questioner answered, "Oh, yes, the Pied Piper of Hamlin." A native of Stratham, N.H., Fred
graduated from Fitchburg (Mass.) High School in 1903. After working in the filament lamp
factory for General Electric for a year, he entered Tufts College, graduating in electrical
engineering four years later. Working for General Electric for a few years, Fred decided that he
was happier as a teacher than as a worker in industry, so he took a job as assistant professor of
physics at Kansas State Agricultural College for a year; then a position at the Mechanics
Institute, Rochester, N.Y., for several years; and then at Clarkson in 1920. He headed the
physics department from 1920 until 1928 when W.S. Blair arrived. After Blair died in 1942,
Fred again assumed the chairmanship until mandatory retirement from the chairmanship at age
65 allowed him to resume his duties as a faculty member for five more years.
Bradford Broughton joined the faculty of Liberal Studies; he become chairman of
Humanities in 1973, and started the Technical Communications program as a major in
Humanities in 1975. By 1981, T.C. had grown to become a separate degree-granting
department; its first chairman was Dr. Mary Lay.
ROTC Band.
Because the ROTC Battalion consistently had enrolled over 500 cadets,
Clarkson's contingent was authorized to organize and equip a Class A band. Limiting
membership to basic cadets, the ROTC unit created a band between 45 and 50 members, most
of whom were former high school band members. Stress was placed on marching well in
coordination and timeliness of its choice of martial music. This group played at all ROTC drill
periods on Thursday afternoons, parades, reviews, and presented an annual concert for the
benefit of the village.
Hat-trick Record.
Ed Meeker '55 set a Clarkson hockey record when he scored a hat trick in
15 seconds in Clarkson's defeat of Hamilton College 18-2. The Golden Knights hockey team
posted a 18-4 record this year.
Humanities I.
Required of every student beginning with the spring semester of the freshman
year was a four-semester sequence in Humanities. The first course began with Homer's
Odyssey
and continued with Sophocles'
Oedipus Rex
and
Antigone,
Euripides'
Medea
, Plato's
Apology,
selections from the
Old
and
New Testament
, various
Canterbury Tales
by Chaucer, and essays
by Montaigne, Shakespeare's
King Lear
, Marlowe's
Dr. Faustus
, and ending with Milton's
Paradise Lost
. This course was the first of the sequence in Liberal Studies ranging through
freshman composition in the fall, then the four-course sequence, a two-semester course in
speech, and others in humanities and the social sciences. Throughout the four years, the
students were introduced to some highlights in America's cultural heritage. By doing so, they
learned to see motives and aspirations which illuminate human nature in the past and the
present, hopefully to help illuminate the path to the future.
Students in Humanities III had to prepare an original creative project in their sophomore
year. Left to their own choices and talents, the students submitted works ranging from pen and
ink sketches, pictures in water color and oil, linoleum block prints, sculptures, mobiles, to
photography, and creative writing.
Ironically, this artistic requirement created one of Clarkson's most famous stories. One
of the young Humanities professors was asked by a trio of Theta Chi sophomores to help them
write and produce a "horror" film as their artistic requirement. He agreed, and with his help, the
students wrote and filmed a 20-minute movie concerning some weird horrors occurring in their
