Preamble
Mayoralty and other ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ fads.
By H. Jay Burns, Managing Editor
When I first arrived at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1992, my guide through ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history was Gene Taylor ’56, a development colleague.
At first Gene taught the simple stuff you might get during the first days of a college course. I heard about Oren Cheney’s vision, about how quirky, unassuming Johnny Stanton defined faculty culture, and about the flimsy, barracks-like Sampsonville apartments that became a community for war-veteran students.
Easy lessons. Kid stuff.
Then one day Gene started talking about this thing called Mayoralty. Sensibility vanished as bizarre word combinations tumbled from his mouth: “Lymelight Lynn…Smilin’ Jack Davis…Mayor Jolly Roger Campbell.” He spoke of convertibles and stagecoaches. He described stage productions mounted from a Broadway-literate student body. Gene seemed to be speaking in tongues. Or maybe he’d become a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ie Stephen Hawking, exploring a brief time in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history. Either way, this Mayoralty thing made no sense in a place that, above all, seemed to prize good sense.
Between Gene’s lessons and this issue’s story about Mayoralty’s demise, by Jack DeGange ’59, I do finally “get” Mayoralty. Yet as I compare that tradition to its distant cousins, the Lemmings fad in the ’70s (page 17), I wonder if the zestiest student traditions defy pat description because they’re prisoners of their eras. In other words, you had to be there.
Mayoralty, for example, flourished and quickly died not because students got lazy (the Student‘s explanation). Rather, it died because its enchanting conceit — that, like a 1950s Saturnalia where slaves and masters reversed roles, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students could control campus doings for a few days — was dashed in the aftermath of a minor off-campus crime. And the Lemmings fad faded in the late ’70s as ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ became more student (or lemming) centered.
That’s why ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student culture is endlessly fascinating. It’s exclusively you, exclusively ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. VH-1 can have its Dee Snyders commenting on Pac-Man for “I Love the 80s”; I’m happy with a stack of old ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Students.
H. Jay Burns, Managing Editor