1969

Please Note: This column's dearth of prodigious prolixity about classmates is purely intentional. To borrow from contemporarily fashionable compu-jargon, "The feedback is as valid as the input!"

First, an academic Thing appears:

A very interesting occupational pattern is becoming obvious at this data collection point. Many '69's don't want an "occupation." Dr. E.S. Schein, M.I.T. Sloan School, described college graduates of the mid '60's as experiencing considerable disillusionment and role conflict with their untuned managers on their first full-time job assignment. Dr. Schein further felt this factor of partial non-conformity to industrial socialization caused a lot of itinerant trainees who "company-jumped" during their early professional years.

Second, the Fraker corollary to the Thing:

Today, it appears many Dartmouth graduates are totally rejecting socialization by big business. The sterotyped reputation of Dartmouth as a key "feeder" to corporate management is being undermined. Company-jumping of the '60's is being replaced by industrial abandonment of the '70's. Traditional staircases of success and companion Protestant ethics are no more for many '69's. Some examples of this phenomenon follow. I'd welcome any and all opinions on these new career values, why they exist, and their implications for the "Middle American Technocracy."

Now, some semi-empirical data:

Jim Quinn was drummed out of the Peace Corps in Curacao for participating in an anti-war demonstration. Bruce Piatt is freelancing and supports this habit by spasmodic tours of duty with the Merchant Marine. Gene Graf has become an Easy Rider non pareil. John Singler is working for the Portuguese government in Angola. Carlo Japikse has not returned to his arctopolitan stint in pedagogics, but rather is a resident head in a Mendocino commune. Ken Furie is back in NYC after a whirl with the CRUMB of ZAP comics. Ted Baehr pounds the skins for the "American Spit Machine." Frank Reynolds is running underground flicks at his West Side emporium with Don Johnsen's productions receiving top billing. RalphParkin is rumored to be abdicating his med school scalpel for a veterinarianship on a green-dreamed Montana game preserve.

Finally, a further effort at relevancy:

I'll finish this expose of tradition-emas- culating, mind-blowing contemporary sub- cultural sociology with an appropriate remark from Al D. Gordon, exiled barrister-to-be. "The best answer anybody has come up with yet for all our problems is just to sit and do nothing!"

After this exercise in neo-journalistic prattle and ritualistic expungement, I'm writing from a protoplasmic puddle. I feel like a W.C.T.U. grandmother whose son was banished from the Boy Scouts for selling counterfeit Tenderfoot badges. Anyway, the de rigeur stylus will return next month. Pete Imber (who desperately needs William McKinley's autograph) says it all: "That's pretty heavy but slosh it around in your head and tell me if it isn't right on!"

Secretary, 32 Summer St. Nahant, Mass. 01908

Treasurer, 32 Overbrook Rd., Rochester, N.Y. 14618