Rhodes Scholarship

"I'm worried that the commission is close to oh-deeing. Mississippi almost did them in, and Kent State will put them over." So said Joseph Rhodes Jr., 23, before setting off for a hearing last week at Kent State University in Ohio, the scene of one of the bloodiest episodes in the recent history of campus disorder. Rhodes was referring to Richard Nixon's Commission on Campus Unrest, of which he is the only student member. By "oh-deeing"--a hophead term for a drug overdose--he meant that the other commissioners have been startled by the fervor of the students and the severity of the country's reaction to collegiate violence.

Joe Rhodes shares their apprehensions, but oh-deeing is not in his bones. His candor, his activism and his penchant for making quotable statements all qualify him as the commission's most controversial and audible member. He began filling that distinction right from the start by suggesting that deaths on the campus could be linked to White House criticism of students. For that Rhodes drew the wrath of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who called--vainly --for Rhodes' resignation just three days after his appointment.

Helping God. The son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, Rhodes grew up under the decisive influence of his mother, a Jehovah's Witness. At 16, he believed that God determined everything. Now he is less sure. At an age when many young men are hindered by resentment or apathy, Joe Rhodes decided to give God a helping hand.

At the California Institute of Technology, the only black in his class, Rhodes quickly gained prominence by running for student-body president in his sophomore year. This was against the rules; until he came along, only juniors were granted that distinction. But under a special resolution, he was allowed to run for the office, and won it. The following year he set another precedent by being reelected, and continued what is still called "the Rhodes Revolution": a successful campaign to place students on all of the institution's major decision-making committees, including the one that appointed the successor to Caltech's then President Lee DuBridge (see SCIENCE).

Helping Washington. While he was still an undergraduate, his name reached the attention of Washington. In 1968, he journeyed to the capital in search of money for a research project on environmental pollution. Impressed by his ideas, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare gave him $68,000 --enough to keep 70 students from all over the country busy all of one summer.

Last year, when White House Domestic Affairs Aide John Ehrlichman needed information on student demonstrations, he called on Joe Rhodes to supply some of it. Rhodes' warning that Nixon would face student opposition despite a conspicuous lack of it during the 1968 election impressed Ehrlichman enough to summon him to Washington later for a White House staff briefing on the same subject.

Though very much its junior member, Rhodes has had considerable influence on the scope of the commission's investigations. He has also conducted some on his own. Some 50 volunteers, mostly students, now produce detailed accounts for him of campus disruptions and also draft written studies on everything from police tactics to contemporary student life. To help pay his staff's expenses, Rhodes successfully solicited money from, among others, John D. Rockefeller III.

His forthrightness did not sit well with Vice President Agnew or even, at first, with members of his own commission. But they have listened to his ideas. What is more, he is ready--often, it seems, before he is asked--to counsel the White House on anything he believes germane to the problems of American youth, from the legalization of marijuana to the war in Viet Nam.

Helping the Commission. More important, Joe Rhodes believes that disorder on campus is only a part of the country's cultural upheaval, and it is to this problem that he intends to speak. "I'm not interested," he says, "in finding ways to solve campus unrest if that means damping out student dissent. My ultimate goal is to tell the President in no uncertain terms what can be done to save lives this fall." He means throughout the country, not just on the campus. "We're like a vast system only a few millimeters from building up to its explosive point.

We're getting into an unanticipated revolution. Nobody seems to grasp the degree to which people are fed up." Rhodes' rhetoric notwithstanding, it is up to the whole commission to ascertain who is fed up with whom, and it is still possible that this fall will bring dialogue instead of a dustup.

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