1961

Mail has picked up some this month. I'm still not buried in opinions. Are you people asleep? I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but there are a lot of people who are writing to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. They show up in Letters To The Editor. They are generally against coeducation, against dropping ROTC, against revision of the academic program, against protest and, of course, against protestors. Maybe they represent the majority of Dartmouth alumni. The volume of letters would so indicate. How do you feel?? So far I get the impression that the younger alumni '61-'69 don't share that position. I'm not going to speak for you. If you feel it, you better write it or it won't get said and we all know how politicians of every occupation are quick to assume silence as representing support.

There are still a few things going on that affect you. According to the flood of Alumni Fund reports I get, the average gift of you '61's approaches 50 bucks a head. Now anybody that gets $50 of my money also pets a piece of my mind - via letter, meeting question, vote or something. Does that go for you too or are you "too busy"? I'm not putting you down, I just hate to see policy directed without our comment.

There is another reason I want you men to write. It makes my job (putting a couple thousand words together every month) much easier. I'm no more energetic than you are. I have to work a lot harder trying to "say" something to you without reverting to the easy way out and just spewing forth my own philosophy. In short, I don't think it's a very good idea to write what I think in the column ... I wanna write what you think. To do that I have to either: 1) get views from you men, or 2) lie.

I did get some help from '61's this month. I'm printing excerpts. Hop Holmburg writes from Washington, D. C.... "On your scale I'm a revolutionary-revisionist. What's crucial is whether you measure intent, action or results (I hadn't thought my question through that carefully, to be honest! — jbh). Only mass spontaneous revolutionary actions have any hope, among overtly revolutionary acts, of achieving 'positive' ends.... I think it is possible to be revolutionary in intent, revisionist in action and achieve revolutionary results. Which maybe is my way of saying that I want revolutionary results in our society but feel one can achieve those only by being in, not out of, our society."

John White sent me a copy of an underground paper which contained a letter he had written... (to the younger generation) "Be realistic — demand the impossible. Reality can be whatever you want it to be. For the first time in history, Utopia is within reach for the simple reason that human nature is changing. An evolutionary advance is taking place in the world today — moral evolution — and you are that change. You are a new species of man; you have left your parents and teachers behind just as Cro-Magnon man marked the end for Neanderthal Man. The social upheavals of this age are signs of a higher form of life called 'young people taking control of the world.' Your minds and your consciousness have expanded far beyond the narrow limits of the older generation which is trying to keep you in slavery to it. Because of your deepened awareness and self-understanding traditional institutions have become barriers to your full self-expression. The old ways of thinking are concerned only with self-image, authority, and power. The old ways of thinking will not change; they will only die out."

Pete Hanauer and Rog Coates got delayed a bit by the mail, taxi, sanitation workers, cable car drivers, air traffic controllers and basketweavers' strikes in mailing me their responses to the January poll. ... here they are: Pete and Rog both allied with the younger generation, followed the active revisionist political point of view, and rated self-development and ye olde love relationship highly. Pete sees the role of the 30's as coordinator: "I am convinced that the current youth generation is quite unlike any in the past and that people of our age have our work cut out in trying to bring the 20- and 40-year-olds to some kind of understanding."

Steve Elson votes for a compromise in the column format, "I think there ought to be a way in which thoughtful opinion and expression can be presented as well as news of individual accomplishments." OK, Steve, your individual accomplishment is that you're now director of marketing for the Erno Laszlo Institute in NYC. Now how about sending me some of your opinions and expressions?

Our cat has just done the telephone lineman scene up my leg, Alvin Lee and Ten Years After are making the glasses shudder and I just can't keep my head together anymore on the subject of this column. I'm going out for a chocolate frozen banana and a sit in the park to get into the faces.

Secretary, 156 West 73rd St. New York, N. Y. 10023

Class Agent, G. H. Walker Co., 225 Franklin St. Boston, Mass. 02110