100 Years of PAW - June 7, 2000
Princeton Alumni Weekly remembers
New trolley... the Depression on campus... a professor's last lecture...
bush league
On the cover: Frank Stella '58's Sat Bhai, mixed
media on metal relief, measures 109-1/2" x 82" x 39". The
work, part of the Collection Graham Gund, lies somewhere between painting
and sculpture. This photo by Leo Castelli is provided courtesy Carl I. Belz
'59, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University."
This particular issue of paw featured several articles about the visual
arts on campus as well as a short feature about Stella's contributions to
contemporary art.
June 6, 1900
Trenton ladies
The trolley line is already in most disgustingly good running condition, and already fat females from Trenton may be seen upon the campus on any fair Sunday, munching luncheons from paper bags-or attempting to do so. One group with whom Johnny Degnan valiantly remonstrated, told him that in their frank opinion his authority might be better employed by driving away those students whose smoke annoyed them at their meal. This modern improvement, the trolley, reaches Canal street (now changed to read Alexander street) by way of the new 18-hole golf course, which will stretch from the water-tower (no longer painted annually) to the canal (into which freshmen are no longer invited to jump, of frosty nights in October).
June 5, 1931
Boom times have ended
The depression in which many of us have allowed ourselves to become bogged will be found to possess one priceless virtue. It has simplified the problems of the bewildered undergraduate. If it has not eliminated them, it has at least reduced them all to a lowest common denominator.
In discussing going to college or doing particular things on the campus, he is this year asking, is it worth my while? And, realizing that time is money, he is reducing all his problems to the one simple question, am I getting my money's worth? . . . Boom times have ended on the campus quite as thoroughly as they have ended on the stock exchange. . . . A few years ago at the height of the jazz age, it was necessary to warn parents against giving their sons too much money. Conditions have changed so that it is now necessary to warn them against giving them too little. There is no surer way permanently to embitter a boy's disposition than to subject him to unnecessary privations in his formative years. -Christian Gauss, Dean of the College
June 6, 1952
Buzzer hall's last lecture
"It was just like a circus," Buzzer told a senior after the affair was over.
The retiring professor had described his final lecture as well as anyone could. Over 700 undergraduates and Faculty turned out for the occasion, and a six-piece band was there to accompany the singing of "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow." . . .
"As scholar and friend, this Professor of 'Things in General' has stimulated generations of Princetonians to think for themselves," the Class of 1952 wrote last winter in dedicating its Nassau Herald to Professor Hall. "A champion of independence and hard work," the dedication continued, "his splendid, unorthodox, determined teaching and perceptive humor are as much his trade-marks as his ties, his cane and his buzzer." . . . "Princeton will not be the same next fall without Buzzer," said the "Prince," "not necessarily because of the loss of a great teacher . . . not even because of his friendship for undergraduates. . . . What will be lost when Buzzer leaves will be an independence of opinion and a willingness to express it which is becoming extinct on the college scene. A sort of 19th century liberalism, it combines a fairly conservative political view with an unshakable belief in the greatest freedom of thought and expression."
June 15, 1988
letter to the editor
When I read that woman's letter in your last issue, complaining about the chap peeing on a bush, I was appalled-both because he chose a bush (no wonder that she got a good view of his activity) and because he peed on his own club's property. I was brought up by my mother (Smith '14, Mayflower, first boat, and still going strong at 96+) to seek out a good-size tree.
The real question is, Why did that GS from the Woodrow Wilson School raise such a fuss? Surely she has seen males peeing before. Was she objecting to his use of a bush? My daughter thinks that the complainant was really objecting to too much beer drinking at Princeton. As everyone knows, beer drinking leads inexorably to peeing. Next thing you know, there will be a demand for the construction of pissoirs on Prospect Avenue.
For my part, I think it's all a tempest in a peepot. -Francis M. Ellis
'45
To order the best of paw
The Best of paw is a 448-page anthology edited by former PAW editor Jim Merritt '66. The anthology will celebrate the history, traditions, character, and culture of Princeton and will be available this summer. To order, send $35pp to Best of PAW, Princeton Alumni Weekly, 194 Nassau St., Princeton, NJ 08542.
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