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Exclusives: Inky
Dinky Do Late
July, 2001: Old Randy (he insists
you call him that, so as not to confuse him with his son, Randy
Wellfleet, Jr. ’86, known as Young Randy) is — how shall
I phrase this? — not exactly the sunniest of commuting companions.
As Larry King would put it, “You look up ‘curmudgeon’
in the dictionary, you get a picture of Old Randy Wellfleet.”
Nothing, to hear Old
Randy tell it, is what it used to be. In his opinion (usually loudly
expressed, complete with hrumphs and pshaws thrown in), the whole
world is heading hellward in the proverbial handbasket. Politics,
entertainment, food, fashion (“When did women stop wearing
hats?!”) all come under his blistering attack. However, loyal son of
Old Nassau that he his, Old Randy reserves his bitterest grumbling
for what he sees as the across-the-board decline of Princeton. It
was with a kind of morbid fascination that I lately found myself
jotting down Old Randy’s complaints. The following — a
mere sampling of his menu of malcontentedness — makes one wonder
how Princeton manages to stay in business. He is, for example, outraged
by the trustees’ plan to increase enrollment. “Why bother
even matriculating?” was his refrain during a recent morning’s
ride. “Why don’t they just hand out degrees on the street
corner?” As for the question of
whether trustee ballots should be mailed to alumni, don’t get
him started: “What a colossal waste of time, paper and postage!
How am I supposed to know what the candidates stand for? There’s
no information anymore on religion, or political persuasion, or
family status, or personal financial statements, or arrest records,
or blood type .... It’s no more than an exercise in photographic
phrenology!” His reaction to the announcement
of Shirley Tilghman’s appointment as president was predictable:
“Couldn’t they find anyone with a Princeton degree?”
He also grumbled about the university’s “knee-jerk kowtowing
to the feminist agenda,” in appointing a woman when “there
must be scores of men better qualified.” That led him naturally
into a long, meandering and all-too-familiar grumble against coeducation. Other bugaboos include
campus construction — “One monstrosity after another”
— and the Dinky itself: “What was wrong with calling it
the PJ&B?” Well, nothing, I found
myself wanting to scream when I heard that one, but now they happen
to call it the Dinky! And what’s wrong with that?! And that’s when
it hit me: Old Randy may be a bit extreme, but he’s not unique.
I mean, that could have been his voice coming out in twin falsetto.
Randolph Wellfleet ’58 is, if you will, merely the poster boy
for disgruntled alums. And there are plenty of those. Just read
the letters to PAW; though signed by men and women representing
classes from before World War II to ’02, ’03 and ’04,
half could have been written by Old Randy at his most curmudgeonly. A university thrives
— financially and spiritually — on the support of its
alumni. It is only through that support that a great institution
like Princeton can continue to grow and evolve and change and...
. And 90 per cent of alumni, it seems, are against change. As Old
Randy would say, “It wasn’t like that in my day!” Hugh O'Bleary commutes to New York City from Princeton. He revels in his daily sojourn across campus to catch the Dinky. You can reach Hugh O'Bleary by writing him c/o paw@princeton.edu
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