ABSTRACT
The Berkeley faculty had the reputation — it may still have — of being cold socially, of lacking the kind of welcomings of newcomers that are almost standard in most American colleges and universities. Nothing comparable, either formal or informal existed for new members of the faculty at Berkeley. Individual departments varied in the amount of social recognition that was given to newly arrived members. Most faculty lived in the hills behind the campus and there was a great deal of relaxed, off the cuff gregariousness. What conceivably saved the author from any feelings of angst and of solitariness in the universe was the Faculty Club. The combination of the Academic Senate and the Faculty Club misled bright young teachers and scholars into thinking a deanship was the highest goal, second only to the presidency, in academic life.
