More Stilwell frogs -- Cafeteria cliques

Another in a series of digitally restored cartoons published between 1971 and 1973 in The Cauldron, the student newspaper at Cleveland State University. Stilwell cafeteria wasn't merely randomly peopled. There were social strata. Certain tables were "claimed" by the members of the fraternities and sororities on campus. The Greeks would hold court at their respective rows of tables throughtout the day as their ilk came from and went to classes. You just knew not to sit at the Tekes' or the Deltas' table, nor at any other table within earshot of them, if you valued individualism and genuine social interaction or just wanted to eat a bland meal, sip a cup of flavorless coffee and study for a while in relative peace. This cartoon is obviously a sendup to this dynamic. You can probably tell that I did not, to put it mildly, identify with my fellow students who "belonged" to these organizations. I was perfectly content not "belonging" to any group. That is, until my circle of friends formed our mocking takeoff on them, a co-ed "frasority" we called Mei Kong Delta, named after the mouth of a river in Vietnam. I should point out, also, that in my five years at Cleveland State, I never saw a rat in Stilwell cafeteria, although I must confess that the nickname of one of the people at our table was "Rat." Seriously. The one used in this comic, which was published on May 4, 1971, is just a comic device, used in the last panel, a panel that also attempts to faithfully represent the southeast corner of the cafeteria, next to the curtained plate-glass windows looking out onto East 24th Street.