Around the Campus

By El Crud

When the Editor asked me to write a column for Salient, I was rather taken aback. I had so little experience. That night, in my room, amidst coffee cups and textbooks, I surveyed my journalistic career.

Let's face it. I was certainly no Walter Lippmann and I couldn't imagine Kennedy revealing his innermost secrets to me. Liberace would never think of suing me, and even the Dom., bless his heart, was unaware of my existence.

For my school magazine I had written a poem on death, shot through with obscure sexual imagery, and in more recent time I had churned out some pornography for the Weir House Magazine. Thanks to a spell as a latrine attendant I had acquired an extensive repertoire of limericks about young men from Bengal. I had even heard Eskimo Nell recited. That's it I thought. Give them Nell in instalments. However I found I could only recall odd snatches so I dropped the idea.

I decided my humour must be clean and uplifting. Deadeye Dick and Mexican Pete must never reach the Rio Grande: well, not in my column anyway.

The cafe proprietor. Fritz Levenbach, awaits the new year with resignation, as he prepared to withstand the inevitable onslaught of coffee spillers salt pourers and table artists.

The parking attendants on campus hunt out their little books, and await eagerly the first student to park his bomb in the space reserved for the staff.

President Moriarty and Co. await the first S.G.M. and Bill Dwyer has his hair in curlers, for he hopes for his photo in Salient again.

And what of Weir House. That septic isle? Weir, where full flagons are thrown from windows and girls chased down corridors at midnight. The cult of celibacy seems o'erthrown, and its members defecting or dispersing. The boarding rate, to my surprise, has not risen, and the place still needs paint.

Dark rumours are already abroad, as sadistic second years plan their Annual Ram Fair, the traditional Weir welcome to Freshers.

So the varsity year cranks into life after summer hibernation and prepares for the annual ritual of orientation, capping, extrav., parties, exec, elections, terms, finals, and results.

Man. I'm in a rut.