Leafing through the Argus archives earlier this month for information on past WSA presidents, my comrade A-Batte happened upon this bodaciously amusing nugget from a “University Convocation” in the fall of 1975.
On Thursday, September 4, President Campbell gave a thirty-seven-minute address, during which he called for a reevaluation of the grading system and noted that “diversity and innovation were ‘expensive qualities’ that Wesleyan may no longer be able to afford” (sound familiar?). Apparently Campbell also called for the establishment of a generalization requirement (sup, gen-eds) and a “coordinated multi-disciplinary program for freshmen” (spell check seems to want to make that “mulch-disciplinary”).
According to Argus writer Jane Eisner ’77 (who later became editor of The Forward and returned to Wes as a Koeppel Fellow in Journalism), “two unidentified individuals” had a different idea:
Shout-out to President Campbell for his agile ducking abilities. I’m impressed. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was less successful when pied in the face by a student activist at Brown in 2008.
No word on whether or not the two culprits were ever apprehended, but I’m just going to point out that President Roth ’78 and Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin ’79 were both freshmen at the time of this incident and leave it at that. You draw your own conclusions.