The longer the anticipated shelf-life of a school publication, the more its theme must communicate "We're pretty close to perfect...." This is true for quarterly magazines that show alumni working to save remote villages in the Far East, but is best proved by admission brochures (expected to last on coffee tables for at least one year) which feature clusters of multi-ethnic students grinning deliriously while focussed on academic projects under the gaze of a teacher sporting a bow tie. Yes, it's easy to capture beautiful scenes on prep school campuses.

At Proctor, a rolling green valley is dotted with classic Greek Revival structures in white clapboard, and a few Shaker barn motifs. Near the center of campus, the pond extends westward to Alice's Garden. Almost everywhere you look the vista is one of pastoral beauty and graceful New England charm. Almost everywhere you look.

Doesn't it follow that if your media has the shelf-life of--say--48 hours that you could reveal the stuff that never winds up in a brochure or magazine? Would it be wrong for Chuck's Corner to bring you images of the tawdry, seedy backside of this pretty place? On the right side of this page are several nominations for Proctor's ugliest nook. The winner, in my opinion, is the terrace between (beautiful) Slocumb Hall and Holland Auditorium. Here, smack in the center of everything, only a pebble's throw from the serenity of Proctor Pond...venerable sugar maples on North Street...and the green dale leading to the boathouse, is a swale of asphalt surrounding a brick patio overgrown with scant turf...the firescape from the old stage....