Word: finleyism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Reality, bears only traces of it. To be sure, on Spring Weekend, Finley's boys play at cricket and bowls in the courtyard, and the excellent House Chamber Music Society performs woodwind and trumpet concerti on the lawn. Apart from Finley, however, the House seems tame and ordinary. There is no literary magazine, drama review, seminar program, serious artistic production--not even a psychedelic light show-dance happening. Instead, the House Committee sponsors a movie series which includes such favorites as Bad Day at Black Rock and The Americanization of Emily. Even the number of preppies has been vastly exaggerated...
...Finley holds fast to the image, even though the House does not measure up to it. He attempts to ensure quality by taking inordinate care in selecting the boys he wants...
...Finley the essence and strength of Harvard is the House system, the College's defense against the pressure and particularization of the University. "Berkeley shows how good Harvard is. Those fellows out there have no connection with anything." A bit of brick-and-ivy security, "Eliot House is the village within a metropolis...
...Finley has created for his House an image which, like a thesis, is the length and shadow of temperament. Wrote e. e. cummings of John Finley, "he generates a particular precision of vitality which our fathers called 'character.'" Eliot House has a vision of itself as a good and distinctive place, a mixture of Greek excellence diluted by the leisurely style of Romantic and Victorian tradition. The image attracts a certain type of boy who likes to think of himself as reserved, safely aristocratic, and casually intellectual. "The president of St. Paul's School has been here since time immemorial...
...prerogative in the selection process was challenged last year when officialdom proposed that each House should contain a cross section of the student body. Finley's eyebrows still snap at references to the arbitrary plan of placement. "We mustn't have the authorities shunt men about. The Houses will be driven to uniformity." Eliot House seniors steeped in the Finley tradition of taste and style are equally opposed to random selection. Says one Eliot House upperclassman of the sophomores admitted under the new system, "You can see a certain sloppiness now in the dining hall. You know, the Winthrop House...