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Younger siblings of Mount students help out with the SWES toy drive in 1954.

WE HAD OCCASION TO BROWSE the digitized editions of the long-running The View campus paper earlier this week and wondered what Mount journalists were writing about in back in the day. Pretty typical stuff, it turns out. In some ways, student life doesn't change a lot decade to decade.

Fifty and 60 years ago there were Christmas parties and fundraisers, event planning for the New Year and looking forward to Winter Break (or Christmas Vacation, as it was called). Here are some choice tidbits from yesteryear:

Sixty years ago - December 1954

• Costume dance party is planned for Jan. 5 by the Gamma Sigma Pi sorority. The locale is "Hernando's Hideaway" at Sepulveda and Slauson boulevards in Westchester, and the theme is "Hard Times." Dance music by the Johnny Delfino Band.
• The Student Councils of Mount St. Mary's, Immaculate Heart College and Marymount share a holiday dessert party on the Marymount Campus in Palos Verdes. 
• The SWES (Social Work, Economics and Sociology) Club holds a toy drive for underprivileged children. The main event is the special delivery of toys by little brothers and sisters of the club members
• The Parnassians literary club and Sodality of Mary Literature Committee hold an annual Christmas book sale. Bestselling titles are Little World of Don Camillo, The Second Conquest, Deliverance of Sister Cecilia, and Holding the Stirrup.
• A front-page editorial urges student to be more respectful of each other in the New Year.
• Two full pages are dedicated to student poetry about Christmas. Another page is given over to coverage of club Christmas parties. 
• "Personalities of the Month" are the three Bondan sisters, senior Anne, junior  Kathy and frosh Jo.
• Christmas Vacation begins on Friday, Dec. 17, 1954, at exactly 4;25 p.m. Classes resume on the dot at 8:30 a.m., Monday, Jan 3, 1955.

Fifty years ago - December 1964

• An article discusses the slow start of the new national program VISTA (Volunteers In Service to America), the domestic version of the Peace Corps.
• To help alleviate a citywide shortage, four Mount students sign on as substitute teachers in L.A. public schools, part of a pilot program to put student teachers in real classrooms. The article notes that they earn the same pay rates as credentialed substitutes.
• Sister Dolores Cecile Schembri, CSJ, of the Music faculty will give a piano concert.
• Volunteers are need for a trip to bring medical and other supplies to poor parish in Tijuana. 
• An article provides in-depth details on Christmas planning in Doheny Hall (the Mansion, then a CSJ convent). The results of the annual CSJ "cookie-baking spree" will be shared with the neighborhood. Sister Mary Irene Flanagan of the Home Economics Department plans an all-white flocked Christmas tree with gold ornaments, while banisters of the Grand Staircase will be festooned with silver garlands and red ornaments. Midnight Mass will be held in the third-floor chapel. 
• Popular book author and illustrator Leo Politi is the guest of honor at a Las Posadas celebration sponsored by the student members of the California Teachers Assn. 
• Nationally renowned artist Sister Mary Corita Kent, IHM, is to give a presentation on her famous serigraphs.
• No. 17 will finally available for classroom space in the spring semester following the death the previous June of Dr. Rufus von Klein Smid, former USC chancellor and a Chester Place resident for 30 years,

Old newspapers are fun to look at, and the Mount Archives has lots of them! Fortunately, they're all available online. Just head over to http://bit.ly/16SHydt. Happy browsing!