Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

Page 27 text:

It ' s 1975. I have to continually remind myself that it ' s 1975. I have to continually remind myself that when three civil rights workers — two Jews and a black — were murdered in Mississippi decade ago, the freshmen sitting in front of me were seven years old. That means that most of this class ' graduating seniors — the class of 1975 — were ten or eleven when Mario Savio started the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. They weren ' t even teenagers when the first anti-Vietnam Teach-Ins began at Tufts. This is the great problem for any teacher: to build a bridge between generations, to give a sense of the continuity of things, so that each class can have the benefit of the past as well as of the present. The class of ' 75 is the first of the Depression Babies — the New Depression of the 1970s. Their instincts are more focused on their needs, on their own problems in finding a place for themselves in society. There was a certain atmosphere of desperation with this group at times, an occasional manifestation of dog-eat- doggedness, a sense of that gal next to me may be trying for my spot in Law School. There was the fall-out from De Funis and the Supreme Court. On other campuses, one heard tales of experiments being destroyed. But thank heavens, the bunch held together! This was also the first of the Nostalgia zanies, the ballroom dancers, the musical comedians, the bona fide film freaks. In spite of the pressures to break apart into a kind of look out for yourself isolation, this class kept its balance, its per¬ spective on life, its relationship to past, present, and future, and above all, its sense of humor, at times when things weren ' t that funny. The prob¬ lems and solutions of the 1960s meant little to the class of ' 75. These young people were forced to mature with other pressures. There was a differ¬ ent urgency. But they never lost their sense of kinship with each other; and they left those of us who stay behind richer for having known them. Sol Gittleman German Department 23