Portland State University - Viking Yearbook (Portland, OR)

Page 6 text:

i K I parted company with the army three years ago. It was i typical hitch. You know, all those hot, dusty, dirty little forts in the south, then Nam and finally Alaska. It was like a three year long sauna bath complete with cold sho When I finally got out I ended up in Portland but it could have been LA. or Bismarck, South Dakota, jus as easily. I didn't start going to P.S.U. immediately. I mean I kind of sat around fora Iittlewhile, put in some 'road time after that and finally went to work for private detective agency. It wasn't at all like Mannix.l don't know which I hated th most: the actual work I was doing orjust work in general I started at P.S.U. two year ago when I needed money an had to choose between robbi a bank or letting the US. government out me through school. School seemed the wiser decision at the time. Al first I hated it but after a while I got to like the idea of a school that wasn't full of the usual rah-rah bullshit. Now I'm majoring in English and I could even dig going to graduate school here. Don't get me wrong; this university has plenty of flaws, problem etc., like giant classes, a teacher shortage and people who would trade grass for cement, leaving the Park Blocks looking like some kin of bad dream from the 21 st century. I guess the best part of going to school here is the fact that nobody pushes you If you want to get involved, you can. On the other hand, i you don't, you can be as anonymous as Harold Stasse

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iiU i .. :2 w 2mm . u Something happened this ye Greg Wolfe said that it was a state of financial exigency' Others said that the students were tu rnedoff by rhetoric, burned-out by confrontatio turned inward in despair. But, the important truth we more nearly that we took a good look at ourselves and a PSU and we laughed For if laughter is a catharsis for grief, now then our mourning is over. We laughed quietly at first, then ironically, then with increasing confidence as we looked around us at the waste and fool ishness, the petty decisions, the arbitrar impediments to learning, the absurd system of accou nting that curtailed spending for needed academic programs allowing superfluous buildin to continue unchecked an we settled down to change the University, with a little help from our friends.