1963 was a banner year for The ‘Burnian. For the first time, it was published weekly! Editor Herm Haase coordinated all creative work, while news editor Bert Gehring covered the latest campus events. Jim Mattern was sports editor and Pat Dupuis was copy editor when I joined the fourth estate as feature editor, which (believe it or not) included original poetry. Much of our work was literal scissor editing. We’d print articles and then cut them (yes, with scissors) to fit available space on a page, and then paste them with glue which really smelled good. (Nobody ever sniffs a laptop.) Our faculty adviser was Max Schroeck, who seldom advised us since his M.A. from Johns Hopkins was in German and The ‘Burnian was in English.
The college brand in 1963 wasn’t “Learn, Work, Earn.” It was “Work, Study, Play,” and we all worked 15 hours a week. Many coeds were uniformed waitresses at supper in Allison dining hall. (Breakfast and lunch were served cafeteria style.) Lots of guys worked in construction since the basement and the first floor of Ludlum Hall were almost finished. I’m not sure how work managers are titled today, but in 1963 we had a Janitress Head, a Janitor Head, a Firing Head who kept the coal-fired heating plant running all winter, a Kitchen Head, a Dining Hall Head, a Laundry Head and a Desk Head to assign plum office jobs. The campus was so small that the new Olin science building was on the far edge. There was nothing beyond Stoddard except Taggert’s Woods (don’t ask). Graham was for upperclassMEN and still smelled new. But I digress.
Since our college motto included “Study,” many hours were spent combing through card catalogs in the library under Clegg Chapel. Instead of iPhones, iPads and iMacs, we had high-tech devices called IBM Selectric, Smith-Corona, Remington and Olivetti (typewriters). Assignments were accepted in cursive handwriting, but typing made them easier to read and was preferred. Our devices all had QWERTY keyboards, plus a carriage return bell.
The best “study” I remember at Blackburn came from Dr. John Forbes, a political science teacher with a doctorate in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. Everyone knew the final in his class was pass-fail. There were no other tests, so if you failed the final, you failed the course. His requirement was very simple. Memorize the Bill of Rights–including punctuation–and write it on your test paper. If you miss a comma, you fail. I took the course in the spring semester, and can still remember walking many miles down country roads between cornfields repeating the Bill of Rights over and over and over in the afternoon sun. It felt Lincolnesque. I passed, but cannot recall a word of it today.
Our college brand also featured “Play,” and for a good time, we could always walk a pillowcase of dirty clothes downtown to the Carlinville Laundromat which had 32 washers and eight dryers. While our polished cotton slacks spun dry, we’d toss back a Green River at Graham Pharmacy on the square. It sold Kodak film and had a tube tester just inside the door. It was also the Greyhound bus stop. The Marvel Theater was not as crowded then as it is today. Quite often, when we’d call to ask the time of a show, a voice would say, “What time can you come?”
We had our share of pranks in 1963. I recall an assembly in Clegg where students snuck in the night before and put a dozen alarm clocks under the pews, each set to go off at a different time during the hour-long event. Or the time two guys (I never knew how they did this) snuck into Stoddard in the wee hours of the morning and quickly painted all the toilet seats pink. My personal favorite happened in Allison Dining Hall, which was sunken so the floor was slightly below ground level. One night, students skilled in construction work quietly removed the picture window, placed planks on the frame and rolled a VW Beetle onto the floor. They replaced the window. And some of these guys went on to earn Ph.D.s!
Much has changed since 1963, but the soul of the school remains intact. If I recall correctly it’s captured in the college hymn. “Blackburn, Blackburn, strength and spirit, unify these years of youth. Fix on us thy three-fold blessing, friendship, work and will to truth.”