Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

Page 30 text:

Richard J. Blue Students come to Placement for only one reason. They are concerned about where they fit in the world outside. This concern sometimes takes the form of panic but more often confusion. They want to make a decision. Really, their parents, relatives and friends want them to make a decision. My first message to a student is that a decision is impossible. Not difficult — im¬ possible. Twenty or thirty years ago it was relatively easy to make a decision. A young person looked at his father’s occupation and decided. 26

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The more one investigates the more it becomes clear that no one really agrees on what the purpose of a university is. There are as many purposes as there are individuals to enunciate them. Perhaps we need parallel institutions, to be attended in alternate years or terms. One would be frankly and unequivocally vo¬ cational—whether to produce a doctor of medicine, a school teacher or an architect. The other would be unequivocally academic—doing nothing more than ex¬ posing the student to the art and literature and phi¬ losophy of the ages and of the present. We might need a third type; for those students who want to pull down society, for teachers to like to gam¬ ble with their careers, and for administrators who need the thrill of combat. The buildings would be in¬ expensive and destructible and easily replaced after each confrontation. On too many campuses there is an undue emphasis on being black or white, or old or young, or radical or conservative and not enough attention given to being merely human. The trouble with the Vietnam War is the trouble with all wars. And the trouble with all wars is the anarchic system of independent nations which makes them possible. The peace marchers want to change the rules of the game. The warmongers like the rules the way they are. The “realists” don’t like the rules but think you can work with them. Then there are a few of us world government fanatics who think we ought to get a new game board. All of us are against the establishment. And each of us creates his own establishment to be against. The trouble with the establishment theory of society (like the late Sen. Joe McCarthy’s conspiracy theory) is that the state of men’s digestive tracts has more to do with the way society operates than greed or ideology. And a migraine headache can make a monster out of a saint. The surprise in growing old is in finding that you still feel young. The pleasure is in learning to live on your own terms. The solace is in getting used to the idea of dying. The shock is in finding that others think you are old. 25

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The range of career options has increased two hundred per cent in the past twenty years. In that same time the concept of a “career” has changed. No stu¬ dent today leaves school thinking he will work for the same employer for his entire lifetime. What a person does for a living is a function of what kind of a person he is. 1 ask students to look inside — candidly. Once we have a feel for what we are, there is no great mystery in finding an activity compatible with that self-concept. 27