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Why (as in yaverbaum)
initiative since I had read a children’s book concerning the Doolittle bombing raid, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. The book that I chose—and make of it what you like—was Camus’s The Stranger.
Being Sophomoric
If freshman year at Amherst made a huge impression upon me, both socially and intellectually, sophomore year is essentially a blur. Actually, nothing of any great importance happened until I was a junior, with pos- sibly one exception.
I lived in North Dormitory (the fraternities gave rooming prefer- ences to upperclassmen), which was in the center of the main campus, adjacent to Johnson Chapel. My roommate was Robert Elowitch, who was from Portland, Maine, and a member of DKE (Delta Kappa Epsilon, pronounced “De-ke”), a fraternity that saw itself as a rival of mine, Phi Gamma Chi. That fact created some tension between us because I was not happy when he, and therefore I, was awakened at about 3:00 a.m. by some of his upper-class brothers to be taken on a “pledge hike”; I appar- ently violated some trust by later discussing the event with some of my own fraternity brothers (and I did not go on our own pledge hike), a fact that really upset him. That aside, he and I adopted a reasonable modus vivendi, especially when it came to the most important of issues, dating. He had a girlfriend from home who would visit, and I would cede the room to him if that was what he asked for. (Starting with my sophomore year, girls were permitted in the dorm rooms.) He would do the same for me, and in sophomore year that actually began to matter.
I believe that my first semi-semi-serious college relationship started in the first semester when I somehow met and spent a fair amount of time going out with a freshman at Mount Holyoke, Anita Sigel, who was very smart and cute, came from Staten Island, spoke fluent French (clear evidence that this relationship would go nowhere), and was a cellist (I never saw her play). I think that I realized that our relationship was not apt to go anywhere because, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in
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