University of North Carolina Greensboro - Pine Needles Yearbook (Greensboro, NC)

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In 1967, American jmpuses echoes with a growing and for student power over the decisions that control the lives of youths both in and outside of the university. Some- times the demand is merely an assertion of egotism in the face of huge and impersonal institutions that seem to reduce the individual to irrelevance. As one Princeton student said after the demonstration against the Vietnam war at the Pentagon in October. We had to provoke some response. We had to get them to admit that we exist. But the demand for student power often goes deeper; it is a signal that today ' s college youths do not like the world that has been handed them and want to change it. The rebellion of youth is as eternal as the seasons, but the protests of this generation have peculiar relevance for American politics and education. They are the post-World War II and almost the post-Cold War generation— the world has changed so fast since their parents were in school that the gap between the generations is not merely a question of time but of hist ory. Today ' s students make new assumptions about the threat of Communism, the rights of the poor, the way to allocate the nation ' s resources. They worry less about paying their tuition (or having their parents or the taxpayers pay it) than about what they are being taught. They espouse a moral codi that places concern for individual people (or, sometimes, individual value judgments) above abstract precepts derived from formal religion or hierarchical family structure. It is these ideas, crashing against the institutions and policies formulated by an older generation, that strike the sparks of student revolt. Ironically, the affluence and security provided by the older generation is a major reason why students can afford to worry about civil rights and Vietnam, and be nonchalant about their own future. The students who care about influencing politics or their own education remain a small group on any campus; the apathetic, as always, outnumber the activists. But change has usually been initiated not by the mass but by an active leadership that is first to perceive the gap between the professed ideals of the old order and the realities of its policies. Early in this decade, student political

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interests focused on the struggle of Southern Negroes for civil rights and equal opportunity. But as the war in Vietnam has grown, and with it the draft calls, their attention has turned to foreign policy . . . In this climate of frustration with politics, an increasing number of students appear to be concerned with their own education and campus life. They are demanding a larger voice in deciding social and academic rules, disciplinary procedures, the hiring of professors, curriculum changes, grading systems and e ven the way the school is organized. Perhaps the most revealing controvesry between students and administrations involves the regulation of social life. For many young people, formal religion or ideology hold little meaning. It is trite but true; they have grown up with the atomic bomb and so many other causes of chaos that it is very hard for them to believe that life can be tied up in neat packages. What they believe in most is each other, and the rules that stop them from loving and learning about each other are particularly onerous. Administrators who grew up in a less mobile and affluent age, who might have believed more deeply in religion and traditional morality, quickly point out the problems. The universities own the dormitories and must take the responsibility for what happens there . . . The students reply that the only way to learn to handle freedom is to have it and that it is irresponsible for the university not to allow them to live their own lives. There is no doubt that much of the current student protest is unreasonable, arrogant and self-righteous. It is not uncommon, for example, for the faculty to initiate improvements in the educational system and for the student body to resist the changes. All wisdom does not rest with the young. But one important theme runs through all of the protest; The students want responsibility, self-reliance, the chance to decide for themselves. What else, they ask is the aim of education? In the U.S., Demands By Steven V. Roberts Reprint from The IMew York Times, Friday, January 12, 1968