President Samuel Ware Fisher did that in Do I hear a whirring sound coming from the College cemetery? That would be Willard Bostwick Marsh rotating at 1, RPMs in his grave at the impudence of it all: The worst declamation student in modern history inflicting himself upon an audience. We can only speculate on what that missionary, Samuel Kirkland, might say were he to return today and find that no Oneidas are matriculating here at this College that succeeded it. Or what that flinty Calvinist might say upon finding that what they are doing today is running a very successful gambling casino over in Verona, and another out in Wisconsin.
That period began Thursday, September 19, , when of us freshmen joined all the other classes in this Chapel for the opening of College though we freshmen had reported three days earlier for orientation and testing.
We shared four characteristics: age, gender, color and apprehension. In the main, we were strangers to one another. Most of us were from Upstate or our antecedents had been. Only two upperclassmen were black, though neither we nor they would have employed that British usage.
When we were here no woman graced either the student body or the faculty. As for an Asian-American or Hispanic student, there was none. For instance, in one of those talks he recalled later, quite seriously , he extolled the benefits of sleep. Now, rousing a bunch of teenagers from their beds in the early morning to lecture them on the value of, as they say, getting a few Zs, may seem like folly of a high order.
Cowley decided to put himself on a rigorous schedule of chapel every six days. Their class is three times larger. Almost half women. Fourteen blacks. At least 24 of East Asian ancestry. Thirty-two from foreign countries. They were taught by a faculty 41 percent female. No way to determine, short of a poll, how many in are Jewish, but only a handful in the Class of were. No faculty members were. Here, in all the fraternity rushing that was going on, he was kind of a nonperson.
