Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

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Of course it has been helpful at the end of many days to be able to go home and pull leaves off my plants, cut them down to proper size or have a soul-freeing potting party. 23

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Alvin R. Schmidt It is not unusual for people to remark to me about the often difficult and some¬ times unpleasant nature of the matters deal with daily. A number of you who read this can understand why, in the long run, my optimism and hopefulness remain unimpaired. You know that I have had the opportunity to know many of you personally. What you may not know is that you have continually re¬ freshed my sense that 1 work in a good university among good people. 22

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William H. Wells Only near the end of a student’s col¬ lege experience does the realization that it is only a transitory period sink in. Until then, the student reacts angrily to the suggestion of those who have lived longer and gained a bit of historical per¬ spective, that he is, after all, only a tran¬ sient. Our society is not kind to transients. With rare exceptions it heaps its greatest rewards on those who cling tenaciously to one employer, one expertise, one ca¬ reer. The man who knows a great deal about one thing is treasured above the man who knows much about many things. The Renaissance man is revered in romance but not in reality. If there is one explanation of the un¬ settled state of this or any campus it might be between the transient and the fixed; between those who see the present as eternal and those who see the eternal as present. The white racist now has his counter¬ part in the black racist and hate is the name of the game. Pity the person who merely loves. I do not believe in collective guilt or innocence—only in individual guilt or innocence. I am not responsible for what my ancestors did nor will my children be responsible for what I do. But I owe to my children that which my ancestors owed to me. And I owe it to those around me not to assail or praise them for what others have done, but to judge them by what they do. The college campus is the one place where anyone can feel young—unless he doesn’t wish to. The biggest difference between college as I knew it as a student and as I see it now is between thinking and doing, between wisdom and expertise. College ought to be an institution pre¬ paring youth for the years that follow. It has gone astray. It has become the mis¬ tress of a part of society. Today’s stu¬ dents want not to return it to its original purpose, but merely to shift mistresses. They seem not to want purity, merely a whore with different interests. 24