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Volume CXXXII, Number 15 |
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Bugle-ing through war history
TODD BUELL
COLUMNIST
My desk on the third floor of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library rests across from the bookshelf that houses every Bowdoin Bugle, our yearbook, since the late 1860s. I enjoy taking study breaks to peruse these repositories of school history. They not only show timeless images of the quad, but also changes in American culture through differences in pictures, formats, and emphases. The contrast is especially vivid between World War II and the Vietnam War era. These periods compel me because they represent spirits of unity, activism, and division-sentiments that seem absent on this campus today as our country rests on the brink of war.
Nearly every yearbook has an introductory message from the editors. The most powerful in my opinion is the message from 1944. It snatches the reader into the severity and gravity of World War II on a hauntingly moving first page. The editors place a picture of Hubbard Hall with the flagpole in a prominent position and the flag itself waving proudly in the front of the picture. A tense but resolute message compounds the visual patriotism:
"In a nation mobilized and geared for total war, the primary function of any institution of higher learning must be to train specialists and technicians…Here, then, is a chronicle of Bowdoin in what may be its last year as a liberal arts college…Seldom, if ever, has there been more uncertainty about the future. In the following pages, however, we have portrayed Bowdoin as it was during the first semester of 1942-1943. The Bowdoin we shall always remember."
This prose shows that the men who compiled this yearbook attempted to portray a somewhat normal existence while being frighteningly aware that not only their College, but also that their country might no longer exist as they had always known it. The book became their time capsule, what they would leave behind to an unknown world as a testament both of their dear College and perhaps of themselves as they were called to war.
The Vietnam War was of course much more divisive in the country as a whole than World War II. Thus, it is not surprising that the Vietnam era yearbooks are completely different than their early 1940s counterparts. The 1969 Bugle has pictures of insouciant frolicking. There is also the stark political image of a burned draft card demonstrating the animosity toward the Vietnam War that was common in that era.
Also, some of the yearbooks in this period are self-deprecating. The best example of this is the 1972 yearbook. It begins with many pictures of bare trees and swamps. There are also a number of pictures of local elderly people that look like they came from a book of George Tice photography. It is as if the editors of the book are attempting to elicit guilt for our "privileged position."
The editors also left no writing in the entire book. I find this decision
troubling. It gives curious students like me little guidance in discerning
what motivations these students had in designing their yearbook as they
did.
We can learn much about the Zeitgeist of both the school and the broader
world by looking at the pictures and words of a yearbook. Though perhaps
the silence of the book and the untraditional photographs are the cultural
messages, it is still disappointing to view the 1972 Bugle as a student
thirty years later and read neither a call to arms nor a call to resistance.
Today, Hans Blix speaks to the United Nations. His words will help influence
President Bush's decision to go to war. Yet there is little sign on campus
that our country is on the brink of war. Let us hope that the editors
of this year's yearbook leave an indication in photographs and words that
there was serious talk of war, and our legacy was apathy.
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