Commencement and Counter-Commencement

THE most remarkable aspect of this year's college commencements is that so many are actually coming off. In the wake of Cambodia and Kent State, some observers predicted widespread commencement walkouts, to say nothing of possible riots. But in the past few weeks, students have channeled their anger and done on campus what they hope to do in politics: work within the system to bring about substantive change. On many campuses, student influence has produced unorthodox commencements--but commencements nonetheless. They have carried, for their participants, new and realistic symbolism, and in the main they have been orderly. A nationwide sampler:

Constructive Dissent. At Tufts University, the protest songs of Joan Baez and Phil Ochs filled the air as denim-shirted students passed out flowers and programs to 5,000 people at a Sunday afternoon "counter-commencement." (The formal degree-granting ceremony the day before had drawn only 25 of the 1,500 graduating seniors.) New York Congressman A]lard Lowenstein, a leading Democratic dove, spoke on the need for constructive dissent. There was a contrapuntal reading of bland passages from the Tufts catalogue and the names of the six Tufts graduates who have died in Viet Nam. There were memorial services for both the war dead and those of Kent State and Jackson State.

At the University of Massachusetts, ceremonies were simple and somber. Said Senior Class President David Veale: "If the war continues, many of the men in this class will be forced to kill or be killed. A joyous commencement is inappropriate." M.I.T. President Howard Johnson will not give the traditional charge to the seniors because, as one official puts it, "the students don't want him to."

Seniors at Whittier College, Richard Nixon's alma mater, voted against presenting the traditional "monument" (among this year's rejected possibilities: a new Scoreboard for the stadium). Instead, $2,000 will go to a fund for wounded Vietnamese children and the American Friends Service Committee. Berkeley students have helped set up separate ceremonies for the university's various departments and colleges. Social science graduates, for instance, will gather in a campus eucalyptus grove. Featured speakers: parents.

Not everyone is pleased with such goings-on. At American University, antiwar students wearing black robes and white masks with Oriental features unsettled the audience by wandering silently about, one of them solemnly shredding programs. Finally, a group of faculty and parents walked out when Guest Speaker Nicholas von Hoffman, inflammatory columnist of the Washington Post, launched a biting attack on President Nixon.

To be sure, commencement has remained pretty much the same at hundreds of colleges, especially in the Midwest and South. But few schools have remained altogether untouched by this spring's emotional climate; at many, caps and gowns are optional, and even where they are required, there is often a scattering of white armbands of protest.

Student influence is visible in the choice of many commencement speakers as well as their topics. Among the prominent choices: Harvard antiwar Biologist George Wald, Anthropologist Margaret Mead, former Attorney General Ramsey

Clark, Georgia Legislator Julian Bond, Radical Columnist I.F. Stone, and Senators Muskie and Kennedy. Most speakers have pointedly avoided the usual traces of condescension and easy platitude. Subjects have ranged afield. Planned Parenthood Crusader Alan Guttmacher urged Smith graduates to practice fertility control; at Vassar, where most graduates' caps were bedecked with peace symbols, Writer Gloria Steinem spoke on Women's Liberation. But the dominant themes were war and the young.

Misfits and Charlatans. President John A. Logan of Virginia's Hollins College told his audience that "the peace movement is a serious and permanent phenomenon which runs broadly and deeply through the entire younger generation. It is not a small minority but an overwhelming number of college students who want an early end to the war." Said Columbia President Andrew W. Cordier: "We have never had a better generation of youth. They deserve more than our sympathy. They deserve our identification." Former Chief Justice Earl Warren reminded his listeners at the University of Hawaii that there are 31 million Americans between the ages of 21 and 30: "Youth has the voting power to lead a crusade whenever it chooses to do so."

There was rhetoric on the other side as well. At West Point, Vice President Agnew growled about unspecified "criminal misfits" and "charlatans of peace"--two fresh phrases in his lengthening lexicon of epithets*--before he exhorted the cadets to take up the challenge of a "lonely and difficult war." Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans had an equally appreciative audience when he told Merchant Marine Academy graduates that "the destroyers of today will not survive any more than the witch burners of Colonial New England or the book burners of Hitler's Germany." At the Air Force Academy, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird said that the Administration is determined to move "from an era of confrontation to an era of negotiation." U.S. "ground combat involvement" in Viet Nam, he added, will end "on a reasonable schedule."

Next: The High Schools. Various explanations have been advanced for the relative calm attending 1970's rites of spring. Some observers point out that the most militant campus types often tend to be underclassmen--not seniors suddenly faced with work or the draft. Says one Princetonian: "Many seniors are out working for peace candidates. Graduation to them is irrelevant." Yet the reverse is also true: this year many students have shown a particularly keen interest in commencement--as amended.

If the present high school crop is any indicator, it is unlikely that the new attitude will soon a trophy--just as many in the older generation will continue to oppose it. At Newton High School outside Boston, for instance, seniors ignored the protests of local veterans' groups and invited a radical antiwar graduation speaker, Professor Howard Zinn of Boston University. At Bellaire High in Houston, U. of H. Professor James Clements attacked the Administration as "anti-intellectual and anti-youth." While dozens of parents hooted and booed, the graduates stood and applauded. Clements' field is communications.

* Last week eleven distinguished University of Minnesota professors, including Economist Walter W. Heller, a former top adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, met with the Vice President and told him that some of his public utterances were "driving moderates into the arms of extremists." They said that among their temperate students there is a "widespread distrust of their Government, a mixture of fear and resentment toward America's leadership." They suggested that Agnew criticize violence in all quarters--hardhat right as well as student left--and that he generally tone down his language. Said the Vice President: "Maybe they've got a point."

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