale Smith Associate Editor Joan Carter Rea} Associate Editor Ruth Lenkoski Assistant Editor Clara Belle Le Grand Make-up Editor Mary Turner Rm* Copy Editors Mary Lib Weaver, Jane Fearing
Salem College Student Newspaper
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Nov. 18, 1949, edition 1
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