[Erik P Conard]

gosh, thanks for sharing those postcards. Those are houses
from an era nearly gone by...costly by any standards in a time
where collegians were very elite, demands on students were
many. Today we do not have the same mien, nor the funds, nor
a society which'll abide these lifestyles. I have seen the Amerst
houses, and you would sicken to see what has been done to them, and I am sure the college did not have the guts to stop it.
History of American Education and the trappings are fun topics,
and Dr. Frederick Rudolph of Williams has written perhaps the
flagship book on the subject although greeks were barely touched
Williams and Middlebury are two other NE schools who've done
away with the greeks. And Dartmouth, who tried to do this in the
past coupla years--has had to put it in crawdad gear. Faculties of
today are not fraternal organization-friendly. In fact, they are a
hostile lot. While NE has tried to set the pace, they have failed
miserably. I hope most of you will observe this and come up with
your own conclusions. But, it is a sad era, and we have opened
up the old schools to nigh on everyone...what would you call this
in class? Mixed emotions abound, from Bowdoin to Ole Miss, from Barnard to Mizzou...good dissertation material.