The Personalists

Brains, beards, civil rights, silly riots and sex--such is the confusing image of this year's U.S. collegian. His mind delights; his morals dismay. He is something new: a cross between the inert "apathetes" of the late '50s and the naive activists of the early '60s. He might be called a "personalist"--one who stresses self-development--and he sounds like this:

"There are no great men today."

"No man or group I've encountered has a corner on wisdom or virtue."

"The only absolute in the universe is the speed of light."

"I try to follow three of the Ten Commandments--some of the time."

"I like the theoretical American society. The actual American society drives me crazy. I suppose I'll end up joining the Peace Corps."

"Identity Crisis." Bright collegians have always flirted with doubt; this generation is married to it. Outwardly conformist, these boys and girls are generally uncommitted to any church or political party. Inwardly romantic, they view everything in personal terms. Nothing is proved; everything is possible--drugs, cheating, abortion. To these students, says a Midwestern professor, "the only real things are intimate things: my girl, my pad, my book, my bottle."

Raised since World War II, these collegians have bounced between affluence and atomic-war fears. Spoiled as children ("They even have fancy balls in the ninth grade," notes a Colorado faculty man), they have been force-fed in high school, pushed to get into Harvard, treated as a national resource like plutonium. The result is a Who-am-I? dilemma known as "the identity crisis."

Abortive Revolution. The dilemma seemed resolved in 1960 when President Kennedy pied-piped youth to Washington. "The college student couldn't help feeling some identification with a commander in chief who had to have a special haircut to look the part," says President Edward D. Eddy Jr. of Pittsburgh's Chatham College. Here was a president who called on youth to serve--and provided the Peace Corps, the Foreign Legion of this college generation.

Stirred by Kennedy and Southern sit-ins, collegians plunged into "involve-mentism." Some picketed Woolworth stores; others ran high-powered colloquiums like Yale's "Challenge" and Princeton's "Response." Berkeley liberals got washed down the steps of San Francisco's city hall while protesting the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Campus conservatives appeared everywhere, held a monster rally in New York's Madison Square Garden.

In those heady days, Chatham's Eddy predicted a student revolution "which could sweep all higher education." But as Eddy recently reported with chagrin, "it just hasn't happened that way." Eddy cites "youth's decreasing identification with the Kennedy Administration," tracing it to "the shock and the terror" that hit collegians during last fall's Cuban crisis. Says he: "We had forgotten how good the world had been to them."

"Meatball Kennedy." Campus disenchantment with President Kennedy now spreads far and wide. At conservative Georgia Tech, the complaint is that "he's interfering with my personal life" through Big Government. At liberal Reed, where "he doesn't inspire respect as Stevenson did," the gripe is Kennedy's caution on the civil rights bill. At exuberant Wisconsin, "he's liked in a negative way," faulted for lack of political conviction. "We're sick of him," say dissidents at Jesuit Georgetown.

Interest in Barry Goldwater is widespread, but it stems largely from the feeling that, like Mme. Nhu, the Arizona Senator is "entertaining." Only "nonthinkers" would vote for Goldwater, says one typical student, and some collegians couldn't care less. Asks a Miami coed: "How can you give intelligent people a choice between Meatball Kennedy and Opportunist Goldwater?"

Grade Grubbing. Fast spreading beyond Eastern campuses, this year's top concern on the campus is competition so stiff that at the University of Michigan, for example, one faculty man reports: "When they ask all the high school valedictorians in the freshman class to stand up, every third person rises. It's kind of frightening."

One unhappy result is an undercurrent of anti-Semitism at small Midwestern colleges, which have lately enrolled many bright, as well as aggressive Eastern Jewish students. There is universal hatred of universal military service--ranging from intelligent questioning ("Isn't the Peace Corps more useful?") to the fatuous wail of a Princeton senior: "The Army doesn't pay enough to keep me in beer. I'd have to ask my father for money."

Unless some academic genius invents a substitute for grades, this generation is seemingly chained to a double life: utter classroom sobriety, relieved by afterhours explosion. Princeton, where rioters went berserk last spring, has its Saturday night "cult of the grubby"--dungareed dancers twisting in once elegant clubs. Bizarre idiocy is also prevalent. L.S.U. coeds recently launched a "drawers raid" on a men's dormitory, and two Cornell fraternity teams played a 30-hour touch football game (score: 664-538). Columbia students staged an 'all-cause" protest rally with marchers Brandishing such signs as HOOVER IN 64 and WE SHALL OVERRUN. The University of Chicago's pitiful attempt to revive football was protested by purists saving ban-the-ball signs in Greek.

Give Yourself. In search of relief, much of this college generation revels n Tarzan movies, aims to try LSD, and 'shacks up" on weekends as a matter of routine. It talks about sex--"the ultimate in communication"--so frankly hat Berkeley students recently asked he dispensary to please dispense contraceptives. Harvard's current flap over abuse of rules for girls visiting boys' rooms is hardly confined to Cambridge.

Yet this same generation--because it s so personalistic--has made civil rights its overriding issue. Currently, it takes a dim view of big talk and big organizations. "You get civil rights for breakfast, lunch and dinner," says a Princeton student. "I'm sick of it." Concrete, man-toman effort is another matter. Yalemen recently traveled all over Mississippi to register Negro voters. This fall 1,000 eager Harvard students volunteered for civil rights work--notably in the Northern Student Movement's tutorial program. Tutoring Negro children is this year's top project at campuses from Reed to Vassar to Wayne State. "This isn't like a one-shot freedom ride," explains an enthusiastic Wayne coed. "This is giving of your time and of yourself on a continuing basis."

Strong & Balanced. Such personalism fails to impress some campus observers. "The big picture is unchanged," says Stanford Psychologist Nevitt Sanford. "Students are by and large not interested in the larger questions of the day in this country." Chatham's President Eddy frets that "youth is beginning to retreat behind excellence" to what he calls "the permanent alibi of scholarship." Critics also sourly complain that today's collegians are "totally defeatist" and "so damn sober." "There's a material sophistication that is not matched by a spiritual one," says one California professor, adding, "They all seem to have read a great deal--hastily."

Yet other professors are slower to scorn--and faster to ask why they themselves are failing to be the real campus heroes and pacesetters. Some profs are simply cowed: "There seems to be a genius under every rock." Or: "These kids grab you and tear you apart. They're always asking me what I believe." On balance, the new collegians get high marks from a faculty majority: "Who would have thought five year ago that Paul Tillich would be mobbed on this campus? I can't tell you how much pleasure it is now to meet a class.' As for the future, says one professor "these students are not going to accept the institution. They're not going to play dead." Sums up another professor: "This is not a cynical, frightened generation Pure nonsense. It's a strong and balanced one--the likes of which few o us have ever seen."

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