April 10, 1963
THE TWIG
Page Three
Miss Raleigh Pageant To Be Held May 11;
Four Meredith Girls Chosen To Compete
By JANE WORRELL
On the basis of (heir adributes
and lalents recently displayed in a
preliminary audition, four Meredith
girk» Ginger Brown, Dawn Holden,
Elizabeth Holland, and Marion
Welch, have been selected as par*
ticipants in the Miss Raleigh Pageant
to be held May 11. Sponsored by
the Raleigh Junior Chamber of
Commerce, the pageant involves
many activities and details un>
known to the public in general. To
be a contender for the Miss Raleigh
title, a girl must be eighteen years
of age by the first of September and
a resident of Raleigh or a college
Mudent attending school in the city.
Following the preliminary audi
tion, in which the girls are inter
viewed, ten are sclccled on the basis
oF their qualiOcation!> and poise, to
participate in the pageant. During
the interval, which succeeds the pre
liminary and precedes the actual
contest, the ten contestants attend
a rehearsal oncc every week. The
purpose of these rehearsals is to
enable the girls ta perfect their tal
ent and lo overcome any flaws in
presentation. They are given in
structions in the arts of walking,
smiling, and maintaining stage
poise. Helpful hints such as learn
ing to apply vaseline to the teeth
in order to counteract mouth-dry
ing effects produced by stage lights
are given at this time. On the night
preceding the pageant, the girls at
tend a full dress rehearsal.
Schedule of Activities
The contestants’ schedule of ac
tivities during the week of the con
test includes two important func
tions. At the Jaycee dinner, the
girls are introduced individually and
are asked general questions so that
the judges may become acquainted
with each one. During the judges’
luncheon, they elect a “Miss Con
geniality” whose name is an
nounced at the pageant. The actual
contest includes three judging divi
sions — evening gown, swim suit,
and talent with the latter division
counting 50 per cent in choosing the
winner. The winner of the Miss
Raleigh Contest is presented a five
hundred dollar scholarship and is
automatically a contender for the
Miss North Carolina crown.
Four Winners in Five Years
It is significant that Meredith has
supplied four Miss Raleigh’s in the
past five years. The 1962 title was
won by a Meredith senior, Berma
Jean Davenport. Raraelle Watlerson
Morrison, Janice Capps Patterson,
and Gail Newton Martin won the
title while at Meredith. Berma Jean
was also the winner in the talent di
vision of the Miss North Carolina
pageant, singing an aria from
Gianni Schicchi plus “The Lusty
Month of May” from Camelot.
Among her appcaranccs during the
past year, she recalls a lecture on
etiquette, given to a N. C. State
fraternity, as being most unusual.
As the reigning Miss Raleigh, she
will assist in the rehearsals and will
be presented at the pageant and will
crown the new queen.
Girls Have Had Music Training
Each of the Meredith girls par
ticipating in the pageant received
■■■■'■‘I
prior to entering Meredith, several
years of formal music instruction.
Ginger Brown, a sophomore trans
fer student, plans to sing a medley of
songs in the talent division of the
pageant. Dawn Holden will pre
sent a comic piano routine of a
“take-off” on Victor Borgc. A voice
and church music major, Elizabeth
Holland plans to sing an aria writ*
ten lor the opera Carmen by Bizet.
Marion Wclch will play the piano
or present a dramatic reading. Each
of the contestants knows that being a
participant is good experience in
gaining poise. The girls also feel that
the experience will be invaluable as
far as enabling them to develop
their individual talents. Berma Jean
Davenport stated that participat
ing in such an activity is “beneficial
to all ten, regardless of who wins.”
Elizabeth Holland prepares her fulcnt for (lie Miss Raleigh competition.
U«rnia Jean Davenport (right), Miss Rakigh »f 1962, dcmonstrutes to Gincer
Brown the corrcct way to walk down stairs.
DEFINITION OF LIBERAL
ARTS COLLEGE EXPLORED
Marion Welch admires dress that contestant Dawn Holden (right) will wear in
evening dress competition.
Meredith is to be represented at Play Day at the University of
North Carolina in Chapel Hill, April 26, 1963.
At least four girls, Bookie Ellis, Donna Cullen, Nicky Childrey,
and Eva Foxworth, of which all except the latter are from Mrs. Jay
Massey’s advanced tennis class, are expected to attend. The girls will
participate in girls’ tennis tournaments, which will be a mixture of
both singles and doubles. As yet, it is undecided as to which girls
will play each type, but Nicky Childrey has predicted that Bookie
Ellis and Donna Cullen will play doubles and that she and Eva
Foxworth will play singles. She added that this is only a conjecture.
The girls are expected to arrive at U. N. C. at 10:15 a.m., and
will continue to play until they arc eUminated. Spectators are invited.
New York, N. Y. (l.P.) — The
new dean of Columbia College re
cently described the role of the
private liberal arts collegc in the
transmission of culture to a new gen
eration as "an enterprise surpassing
in importance any other in the edu
cational world.”
Country’s Commitment
“This country, consciously but
with little concern for implications,”
declared Dean David B, Truman,
‘has in effect committed itself to
school attendance tor everyone for
from two to four years beyond high
school. I deliberately do not refer
to this commitment as ‘a college
education for everyone' because
the crucial question is whether
such attendance achieves education,
whether such institutions are col
leges in anything but name.”
First Function
Dean Truman explained the first
major function of the private libera!
arts college in the current rush to
ward mass enrollments: “That is to
assert firmly that transmitting to at
least a faction of the next genera
tion a genuine understanding of the
culture that constitutes their princi
pal heritage is an enterprise surpass
ing in importance any other in the
educational world.”
Free of the compulsion to be all
things to all men, the privately sup
ported liberal arts college, if it is
strong, can insist on this function,
he stated. It (he insistance is
equalled in practice, he added, it
will invite, if not compel, institu
tions functioning in a politically in
fluenced setting to follow the lead
at least in part.
Experimentation
Experimentation, said, Dean Tru
man. is the second great area
in which the private college can
more than compensate for its mi
nority position in the educational
structure. “With its comparative
flexibility and its freedom from ex
traneous restrictions, the strong col-^
lege that is not dependent upon gov
ernmental support can take the
lead in developing means of deal
ing with problems common to all
institutions of higher education.
“Experimentation should not be
confined narrowly to programs of
study. For example, the character
of a curriculum and the quality of
the college community — a very
special kind of social grouping —
are related in subtle but highly
significant ways. An institution
legitimately can be charged with
abdicating its responsibilities if it
confines its concerns for the college
community to such essentially nega
tive functions as compelling attend
ance at classes or examinations or
imposing punishments for infringe
ments of the moral code.”
Norms Arc Complex
“Tlie causes of the non-educa-
tional norms of many American stu
dent communities are complex, and
few of them are subject to college
control. In a student population
where active engagement is delib
erately encouraged by the design of
the curriculum, the likelihood that
undergraduate norms will subvert
the institution’s educational goals
will be greatly reduced if not wholly
eliminated.”
Reserve Space,
Suggests Dean
Grinnell, la. (I.P.) — Propos
ing that “we reserve perhaps fifty
places in each freshman class for
students who do not fully meas
ure up to our quantitative stand
ards of acadcmic aptitude but show
signs of excellence in other dimen
sions,” Dr. Howard R. Bowen,
president of Grinnell College, points
out that “the aspects of personality
we value most highly, and which
the world needs desperately, are not
easily measured.
Bowen’s Suggestions
“I suggest that when these stu
dents are admitted their progress
be carefully studied so that we may
learn over a period of years how to
select worthy students who are not
top performers on multiple choice
tests. If we wait until the selection
process can be reduced lo a me
chanical method based on quanti
tative measures, we will all be dead
before the first such students are
admitted.
“I propose that objective exami
nations should be sparingly used in
a collcge like Grinnell. The basic
assumption in testing a student in
any course should be that he is a
young apprentice scholar in the
field, and tliat the test is to ascer
tain his scholarly proficiency. The
scholar’s work requires knowledge
of sources and constant access
to them: it requires painstaking
thought, and it requires exact for
mulation of ideas.
It is a far cry from the usual
examination which imposes a rigid
time limit and requires rapid re
call, split sccond judgments and
hastily composed answers. I sug
gest that in most courses there
should be only one examination,
namely, a final examination. The
present multiplicity of examinations
focuses the student’s attention suc
cessively on little fragments of the
subjects under study.
Deadlines Problems
"These deadlines are as likely
to prevent an orderly sequence of
work as to promote it. The student
is denied the opportunity to learn
how to be responsible for scheduling
his own time. He is seldom con
fronted with the larger and the more
scholarly aspects of a liberal edu
cation.
“I suggest that in the evaluation
of students the relative weight of
course grades be rcduced and the
relative weight of comprehensive
examinations be increased, to
heighten the motivation of the stu
dent toward mastery of a major
field and to reduce his preoccupa
tion with the bits and pieces.
Final Recommendation
“My final recommendation is
that cach student be required to
keep a personal diary during his
four years at Grinnell in which
(Continued on page S)