“Undergrad Auvisury Dearden: ficult to ‘The College VOL. XLIII, NO. 4 ARDMORE and BRYN MAWR, PA., WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1957 © Trustees of Bryn Mawr College, 1957 PRICE 20: CENTS Traditions Slated For College Poll The Undergraduate Association will take a survey next week to find out the extent of support that traditions have, Dodie Stimpson, Undergraduate president, announc- ed Monday. The, survey will concern four major traditions — Parade Night, Lantern Night, Hell Week, and Mayday. The questionnaire will ask if students are in favor of continu- ing each tradition, of dropping the tradition, or of continuing it with changes. If the student favors altering a tradition, she will be asked to note what changes she thinks desirable. Since they have not participated in Hell Week or Mayday, freshmen are being excluded from the survey. Questionnaires will be placed in the boxes of upperclassmen by bers. Undergrad is taking the survey both in view of recent discussions about traditions and because of the feeling that events which de- mand student time, energy, and money should often be reassessed to determine the degree of their Bald Primadonna To Be Presented As the clock strikes seventeen, at eight-thirty o’clock sharp, on November eighth and ninth (simul- taneously), the Skinner Workshop curtain will rise on the first act of a one-act anti-play, The Bald Primadonna. Mr. and Mrs. Martin (Dave Morgan and Mary Lou Cohen) were invited for dinner, but as they were late, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Jon Korper and Jinty Myles) ate with-| 4 “| out them, Meanwhile Mr. and Mrs. Martin lose each other and find each other again, and Mary, the maid (Helene Valabregue) solves a mystery. The Martins and the Smiths then engage in a half-hour of polite after-dinner conversation which is interrupted by the arrival of the Fire Chief (Charlie Knight) | who proceeds to entertain them further. ~ I£.vougdon’t understand the plot from the above, don’t worry. The author, Eugene Ionesco, didn’t really intend that there should be one, Director Harvey Phillips from Haverford has, however, imparted a sense of the “meaning” of the play to the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Cast, and the dialogue is Very support. amusing. Endless Mycenean Supply Lists Deciphered from Linear B Tablets ? Dri RB “ Carpenter, introducing his secdnd—lecture on Mycenean Greek: Content,\ happily informed his audience tht since they had been presented with the “Ventris- loquist key” at the first lecture, they could‘spend the evening in a relaxed reading of Linear B. Unfortunately, the task of read- ing two Linear B tablets did not seem so simple to the audience, even when the phonetic sounds for the syllables had been supplied, and. Dr. Carpenter was forced to confess that certain peculiarities of Mycenean Greek made it very dif- transform into good Homeric or classical Greek. The first problem with Linear B is that it is open syllabic, and that it has no way of expressing a syl- lable which might, in the spoken language, end in a consonant. Thus, extra consonants in the middle and at the end of words are omitted and must be supplied by the deciph- erer if he wishes to extract any meaning from the tablets. For in- stance, in the first tablet shown, the word written po-me must be altered to pomen before it can be recognized as the word for shep- herd. As Dr. Carpenter sadly re- marked, the system must be con- sidered as “extremely inefficient, and phonetically speaking, entirely inadequate for recording Greek.” Many Old Difficulties But scholars are used to such problems, for ancient Egyptian has no method of noting vowel sounds. Linear B, however, is even worse— the same+sign-is used to-express ‘sounds later carefully different- iated, such as g, k, and kh; 1 and r. Often it is possible to tell a word’s meaning only by intuitive recogni- tion, since the combination of the two difficulties (the lack of conson; ants and the common signs for dif- ferent sounds) makes innumerable reading possible. Boy and sheep- skin, sword and devil are identical. And modern scholarship can never . fill in all the gaps left by the Mycenean scribes, no matter how many tablets are discovered and deciphered. After this introduction, the audi- ence was able to follow Dr. Car- penter in his reading of the trans- literated table KE-RO-WO_ po-me a-si-ja-ti-ja o-pi ta-ra-ma-o qe-to- r0-po-pi 0-ro-me-no and understand that. basically Kerowos the shep- herd was looking after some quad- rupeds. “Was it worth the effort?” asked Dr. Carpenter. It is sad that all of the nearly four thousand tablets so far dis- covered at Pylos, Knossos and. My- cenae are inventories; although some -pots found at Thebes and Tiryns are inscribed with Linear B characters, they can’t as yet be well understood. Moreover, there is little likelihood that any other type of document has been preserved, and only the most devoted schélars can be excited about lists of pigs, supplies, and chariot equipment, though sometimes the names (Nimble, Quick Mouth with vari- ant reading of Gullet, Winefare for an ox) are amusing. The inven- tory is preserved, but the story is lost; we have the properties, bu not the play. But, although these lists may be disappointing, it is possible to draw inferences from them. For instance, there are many lists of men’s names and wheels belonging to them,’ but no mention of the carts which the wheels must have been attached to or the horses to pull them. Were wheels a_ separate item, more important than the chassis or motive power? At first Continued on Page 5, Col. 5 Bodde to Lecture On Confucianism Professor Derk Bodde will de- liver the Class of 1902 lecture on Monday, November 4, at 8:30 p.m. in Goodhart Hall. The title of the lecture is “Confucianism and Modern China.” Dr. Bodde is_ Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Included in the numerous books he has written are: Chinese Ideas in the West, Peking Diary, A Year of Revolution and Tolstoy and China. an, anenen ry At OINOPA PEGEN! Alumnae To See Biology Building Cornerstone Laid On Saturday afternoon, Novem- ber 2nd, President McBride will lay the Cornerstone for the new Biology Building. The ceremony, planned as part of the program for Alumnae Weekend, will take place at two o’clock immediately follow- #1/ing’ the Alumnae Luncheon. Mem- Lantern Night: NEWS photographer Holly Miller's time exposure shot captures pattern of Bryn Mawr’s tradition Friday. Britain's Priiip Greeis-C. 5. Scientists. At Physics Institute; Michels Present by Rita Rubinstein Dr.“ Walter C. Michels, chairman of the Department of Physics, at- tended the dedication ceremonies of the American Institute of Physics in New York on Monday, October 21. This afforded him the opportun- ity of paying his respects to ninety other prominent scientists and edu- cators as well as to Prince Philip of Great Britain. The Prince, known to be actively and sincerely interested in science, had been invited to observe the Institute’s dedication when it was learned that the date of his New York visit coincided. The cere- monies had a three-fold signific- ance: the Institute’s new head- quarters at 335 West Forty-fifth Street were to be dedicated; a Board Room, in memory of Karl Taylor Compton, one of the orig- inators of the organization, was to be dedicated; and the first Karl Taylor Compton Gold Medal was to be awarded to Dr. George B. Pegram, vice-president Emeritus of Columbia University, for his ex- Ne College Choruses, Pianist in Concert Friday and Saturday at the Aca- demy of Music in Philadelphia, the combined choruses of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore will give a concert with the Philadel- phia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy. Mme. Agi Jambor will be fea- tured on the program, playing two Bach concertos. Also included will be the Bach Cantata No. 50, “Ric- erare”,, and some Goldberg varia- tions. : After working with their respect ive conductors, the choruses com- bined for rehearsals under the direction of William Smith, Assist- ant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and later Eugene Or- mandy. “... an exciting exper- ience!” says Eloise Clymer, Pres- ident»of the Bryn Mawr Chorus. . A few tickets can still be obtain- ed for the Friday performance by calling or writing the Academy of Music box office. The concert will be at 2:00 on Friday, and at 8:30 on Saturday. tended service to the science and to the American Institute. ‘Dr. Frederick Seitz, (married to a former graduate student here) chairman of the Institute’s govern- ing board, read the citation; the Prince presented the medal and conveyed the “fraternal greetings” of all scientists in the British Commonwealth to the-scientists of America. Dr. Michels commented that Prince Philip remained to shake hands and speak briefly with each of the ninety scientists present, thereby extending the 5:30-6:02 time allotment at the Institute by about 20 minutes, This was. of no serious consequence since the en-| croachment affected only a sched- uled rest period. At 6:22 the Prince left with his party; his comptroller, his secretary and the Chief In- spector of Scotland Yard. According to Dr. Michels, “The Prince appeared to be a highly in- telligent, charming individual who bers of the College are ,invited to attend. Construction has proceeded apace Py) on the three-story structure, as }4| Visitors to Park Hall will note, 1] since the ground-breaking on August Ist. The building, which will be the second in Bryn Mawr’s proposed Science Center, is expect- ed to be ready for use by August 1958. Martin, Stewart and Noble, the firm which designed Park- Hall, are the architects. -~-“Cornerstones. 1957” is the theme of Alumnae Weekend, with mem- bers of the Faculty of the Dept- ments of History of Art and of Biology speaking at the Saturday meetings. Among the items to be sealed in a metal box within the cornerstone are: reprints of some of the works by early members of the Biology Department (Edmund B. Wilson, Thomas H. Morgan, Franz Schra- der, N. M. Stevens, Jacques Loeb, and D. H. Tennent); a pair of sand dollars collected by Mr. Wilson in 1887; the October 23, 1957. issue of The College News; the summer 1957 Alumnae Bulletin; current catalogues of the college and the graduate school; this year’s: Alum- nae weekend program. All for pos- terity. on The News is pleased to an- nounce the addition of the fol- lowing new members to its editorial staff: Frederica Koller ’61 Gail Lasdon ’61 Betsy Levering ’61 Lynne Levick ’60 Judy Stulberg ’61 Alex van Wessem ’61 jis taking his job very seriously.” Janet Wolf ’59 Quarantine at Mount Holyoke and Princeton, Lehigh closed, fifty per cent absences at Radnor High School—in view of these unusual waves of illness, Bryn Mawr is very lucky, for so far nowhere near the twenty per cent constituting an epidemic has been stricken. The upper respiratory disease now making the rounds of the col- lege is probably Asiatic flu, al- though the diagnosis will not be certain until the throat washings and blood samples return from the Virus Diagnostic Lab of Philadel- phia in about two weeks. What- ever it is, the illness seems very like most other varieties of flu with only its sudden onset and many temperature fluctuations to distinguish it. In order to cope with the situa- tion, the Infirmary (under the. sup- ervision of Dr. Elizabeth Humeston assisted by Miss Muriel Farr) has taken over the first floor of East House, added five beds to the In- firmary’s twenty, and called in one registered nurse and three trained practical nurses to help out the ‘regular staff. Most of last week the thirty-eight beds were filled, and, although at the time of writ- ing the number of Infirmary pa- tients was tae will be ‘Upper Respiratory Disease’ Challenges Bryn Mawr; Strength Is Sub Epidemic added if the need increases. The Infirmary staff would like’to emphasize that they can and will take care of all cases, and urge that students enter as soon as they feel ill; for the flu itself is not dangerous, but possibly secondary infection (pneumonia) may be, and can best be counteracted by early doses of antibiotics, Also, obvious- ly, there is danger of contagion if sick students remain in the halls. The treatment consists in daily examination by the doctor, plenti- ful doses of pills, and a lot of rest After their temperature has been - normal for. twenty-four — hours patients are discharged to a two day convalescence in their rooms. Asiatic flu vaccine, given to all food handlers, the medica] staff key personnel, and freshmen. before classes started, is probably respon- sible for the mildness of Bryn Mawr’s case of AF. The vaccine which takes ten to fourteen days for maximum protection, has since been made available to all the col- lege family (students, faculty, staff), and boosters of a polyvalent strain to immunize against a pos- sible second epidemic will be offer- ed when the present illness sub-, sides. ; ronan ORCS