 | | September
8
 | First
meeting of the year
|
| Met
in room 313 of the Alvarez Union before walking over to Eumenean Hall to
show new members where to go.
|
| In
attendance: Palmer Seeley, Bill Johnson, Louie Becker, and some freshmen.
|
| Palmer,
Bill, and Louie (the three returning members) gave an overview of the hopes
for the society for the upcoming year: more membership, continued literary
discussions, branch out to include other fields of interest, such as art,
music, opera, current events.
|
September 15
| First
complete meeting in the Chamber of Eumenean Hall.
|
| Attendance:
Palmer Seeley, Bill Johnson, Louie Becker.
|
| Elected
officers: President – Palmer Seeley; Vice-President – Ryan Clark;
Secretary – Bill Johnson; Historian – Louie Becker.
|
September 22
| Planned
on a trip to the Mint Museum in Charlotte to see an exhibit of
African-American Art. Not
enough members showed up, so trip was cancelled.
|
September 29
| Attendance:
Palmer Seeley, Bill Johnson, Louie Becker, Lauren Lester, Ryan Clark,
Margaret Megerian, John Atkinson.
|
| Began
meeting with suggestions for a Historian’s report for the next meeting.
This turned into a discussion of the history of the society, its
place in the school, and the rivalry between the Eumenean and Philanthropic
Societies. Some of the topics
discussed were:
|
- In
the early years of Davidson, classes did not have a lot of required
reading, thus there was no need for a school library.
The libraries of Eu and Phi were the only sources of books on
campus. Almost all reading done by students was either leisure
or for the society.
- Eu
had a very good debating team. Almost
all of the trophies on the 4th floor of the Union are National
Debating Trophies won by Eu.
- At
one time, membership in either Eu or Phi was mandatory.
Each society had its own group of dorms.
One year there was a mix-up and one of the dorms was assigned to
the wrong society. This led
to an uprising and half the school seceded.
The school was saved from financial ruin by a professor who rode to
the next train station down the line and convinced the students to return.
| Questions
for Louie to research:
|
- What
did the two societies do? Particularly
on a day-to-day basis or in the meetings.
- What
is the history of rushing for the societies?
- What
the downstairs of Eu Hall used for? Was
it the reading room and library?
| The
next discussion was about what we should do in our weekly meetings.
One idea was to set a topic for the next meeting and have everybody
bring something related to that topic and have a debate.
Another idea was to have a “finish the phrase”, where a phrase
would be decided on (ie, I have always wished…) and at the next meeting
members would bring their ideas on how to finish the phrase. (This is where Palmer went into his CD analogy of bringing certain
genres at one meeting and leaving other genres for another time. We learned
that Palmer does not like polka music.)
|
| We
decided to pick a topic for next week and have everybody bring something
related to that topic. To
choose a topic, every member picked a random word from the dictionary.
Then we voted for which word we wanted for a topic for next week.
The words that were picked were: hot-spot, Sinn Fein, Mars,
hatchetman, Portugal, clutch, and whipped.
We decided to save Sinn Fein for a later meeting.
Next week’s topic is clutch.
|
| Palmer
also mentioned his “Profs on God” series, which is being sponsored by Eu
and the Lilly Program. It is an
idea he imported from his time at Oxford.
It is a lecture series in which professors talk about how their
academic studies intersect with their religious beliefs.
On October 8, noon, in CoHo, Dr. Striplin from the Chemistry
Department will speak. On
November 5, 12:30 pm, in CoHo, President Vagt will speak.
Later in the semester Dr. Roberts from the Political Science
Department will speak. Next
semester, we hope to have “Staff on God”
where we have members of the college staff speak about religion and
their lives.
|
|
