PAGE TWO The Dally Collegian Editorial Page Editorials and columns appearing m The Daily Collegian represent the opinion* ot the writer. They make no claim to reflect student or University consensus. Unsigned editorials are written by the edttevi. Building Boom Welcome back to Penn State. Alumni! Consternation at the sight of the College’s third major building boom in modern times, and its attendant “desecration of our lovely campus,” de struction of vistas and the closing-in of buildings, is probably struggling for emotional supremacy among many of you. It has been ever thus among the unrealistic sentimentalists, be they alums, students, faculty members, administrative officials or trustees. It probably always will be. How about it, you old-timers? Remember the hues and cries when Central Library, Sparks and Burrowes began to “clutter up” the north end of the campus? Now this northern end of the mall is one of the most attractive sections of the entire campus. In the light of the College’s responsibility to the lax-paying citizens of the Commonwealth to pro vide a means of low-cost higher education to its sons and daughters, planned expansion must apnear as a necessity, not a disaster. Just sunpose that none of the buildings of the last decade had been erected. Where would Penn State be today without Electrical Engineering Building, Osmond Lab (nee New Physics), For estry, Ag Engineering, Atherton Hall or White Hall? Many of the present students—perhaps your children, or younger brother and sister—could not have matriculated for lack of facilities. This post war.program, still far short of its necessary pro portions, will help provide space for descendants of today’s student body. Let us, then, cheer the Diesel shovel, thrill to the rhythm of the riveter's hammer as a bigger and better Penn State of tomorrow unfolds around us. It would require an extremely hard-shelled dreamer to deny that the new buildings are far more attractive than the pre-1920 eyesores. Ob viously. today’s supercrowded conditions would prohibit the razing of even the most antiquated relic until a new structure has been raised to re place it. So, as any healthy living organism must, let Penn State continue to put forth new cells of life, and eventually increase her beauty by expurgat ing the deteriorated units. On Saving Seats We were sitting in the Beaver Field bleachers ; nst Saturday before the start of the West Vir nd the desire to mix. Besides, there would be the ever-nrespnt nroblpm of placing classes ac cording to rank. No method could be devised that i-ould be nut into operation without a flood of student criticism. Voluntary, individual co-operation is the only possible wav to alleviate the strain on tempers that is sure to arise every Saturday afternoon vhen there is a home game. Remember: Don’t save a seat—save someone -Ise’s temper COLLEGIAN GAZETTE Sunday, October 24, 1948 PI LAMBDA THETA, NE Lounge Atherton, 1 p.m. ALPHA RHO OMEGA. 304 Old Main, 7 p.m. College Hospital Admitted Thursday: Ray Hedderick, Anthony nhumskas and John Stanford. Discharged Thursday: Alden Amig, Richard 'laker, Edwin Hanford. Melvin Breining, Annette r.efkowitz and Cornelia Dreifus. Admitted Erid.iv George Lukacs, Olin Simp r.n and Pnvmnnd Shultz. Disehavftnd k'ridji'': Anthonv Tsahei rtreie. Twin T,inden^n r o Royce W. Nix, Raymond Shultz and Joe’- nhitnn College Placement Hoover Comoany. October 27 and 28, eighth semester men from EE and ME. Lukens Steel Co.. October 29, eighth semester men from ME and Metallurgy. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., November 1 to 5, seventh and eighth semester men from Chem istry, Chem Eng, ME and Mining Eng. Proctor & Gamble Co.. November 2 and 3. eighth semester men from ME. EE. lE. Chem Eng. Ghornjctrv and Commercial Chemistry. Brown Instrument Co.. November 9 and 10 einhth semester men from EE ME and Phvcics. Cairo Chemical Division of American Cvnna mid, November 3. eighth semester men from The great American garaa Ray Sprigle. Pulitzer nrize-w of “The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Negro and for four weeks “lived fellow Americans. In a series of t The Daily Collegian, he presents hi the names of persons and places : involved. For four endless, crawling weeks I was a Negro in the Deep South. I ate, slept, traveled, lived black. I lodged in Negro house holds. I ate in Negro restaurants. I slept in Negro hotels and lodg ing houses. I crept through the back and side doors of railroad stations. I traveled Jim Crow in buses and trains and street cars and taxicabs. Along with 10,000,- 000 Negroes I endured the dis crimination and oppression and cruelty of the iniquitous Jim Crow system. It was a strange, new—and for me, uncharted—world that I en tered when, in a Jim Crow rail road coach, we rumbled across the Potomac out of Washington. It was a world of which I had no remote conception, despite scores of trios through the South. The world I had known in the South was white. Now I was black, and the world I was to know was as bewildering as if I had been dropped down on the moon. The towers and turrets of the great cities of the Southland, painted against the falling night, as we rolled along the highways, represented a civilization and an economy completely alien to me and the rest of the black millions in the South. Only twice in my month-long sojourn was my status as a black man even remotely questioned. A Negro doctor in Atlanta, to whom I was introduced and with whom I talked briefly, later turned to my Negro companion, who was leading me along the unfamiliar paths of the world of color, and demanded: —Jack Reen. “What are you carrying that white man around with you for?’’ To which my friend replied: “He says he’s a Negro and that’s enough for me. Have you found any way of telling who carries Negro blood and who doesn’t?” And if the doctor wasn’t con vinced he was at least silenced. Another time mv membership >n the black race was doubted was mv own fault. 1 broke mv ’•esolution to keen mv mouth shut k'nr a coi'nle of davs I alone in Atlanta, livin' 1 in the Negro v M.C. A. and eating ir a small hut excellent restaurant. Mrs Hawk, the proprietress, tangled me in conversation one day— never a difficult task for anyone. So, I talked too much, too fast and too expansively. A couple of days later she met mv friend and remarked. “That friend of vmirs—he talks too much to be a Negro. I think he’s white." Detected No Suspicion In the Land of Jim Crow Questioned Only Twice By Ray Sprigle inning reporter and staff member ” recently disguised himself as a I black” in the South among his welvp articles, heeinning today in is findings. Mr. Sprigle has changed in some instances to protect those contacts with Negroes, from na tionally known leaders of the race to share croppers in the cotton rows I was accented as a Nccto. I sat for long hours in Negro grouns where we discussed every thing from Shakespeare to atomic energy and the price of cotton. Neither I nor my companion ever detected any reserve or susoicion that I wasn’t just what I pre tended to be. a light-skinned Negro from Pittsburgh, down South on a visit. I attended half a do7en Negro meetings, from Y.M.C.A. banquets to political conferences and church gather ings—and was even called upon to speak. My contacts with whites were few indeed, but here, too, I went unsuspected and unquestioned. Southern whites have long taken the position that when a man savs he’s black, as far as they are concerned, he is. So the white folks never lifted an eyebrow when I sat in the Jim Crow sec tions of trains, buses and street cars, drank from the “For Col ored” fountains in courthouse and railroad station, ate in Negro res taurants, sat in the “For Colored” sections of rail and bus stations. Rarely is a light or white Negro questioned in the South when he seeks Jim Crow accommodations. Now and then a conductor or policeman will remind a passen ger, apparently white, in a Jim Crow coach, or a light-skinned Negro entering a “For Colored’ restaurant —“That’s for Negroes, you know.” But the usual re sponse of “I’m where I belong” ends the matter right there. He Took Guide Of course, I realize that if I had tried to make my way through the black South on my own, alone, I would have met with sus picion and rebuff on every hand from blacks and whites alike. Fortunately, though, I didn’t have to go alone into the black world of the South. Walter White executive director of the Nations 1 for the A d”n nopmen * of Poler-od Tiivmln, took care o f ♦ hit Out of bis vast store of nnl one Nerrooc end °nut'i Vie <"Vin»e a man to to.,a •np thnninVi the warrens of dm vicMr C~,|th. And if there is nnv commenda tion due anv one for these rhron icles, surely the lion’s share must go to that companion of mine. I doubt if there is a man living who knows the South, black and white as he does. We ate. slept hved and traveled for four weeks. Tf I learned anvthincr about the life pf the N an rn it is beonucp he took meto the olace«. the men (Continued on page three) SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23. IMS No Monthly Check What would happen if suddenly your allotment checks, or monthly allowance disappeared? Would you be able to remain in college? There are many men and women students who have never had the benefit of the subsidy to which you are so ac customed. Have you ever truthfully asked yourself ft you could keep up the pace of studies plus whole, or even partial support? Lost in that happy land of fraternity parties, football games, and the old Saturday night date, it Is difficult to realize that someone else is wondering if he or she will be in the school the next week or next month. Yet there are manv who struggle valiantly only to be vanquished by the great god Dollar Sign. Silently they slip from the class lists while your personal cycle of parties, studies, sports and the dependable monthly check goes on. Admittedly women are the weaker of the race. Partial support for a woman is often a more dif ficult task than total support for a man. Female employment opportunities are comparatively scrawny. A woman cannot work at high paying manual labor during the summer to accumulate a F+urdy bulwark against fall and winter expenses. The Dean Charlotte E. Bay Scholarship was set up in 1946 for the purpose of rescuing worthy women students from financial tangles. It consists of $lOO per year, and is maintained by funds accrued from the annual Mortar Board Carnival, this year renamed "Mardi Gras." The Mardi Gras will be held in Bee Hall on Friday. For the first time fraternities' and independent men’s groups have been invited to sponsor booths, eiher alone or in conjunction with a sorority or women's group. Mortar Board asks for cooperation in making the celebration a success both financially and as an entertainment. Those few hours you spend next week planning your booth will be a step in this direction. Mavbe $lOO hardly seems worth the trouble to you. Mavbe vou spend that much in a few. weeks of partving. But it might be the needed bridge to graduation day for the young lady in your comp class. The Big Race Another year—another influx of coeds on cam pus. Yes, the coeds have done it again. As the weekends come and go, new faces can be seen cir culating about the fraternity houses, hot-dogging it in ye old corner room, arid causing the green horns of jealousy to pop up on the heads at the junior and senior girls. How well the “old faithfuls” recall their sopho more days when they too were being sought after. But now they must resign themselves, at least for the time being, to a cheerful smile, a cour ageous lift to the chin, and weekends of dateless monotony. Sacrifice is the key word in sororities these days. The actives amuse themselves with forming date bureaus for the benefit of their innocent, wide eyed pledges, whose duty it is to be seen at the latest social affairs on campus. Can’t you just pic ture the crowd of male admirers that has gathered about Miss Susie Sophomore as she turns from side to side, smiling engagingly, and exposing her newly acquired pledge ribbons for the benefit of her appreciative audience? “Are you affiliated with a sorority?” queries one of the less intelli gent young men of the group. That’s right, Susie, shake your head yes, smile and let those Greek words that have taken you nights to memorise pour glibly from your lips—and stop right there. Remember, anything you say will be held against your sorority. And while you are being swept off your feet by those handsome men-about-State, the boosters of your popularity are sitting in and con centrating on turning the heels of their argyle socks, secretly cursing their men friends who have found greener pastures. What is this magnetic charm that casts an aura of temporary insanity about the heads of the male members of this college community with the open ing of every fall semester? Can it be that the entrance of the sophomores on campus stimulates the inherent drive of aggressiveness and mascu linity on the part of the complacent, easy going men here at State? Is it that new things are always more intriguing and mysterious? Or finally could it be that these new faces about campus will prove to be a novelty that will wear off sooner than un suspecting Susie Soph thinks? Here’s hoping! utye Hatty Collegian Successor to THE FREE LANCE, nt. lift Puhllshod through Saturday mornings fnclaaW* 4ww ” ,r College v#»nr hv tho nt nff of Tht Dally Cotlogfov) of Tho r 'onnp'lv flT im Rtitr College Entered »p second elms* matter r ”’v < mrt4 SW* CnlWc. Pa. Pont o*fiec on dor Dm Mnroh 3 187 ft Subscriptions —l2 ■ wmwtir. 14 tfc# ,Up n i vmr °<*hrA«*ntod fr