Wednesday, October 22, 1958

THE

«

COLLEGE

NEWS

Page Three

 

Aide Discusses
Summer’s Work
For Mentally Ill

by Margaret Williams

This summer I had the opportun-
ity to work as-a volunteer.in a
private mental institution, the But-
ler Health Center in Providence,
Rhode Island. There were other
college students also working
there, one of whom had come up
from Pennsylvania to spend the
entire summer, living and working
with the patients.

I had always been a bit appre-
hensive about working in a mental
hospital. Would there be violent
patients who, if-you won in a
game of tennis with them, would
hit you over the head with the
racquet? Would there be a feel-
ing of embarrassment between
the patients and me because they
- were different, and would they feel
ashamed for a normal person to
see them in their condition and
might they thus withdraw even
more? Would I be able to make
Sany contact with them, to make
real friends among them? I want-
ed to find out, and so I became a
volunteer.

No Fear or Embarrassment

In the month during which I was
at Butler nearly every day from
nine to four, my questions were
answered, The patients who play-
ed tennis usually won all the time
and were quite pleasant about it.
I encountered no fear or embar-
rassment because I learned :that
a volunteer must not act afraid or
constrained; she must be as friend-
ly and outgoing as. possible in or-
der that the patients will accept
and like her, Thus she can accom-
plish her work—t6 make the men-
tally ill feel at ease in the presence
of normal people.

My duties were most enjoyable.
I went on picnics with the patients,
swam with them, played tennis,
badminton, ping-pong, and double
solitaire. In the Occupational
Therapy departmént I helped them
with their work, knitting, sewing,
weaving, and cooking. I also took
inventories of supplies and straight-
ened out drawers full of crochet
hooks. We sang, played the piano
and drew pictures together. In fact,
_ I did just about everything from
typing in the office to decorating
a patient’s birthday cake, and
every moment was fun, To ob-
,, Serve ill people in the process of
” getting well is far from  aapeu
ing.. -

A patient whe is able to sal
about and do things is benefited,
I think, merely by the sight of a
new face and by a new enthusiasm.
Hither calls his attention to some-
thing besides himself and the sur-
roundings he has become used to
and perhaps tired of. His after-
noon is brightened considerably if
he can play tennis with a young
volunteer.

An old lady appreciates a sym-
pathetic listener; the nurses are
often too busy. Above all, your
work makes the patients feel that
someone cares about them enough
.-- to come and help them without
thanks or pay. The volunteer him-
self is richer and wiser for the ex-
perience.

The Bryn Mawr League is in
contact with two nearby mental
hospitals, Embreeville and Coates-
ville. These institutions would be
glad for students to come over for

a week end or for an evening to get

.up games of chess and various
other amusements. Patients about
to be dismissed need contact with
people outside in order to feel that
they can get along with others
when they leave.

Other patients need actual care,
such as being fed and helped with
things a they cannot do for
themselvés: Whatever needs you
can fill will help these people a
great deal and leave you with the
knowledge that you have done

 

something truly wo
and effort.

 

  

Brun Mawr Students of "20's Considered Themselves
“Apart from... Spectacular Features of... ‘Balluhoo

It is my hypothesis that
throughout the period that fol-
lowed the First World War, Bryn
Mawr preserved its central ideal
intact and therefore. maintained a
eulture often in opposition to the
rest of society. This does not mean
that the Bryn Mawr student was
an atypical member of hér gener-
ation, but only that there was an
almost’ complete dichotomy be-
tween her college life and her
private social life, and that when
she was immersed in her college
activities, she was under the influ-
ence of an all-important and im-
mutable ideal: the primary value
of “things of the mind.” While the
Bryn Mawr girl took an active
part in the intellectual revolt of
the time, she never questioned the
value of her education, and as a
part of a community of dedicated
scholars she found a secure cen-
tral touchstone that enabled her
to keep her perspective and avoid
the confusion and uncertainty so
prevalent in society at large.

Culture Within a Culture

When I say that Bryn Mawr
maintained a “culture within a
culture,” I do not mean that the
college remained static, while the
world changed dround it. I mean,
first of all, that during any period
the members of a small and in-
tensely dedicated community are
apt to be insulated from the “out-
side world,” and their particular
set of values is often in opposi-
tion to those subscribed to by the
“man in the street.” I can only
show the. effect of the 1920’s upon
a college community; the people
I will talk about are intellectuals
and only representative of what
was happening to people of a simi-
lar nature under similar environ-
mental conditions. They were not
immune to the spirit of the times,
but they stood apart from, and
often criticized, those Americans
who fostered and enjoyed the more
spectacular features of thé “Bally-
hoo Years.”

That the girls considered them-
selves to be set apart from the
outside world ‘is indicated by the
several editorials concerned with
the danger of almost completay
withdrawing behind the “gray
walls of Academia and the female-
crowded cloister.” (College News,
1925.) On the other hand, the 1924
Class Book rejoiced in the follow-
ing manner:

Oh, what joy

To see a sanctuary

For our country’s youth,

A habitation sober and demure

For ruminating creatures.

Chateau Universitaire et
Romantique
That people outside the college
thought of Bryn Mawr as some-
thing “different” is illustrated by
M. Chevrillon’s remark that, “A
Bryn Mawr nous pouviens nous
croire dans le chateau universi-
taire et romantique de la Princesse
de Tennyson (College News, 1923);
or by the numerous charges that
the college represented a “hotbed
of radicalism.” One of Mrs. Nahm’s
classmates recently declared that
she would never send her daughter

to Bryn Mawr for the simple rea-

son that she now realized that her
years there were spent in a “closed
universe.”
Idealism Counters Disillusionment
But in speaking of a Bryn
Mawr culture I mean more than
the inevitable and natural isolation
of an intellectual community; for
although the Bryn Mawr girl fur-
nishes a good example of the criti-
eal and “debunking” attitude of
those engaged in the current “Re-
volt of the Highbrows,” I found
one very. important _ difference
which distinguished her’ from
other intellectuals of the time. Ac-
cording to Frederick Lewis Allen,
(Only Yesterday, 1931) the
keynote of the intellectual re-

 

and Gertrude ghee ge to be

“fix. all-the wires.
| continued gaily, “we are heard all

As everyone knows “there is
nothing new under the sun.” We
of the fifties, a decade yet lack-
ing an epithet are often reminded
of this,especially when we are. the
subject. of unfavorable compari-
son with our predecessors in the
earlier part of the century, both
on and away from this campus.
We are vaguely shadowed by the
past, vaguely reminded that our
spirit is-not what it might be—
and we seldom seem to have much

to answer save that nothing ever |

happens to stir us up.

For purposes of comparison (as
there are alwas those who will
compare) or mere piqued curi-
osity as to the nature of our
predecessors, or better still, for
a sense of the past as a source of
our particular development, and
the character of the atmosphere
we inhabit, THE News publishes
this article as the first in a series.
This is the introduction to a
study, made by Carolyn kern ’59
(history department) for a socio-
logical research project. Miss Kern
studied at Bryn Mawr in the
1920’s, the mores and ideas of
the student here in that lively
age, and the place held by the
college in relation to a constantly
changing social atmosphere. Much
of her material is derived from
interviews with students who
were here in the: period, or from
college publications.

 

found in the word “disillusion-
ment” and in the phrase “the bilge
of idealism.” These people were
concerned with tearing down the

old order, with little thought and
less optimism as to how it could
be rebuilt. The Bryn Mawr girl,
however, never ceased to evince a
seemingly dauntless idealism, an
idealism which bordered on smug-
ness. Three of the people I talked
to remarked that the thing they
most remember is “How incredi-
bly self-confident we were! We
thought we could and would make
the world over.” Lippmann noted
that “What most distinguishes
the generation who have ap-
proached maturity since the de-
bacle of idealism at the end of the
War is not their rebellion against
the religion and moral code of

their parents, but their disillusion-
ment with their own rebellion.”
(In A Preface to Morals, 1929). I
found no evidence that the Bryn
Mawr girl did not have boundless
faith in the efficacy of her rebel-

lion, perhaps because, as mentioned
earliér, her central tenet was
based on something universally
recognized as solid: the possibility
of progress through enlightened
education. —

In attempting to resojve the
question of what enabled the Bryn
Mawrter to preserve her idealism
intact throughout the post-war dis-
illusionment, I believe that I
found the answer in the person
of M. Carey Thomas, president
during the immediate post-war
years. She was a splendid idealist
and a magnetic personality, fully
capable of shaping the young
minds at her disposal. The sheer
force of her own personal idealism
provided a balancing factor to the
“debacle of idealism” experienced
by the “Lost Generation.” Every
morning at chapel she talked to
the girls about the possibility of
remaking the world through social
reform and the new opportunity
and obligation for women to take
part in.this. “Train yourselves for
the highest possible service. Be-
come scholars, teachers ... re-
search “workers, physicians, law-
yers . . stateswomen, wise re-
formers. We need leaders desper-
ately.” (President Thomas, ‘ quoted
in The College News, 1920:) She
liked to quote Anna Howard Shaw
as saying, “Men know best about
some things, but men and women
together know all there is to know
about everything in the world.”
Miss Woodwofth remembers, “You
could always tell a Bryn Mawrter
from an. _outsider—we were so
much more jaunty. and’ self-confi-
dent. Miss Thomas taught us that
we could get anything that we
wanted.” THe Sun Also Rises did
not fall on ready and fertile
ground within M. Carey Thomas’s
domain. Her work at the begin-
ning of the decade gave a peculiar
flavor to the: Bryn - Mawr: of the
1920’s, an idealistic flavor which
distinguished her revolutionary
intellectuals from __ intellectuals
elsewhere.

 

To Be Continued.

 

WBMC Presents “Mostly Music,’’
Can Now Be Heard Campus-Wide

by E. Anne Eberle

“Just tell everyone that we’re
certainly back in business and to
LISTEN!” exclaimed Dee Wheel-
wright, Publicity Chairman of
WBMC, the college radio station.
“Reception? Yes, we even have
that this year. You see, the sta-
tion hasn’t made a go of it in the
last few years, well, mostly because
the wires were all corroded out—
rotten,” she continued, “but this
year Undergrad gave us $75 and
Haverford gave us some money—
they have fellows working on
the shows as technicians, too, you
know—so we had enough money to
And now,” she

over the campus, not just in three
rooms of Pem East and Denbigh,
or whatever it was last year.”

The idea of such mass commun-
ication inspired Dee to more com-
ments on. the program, “Yes,
we’re on from 7:00-10:00, Monday
through Thursday evenings. In
the morning? No, no ‘misery
shows’ at the crack of dawn this
year. But we have everything
else. Mostly music programs right
now—in fact, all music—but we're
going to expand our broadcasting
time as we go on, so we'll have
other “kinds. For instance, we

 

with other things if it works out.

“But all kinds of music—jazz,
mood music, folk songs, show tunes
to study by if they can stand it,
but don’t put that in. And class-
ical—Nahma Sandrow—do you
know her?—she has a fabulous
classical program on Monday
nights, 7:00-8:00; it’s her com-
mentary that really makes it—she
tells about the music in plain,
human language.

“And on Tuesdays from. 8:30-
9:00 Roo Stainton and Alice Tur-
ner have a show called ‘The Rock
and: Roll Queens of Bryn Mawr.’
Oh—and the most wonderful thing
—for the people with pop music
shows, the record shop here in
Bryn Mawr will loan us records
and exchange them all the time for
current ones. Isn’t that great?”

Dee’s enthusiasm was too strong
to. pause for.concurrence, so she
flew on with her gush of informa-
tion. ..“Let’s. see, mostly music, Oh
—and Sue Freiman does the news
—really good—she gets the stuff
out of the New York Times and
writes up her own reports. Actu-
ally, we have about 35 announcers
and as many technicians; most of
them do one show a week.” |

“And don’t forget Dee’s wonder-
ful folk music shows,” “said Roo
Stainton, who had dropped in out

now “A, live one _called|

Exotic Morocco
Locus Of Travels
Of BMC Junior

by R. Rubinstein

It is indeed difficult to organize
kaleidoscopic impressions of a
three-day visit in Morocco—one
conjures up memories of a dizzy-
ing succession of sights, smells,
feelings—impressions that seem to
defy rational, systematic treat-
ment. What comes to mind are
the haunch-squatters, the ‘fati-
mas” (women) in their “djella-
bahs” (veiled garb) the camels,
the straw-mud huts. Or one may
recall one bewildering) moment in
the “medina” (marketplace) when

and haggling shoppers seemed to
suddenly close in on the unsuspect-
ing visitor. The anxious and curi-
ous outsider could “look and dis-
cover and only later question and
attempt to understand.

Nouasseur is one of the five
American Air and Naval Bases
built in Morocco during the past
six years. My brother-in-law is one
of the 7000 men stationed at Nou-
asseur, 20 miles out of Casablanca.
Thus, our excuse for a summer of
travel—a family reunion in Mo-
rocco after he had completed half
of his tour of duty.

From Madrid to Casablanca
None of us in our intimate and

quite forget that drive from
Madrid to Casablanca. Finally,
after a series of delays—some
caused by Franco’s “unfinished’’
highway system, and another, by
a Fiesta, and a session with “los
toros” in Algeciras — we were
crossing the Strait of Gibraltar on
a midnight ferry. The palm-lined
waterfront in Ceuta, Spain’s only
remaining protectorate in Morocco,
was already darkened as we found
our way to the nearest hotel. The
choice was limited in that deserted
city during those early morning
hours; whether all Ceutan plumb-
ing was out of commission or
whether that was a permanent
feature of the Hotel Terminus, we
shall never know.

Six a.m. and we were on the
road again—the donkeys jogging
along to market, , saddled down
with produce, the squatting. and
wizened “Mohammeds” (any adult
male) along the side, the rickety
buses of laborers all contributed
to the panorama. The morning
mist was rising over the brown-
toned countryside as we passed
through -the last Spanish Duana
and entered the independent state
of Morocco. Tetuan, Larache, Al-
cazarquivir—everywhere were the
same fields, farmhands and yes,
camels. In the villages one could
see the omnipresent khaki of the
new Moroccan bureaucracy against
the backdrop of the old—the stalls
of the local barbers, blood-letters
and craftsmen. Then on to Port
Lyautey. The name, in honor of
that famous French Governor
General, has now reverted to the
original, Kenitra, signifying the
thorough-going attempt to remove
all vestiges of imperialism.
Modernity With 12th Century
Rabat, the capital, was next.
Ignoring its majestic, modern
white facade, one realized that its
Kasbah Oudaya and Hassan Tower
dates back to the XII century
when it was’founded by the Almo-
had Caliphs. Our destination, the
great port of Casablanca, is
equally a European, as it is a
Moroccan city. Similarly, one is
struck by the modernity of its
architecture, the skyscrapers, the
deluxe hotels, the “El Mansour”
and the “Marhaba.” There are the
elegantly dressed Europeans, the
white stucco villas, the broad ave-
nues so lushly lined with flowers
and palms. In the residential dis-
tricts like that of Ain Diab one

diseased children, nursing mothers, —

cramped travelling party will ever™

could easily forget one’s geograph- .

ical location if not for the occa-
sional appearance of a_ veiled

 

‘Delia’s Gone’ from 8:00-8:30 on

 

-broadcast Junior Show live.on Fri-|.
day night, and we hope to do that

fatima, pearing perhaps a child