Various Positions by Ira B. Nadel Read Free Book Online Page A

average on the entrance exam was 74.1%. Ironically, his lowest mark was in English literature; math was his strongest subject. His actual undergraduate marks at McGill were less impressive: he graduated with an overall average of 56.4%. He studied arts his first year, commerce his second (with courses in accounting, commercial law, political science, and math), and then arts for years three and four, continuing with political science and adding zoology. English was his favorite subject. He attended lectures infrequently though and squeaked through McGill only with supplemental examinations. He explained that his completion of the program was “paying off old debts to my family and to my society.”
    Cohen introduced new ideas and radical policies to his fraternity. Drinking on the lawn and in the fraternity house was encouraged, leading to Cohen’s impeachment. But he brought life to the institution, leading house meetings with his songs and guitar playing, and often unexpectedly promoting surprising moments such as the time a friend and female guest appeared at lunch sharing one overcoat which had difficulty staying closed. To his fraternity brothers Cohen brought “limitless space” and the gift of possibilities. He was a popular member.
    Cohen was active in the Debating Union, first as secretary and later as president. In his first year at McGill, he won the Bovey Shield for Public Speaking, represented McGill in Burlington, Vermont, and at the end of the year received a Gold A award for Debating. In his second year he was corresponding secretary of the society, winning the Annual Raft Debate, and represented McGill at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. During his third year (1953–4), he was vice-president of the Union and was elected president in his fourth year. His presidential nomination speech began with Burke and moved on to a rejection of the “ineffectual shower curtains of political modesty.”
    Cohen participated in national and international debates, engaging diverse opponents that ranged from two Cambridge students to a team of convicts from the Norfolk Penitentiary outside Boston (with whom he debated the negative moral impact of tv on society). Cohen had been introduced to the convicts as a poet and he first clarified his position:
    My colleague has promised you a poet, but I am afraid that you will be disappointed. I do not converse in rhyming couplets, nor do I wear a cape or walk brooding over the moor or drink wine from a polished human skull or stride frequently into the cosmic night. I am never discovered sitting amid Gothic ruins in moonlight clutching in my pale hand a dying medieval lily and sighing over virgins with bosoms heaving like the sea. In fact I wouldn’t recognize a dying medieval lily if I fell over one, [and] hardly think I could do better with a virgin, and I’ll drink out of anything that has a bottom to it.
    Cohen lost to the inmates, who had not been defeated in twenty-four years. Impatient with the prolonged, ineffectual executive meetings of the Debating Union, Cohen moved to ban any further meetings. The Debating Union was a suitable apprenticeship for a budding lawyer, a career that Cohen was then considering.
    Cohen also joined Hillel, the Jewish students’ organization. He organized a Hillel band and participated in a Hillel play directed by Bernie Rothman. The cast included Yafa Lerner; Eddie Van Zaig (later to marry Roz Ostrow, Cohen’s stepsister, also in the production); Freda Guttman, in charge of properties; Robert Hershorn, who was part of the stage crew; and “Lenny Cohen” as second guard. Law, the courts, and freedom were the focus of the work.
    Before the start of his second year at McGill, Cohen and two friends formed the Buckskin Boys, a country and western band. The choice was not entirely a surprise since he had long admired country and western music, listening for hours to the musical narratives on radio stations from the states. They chose their name because