University of Virginia Library

Openings '67

If you survived the first night of Openings Weekend
with no more damage than an aching throb in your
head this morning and maybe a bruise or two where
you fell own Carr's Hill, then the best is to come. Today
the Cavaliers meet their old friends from Chapel Hill,
tonight the combos will rattle those staid white columns
and red bricks along Rugby Road and Mad Lane,
and tomorrow—who cares?

Put all thoughts of the mid semesters you failed, the
army that's going to draft you in June, and the sweetie
who shot you down far in the back of your mind. It's
Openings Weekend 1967, the University's annual rites of
fall, at which time students take a well-deserved hegira
from the rat-race and responsibility. The cares of the
world are traded, for however brief a period, for a bottle
of Scotch and a girl from Hollins. Not a bad deal at that.

Sociologists would probably have a field d examining
the tribal customs of the natives around the Grounds
this weekend; we can hear their abstruse muttering about
the New Hedonism already. But it's the same old hedonism
that our parents enjoyed in Charlottesville, and their
parents before them, only it's garbed in a miniskirt and
plastic boots or a double-breasted blazer and tassel Weejuns.
Social life at the U. has retained a certain 1920 — or
even 1820-rakishness about it, and John Held or Scott
Fitzgerald—or even Beau Brummel—would feel right at
home.

Enough of such recondite rambling, The fall leaves are
nicely littering the Lawn, and there's the sweet smoke
of burning oak in the air. The young ladies are arriving
by the busload, and the old ladies are taking them into
their homes—discriminatingly, we suspect. The alumni
wives, perfumed by Chanel, and the alumni, scented by
Jack Daniels, are wending their way to the stadium. The
rushees are shaking their one thousandth hand and flashing
those wonderful Pepsodent smiles, and the combos
are tuning up. There's talk of rugby, polo, meeting in
New York at Thanksgiving, "why don't we go up to my
room?" and whether Bacardi Dark makes a better Collins
than Light.

Mr. Jefferson, perched rather precariously on that
Liberty Bell in front of the Rotunda, watches all the
goings-on with a stern, but not entirely disapproving
eye. Maybe he remembers Openings at William and Mary,
say in 1767.

We're sure, at any rate, that we'll remember Openings
'67 and hope your memories will be equally as pleasant.

We have heard, from a usually unimpeachable source,
that certain alterations were made last night to the face
of one of the Rotunda clocks. It seems that the timepiece
in question now resembles a Mickey Mouse watch, a comment,
no doubt, on the way things are going around the U.