Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

Page 23 text:

Thinking back on student days here, and of the 30 years since, I can pass on these thoughts: You are leaving a world dominated by words and abstractions for one you must experience actually. Don’t hesitate to make the switch. Change that larger world if you wish but only after seeing clearly that each part of it is a part of you. You will become responsible for all the world’s actions! The relationship sounds heavy but you shouldn’t find it so. The eventual payoff will be a feeling of love for the whole thing, and of knowing that you are loved. Robert Compton 21

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Four years ago you came from many different places, families, backgrounds, schools, and you were different one from the other. Is there anything that kept you together these four years, that made you alike, that you shared with one another, and which you will take with you and cherish? It is not for me to tell you the answers hut I can tell you the answers which my colleagues and I would like to hear; 'We have developed,’ I would like to hear you say, ‘a love of learning and an appreciation of knowledge and understanding. We now know that we have to study something before we can take an action or make a decision, and we realize that we are entitled to make our own decision only after we know what it is all about. We have also come to know that principles are abstract, absolute, and unchangeable, but that practical decisions, although they must conform to principles, lack the precision and the validity of principles, mainly because of human nature, such as it is, both in us and in those with whom we are dealing. We have learned to love each other or at least to respect each other, not only emotionally or socially, as we did before, but rationally and humanly. This is why we treasure friendship so highly and want to preserve our friendships throughout life even if we are separated in one way or another. If and when things are difficult and unsatisfactory, we realize that this is caused not only by human failings, on our part and on the part of others, but also because the good tilings and the bad things in life are intricately and naturally connected with each other, in the individual and in society. We should like to think that we have done our best and we are determined to do our best in the future.’ Antony Raubitschek 20

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Although you have all been tagged as members of the “Me Generation,” I woula contend that those of you I have had in my classes are not very different from my students of the 1960s. What has changed is the world situation. And so the young people today respond differently, just as most of last decade’s revolutionaries have themselves put on new hats, or turned their collars around. In truth, this present generation is not without its own heroes and heroines, for it has expressed its concerns, in many noble ways, about acts arbitrary, treatment intolerant, investments immoral, and decisions discriminatory. Indeed, students today may well be members of what could be called the equal-rights or liberation generation, no better exemplified than by the young women of this class of 1979. What has impressed me more than anything else about many of today's young people is their unfeigned interest in moral questions—in the difference Detween what is and what ought to be. Economists generally shun such territory, preferring instead to concentrate on efficiency -how to get more output with the same inputs. Some of that output may be taken from the affluent and given to the poor, or some of it may be used to bomb the poor. Economists profess not to know which is better. Just give us the goal,” they say, and we will search for the most efficient way of reaching it.” As a consequence, economics students find it almost impossible to discuss good and evil” in their classes, and 1 suspect that is why so many have found their way into my Marxism courses. Marxism, whatever else it may be, is tightly woven in ethical patterns. It docs allow a clear-cut choice to be made between helping the disadvantaged and clobbering them. I deeply appreciate this opportunity to honor your achievements here at Stanford. 1 will treasure the associations that I have had with many of you, and I wish all of you good fortune, and most especially, worthy lives. John Gurley 22