Your Petitioner humbly prayes your sacred
Majestie would in Your Bounty bestow on him wisdom
in this office which hee shall indeavour to discharge
with diligence.
Every succeeding president has been invested with this medallion at his inauguration,
and at the beginning of every Commencement and other formal university occasion, the
University Marshal invests the president with this symbol of his office.
&dCongratulatory &dTelegrams. Among the congratulatory telegrams received by
President Whitson were ones from President John F. Kennedy and Governor Nelson
Rockefeller. President Kennedy's telegram read:
My warmest congratulations on your inauguration as the President of Clarkson College of Technology.
No national concern is more important than to assure the
continued growth of our academic institutions, large and
small. As our history
becomes increasingly dependent upon technological progress we must look to
schools such
as Clarkson to supply the versatile, competent leadership we
require. My best wishes go with you as you assume
this important new
responsibility.
John F. Kennedy
Tournament of Knights.
Held at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, September 21, the new Tournament of
Knights was established to replace the recently abolished hazing of freshmen. In this
tournament, the freshmen and sophomores battled it out in games of tug-of-war and pushball on
Snell Field.
This idea emerged from the hazing controversy of the previous year when the New
York State Police, intervening in a mass hazing session in front of the hockey arena, reminded
the students of a state law, on the books since 1900, which forbade hazing in any form, a law
which neither the students nor the administration knew about.
When Director of Freshmen Personnel Harry Bingham explained this law to the
freshmen, including the provision which said that no one could force them to wear beanies, he
added that beanies had been a long-standing Clarkson tradition which had a dual purpose of
letting freshmen recognize each other. As a result, they agreed to wear the beanies up to the
time of this new Tournament.
Using shaving cream in cans, rotten tomatoes, eggs, and almost any other harmless
missile, both sides confronted each other in the middle of the field. Neither side, freshmen nor
sophomores, were able to push the ball across for a score, so the referees declared the game a
draw, and called for a tug-of-war to settle the battle. After the rope broke on three separate
occasions, the Tournament of Knights ended with a mad rush toward the showers in the gym
and the dorms.
Damon Hall.
In 1949, the Board of Trustees authorized the construction of a new physics
building, a three-story brick structure, located on Main Street in front of the new chemical
engineering laboratory building. This building replaced the frame structure used since 1938 to
house the physics, mathematics, and liberal studies departments; those three departments
remained in the new building. To erect this structure, three homes along Main Street had to be
razed, which caused the offices of the dean, the director of admissions, and the registrar to be
moved to the Newcomen House on the corner of Pierrepont and Main Streets. This new
