North Carolina State University - Agromeck Yearbook (Raleigh, NC)

Page 11 text:

At State it ' s not so easy to be alone. Wherever you walk, there are people engaged in the same inane pursuits that I wanted to escape. And where there aren ' t people, there are other reminders: classrooms, tennis courts- there ' s really no place to forget the world. The best plan, I found, was to walk and think at night— late. The campus is eerie then— only bathroom lights and a few campus cops to keep you company. Certain parts of the campus are espe- cially dark and quiet: the field behind Lee, the railroad tracks. Riddick Stadium, before they tore it down, were my favorites. After several months of these walks, my problem began to explain itself. What I do in the present is influenced by the past and the future. If I don ' t understand what happens now, chances are it ' s because I don ' t under- stand my history. Frustration with questions about myself then does not necessarily imply inabiUty to answer them. It simply means my current desires are conflicting with my past which hasn ' t adequately prepared me for serious thought. Perhaps, but what of the future? Can I really plan for it, or will the present always be shaped by the past? For awhile that was the most demanding question. Then I decided the future is far less important than the past or present for we have direct knowledge of the last two-a good job, in light of yesterday, and tomorrow usually takes care of itself.

Page 10 text:

Ill the first place there is evidence from across the Nation that some types of campuses experience more overt student discontent than others. Greatest inci- dence accords with the campus having a highly selective student body who are studying predomin- antly in the humanities and social sciences and who are upper middle class in income and background. (That generalization obviously applies to the pre- dominantly white institutions.) The lowest incidence of discontent and protest occurs on the small, work-oriented, relatively open-admissions campuses. No two campuses have an identical profile. NCSU is predominantly career-oriented scientific and techno- logical. 1967-68 enrollment in liberal arts courses, it is true, accounted for 36. 7 per cent of total credit hours taught at the University. But despite this fact the flavor of the campus is heavily career-oriented, admissions selectivity is modestly high, student economic background ranges from low to upper middle class affluency, and indeed solid middle class would be a fair description. Tliese are probably the basic reasons NCSU has thus far escaped notable student militancy. ChanceUor John T. Caldwell, 1968

Page 12 text:

There was, I decided, hope after all. But it still bothered me that so much of my school work was antiquated or meaningless. On top of that, so many of my friends seemed lethargic when- ever I suggested that education at State needed to be made more pur- poseful. At least in my estimation an academic outlook that once would have satis- fied students who came to college for mere job training simply had no rele- vance to the type of student the University is breeding now. For there are students at State who are dedi- cated to the same basic fields of study which the school has always of- fered. . .the predominantly scientific disciplines. But when people across the entire country are concerning themselves more and more with the morality of a way, the dignity of a race, the ability of an educational structure such as Duke or Columbia to turn out better human beings, i.e. the decidedly non- materialistic side of life, how can State fail to see the need for human- izing education? How can the growing involvement of University students in community affairs pass State by? Applying the same analytic approach I had used myself, I soon began to realize that State too had its problems of identity and purpose. The more I pondered the more intriguing became the parallels I could draw between disgruntled students like myself and North Carolina State and its growing pains.