Plymouth State University - Conning Tower Yearbook (Plymouth, NH)

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“For a student who wants a good general education PSC is definitely a good place to be”. “Students are now less socially oriented and more into studying their material.” I like the cross section of students at PSC, it represents what people are like in the outside world. This diversification of minds is a positive thing. It also holds true of the faculty, because of their unique educational backgrounds they do not all think alike. I've noticed a change of attitude in the students during my 5 years here. Before they were going along with society, going to college because everyone else was. They weren't really interested in learning for learnings sake. Today I feel students are here because they want to be. They arc no longer going to college because it is expected, but be-cause of a desire for more knowledge. Tliis is evident in better grades and more people going on to graduate school. Students today are more oriented toward the future. It is natural to change after college, because this is prepatory stage for life to come afterward. It would be foolish and harmful to replace liberal arts education with vocation. Liberal arts education means gaining knowledge for knowledges sake. In this way it is making a wise man wiser. For a student who wants a good general education PSC is dcfinatly a good place to be. Its small enough to get to know professors as well as students. There is also much knowledge to be gained through other students at PSC. It is a wise person who gets out and Joins organizations because so much can be learned from peers. Life should never be drudgery, it should be lived and enjoyed to the fullest extent. This can be done by not being rigid but by being relaxed and open minded. I've noticed a change of attitude in the students in the past few years. They are now less socially oriented and more into studying their given material. I say that because of the attention they are now giving as compared to before. I guess this is a national trend, I've read some things about it. Along with the students the reason Plymouth is so special is because of the mountain setting. In a small town you can get to know students better, when you see them you exchange greetings instead of just walking by. In other places you can see students and not even realize they are in your classes. I like the environment here. I plan on staying for a while . . . Dr. Ford “Every system has its limit and we are rapidly approaching ours.” This generation is approaching a crises point which will come cither at the end of this century or the beginning of the next. There are many problems which can no longer be ignored. It appears as if everyone has a small amount of time to get it together or we will witness a catas-rophie in the form of armed hostility, plague, fammon, or total destruction of the ego systems. I see spiritual awareness (not theological) as the answer to the above problems. Also, through Psy-cology and understanding of how we think we may be able to avoid this total destruction. Every system has its limit and we no matter how much mistreated, doesn't bear a grudge. This means that mistakes may be corrected. Don't give up but approach life with more aggression and self confidence. Mr. Terry Downs. Dr. Normand Cote 21 Dr. Boyce Ford Mr. Terry Downs

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“The essential ingredient we need: consciousness, more awareness, life.” “Work must be grounded in love.” X o D o x H C 3 PJ PU Pu C 3 Pu O c cu PP X H I am here because I like the peace and purity of the mountains, the clean air and water, the spaciousness of the area, the fact that the college is small, and because I like my chairman. There have been some very special students also whom I have have had the priviledge of knowing. In the years, however, that I have been here there has been more and more of a reversal of values amongst the students--extra-curricular activities have become curricular and curricular work has become extra-curricular, making classes and study somewhat secondary. I constantly have students asking or even telling me that they have to skip classes or some portion of them to play soccer, work in the darkroom, or sleep because they have been working till midnight someplace and cannot stay awake during the day. Too, there is too much value placed upon the extra-extra-curricular--partying, for example. What we could use is a little more Socrates and a little less Dionysus on campus. I think a college ideally should be like Plato's Symposium, a place and time for investigation and celebration of knowledge on the very highest level, the level of higher education, where Socrates' advice can be taken, Know your self, and where the priesthood of professors can speak of life, love, death, the human spirit, in competition for the prize of wisdom and truth. The temple of the intellect and spirit as it now stands is in ruins. Shall we say, following Nietzsche, not only that God is dead, but that the priests have killed him, taken his place and are merely serving up the leftovers in a false communion? We are living in a period when colleges and universities which have been traditionally temples of the rational mind and human spirit under the jurisdiction of the high priests arc in danger of extinction, and it will be up to visionary idealists to revitalize the institution to prevent it from becoming just a mill or a fact-ory for the production of money-makers, technocrats, and mechanists of one sort or another. The essential ingredient we need: consciousness, more awareness, life. Why should biology be the study of dead butterflies and dissected frogs? Why not rename it for what it is--thanatology? And psychology--the study of the mind? Might it not be better called ratology ? Or somatology ? What about business?Should making a living be mistaken for making a killing? And philosophy--the love of wisdom? It, too has become objcctivc --making everything into a lifeless object--like all other disciplines, trying to avoid a concern for the values that might be necessary to prevent other disciplines from becoming dead bones mistaken for life. The spirit of abstraction from from the whole and reductionism to the lowest is loose, and such a spirit is only a ghost of the real spirit which animates man and gives him life and love. I think of my own discipline as the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love. Those of you who have graduated this year I hope have left with the satisfaction of knowing that the subject of love has everything to do with one's vocation in life and one's productivity. Work must be grounded in love. One must make his living by loving, Thoreau says. Work is the dis-play of love and discipline. If done with love, work is recreation. All creation is re-creation: play. All cognition is re-cognition: wisdom. All production is re-production: a labor of love. A labor of love is a love of labor, A play on words, words on play. Farewell on your path of love. Dr. David Haight 20 Dr. David Haight

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“Very few of us know where we are going to be 5 years from now.” Students have become a little narrow in what they think an education is. Take the average 18 year old who is going to enter our business program, let say, okay, what are you going to do five years from now? What do you want to be doing? He can't answer that question but seems to think that the way to get where he wants to be is through a very applied business education, or business curriculum. I think that's an error, and I think that's one of the reasons why we've maintained the posture that a good portion of a students education has got to be a liberal arts area. This will help the student develop his ability to think about other things; philosophy, art, theatre and all the componots to a general education. Very few of us know where we are going to be five years from now. If you are prepared to be an accountant and only an accountant, you're locked into one little narrow niche. I think the faculty shares this at Plymouth, we arc going to maintain our posture as a multi purpose institution. One of the problems we are facing in the business department is that soon we arc going to have to limit the number of people that can come into business. It's going to have to happen, because if we get over subscribed in business the other areas are going to feel the crunch because of the lack of students. They could fill the entire freshman class next year with business students, if they allowed that to happen what's going to happen to languages and all those other fields? I think we all recognize the sudden increase in business students is not going to continue forever. In the future there will be a shift to engineering. What we hope to do is take this period of growth to try to build a set of resources, so when things flatten out or level off, you still have real quality there. You can maintain a decent quality in a fixed number of students. In the long run, I suppose that whatever size the entering class is next year—it will be as big as it ought to get. This school is facing that decision .... Dr. David Kent “. . . It’s much healthier than when they had to keep this stuff in” Students are more open and freer to express opinions then they were 20 years ago. Back then young people were to be seen and not heard. As far as that is concerned though, the whole society has changed. I've heard students say things to their parents that never would have been said before. It's not so much a change in the students as it is a change in the environment in which they've been brought up. I think its a much healthier kind of thing than is was when they felt they had to keep all this stuff in. For the most part we have the kind of student who is earnest. We draw from the kind of student who sees education as being a step upward in society. I've always found the students here very easy to work with and I like that. Plymouth is still small enough so that students can drop in and talk if they want to, without making an appointment three or four hours in advance. That is good for faculty-student relations. Dr. Norton Baglcy Dr. Norton Bagley