The Students: All Quiet on the Campus Front

By Gregory Wierzynsk

The school year is half over, and once again the young are pursuing their vocation of confounding the old.

After six years of mounting campus turmoil, students seem suddenly to have reverted to a quiet, private style of life. Instead of taking over, they are taking in their classes; instead of raging in the streets to protest national issues, they toil on committees studying campus problems. The abrasive cant of radicals is scarcely to be heard. Such square fads as booze, early Beatle records and card playing are making something of a comeback. It is not a throwback to the silent '50s. As the demonstrations against the Laos invasion by South Vietnam forces last week showed, the students have by no means shed their deep concerns about the war--or poverty and the environment. Yale President Kingman Brewster calls the new mood an "eerie tranquillity."

The reasons for the calm atmosphere perplex educators and vary from campus to campus. But certainly the May strikes gave students and faculty a nightmarish perception of chaos. Says Albert Hastorf, the Stanford dean of humanities and sciences: "People got scared. In the 'feel-not-think' philosophy they saw their world coming to an end. This fall the point of many lectures has been that thinking is not necessarily an ally of fascism." On the contrary, it is realized here and there that nonthinking and anti-intellectualism are the real allies of totalitarianism. The Kent and Jackson State killings on one hand, and the wanton bombings by urban guerrillas on the other, have instilled in students a profound fear of repression and violence. One of the few clear trends on all campuses is a rededication to a Gandhi-like philosophy of nonviolence. Yale's Brewster says: "It is much more clearly recognized that Weatherman beget Minutemen."

Additionally, mass demonstration as a tactic to bring about political change has worn thin. Students are not only weary of tear gas and nightsticks, but have recognized that mobs, however idealistic, can easily be manipulated by small minorities on both sides of the issues. They are now asserting their independence and privately searching for new tactics.

Large numbers are alienated from the present political patterns. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that all the effort and idealism they have expended on such issues as the war and racism have had little impact on Washington. Neither party, in their view, has the fortitude to meet head-on the country's serious issues. A recent Harris poll indicated that an extraordinary 26% either would refuse to vote or would not cast their ballot for candidates of the established parties.

The slack in the economy has also left its mark. Even in the elite schools, the fear of not finding a job this June runs high. Among seniors in liberal arts, this fear verges on panic. IBM, for example, plans to hire fewer than 50 humanities majors out of the 500 students it intends to recruit this year. Because of the general belt tightening in education, graduate students face similar bleak prospects. One future Harvard Ph.D. in English sent resumes to 108 colleges, was interviewed by only eleven, and received one offer--from the American University in Beirut.

Appointments to stay on are only brief respites; chances for tenure are slim. "They were quite blunt about it," says a young Harvard Ph.D. who was recently awarded an assistant professorship. "They said my appointment was as terminal as cancer." The result is bitterness toward the System. "I personally feel sold out," concludes Tom Lifson, 23, a sometime antiwar organizer now studying for a Ph.D. "All this time we were told how important it was for us to go to graduate school and how much we could do for ourselves and the country."

The effects of the new mood are unmistakable. Students are studying with unfamiliar zeal. "The undergraduates are not only doing all the assigned readings, they're even doing the supplementary reading," notes Amherst Political Science Professor Hadley Arkes. "It's fun to teach again," says Wisconsin Professor David Tarr. His classes in military history used to be the radicals' guerrilla-theater stage; now students linger after the lectures to ask polite questions. There is a new respect for the rights of others. At Harvard, which protested strongly 22 months ago against ROTC, a Marine Corps recruiter recently turned up on campus. When a small band of radicals tried to block the path to his office, some 40 self-appointed marshals quickly cleared the way.

The radical groups are largely splintered or defunct, their leadership out of school or underground. Most campus papers that were once mouthpieces for the movement have reverted to more dispassionate journalism. Others, like the Harvard Crimson, do not bother with editorials any more. The most visible political group at Dartmouth is a chapter of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom; it numbers about 15 members. Even women do not seem to care much for their liberation. A recent poll conducted by the University of Washington's campus paper produced the startling conclusion that those who wanted less news about Women's Lib were themselves women; what the large majority of students wanted was more coverage of academic and research developments.

Many campus bookstores are stuck with embarrassingly large inventories of works by yesterday's gurus--Hermann Hesse, Herbert Marcuse, Jerry Rubin. In rock music, the staple of the youth culture, a shift can be perceived from acid rock to the soft ballads of Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot and James Taylor. There is a strong revival of interest in folk-rock singers of the early '60s. The most popular movies are the ones that examine and expose contemporary hypocrisies: Diary of a Mad Housewife (male chauvinism), Catch-22 (war), and Lovers and Other Strangers (marriage).

Marijuana remains an almost universal form of recreation, but its use is far more discriminating. Gone are the big smoke-ins punctuated by acid rock and strobe lights. The smoking is done in small groups of friends, and the aim is not an easy high but a better understanding of self. Indeed, for many students, says Martin Meyerson, president of the University of Pennsylvania, "any concern beyond the self tends to be regarded as too luxurious."

How long the eerie tranquillity will last is a matter of conjecture. Many administrators fear a return of unrest in the spring, when youthful exuberances always blossom anew. Even if there is no further trouble, campus quiet is not synonymous with campus health. Oases for ideas, universities should be places of ferment. The violence of the past few years was, of course, unacceptable, but the student movement has called the nation's attention to some of its weaknesses--a hidebound educational establishment, inequitable draft laws, unrepresentative political procedures, to mention some of the most legitimate targets of protest. Despite the new calm, the turbulence of recent years cannot be written off as a mere episode, a minor aberration. The memory of the violence will endure, but so will the existence of students as a once and future conscience and collective voice of national concern.

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