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

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that we most of ( attend 1 in tlie fltli oor actively ortand boi.tlie isk any ipomics if it ' s a lie road experi- afouf- id new lyways, beyond iai suli- and the fn college you can change your career identity each semester, and elect courses which will allow you to ' play-act ' the real-world identity you choose. Perhaps even more importantly, college offers you an opportunity to experiment with a range of ways of living, and with a range of groups to belong to — again, an opportunity to try on for a while a series of identities, to see how they fit, to see what kinds of satisfaction they bring. You can be a long-hair or a Frat-rat, a Commune member of a Cam- pus Politician, and you have no committment to it for longer than you want to dress and behave the part. It ' s all very temporary, very Now , and makes no obligation on the future or the future for you. Perhaps the secret of involvement is somehow tied up with the recognition that the University is really in the business of giving you the freedom to fail, where failure costs are minimized. To learn, to grow, to create, to move beyond what you were, means to risk a little more than you ' re sure about, to gamble on yourself a little bit beyond your own qualities. If, as students and teachers and ad- ministrators we can recognize this, then the University experience will be a fulfilling one.

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MAKE AMERICA A BETTER PLACE. LEAVETHE COUNTRY J - J.G. Peck sociology anthropology One of the unusual things about our society is that we are able to and willing to subsidize many if not most of our young people for a four-year period while they attend a ' university ' . We not only allow them to freeload in the sense of avoiding productive labor, (we do this with our welfare people and with our Hippy groups) but we actively encourage them with bribes, subsidies, tax support and the promise of the Great Middle Class status symbol, the BA. What the BA is in is largely unimportant. (Ask any personnel director the difference between an Economics BA and a Sociology BA, or whether it matters if it ' s a Civil or Industrial Engineering degree he puts on the road with his milking machine sales team.) One of the essences of the student-university experi- ence, it seems to me, is that the student is afforded a four- year period to experiment with new behavior and new thoughts, new experiences and new goals — in many ways, to push his own capacities to the limits of self and beyond if possible— in an environment and within a social sub- system designed to minimize the cost of change and the consequence of failure. II

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Dr. Howard G. Miller psychology We live in an extremely complex society. That state- ment is a truism. Its constant reiteration has made it a banality. Yet it remains a profound statement because it communicates a truth about modern life that is little under- stood or heeded. The most significant factor in modern complex society is its dynamism, its ever changingness. We have some vague understanding of certain elements in this dynamic world, particularly of the pace of develop- ment of science and technology. But we have very little understanding of the effects of such dynamics on human existence. Unless we learn more about these effects and how to control them and prepare for them we are probably in for an ever accelerating set of problems each level becoming more sever and more difficult to deal with than preceding problems. Human society normally develops certain social institu- tions as instruments to stabilize and control the world. The family, the church, the government, the business firm are such institutions. The university is also an institution with such purposes. The pattern of development of human society has been such that its institutions have been basically conservative. They have stabilized and organized the wisdom and practice of the past and carried them on into the present and projected them into the future. Most of these established institutions have been poorly adapted to adjust to change and because, until recently, change came slowly, unchanging institutions had not so many crisis situations as are occuring today. If it was wise in a static world to develop institutions to preserve the conven- tional wisdom it is necessary in a dynamic world to de- velop institutions which enable us to understand and control change. My view is that the university is such an institution. It should be so conceived and it should be so developed. It might be useful to examine some of the basic func- tions of the University in the light of this interpretation. Most of us see education as the central function of the University and I would not disagree. There are different views as to how this education should occur and concern- ing what its product should be. I see education as the preparation of students to assume an active role in a changing world. That is, the educational process should produce graduates who are adapted to change. This means that the educational process is one which brings students into direct contact with the world into which they will go. Seen this way the University is not a sheltered ivy covered retreat, but is a part of the world. Unless the student has direct contact with the world during his uni- versity days he will be unprepared to deal with the kinds of problems he will meet in whatever career he may