Carnegie Mellon University - Thistle Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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It is a pleasure to have a small part in this issue of the reanimated yearbook. For the past 2 years it has not been published because students were not interested in purchasing or producing it. Now it is being brought to life again, and I hope that it will flourish. The death and rebirth of the yearbook seems to me to reflect a parallel but not exactly contemporary change in student culture. As everyone knows, yearbooks have always been as standard a fixture on college and university campuses as the cafeteria. And as everyone knows, they have for the most part been standard and uninspired - pictures of juniors and seniors, pictures of organizations and social and athletic activities, and some text here and there, plus a few advertisements to help meet the costs. But they were nevertheless prized possessions of alumni because they were reminders of their college years - of the other students they had known, of fun and games on the campus. They were in a sense a personal historical document, a storehouse of individual memories. But with the decade of the sixties, the student culture underwent a change. Although many students no doubt still adhered to the former values, the more vociferous ones tooks charge of the scene, literally, so that campuses became centers of protest, often violent, against many things — notably the draft, the military, and the war in Viet Nam, the establishment, the policies of colleges and Universities, racial discrimination, and so on and on. The ferment was often directed at educational, political, and social faults that needed to be corrected, but the methods used were more often destructive than constructive. It was a stormy time. Now the reaction seems to be setting in. The mass protests, the sit-ins, the violence have all but disappeared. A number of factors other than the normal pendulum effect have contributed to the reversal. The draft and the war in Viet Nam, which had a devastating effect on people's outlook on life, are no more. Some of the battles that the activists fought have been won. And college and university administrations have learned to do a better job of communicating with the students and of listening to and considering their criticism and suggestions for constructive change. The campus mood now appears to be similar to what it was before the disruption and violence of the late sixties. Students are applying themselves to learning, to preparing for a professional career. I am sure that the campus quiet is not due to apathy or unconcern about educational , political, and social faults. Rather it grows out of students' recognition that they cannot solve such deep-rooted problems over night, that their best course is to prepare well for their professions and thus to equip themselves to help effectively in finding the best solutions. I hope that this thistle will capture and preserve some of the character and flavor of Carnegie-Mellon University as it is today. Richard M. Cyert December 3,1973

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