Salinger slept here (Just dont tell anyone)

Then Jon Volkmer,an English professor,had a terrific idea. They could establish an annual J D Salinger Scholarship in creative writing for an incoming freshman,and the winner would get to spend the first year at Ursinus in Salingers old dorm room.

On January 19,2006,the college announced the $30,000-a-year Salinger scholarship,and within a week,the writers literary representatives were demanding that his name be removed. This was not a big surprise. All his life,Salinger had done everything possible to protect his privacy.

Salingers representatives sent us a warning; it was only one paragraph,but it was blunt, DiFeliciantonio said.

College officials pleaded that they were just trying to help worthy students.

In deference to what some would refer to as Salingers artistic sensibilities and others would call his nuttiness,the college changed the name of the scholarship to the Ursinus College Creative Writing Award. But the part about sleeping in Salingers room remained. I mean,we own the room, Professor Volkmer said.

In the next few weeks,Ursinus will announce the sixth annual winner of what is now known here as the Not the J D Salinger Scholarship.

In theory,previous winners who have slept in Salingers room,300 Curtis Hall,should have felt honoured and humbled,although it was no bed of roses.

Its a tiny room, said Anton Teubner,a senior who slept there in 2007.

It is small, said Logan Metcalf-Kelly,the current occupant. But I dont mind sleeping in it.

Late at night, Teubner said,Id be in bed and thered be these drunk freshmen yelling in the hallway: Its the room,its the room. Cut into my sleep.

On the other hand,for the lonely male freshman,there are benefits. Girls are interested in seeing the inside of Salingers room, Metcalf-Kelly said.

The problem is,theres scant evidence that one of the great writers of the 20th century spent the first half of his freshman year there. A slanting ceiling makes the room feel even smaller than it is. Its hard to tell whether the walls are a faded yellow or bright beige. The carpet is matted,threadbare and cruddy-looking.

A scholarly assessment of Salingers four months at Ursinus would probably conclude that great writers are not necessarily great human beings,and that their behaviour in their formative years does not necessarily foreshadow their outsize successes to come.

Salinger wrote a weekly column in the school paper called J D Ss The Skipped Diploma. The writing is so snide and hip and insiderly,it is almost impossible to tell what,if anything,he was trying to say. He was also the papers theatre critic,but his reviews were mindlessly positive and cloying,particularly when it came to the female roles,and some scholars have speculated that his primary artistic goal was bedding coeds.

Still,for a man who didnt appear to like much of anything for very long,he seemed to have had a fondness for Ursinus. It was as close to an alma mater as hed get. In her memoir,Margaret,his daughter,wrote that he had only good things to say about Ursinus and its lack of pretension.

To qualify for the Not-the-Salinger-Scholarship,applicants must submit writing samples. The judges arent looking for a person who writes like Salinger but who writes with a strong,distinctive voice like his. Just as well since many have not even read his books.

Callie Ingram,a junior,slept in the Salinger room two years ago. She described The Catcher in the Rye as a good book,but not pivotal. MICHAEL WINERIP