Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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o I don't have any inspiring things to say to a graduating class. 1 merely want to say that I enjoy teaching physics at the elementary-intermediate levels, an 1 appreciate the interactions I have with undergraduates. I like their responses to the demonstration experiments I do in the lectures. 23

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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

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Wray Huestis As a scientist whose intellectual life has been influenced profoundly by an undergraduate “liberal arts education. I am an enthusiastic advocate of diverse humanist education for students regardless of their careergoals. When distribution requirements were dismantled in the academic upheavals of the last decade, students lost an important motive for attempting new and difficult fields of learning. I hold the reactionary view that a university has an obligation to define its educational values and to guide its students accordingly. Your generation of students has been criticized for approaching Stanford as a preprofessional training institute rather than a university. I think that our reluctance to visit our values on you has contributed to this atmosphere, for of course you were not really freed from structure and pressure. Instead, the demands made on you came to be shaped by external and sometimes alien social institutions. This distorted your use of our resources. I hope that in spite of these demands, your years here have brought you enough maturity to sec beyond the bottom line to the more subtle rewards of scholarship. 24