4p, one-sided pages, 4 horizontal folds, staple in top left corner. Mimeograph on matte off white paper. Announces that the first three hundred promotional sheets of the 1945 Summer Institute has arrived and will be mailed soon Elena Gomez arrived from NYC and has began her work as secretary for the Summer Institutes The faculty and student officer had met with 4 people of the Advisory Coincil: Walter Gropiusl, John E Burchard, Herbert W Sanders, and Robert R Williams. Visitors last week: The four people from the College's Advisory Council (see notes) Ann and Fred Mangold Henry Hill and Ian Barber Ted Marburg and Lee Shames.
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE
Community Bulletin Bulletin 29
College Year 12 Monday, May 7, 1945
CALENDAR:
There will be a Community Meeting in the Dining Hall this evening at 7:30 o’clock. Among the speakers will be Herbert Miller and Fred Schwarz.
Captain Joseph W Jailer, biologist and physician, will give an informal lecture this evening at 8:30 o’clock in the Faculty Room on “The Cell.”
The Board of Fellows will not meet on Wednesday but later in the week, perhaps on Friday afternoon.
The Faculty and Student Officers will meet on Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 o’clock in the Faculty Room.
Dr Charles W Harris will address the College Community on “Maya Civilization in Yucatan” on Wednesday evening at 8:15 o’clock in the College Dining Hall. Dr Harris was for seven years University Pastor at the University of Indiana. From 1927 to 1944 he was Chaplain and Professor of Religion at Lafayette College. He is the author of The Hebrew Heritage and has done his major work in Old Testament literature, the history of art and archeology.
There will be a reading of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” in Bob Wunsch’s study on Wednesday evening, beginning at 9:30 o’clock.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The first three hundred copies of the 1945 Summer Music Institute came from the press today. They will go out immediately in the mail. Several thousand more copies will go out from the College later in the week.
The 1945 Summer Art Institute announcements will come from the press the end of the week.
Elena Gomez, the new College secretary, arrived at Lake Eden from New York City on Thursday, May 3, and began immediately her work as office secretary for the Art and Music Institutes. Miss Gomez attended City College of New York and the New School for Social Research, and, until recently, was employed as private secretary to the president of Omni Products Corporation, a New York export firm.
The Faculty and the Student Officers of the College met in the Faculty Room in the Studies Building on Saturday evening with the four visiting members of the Advisory Council: John E Burchard, Director of the Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr Walter Gropius, Chairman of the School of Architecture at Harvard University; Herbert W Sanders, Executive Secretary of the Blue Ridge Association; and Robert R Williams, Asheville attorney. Ted Dreier, acting as chairman of the meeting, gave a brief history of Black Mountain College, listed its problems and its achievements, and told of the plans of the Faculty for the immediate future. Dr Gropius spoke of the value to the College of the drawing up of “a flexible master plan.” Mr Burchard listed possible sources of income to the College and advised the Faculty to seek funds primarily for student scholarships rather than for the College directly.
On Saturday evening Heinrich Jalowetz, Trudi Straus and Anna Schauffler gave a piano, violin and cello concert in the Dining Hall. They played Max Reger’s Sonata Opus 139 in C Minor for Violin and Piano and Mozart in G Major for Piano, Violin and Cello.
WITH FORMER STUDENTS:
New Addresses: Mrs Hope (Greer) Elderman 24 Maple Avenue Eatontown, New Jersey
BMC Community Bulletin –2- Bulletin 29
In the Mail:
PFC Henry Adams writes from France on March 21: “Since a great many of the future students of Black Mountain College will be ex-servicemen, we should begin to think over their problems. Perhaps I can best begin by telling my own experiences: In July 1943, when I was still a student at Black Mountain College, I received a letter from the Army telling all about the Army Specialized Training Program Reserve. By joining right away, it said, I could be sent to college, at Army expense, to study psychology, languages and engineering. Since I was in imminent danger of being drafted, I decided to sign up in the hope that I might get some training in psychology and languages. I signed up and was immediately hustled off to North Carolina State College, where I found no openings in psychology or languages. Everybody took basic engineering. I spent one quarter as a civilian, wearing civilian clothes, studying at Army expense under Army regimentation. When the quarter ended, I was sent to Fort Benning to take basic training, as the regulations required all men in the ASTPR over 18 to take this training. We expected to be sent back to college when we finished basic. Instead, the ASTPR was closed, and I was sent into the infantry....Now from the time I left Black Mountain College until I finished basic training, a period of six months, I was little more than a civilian in uniform. I still thought and acted very much as I had when I wore civilian clothes. When I was sent into a combat infantry, my outlook on life began to undergo a subtle transformation. The psychology of the average GI is quite different from that of the average civilian. It's hard to put your finger on those differences in a few words, but you can begin to realize them when you understand a few major adjustments we all have to make. They include regimentation, separation from home and family, separation from the opposite sex (very important), and general uncertainty about the future. I mention these things in the order of their importance and the difficulty with which one gets used to them. Regimentation is the most obvious thing about the Army, and very soon all but the die-hard non-conformists take it for granted. Separation from home and family is hard for anyone, but it’s much worse for married men with children. In the States many men have their families come live with them; but when they are overseas, naturally, that becomes impossible. Many men are worried about their wives- whether they are running around with 4-F's back home. I can say this; that nothing does more to wreck a GI’s morals than for him to suspect that his wife is taking advantage of his absence to run around with somebody else. Young, unmarried fellows who haven’t had time to get into any entangling responsibilities are lucky in having no family worries. Still, most of us who are young and have one or both parents show concern over their parents. I personally went to save my mother and father all the worry possible.....As for separation from the opposite sex, well- a lot can be said, and a lot can be left unsaid. The typical conversation of men without women is cruder, more frank, and less printable than any in mixed company. Sexual dissatisfaction is not the only characteristic of this separation. It's the company of women that the fellows miss. That's especially true over here where we cant go up to any girl and expect her to understand what we say. But like regimentation and being away from familiar people and places, separation from women is something that eventually will be accepted and taken for granted. Those three things one gets used to, but they don’t alter anyone’s outlook on life fundamentally. There is one more thing that does, however....It is the uncertainty of Army life. From one minute to the next you don’t know what’s going to happen to you. You get transferred whenever you get to a post you like. When you make plans to go to town, you catch guard duty. When you go home on furlough, you are told to report back as soon as you have had one meal. You can’t make plans, so you live for the moment. you spend your money now, because you don’t know when you’ll get a pass again. In short, in the Army you live only for the moment. You can’t make plans, so you grab every opportunity that offers itself for getting a little fun or getting out of work. You think only of yourself and of what you can do now to make things easier or more entertaining for yourself. You can't worry about anybody else because you’ve got troubles of your own in the Army; and you can’t plan for the future, because the Army always does everything without letting you know until the last minute. That situation leads toward a spendthrift, callous,
BMC Community Bulletin –3- Bulletin 29
Cynical, shortsighted point of view, which to some extent even the most generous and farsighted people adopt...Now consider all these differences I have mentioned. Imagine a person being subjected to them during his most impressionable years. Consider how completely the results to this Army environment differ from the ideals of Black Mountain College. In civilian life, and especially at Black Mountain College, the attitude of the group encourages farsighted thinking and planning, freedom of thought and action, the development of the individual personality, and a tolerant, questioning, inquisitive attitude. Army life encourages the opposite. Whenever civilians discuss the armed forces or have dealings with any servicemen, they should consider this fact...I have seventeen when I joined the ASTPR, and I expect to be twenty-one when I get out of the Army. I shall have spent my most impressionable years in an environment which is in every way the complete antithesis of BMC. If I ever come back to a place like BMC, I shall have a hard time getting adjusted. Even on my last furlough I felt quite out of place at home among civilians. And I have been in the Army a relatively short time. Consider the fellows who joined the armed forces in 1941 or 1942. Many of them want to continue their education after the war....These ex-servicemen will present a difficult problem when they come back to the schools and colleges of America. They will be older than most college boys. They will expect a great deal more independence and resent rules and regulations more. They will be free from Army regimentation and a lot of them are going to raise whoopee as a result. They'll still retain a lot of that GI psychology which I tried to describe, and they’ll probably feel, quite justifiably, that they’re misunderstood. But they’ll be quite serious-minded and mature as compared with most undergraduates. Those who come to college will have the feeling that they have lost a lot of time that they might have spent in educating themselves, so they will want to make it up fast. They'll want their education condensed into the shortest possible time. Understanding educators will realize these facts and do all they can about them... Now what do I suggest for BMC? I can speak only for myself, but I believe that the school should plan to run all the year ‘round for a period of several years after the war. Veterans should be allowed to speed up their education as much as possible without reducing standards. In their case the College can’t do too much about developing the personality. They’ll be more emotionally matured from a year in the Army than they would have been from two or three years in any college in the country, even BMC. Let me underline that statement: they’re emotionally mature; it’s their attitudes that will be different. True, they’ll all be a problem, but it is, or should be, the purpose of schools like BMC to help people become more valuable members of society. With a little foresight, a lot of understanding, and plenty of tolerance for men who may be embittered against civilians or certain groups; with discretion toward battle veterans who have gone through the soul-searing hell of combat; and with a realization of the many ‘problem’ students BMC has helped in the past to find their true potentialities, I believe you can do more to help these young soldiers over the difficult period of transition to civilian life...Here’s wishing you all the luck you need to do it! After twelve years of crisis, I think you can weather twelve more. By that time, no doubt, crisis will have become such a tradition that BMC wouldn’t be BMC unless it were one jump ahead of one hell of a lot of trouble.”
Edward North Jenks, an enlisted Navy correspondent stationed on the USS New Mexico, writes from somewhere in the Pacific: “I was drafted on December 7, 1943..was sent the following March to the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, where I became a student in the Aerography School. In July, after graduation, I was appointed instructor in aerography..In January of this year I was sent to Pearl Harbor with the first group of enlisted navy correspondents. Was assigned to USS New Mexico as a correspondent. As now writing news stories about the ship and its crew for newspapers in the States.” Before being drafter, Ed worked for a year in the newsroom of the New York Times, first on hourly news broadcasts, later on general assignments, finally as a writer of by-line articles on radio program and personalities for the Sunday radio page. In August 1942, he was appointed editor of the New York Times Index and served in this capacity until he was drafted.
BMC Community Bulletin -4- Bulletin 29
Greer Wisenman writes from Eatontown, New Jersey: “Was married in 1942. Our child, Susan Sangree, was born the following year. I served as an assistant in the Dartmouth College Library until I began my present ‘army life’, following my husband from camp to camp. I am caring for my child and studying. I expect to go to college again after the war..”
WITH FORMER MEMBERS OF THE STAFF:
In the Mail:
Dr Anna Moellenhoff writes from Chicago: “The excerpts from the student-soldiers' letters in the Bulletin are highly interesting and, I must say, impressive. Some of them are useful to us civilians in helping us in our attitude toward the returning soldiers....The Moellenhoff family is all right. Fritz is too busy..Esther has gotten her BS degree from the University of Chicago and is now waiting for her citizenship papers that will enable her to go to California for further studies and a job. Andrea is happy..I am still much at home, becoming gradually quite a good cook. I am doing a lot of reading, something I have longed for years to have time for..For our summer vacation, in August, we have chosen Provincetown on Cape Cod..”
First Lieutenant Bedford Thurman writes from the Philippines: “Another assignment now. Another good outfit. I like my work; I want us to win; I don’t like being so far from home.....This is my third Philippine island.”
COMMUNITY WORK:
(For week ending May 5)
Fire wood hauling and scraping the bottom of the College coal storage yard kept the truck crew busy all week supplying the Community- to heat the boilers during the recent unseasonably cold weather.
Several days of rain interfered with the Service Building reconstruction which nevertheless by week end had reached the stage in which the framework was complete, ready for the application of siding and roof boards.
A start was made on the construction of stone ends for a large culvert pipe under the road near Roadside Cottage. This work is under the supervision of Paul Biedler, visiting architect, who is also helping the Summer Rooming Committee to devise auxiliary space for music practice.
Volunteers helped the office staff address three thousand five hundred envelopes in which to mail out the Art and Music Institute Bulletins that will come from the press early this week.
Never before in the history of the College has so much of the maintenance work been done by the Community itself as has been done this year. There are no hired cleaning maids, one less helper in the kitchen than in former years, and only one fireman instead of two. This release of manpower for the war effort has resulted also in a considerable money saving to the College. The workers have volunteered this effort in good spirit and have been done consistently good work. There is the promise that in the not too distant future the emphasis in the Community Work can shift to more creative, more varied, and more interesting jobs.
--Mac Wood
VISITORS:
In addition to the week-end visits of four members of the College Advisory Council, there were other visits during last week.
Ann and Fred Mangold arrived from Mexico City on Wednesday evening.
Henry Hill and Ian Barber, associated with the CPS Unit at the Duke Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, were week-end visitors.
Ted Marburg and Lee Shames spent Saturday evening and Sunday at Lake Eden.
