Kay’s Klowns T-Shirt and Play Script, USM Honor’s College (1976)

an aged yellow T-shirt with bold black lettering in the center, writing out Kay’s Klowns

an open paper packet for a play script. The first page is written as follows:ACT ONEScene One(Setting is Klowns’ abode. Enter Klowns center stage, one at a time.)KLOWN 1I am the klown of Honors past. (Goes to right of cauldron.)KLOWN 2 I am the klown of Honors future. (Goes to left of cauldron.)KLOWN 3 I am the klown of Honors present. (Moves between other two.)VOICE. No, you idiots. Wrong story!(KLOWNS take poles and start to stir. Chant together.)KLOWNS Sinny ninny, pappy poopyMama Mactharpe and chicken soupy.KLOWN 1 What do you get when you cross an elephant with a fruit fly? (Pause.) A forget-me-gnat!KLOWNS (Repeat chant.)KLOWN 2 What kind of bird in Honorsland has wings but can’t fly? (Pause.) A dead one!KLOWNS (Repeat chant.)KLOWN 3 Is Allison here?KLOWN 1, 2 Allison who?KLOWN 3 Allison Wonderland!KLOWNS (Repeat chant. Lights dim.)Scene Two(Setting is McKay’s office. Lights come on as McKay paces back and forth, followed by his secretaries, who take notes of his every word.)SEC. 1 How do you spell that?MCKAY It doesn’t matter. Make something up.MCWARD (Enters.) Your highness, the duke of Malboro, the Earl
of Kent, and Lord Chesterfield are here to see you.MCKAY Do they desire an audience?MCWARD No, sire. They desire a light.SEC 1 (holding telephone receiver.) Sire, he’s not in, now.Should I leave a message MCKAY Yes. Tell him to call me back when gets in.MCWARD But sire. The telephone won’t be invented for 800 years.MCKAY Good. He should be in by then.VOICE MEATBALLLLLLLL! (Meatball falls sky, all look up.)SEC. 2 A reporter is here to interview you, sire. MCKAY Those clods are always making me out to be a liar. SEC. 2 What shall I tell him, sire? MCKAY Tell him I’m not in.

Donated this spring to the University Archives by Mr. Byron Glick, this unassuming t-shirt and stapled papers are pieces of early Honors College history. The history of USM’s Honors program dates much further back than the 1970s, but it was formalized into the Honors College as we know it now under President Aubrey K. Lucas in 1976. The proposal for this establishment – drafted early into Lucas’ administration by Wallace G. Kay who would become the first Dean of the Honors College – outlined the purpose, requirements, and general framework for the reformed honors program, stating “The purpose of the Honors College will be to provide superior students with a broadly-based, humanistic undergraduate education; to give proper setting and perspective to their more specialized studies, and to challenge them to their best efforts.”

As dry of a purpose statement as that would be, the first freshman class of the Honors College, counting to 40 students or so, was decidedly not. Taking the moniker of “Kay’s Klowns” in honor of the first Dean with the original objective of acting as the Honors College’s intramural sports team name, these first freshman describe a kind of communal giddiness and good-natured hijinks with the formation of this scholarly cohort.

The t-shirt, accordingly, was intended to act as the jerseys for these intramural sports games – a design which was rejected by the university at the time due to strict rules requiring jerseys to sport officially registered organization names, of which Kay’s Klowns were not - but even so, the shirt received extensive use at Honors College conventions, on stage performing the pictured play, and as general attire. Relatedly, the paper packet is the script for a play, performed only once in fall 1976 for the faculty and their families by the students of the College. With a plotline inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and several corny jokes, the play is made up of 18 scenes across 5 acts. The play was written by two students in the initial freshman class Daryl Coats and Byron Glick, following rather faithfully to the original with characters based on key faculty taking the archetypal roles in the story, namely MacKay, MacTharpe, MacBowers, and MacWard. Although a certainly colorful representation of the early Honors College, to quote Mr. Glick in his account of this history “both of these artifacts are faithful representatives of that first magic year of the Honors College.”

For more information on the item or the University Archives collections contact Uriah Jenkins.

A very special thanks to Mr. Byron Glick for donating the items and providing such a robust history of their importance!

Text by Uriah Jenkins, Records Management Specialist.