University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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— though this IS a highly personal, debatable and romantic notion — the most valuable things acquired in col- lege ceme when we are alone with ourselves and an idea. It matters not what the idea is, so long as we are concerned with grasping something previously beyond our reach. What js important is that we are awakened, are struck by the ageless curiosity as to the whys. ' ' ' and ' wheres.- ' ' of our lives, of all lives. The idea may come completely unannounced in the midst of the noisiest night of the year in the Tempo; drunken philosophizing in smoky clamorous beerhalls is not en- tioned God and those who exalted Him; above all, those teachers who lifted our eyes — forcibly in most instances ■ — above Y-Court, above Woollen Gym and Harry ' s and fra- ternities and dormitories — in brief, above the passing parade of manifold fun and games, to the lasting ques- tions of the mind and heart. Anything which draws one outside his small circle of problems and con- cerns is beneficial; and if during our stay in Chapel Hill, we — even once — stood and looked beyond this day ' s work and tests and the next evening ' s pleasures and gazed into the swirling awful process that is life — if only ofice we looked beyond ourselves to the stars, then the time has been well spent, for one who has looked upon stars hesitates to return to earth. Per- haps education is essentially the cracking of the tough, unyielding wall of self-preoccupation, the free- ing of one ' s mind arid — if you will — soul, from the tiny confines of self-indulgence and concern. It is not only by books that we are made more knowledgeable, more wise or better able to cope with our lives. Perhaps Pages

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America to the Soviet nemesis. A Student Peace Union is formed, each week the Di-Phi unravels nettlesome problems, William Buckley shocks conservatives as well as liberals with his Rabelaisean metaphors; a mock United Nations General Assembly is held; liberals and conservatives (the Punch and Judy Show of America, 1963) slash away at one another with rusty verbal sabers. And somewhere between vocifer- ous Daily Tar Heel editors and no- torious Daily Tar Heel letter-writers and the factitious leaders of partic- ular groups — be they Dekes or Stu- dent Party members, or Pan-Hell ' s or NAACP members — stands that usually unnoticed, unconsulted and much-maligned straw man: the Caro- lina Student, to whom these lines are written, and to whom the following question is directed: What differ- ence has the University of North Carolina made in my life. ' ' We have devoted years of our lives and thousands of dollars (either ours, or more happily, someone else ' s), and • — most of us — much anxious mental labour in order to obtain a degree from this school. And what really has it meant ? Look beyond the obvious answers of future earnings, status, and the good times on campus (which will grow even better in retrospect) ; what have these four years, more or less, meant to our lives? The experience that is a uni- versity education ideally should be a broadening and awakening one. We who have lived and worked among professors who have spent their lives in learning should our- selves be more open to ideas, more anxious to learn. Ignore the pedants and the incompetents; their presence has not altered in any way the ex- ample of those who seek to learn and teach : the professors who exposed to our slower eyes and ears new facets of Shakespeare; the ones who ques- % KP f .€ ' ' . ' . S... L : %-r ■- k , ' ' J El i ■ -k- H H B B i i .. r B v l lfv ' tfl l ■ dL j ' ' i K ■•J satuy s ■a ji 1 tmr-mc- tim Page 7

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tirely futile. Occasionally, beer breeds a valid fresh thought. Or an insight may arrive to the visceral beat of one of the infinite number of com- bos that circle in and about Chapel Hill, vying for the fraternity ' s favour. A pair of eyes, equally as intoxicated as our ovk ' n, sometimes ■ — for an in- stant • — become more knowing than Plato. Or walking down South Build- ing steps, facing the library ' s chal- lenging bulk, the thought may come that college is not forever, that all lives lead somewhere, and our own lives must go on from this small vil- lage. But where. ' ' And why. In the