Concern on the Campus

I am prepared for the unexpected, I lunge toward it with hunger, even though I've seen so much I seldom encounter a surprise; however, I am most near death when I begin believing I've seen it all. So I continuously doubt the future. My faith is behind me, not out in front. I am not drawn ahead by the apron strings of heaven; I am pushing at crashing speeds into the unknowns. I've made no contract with God; his promises and threats do not interest or frighten me. My power is in me, in all of us. Life is this power.

So writes Psychology Major Louis Cartwright, 25, in To Make a Difference (Harper & Row; $4.95), a collection of ten essays by students at San Francisco State College. Edited by Otto Butz, who encouraged the students to write the essays for a lecture series, the book throws an illuminating light on the mind of today's academic dissenter.

Excerpts:

> ON MATERIALISM. "For me, there is a great longing to reach beyond the Formica and gleaming stainless steel and to be able to touch other human beings. I want to be able to share with others the awe of a redwood tree and its inviolability in comparison to a high way; I want to do so without being considered a 'nut.' I want to be free from the compulsion to possess things and people, and to know that others are similarly free. I want to be able to love life enough to value it over all else, and to live in a society that shares that value."

> ON EQUALITY. "The term civil rights means nothing to me, but a person getting unfairly shafted means everything."

> ON POVERTY. "Now that there is a chicken in almost every pot, and two or three cars in most garages, how do I explain or justify the one-fourth of our people who do not approach sharing these things?"

> ON WAR. "All I know is I don't have any reasons to kill anyone, and I'm the one who has to have them in order to do it. I can't be pushed or bullied into a war I don't understand."

> ON SEX. "A pacifist living with a woman, who takes a stand against what war does, can reach a higher state of moral consciousness than, say, a businessman who is faithful to his wife, yet never thinks about his nation's right to inflict cruelties against the Viet Cong."

> ON CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION. "I loathe the notion America is promoting to that one has to go to college in order to 'make it.' Most classrooms are holding a recital of the text you read last night. But every now and then, one man sneaks through and holds a class of his own that balances off the entire history of inadequate professors."

> ON RELIGION. "The only one left to believe in is Man, so I figure we've got to prepare him for the responsibilities of being God."

> ON THE U.S. "America's a big place, but it barely has room for me. I live on its borders, up against its cultural limits at all times. The cost of living on the border is high; you've got to be wealthy, and wealth here is measured in terms of how little you need to live. I do not need the luxuries this country uses to bait its people toward progress. I've learned to despise that word."

> ON STUDENT GOALS. "What we want to help create is a human order which allows for and encourages meaningfulness in our experiences demanding in dependence and tolerance; a society, moving not toward a narrow orthodoxy, but expanding outward, with room for all our personal values."

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