Psi U Authors

Bernard Moran, Beta Beta ‘58 (Trinity College )

Love and Treachery In Palm Beach Fifteen short stories delve behind the glitz and glamour of Palm Beach to reveal the true natures of residents of this island paradise. A playboy tries to score with a rich widow. A sugar daddy lusts after young girls with tragic consequences. A social climber seeks to breach the rarified world of restricted clubs. A ne’er-do-well undone by the machinations of his Palm Beach hostess. An Old Guard mother tries to control her adult children. Desperate matrons yearn for love or its substitute. Cheating husbands, vindictive wives, bankers, brokers, schemers, scammers - they’re all here in this panorama of Palm Beach life.

Steven R. Smith, Rho ‘66 (University of Wisconsin)

Managing for Success: Practical Advice for Managers This, concise, 150-page guide is for readers who want to learn what they really should be doing as managers of people and departments- and how to do it. It includes the best ideas the author has discovered and applied throughout his 42-year career spanning 15 companies of all sizes. Most of us never receive the training needed to become really good managers, but this book helps fill that void by providing advice on how to handle your most important duties and responsibilities.

Barry Gough, Zeta Zeta ‘62 (University of British Columbia)

The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer Who Opened the Northwest Sir Alexander Mackenzie is known to schoolchildren as a great Canadian explorer who gave his name to the country’s longest river, but hardly anyone could name the man who mentored Mackenzie and mapped much of northwestern Canada before him. Soldier, fur trader and explorer Peter Pond, the subject of this long overdue book, is a man whose legend has been forgotten in favor of those who came after him. Much of Pond’s life is shadowed in mystery. Historian Barry Gough uses Pond’s surviving memoirs, explorers’ journals, letters written by acquaintances of Pond, publications in London magazines and many other sources to track and reconstruct the life of one of the last of the tough, old-style explorers who ventured into the wilderness with little more than a strong instinct for survival and helped shape the modern world.

Rodo Sofranac, Chi ‘71 (Cornell University)

Polly and the Peaputts: Join Polly Poppop, and learn more about her family, friends, and their village called Peaputt Place. The Peaputts may not be perfect, but they practice acceptance and forgiveness in special ways. See how Polly and the Peaputts live, love, learn, and smile.

Polly and the Peanut Pull: The residents of Peaputt Place stumble upon a strange “root” growing in their town. Excitement from the Peaputts and their creative efforts to extract the item leads to an important lesson from the smallest member of the community.

James P. Lenfestey, Zeta ‘66 (Dartmouth College)

Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage To Cold Mountain In this transformative book, award-winning poet and essayist James Lenfestey makes an epic journey across the world to find the Cold Mountain Cave, a location long believed to exist only in myths and the ancient home of his idol, Han Shan, author of the Cold Mountain poems. Lenfestey’s voyage takes him from the Midwestern United States to Tokyo to a road trip across the expanse of China with frequent excursions to the country’s rich historical and cultural landmarks. As he makes his way to the cave, Lenfestey learns more than history or geography; he discovers his identity as a writer and a poet. Interspersed with poems by both the author and Han Shan, Seeking the Cave will appeal to lovers of poetry and travel narrative alike.

Ernie Wood, Psi ‘69 (Hamilton College)

One Red Thread When architect Eddy McBride, a fortysomething self-absorbed noticer of details and self-appointed seeker of truths, stumbles upon a way to visit, watch and ultimately participate in events from his family history, he finds answers to long-ago tragedies and mysteries. But each time Eddy returns to the present, he unleashes the unhappy consequences of exploring history on his family and friends. And as Eddy’s knowledge of the past grows, he turns from curious seeker of truths to frantic fixer of mistakes--present, past and by those from the present who would change the past--as he follows a devastating trail of hurt, disappearance and death.

Fraternities are designed as intimate organizations, but Amherst’s policies and dearth of social space resulted in pressure to increase membership; the Gamma had as many as 150 members during this period. The College could have built new residential or social facilities, or spent money on athletic teams, so that women had equal opportunity. But the fraternities provided convenient scapegoats. And of course, with enormous membership rolls, most of the other fraternities found bonding with the many new members too great a challenge. The result in many fraternities was a much looser connection to the bonds of brotherhood, leading to disciplinary incidents that the College claimed were attendant to the fraternities’ mere existence.

For Amherst’s Board of Trustees, this was always about real estate, and for the administration, it was about power – control of student life and speech. So when the Board of Trustees ruled that the fraternities’ use of their houses would be discontinued in June of 1984, Amherst thought the problem solved. An institution dedicated to scholarly study and leading the world had never stopped to think that fraternities were about bonds between individuals, and not valuable real estate surrounding a landlocked campus.

So the fraternities vacated the chapter houses, but no one ever said they had to stop being fraternities. Amherst’s galling straw man argument was that the fraternities went “underground.” Nonsense! The College withdrew recognition and began a duplicitous relationship where the fraternities were considered unsanctioned and unrecognized for some but not all purposes. With fewer than 2,000 students, Amherst always knew what was happening, and the fraternities were never secret underground organizations. Psi Upsilon undergraduates and alumni met formally with college administrators many times over the years. If the College didn’t know who was in the fraternities, it was because it turned a blind eye to the proffered membership lists.

While several of Amherst’s fraternities purchased or rented meeting houses off-campus at one time or another, there was never a return to the residential fraternity system that Amherst discontinued in 1984. Without the distraction of housing and the pressure to solve all of Amherst’s selfinflicted ills, the fraternities were able to focus on initiating friends with shared values. Even without recognition from the College, the Gamma remained coed because it was a treasured part of the chapter’s culture.

But in May 2014, Amherst reopened old wounds and declared war on unsanctioned friendship, speech, and thought. You can associate with whomever you wish, said the College, as long as it’s not “fraternity-like” or “sorority-like.” If you engaged in this loosely defined behavior once the 2014-15 school year started, then you will be expelled for violating the school’s honor code.

Amherst now persecutes disfavored friendship and speech. Whether choosing a roommate, associating with a group of friends, or joining an athletic team will be found to be “fraternity-like” or “sorority-like” remains to be seen. The only thing that is clear right now is that ordinary social association is now subject to review by the Amherst censors in a gaudy display of unchecked power.

The greatest benefit of this decision may be felt in the unrelated investigation of Amherst’s poor handing of sexual assault cases under Title IX. As to fraternities, according to Amherst, “We are not saying they are disproportionately guilty of sexual assault; we have no evidence that this is the case.” But now Amherst can proudly point to its abolition of fraternities and complete regulation of intimate relationships. In doing so the College can state that there is no further reason for the federal government to continue its Title IX investigation, holding its collective administrative breath that the federal government doesn’t look too closely and ask what one thing has to do with the other.

Henry Poor passed away 2009 and was proud of Amherst and Psi Upsilon until the day he died. I shudder to think of what he would say about Amherst today. With its endowment approaching $2 billion, Amherst will surely muddle through this mess of its own making. But what of Amherst’s soul? A college founded to “give light to the world” has lost its purpose when it condemns lawful friendships simply because it does not fully control them. I hope Amherst’s otherwise rigorous spirit of inquiry will recognize the folly of these actions.