VOL. XLIII, NO. 9

 

 

 

ARDMORE and BRYN MAWR, PA., WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1957

© Trustees of Bryn Mawr College, 1957

PRICE 20 CENTS

 

Katherine Hepburn

In Benefit For B.M.

 

Will Come To City
Scholarship Fund

Katherine Hepburn, Director John Houseman and Alfred
Drake.

Katherine Hepburn, noted film
and stage actress and Bryn Mawr
Alumna will appear with Alfred
Drake in a production of Shakes-
edre’s Much Ado About Nothing

Philadelphia for two weeks. The
opening performance on Monday,
December 30 at 8:30 p.m. at the
Locust Street Theatre will be a
benefit performance sponsored by
the Bryn Mawr Club of Philadel-
phia for the regional scholarship
fund.

 

Miss Hepburn and Mr. Drake are
again playing the roles in which
they were seen this summer at the
Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare
Festival. The present production
of -Much Ado About Nothing is
again being presented by the Amer-
ican Shakespeare Festival.

Tickets for the benefit perform-
ance may be obtained. by writing
to Miss Anne Nelson West, 1306
Wyngate Road, Wynnewood, Pa.,
before December 23.

 

Nancy Dyer Contends With Electric Co.
Before Court For Stockholder Democracy

by Barbara Broome

Ever since the time of M. Carey
Thomas, Bryn Mawr has_ been
known for producing women who
have been innovators. Nancy Dyer
is no exception. This time, how-
ever, Nancy is not involved in a
campus problem but a proxy con-
test with the management of a
$500 million dollar industry.

Nancy, a stockholder in the Un-
ion Electric Company, in St.
Louis, represents the plantiff in a
petition filed by her father in the
United States Court of Appeals,
which contends that this company,
whose actions are being upheld by
the Securities and Exchange Com-
mission has been crushing “stock-
holder democracy.”

Two of Nancy’s main points
against Union Electric Company
are: (1) that advertising of the
company, some of the communica-
tions sent to the stockholders have
been false and (2) that Union’s
proxy ballots are ‘restrictive’ ones.

On the first point, she contends
that Union has sent its stockhold-
ers false and deceptive material.
The SEC, however, declined to pass
this but it did allow Union to
exclude from the proxy ballot pro-
posed By-Law (which would ban
‘false advertising and false com-
munications to stockholders).- The
Union Electric Company says that
this is a matter for the manage-
ment and the SEC has sustained it.
On the other hand, _—" —

 

who is a lawyer, says that under
Missouri law this is a question for
the stockholder to decide.

Last March the SEC backed the
management of this company up
on Nancy’s second point, that of
the “restrictive” ballot. The SEC
said that it was all right for the
company to have a provision in
its proxy ballots which state that
unless the stockholder votes for
or against a particular issue, the
proxy agents appointed \by the man-
agement could vote as they chose
on the proposal.

The plaintiff contends in her
petition to the U. S. Court of
Appeals that such provisions make
Union’s proxies ‘bestrictive” prox-
ies and in such a way, managment
can put into effect anything it
likes, bigger salaries, bigger pen-
sion plans, etc.-This question_is_an
important one because a great
many corporations use similar prox-
ies and they will have to make a
large number of changes if her
By-Law is put into effect.

(Other articles discussing fur-
ther developments in the case will
be included in future issues of
The News.) ‘

 

Frank Quinn, professor of
English at Haverford, will
speak at the next Arts Forum,
on Wednesday, January 8 at
7:15 in the Common Room. His
topic will be James -Joyce’s
Ulysses.

 

 

 

 

Shorter Summers,
Revised Schedule,
Proposed to B. M.

Marshall Plan Aims At
More Effective Year

by Miriam Beames

 

“Is the Bryn Mawr year, since
it is extremely short, overly in-
tensive in quality and _ overly
crowded in quantity ?” “Is it waste-
ful {to have Christmas vacation
make the two weeks after it a
lump of teaching and cramming,

, |when the students are tired?” —

In. wrestling with these and
other “earth-bound, practical diffi-
culties” in the present calendar,

-|Mrs. Dorothy Marshall, Dean of the

College, has tried to work out a
new schedule which would be “fea-
sible or appealing” to students and
faculty.

The ‘Marshall Plan,’ in its pres-
ent tentative state, calls for an

facademic year beginning one week

earlier than at present, with the
first semester ending before Christ-
mas vacation, which would be
lengthened to three weeks of a
month. The second semester would
end before a. two-week spring va-
cation, coming late in the. year;
and the remaining several weeks
could be used for further teaching,
a review of the year’s work, special!
projects, or assigned extra reading,
with the year ending about a week
later than usual.

The advantages of having long
vacations without work and papers
due, of liminating the ‘cram ses-
sion’ after Christmas, and of
bringing the Bryn Mawr girl back
to college at the same time as her
friends at home are obvious. But
there are also many. complications
—the student who wéuld like to
continue a lucrative summer job
as long as possible, the faculty
member who needs a long summer
for research and travel after the
heavy teaching and committee load
of the school year, And there are
the practical and financial consid-
erations involved in keeping the
halls open for a longer period, as
well as the problem of trying to
coordinate Bryn Mawr’s academic
year with Haverford’s.

The present Yale schedule, which.
has been operating for two years,
comes nearest the ‘Marshal Plan’
in timing, but Mrs. Marshall has
not yet received a report on its
effectiveness. Since it has not been
officially presented to any group,
the ‘Marshall Plan’s’ status at the
moment is uncertain; in any case,
it cannot go into effect until two
years from now.

Siepmann Deplores
Present Teaching

“Many of today’s teachers are
unqualified to teach,” said Charles
Siepmann,.Professor_of Education
at New York University, speak-
ing on “The Future of Educational
TV” ‘on December 12. ~ |

Mr. Siepmann outlined the pre-
sent. decadence of the educational
system and the growing crisis due
to an overwhelming shortage of
teachers and the enlarging popu-
lation in schools and colleges which
will grow worse before it grows
better.

Many students who are entering
the profession now are looking for
security, and many girls are look-
ing for husbands, This does not
make a good teacher, he added
The function of the teacher is to

Se eentieennieabisiennedeie

Camp Discussed

Three important_motions were
passed by Legislature last Thurs-
day evening. It was decided to
turn the second floor of Goodhart
into a student center. The present

Praise Of A Critic
Freely Given Godot

by ‘Betsy Levering

“You’re sure you saw me, you
won’t come and tell me tomorrow
that you ‘never saw me!” shouts
Viadimir in Samuel  Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot. Had he ‘been
addressing the audience they might
have answered that that was one
of the few things about which they
could be sure. That, and the fact
that Kenneth Geist’s highly pro-
fessional production of Beckett’s
tragicomedy on yee sata 14 de-
lighted them.

Kenneth Geist, divesting Godot
as an honors project, was able to
skim the cream from the _ local
theatrical crock. Moreover, he ap-
pears to have insisted on perfect-
ion in every aspect of the perform-
ance: the play came across with
the skill, polish and ease that are
only accomplished with careful at-
tention to detail, timing, and in-
tegration of all the functions, tech-
nical and dramatic, that makes a
performance out of a jumble of
rehearsals.

As for individual performances:
Kenneth Woodroofe, as Estragon
(Gogo), played his part with a
chest - expanding, belly - hugging
humor that was a cross between
an Englishman drawing himself to
his full height and Saint Nick.
Master of. the straight line, Mr.
Woodroofe was able to underscore
with: tone the lines the audience
Should not miss.

Robert Butman’s Vladimir (Didi)
was a chap tottering between the
comic and tragic, an Emmett Kelly,

Continued on Page 2, Col.’ 5

 

Student Center, USE, Summer

by Leaislature

Rumpus Room and soda fountain
will be refurnished and redocorated
under the supervision of a New
York architect, and a door will be
constructed between the Undergrad
room and the rumpus room. The
college will provide whatever funds
are needed in addition to the $2500
given by~the student body from
the surplus in Common Treasury.
{This appropriation will leave
$1,000 surplus.) The new Student
Center will be under the manage-
‘ment of Undergrad.

USF Fund |

The second item of business in-
volved the procedure followed in
determining United Service Fund
appropriations. On the basis of the
apparent'apathy of Legislature- at
the USF meeting last month, it
was moved to let a joint Alliance-
League Board hear the applica-
tions of the Various organizations
and to consider the appropriations
instead of bringing the matter be-
fore the legislature. Students,
however, will still be free to deter-
mine the specific amounts they
wish to allot to the individual or-
ganizations.

Legislature also decided to allow.
League to conduct a drive for funds
for Summer Camp in the spring,
provided it had the personnel to
run the camp. Last year only one
Bryn Mawr girl served as counsel-
or. This year students must make
definite committments.

 

The News is pleased to an-
nounce the following new elect-
ions to its editorial board for
the term beginning in February:

Editor-in-Chief
Eleanor Winsor ’59
Copy Editor
Gretchen Jessup ’58
Managing Editor
Janet Wolf ’59
Member-at-Large
Betsy Levering ’61

 

 

 

 

 

Bryn

by Martha Bridge and
Donna Cochrane

The Bryn Mawr delegation to the
‘United States Military Academy’s
Ninth Annual Student Conference
on United States Affairs (SCUSA)
arrived at West Point on December
4 after twelve hours of fighting
blinding snow, ably assisted by
ten, Annapolis “Middies,” two Johns
Hopkins “civvies,” two ladies from
Wellesley, and one cadet “drag.”
We drifted into this oddly assorted
group due to the failure of public
transportation and, linking our fate
with theirs, weathered the heights
above-the-Hudson-in a requisition-
ed army: bus.

Safely arrived at West Point, we
spent the next thirty-dix hours
working on the problems of Nation-
al security policy, the theme of the
conference. The one hundred and
sixty students from colleges on the
East Coast were divided into nine
roundtables, each of which discussed
U. S. policy in a certain area of
the world . Donna was a member
of the East Asia roundtable and
was asked to present her group’s
report to the final plenary session.
Martha worked on the Middle East
roundtable and concentrated on
writing economic policy for that

 

Sane ae ee's Ce

 

area. — sessions

Mawr Delegates To SCUSA

(Discuss Security Policy Conferencé

were the most substantial (about
eight hours a day) and valuable
aspect of our experience at the
conference.

Evening meetings featured talks
by well-known figures in the field
of foreign affairs. Thursday
night’s program was a panel dis-
cussion on “the formulation of
foreign policy.” Dr. R. R. Bowie
of the Center for International
Affairs, Harvard University, Sen-
ator Jacob K. Javits of New York,
and Mr. Arthur T. Hadley of the
New York Herald Tribune, gave
their views on the respective roles
of the President;-Congress and the —
press in policy decisions. Friday
night, at a sumptuous banquet in
an impressive candlelit hall, Mr.
Chester A. Bowles, spoke to con-
ference participants on the basic
aims towards which, in his opin-
ion, our foreign policy should be
directed. These speeches, more gen-
eral in outlook than our roundtable
topics, served to stimulate think-
ing with respect to specific issues
in the light of fundamental prin-
ciples, >

We felt that the major value of
the SCUSA conference lay in the
opportunity it gave us to spend
four days working with a varied
group of students. On the whole,

 Continnsd” on Page & = 3

 

 

 

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