Five College Forum; Panel Discussion on "What Does the Campus Upheaval Mean"

What does the campus upheaval mean? Today's Five College Forum, taking part all from the University of Massachusetts, Milton Mayor of the English Department, Jeremiah Allen, Associate Provost, Lewis Mainser, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, Alvin Winder of the School of Nursing, and Robert Stanfield of the Sociology Department. Milton Mayor begins. I'd like to suggest as a possible text for this discussion, the words of John Locke in his second treatise of civil government, he wrote, when people are miserable enough, they will rebel, cry up the divine right of kings how you will. It would begin to appear that some people on the campuses of the United States and of

a great many other advanced countries are miserable and are in rebellion. I'm a minority to be sure one place, a small minority, another place, a larger one, but then all revolutions are minority revolutions. Our American Revolution was, according to John Adams. We know that the French Revolution was in the spring of 1917. There were only 200,000 Bolsheviks in what was then Russia, and the characteristic, the common characteristic of all of these revolutions drawn on a more epic canvas was that they succeeded to the extent that they did in considerable measure because the most of

the rest of the populace was indifferent to preventing revolution. Gentlemen, are there any grounds for revolution by a generation in the world today in countries like our own and other than our own, and is there any remedy for the misery, short of confrontation to the death? Well, I suppose there's misery enough to produce a revolution, as far as I can see, one isn't there, misery. What's peculiar perhaps on the American universities is the extent to which we're seeing

it today, and we keep comparing today to the days a decade ago, well, more than a decade, 15 years ago when I was in college. I was part of the silent generation that didn't have very much to say. Does that mean that the college life in those days was idyllic? I think far from it, I seem to recall misery, but it was a misery that I suffered in silence. And I guess that for some reason the other, some students today have chosen not to suffer through it in silence. That was Robert Stanfield, Alwinder. Well, I think that maybe the change between the silent generation and the generation today as far as their dissatisfaction and their articulation of their dissatisfaction came about possibly with the change in music, the change in dance, the change in dress patterns that you

have well began to develop five, seven years ago. I think these things have accumulated effect, accumulated effect because the development of the mass media, especially of the, well, of the phonograph record, has been that, and secondly, TV has been that, in effect, the words of these songs, the change in the music, the mode of dress communicated itself throughout all, all youth of high school age in the country. I think this is the generation that has, in a sense, been able to articulate a revolutionary attitude. Now, why possibly did the change in music, the change in dress styles bring us about why did this occur?

I think because possibly in the last 10 years, there has been a combination of three events. One, the recognition of the hydrogen bomb and the fact that all life can be destroyed. Date seven or eight years ago in Bob Dylan, so on the eve of destruction, which at that time was dealt with that problem was most popular with youth. Secondly, I think the fact that there is a growing recognition that there is some type of economic revolution, that there's a possibility that they just won't be jobs in the future, that everything may be done by machines. I think this spot is youth, and this has become, they become aware of this over the past several years. Thirdly, of course, the great revolution in civil rights, which is swept Africa, Asia, and this country, too, and which is contributed through their initial interest and activity and SNCC and other organizations to give them a perspective on both injustice, suffering

and the need for a new equality for man. Mr. Mainser, why all over the advanced world, East Japan, as well as West, this revolution? Well, listen, don't make me too much of eyes, man, by asking me why all over the world. Let me cope with the question about, as my colleagues did, to begin with, Locke may be wrong. I don't know that misery makes revolution. I think hope makes revolution as often as not, as a general notion among historians I gather, among those fraternities, don't number myself. But when things aren't quite as bad as they were, then watch out for a revolution. And I think at some point to that, I think that, let me say there are two things wrong in America, which may have a fact elsewhere. They don't want to press the two far, that are the miseries.

The first is the Vietnamese War, the students, along with their faculty brothers, I might add, recognize this pretty early, earlier probably, than Fulbright and others. And the Vietnamese War is of general moral concern to students, and also the draft is a very direct concern to students. And it brings the moral issue and the physical dangers right to them. So I don't know that things will go away if we solve Vietnam, but I'd sure like to see it happen and see if it helps. And the second question, of course, is race, and they're the state of race relations in America, especially to young people who haven't seen the difference. I lived in Washington before the 1954 Supreme Court decision, I see a difference. If you came on the scene after 1954, whatever is good, you take for granted, whatever is bad, is glaring, is intolerable. So those are the miseries, the hopes, I don't mean to be dogmatic about this, and I may well be wrong, and everything I say, but the kinds of hopes that I see are the hopes

for a qualitarianism. We see this on campus, this afternoon, I heard some students quizzing our president, and they wanted to know about democracy and the university. Our president was kind enough not to say that if everybody had a vote, the students could run the university. They'd win 16,500 to about 1,000. There's some reason that faculty and others are concerned about whether democracy is the way you run a university, but the ideal of the qualitarianism seems very strong, and perhaps a naive and unsophisticated way, but as an ideal, it obviously has very real roots in any democratic society. World peace that relates to Vietnam, and in a broader way, again, I think somewhat naively, maybe wrong, students still have the attitude often enough that if they were the will, then peace could come to the world. You can argue the case, you can look for occasional happy periods from Romans or others brought peace, but there's a fair amount of world history that's discouraging on this. I know my faculty colleagues don't all agree with me on this. We political scientists tend to be a little dismal in this respect, love listening to the students, even the the betterist students.

They often are damning us for failing to live up to the system of love as the force, as the binding relationship among all people, and this is a natural and a good goal in obviously has Christian and other roots, whether it can, in fact, be put into force. I don't know it. It asks a lot, manifestation of that love, as I suppose brotherhood among blacks and whites, which also is a form of equalitarians. Well, one could expand on those, and then perhaps just to tie the two together out of the civil rights movement and fostered by the Vietnamese war, the demonstration, the manifestation, is the way in which you act politically comes into being, and in the name of the ideals we get demonstration. I don't want that to sound too pat, I don't have the answers. Dr. Allen, I'm left with a couple of questions here. The generational revolution is going on in societies in which neither Vietnam nor race plays

a role in France, Japan, Italy, Spain, elsewhere, and the other question that I'm left with is what love has to do with the higher learning in America. You want to tell them both, then? Well, I'm not sure if I can take on those two questions. I must confess that I don't know the answer or an adequate answer, logically, to the present phenomenon of student revolt. There are lots of causes suggested, but I think Mr. Mayor, you made the point I was about to make, that many of these are, we think of as local, a draft, Vietnam, and so forth.

Yet, the phenomenon is international, other European countries, for example, are experiencing very much the same thing, and you mentioned the job, the fear of no jobs. I would have put that the other way around. When I went to start it in college, we were still sort of in the shadow of the depression, and the fear of no job or the lack of certainty of getting a job, a good job, was certainly with us. Much more, I think, than today's generation of students who, as far as I can observe, tend to take it for granted that they will have a job, though they may not like it. It may be in plastics, and they may be suffering from a graduate syndrome, but I can't see it there.

The bomb is another interesting point. I was going to make a comment about that. It seems to me we don't hear much, at least among adult discussions or super adults, like us. There was a lot written and said about the bomb, well, back in the late 40s. We don't hear so much about it, perhaps. It bothers the students who, after all, our students were born after the atomic bomb. Maybe we've learned to live with it, and they haven't. Yeah. They haven't had to learn. Well, friends, there is this consideration. I'm hung up, I believe, on the notion that this is a, if it's a revolution, it's a world revolution, and if so, we may be being a little provincial in talking about the situation and our campuses and the local conditions that appear to give rise to it.

But the fact is that in the United States of America, some 51% of the eligible young people in the country are in college, we sometimes call colleges universities, and in the rest of the world, it's nothing like that. In England, it's 12% in most of the rest of the West, it's closer to 5%. This is a fact that may relate itself to our mind or just suggestions that students are worried about jobs. I suppose that an awful lot of these young people are in college because the advanced technological society has no place other than college to put them. It doesn't need them, except possibly in Vietnam, where they don't want to go. And so they are housed here in the colleges and universities until possibly the society

can use them, and they may have then a sense of alienation by virtue of that fact alone. Does this make any sense to any of you? Well, let me suggest that I'm not being entirely convinced, but you know, people have suggested different kinds of student culture and the idea is of some persuasiveness to me. If there is a sort of vocational culture, it would mean that students who probably are first generation college, students coming out of public schools almost every case, go into college, work hard because they do want to get ahead, and they want jobs, and this is the way ahead. And if anything, we professors have over good many years complained that the students had a rather routine attitude toward college. They wanted jobs, and the growth of schools of business administration, schools of engineering, and the like, probably testified to this, whereas the leaders of students, the students often seem to be in the studies

I've seen evidence this, out of families with substantial education and income, intellectual background. When you catch the kids who tilt over police cars and such and ask them, what does daddy do? It turns out he's got a college degree. Those students, very likely, having a kind of intellectual bent can, if they want for seed careers in universities, they're not going to be punching buttons or be unemployed I suspect. So the ones who have the most vocational concern are probably not being political activists, the one who are being political activists, probably have the least vocational concern. Don't mean again to be too dogmatic, at least they offer it. Well, vocational concern, I wonder, it seems that this vocational concern in a sense may simply mirror what exists on campuses, that is what exists in American higher education. You'll have the academics, and you'll have the service, the technical people, the service people, the academics being predominantly will say, the liberal arts people, the service people being schools of education, business administration, engineering, etc.

I wonder if actually the fact that students do an overwhelming number say that they wish to get a vocation when they get out of college, that this is why they're coming to college, doesn't simply reflect the tremendously important service orientation, American higher education, the fact that the academics have pretty well been in the background of this debate, all since the turn of the century, I would say. My observation over the past 20 years, I taught for 20 years in a college of engineering, and I noticed over that rather long span, a great drop in the vocational orientation of the students. This was not a distinction between students in arts and sciences and students in a professional school. It was simply a phenomenon that happened, and I observed it, others observed it.

We commented on it, we speculated about the causes for it, possibly the final withering away of the old attitudes that I think generated back in the depression, the real fear of not having a job. One of the phenomena that we noticed among today's student generation and those close to them is a great many of them have been able, effectively, to drop out of society. In today's society, you really don't need a job for the primary purpose of keeping alive. It was a real terror of losing a job in the 30s, because you could start with a family child. Brother Stanfield, I want to know if there is something radically wrong in the world that

despairs of reform and conducers to revolution and whether there is something radically wrong in American education and in the institutions that administer it, that likewise, despairs of reform and conducers to revolution some mouthful for you. You know, those questions take us back over what's been said in the last few minutes. It gets to an earlier point as to the international aspects of the student rebellion or the student revolt. My feeling would be, first of all, that student rebellion or student revolt is possibly a new phenomenon on American campuses, but it's not new elsewhere in the world.

If I personalize it again, I'd suggest that 15 years ago when I was an undergraduate, one of the questions that was raised was why students in colleges and universities in Europe, in Japan were active, politically active, while we remained relatively passive. What I think we've seen here is a kind of an introduction of political concern here in the 1960s among the students, and we might have to ask what it was in the American experience that accounted for the radicalization of some part of the student population in America. I think maybe Lou Mainser had a point there with this business about hope. If I look back over the past decade, I'd say that hope came in with misery during the Kennedy years. I don't know whether it really came in during the Kennedy years.

I think maybe it's the afterglow of the Kennedy years. It's a Kennedy mystique, but it has tremendous Camelot qualities to it. The notion of the new frontier, the Peace Corps, Vista, a number of these other things. The idea that the intellectuals of America, the academics of America, the educated people of America, would be called upon somewhat more by government than they ever seem to be called upon before that rather than being a businessman's government, it would be a professor's government. This was something that was suggested in the Kennedy years, and then there was also in this appeal to youth with a new frontier with Vista and the Peace Corps. The Kennedy years produced hope, and after that hope had been opened up, the years that followed, particularly with the Vietnam War, this sort of dampen that hope, and I think this is the thing which produced this political change in the American students. Now, you get the impression from Professor Mainser that this hope of which you speak was

not economic hope. It is not the economically underprivileged who are turned off or alienated and revolutionary in this country on the campuses that is, except for the Negroes. And they among Negroes are not the economically underprivileged Negroes. Yeah, and let me add to hope, without being too sure it's a worldwide phenomenon, but I have that sense, and it's hard to say this in a period when some countries are rather roughly governed, but there does seem to be a substantial dissolution of authority. And since there's that variety of places in America, again, the revolutionary youngsters are likely to come from permissive families, and permissive child bringing up is pretty common among educated people in America. Kings, think about kings, you know, we're living in a day without a decent king, all right,

with his nice Belgian fellow, who doesn't, you know, he talks for 15 minutes to President Nixon, and then they sent him away and got down to business with the prime minister who was elected. Authority isn't what it used to be, whether you're talking about the American family, certainly not in the American University of the courts the other day told B.U. You can't throw a kid out without fancier procedure, and he'd be the worldwide authorities having a rough time. All right, I think we all pointed to you. There we go. Go ahead, Gary. Well, I thought about a permissiveness as a cause, and I think it's a very attractive explanation as long as you keep your focus on America. But again, the fact of the worldwide character and the great similarities, despite differences of what's going on, you know, what went on in France and what's going on here, seemed to me to weaken that as a logical explanation. Now, France, I would say, was one of the least permissiveness societies that I know of in what, in generally what we refer to as the Western world, whereas Czechoslovakia,

which is the society I know best, was one of the most permissive societies in the Western world. Both of them finding themselves in under quite radically different circumstances and confronted with student revolutions. The Czechs were quite happy to be confronted by their student revolution, which was the backbone of the liberalization there a year ago, and of course, the French a great deal less happy. I would feel that it's not the permissiveness in child-rearing, for instance, the whole idea that too many middle-class parents have read Dr. Spock 20 years ago, and nothing like that. I see, however, though, that there is, at least in the Western world, and maybe further a continuing breakdown of sources of wisdom, and I think this is where maybe the fault or the impetus lies, the church, the religion, the family, social class, that these

sources of wisdom no longer are credible in the eyes of youth, and I think this is happening certainly throughout the Western world and maybe further, and that in this sense, in this sense, it's not a permission to go ahead and revolt against authority, but a disillusionment with authority, that somehow, rather, these conventional authorities no longer can be seen as guides or as ways of life by young people. A question, you know, why under you and Lou Mainser, don't we have to square the breakdown of authority you're talking about with the rise of authoritarianism? Yes, I would agree with that, absolutely, because what youth seem to be saying, at least

in this country, is that as the traditional centers of authority no longer become to use their term relevant to the problems of youth today and tomorrow, that the traditional centers of authority seem to become more authoritarian, that is, they view youth's questions about relevance, not as questions of relevance, but as a crisis of authority, and I would say this happens on university campuses, but I think this happens politically, too, in other parts of the world, a crisis in authority develops and you get a tendency for more rigid rather than flexible use of authority. Well, yeah, I might add that I wasn't trying to emphasize solely child rearing and I started with kings, I think of Walter Lippman's telling phrase, the acids of modernity have eroded the sources of authority or something close to that, don't quote me.

Now, it's true you find authoritarianism, but it may be that it's filling gaps where feudal systems, monarchies, or other systems have deteriorated. Sometimes after bloody war to establish authority, I don't know that there's an inconsistency between some of the very harsh forms of authority that we've seen established and a notion that perhaps in general, for example, the notion of traditional inherited authority is very hard to sell to people. We were at the moment apparently about the electoral college because people are afraid that someone may not believe that Nixon was elected or the next man was elected if he doesn't have a system that's very convincing. This concern with establishing the legitimacy of authority and in the case, we all used to talk about Spain, at least the older members of this generation, now they're worried in Spain about how to pass on authority or in Portugal. You can make the case, again, if you don't press your left too far, I suppose. On the campus of the University of Massachusetts, an institution which all of you gentlemen

ornament, recently a 150 or 200 students demonstrated against the presence of the representative of the Dow Chemical Company who was recruiting students for jobs and some 30 of them, as I understand it, liberated the administration building of the University. The University, having not more than half a dozen campus police available to restore or maintain order, found itself calling the state police and so on and so on. This is a commonplace characteristic incident. Should the Dow Chemical Company be on the campuses of universities, should there be job

placement offices in universities, should there be non-educational operations of any kind in a university, and if they were all thrown out of the institution, would the students be happy rather than miserable? Gerry on? Well, the obvious answer to the last question is that the students probably would not, I don't say it would be miserable, but I don't think they would be particularly over joined if this particular service were discontinued. On this particular campus, it was only, I think, two nights before, perhaps even the night before, the demonstration that the undergraduate student senate, which is purportedly a representative body, voted 45 to 1 with, I think, 3, perhaps only two abstentions to have a policy of open recruiting on the campus.

I might add as a footnote, I was there all day at Whitmore, I don't think the building was particularly liberated and it was hardly even more than a token occupation. As to whether a university should have these so-called non-academic activities going on within its real estate, that I think is a very difficult question to answer. I could go on for the rest of the time and consider me more of that. Maybe we should. I wonder though, at this point, whether when the student senate voted 49 to 1 to continue, 45 to 1 to continue job recruitment in the university's premises, whether the university in the name of higher education should not have resisted the students at that point and

have said job recruitment has nothing to do with the higher learning. Well, there I think we're running to a problem of definition, of the word. The word is university, what is or who is the university? Actually, at that demonstration, and this was a matter of concern to some people who discussed it during and after the demonstration, we had a group of at most 100 to 150 students in a student body of some 16,000. In other words, about 1% of that, I think it's a generous estimate, coming to one small and not so powerful component, as some would think, namely the administration and asking the administration to take unilaterally an action which was contrary to the express

of the majority and which would have, in effect, abolished a practice which had grown up over a long period of time. Whether the university should ever have engaged in this kind of practice is of course another question, but whether the university, who the university is, could write at that point so we change the policy, I just don't see how it could be done. Perhaps the trustees good, no, I tell it very much that they would. Well, I think I would differ maybe with Jerry on what the university is and who it is. I think first. I wouldn't say what it is. I know, but okay, I'm not just saying that what I was saying by an implication is that many people tend to equate the university with the administration.

Yes, and this is- I do not think that is- Oh, because I don't think that either. I think that essentially the university is the faculty and that the power and the university resides within the faculty rather than the administration and that there is a mistake and I think perception and I think sometimes the students share that seeing the administration rather than the faculty as the- where the power resides, but I think more important that where the university is, where universities are, I think in this country today, essentially are in the model of what Clark called the multi-versity. That is basically a giant service organization which was curricular and character by Robin Maynard Hutchins when he said essentially the multi-versity is a place where we will teach anything that you will pay us for, but that specifically, specifically that the multi-versity is a service organization preponderantly and that for this reason, since one of the, in

a sense, customers and the students say this, but I think it's all one of the customers in terms of government contracts of the universities generally are such organizations as Dow Chemical. In a sense, service to the student and to Dow Chemical, both, therefore can be seen as a service that the university could offer, but I think it's this concept of service rather than the academic concept of education that maybe is at the crux of the matter here. We will not only teach anything you pay us to teach, we will research anything you pay us to research. It says here, friends, in fine print, that two-thirds of all university research in the United States is now financed by three war-related agencies of the federal government. In one institution of higher learning, which I hope shall be nameless now

and forevermore, 80 percent of all its research is financed by the federal government. You may recall that in an historic antitrust case many years ago, the court held that a control of 6 percent of the production of one essential ingredient of all automobiles represented a monopoly in the field. If 6 percent does, I dare say that 66 percent does also. Let me say I don't think the university should be nameless. I think its name is Legion. I doubt that there are, I think there are great many universities where more than 80 percent perhaps of the total research is sponsored by the federal government. That simply is the place where the money is. This does not mean that all that research is war-related.

Much of it is not. And on occasion, congressmen have protested this. May I come to the defense? You take for granted a federal and remarkable institution that's developed in the United States. It started in the immediate post-war period with the Office of Naval Research, which continued a level of research which had originally been done during the war. That is one alternative during the war was to bring all the scientists into the government, make them government employees, and have them do the wartime research. It's too late now, at least for those of us who are around the World War II, to argue whether we should have been in the war and should have given efforts to it and such. Let's say that we were all patriots then. So the scientists come off near the bed and are worse than the rest of us. ONR achieved what you take for granted and you're old enough that you shouldn't. It gave money without buying souls, which nobody thought it could do among certain groups at least. Now, of course, nothing's perfect. And if you look, you can

find souls that have been bought or, in fact, given free of charge. But I'm quite impressed with the ability of the federal government to finance research without destroying freedom. And if the federal government isn't going to do it, then you're going to ask about state legislatures. You're going to ask about private donors. And you're going to ask who has the money. And it's all right for the kids to play this game without an answer. But if we're going to play it, we're going to have an answer as to who supports things. There are many people concerned about state universities being supported by state legislators. I've heard the students contend with state legislature. And then my answer is private universities have sold their souls for money too. There isn't any scot-free way, perhaps, by fairly impressed with what the federal government has done. Then let me turn to recruiting and be reactionary on this too. It would be hard to resist the image of a university as a small grove in which people gathered to talk. And Emma's college down the road from us to some extent achieves that. And it's a lovely and admirable institution serving about

1,200 students. If we're stuck with the notion, as I am, that a lot of students want to go to universities in America, and that they are going to be served one because there's a real case for it and two because we'll all lose our heads if they don't. And the first is the better reason. Then you're going to create something other than a bunch of our colleges, and they're probably going to be state universities in considerable measure. Now, state university is full not only of recruiting, but all sorts of things. I won't name all the things that I regard on campus as rather tangential to a liberal education. The students pursue, I think, the student leaders, the critics, the activists, the goal of purity, purity and all things. For a university, that means talk about the most important matters. And in fact, some of these students would propose that. For an individual, it means purity in all relations. I spoke before about relations of love. These are, for some of these students, at least as I listened to their talk in recent days, the only legitimate kind of relations among people, true relations of love. I think of the boober, I think of

Marcel, I thou, presence, things of this sort, very admirable. They moved me to, but whether that kind of purity is, in fact, the basis for organizing a society is a legitimate question and usually we organize a society according to much less admirable principles, but principles which I think may be necessary. Principles of hierarchy, bureaucracy, impersonal relations, prudence, courtesy, often a contempt for courtesy among students. It's not pure, frankness, pure, hypocrisy is the mark of courtesy. I'm then going to take my stand with the prudential, the contingent, the imperfect of this world, rather than the purists who, in the name of purity, may lop off somebody's head someday. A little straw, just kidding. I take it, a little manzer, that you're in favor of love, but you don't see how we can organize society on its basis. Right. I don't trust the people who start out to do so because they usually kill off those who won't love. Is purity possible after 30?

No, it wasn't possible, in my case, before 30, I'm working on it, give me another ten or twenty years, I'll let you know what I'm doing. Robert Stanfield? Yeah, sociologists, I think, are notoriously amoral, and I could give you my image of the American University in such a form that, even though you people disagree with one another, you'd end up feeling that I would speak, each of you would feel I was speaking against your position. I think I'd borrow a phrase from a Clark Kerr, a term, Al has already mentioned his term, the multiversity, but Clark Kerr in his book, The Uses of the University also made mention of the knowledge industry. This is a tremendously important notion to keep in mind regarding the university. If we look at the place of the university in society, it is to be seen as part of an industry, of the knowledge industry. It's turning out two kinds of products, one knowledge in terms of what might be written in books, particular technology,

particular kinds of hardware. The second product that's turning out is people to read those books and use that technology and work with that hardware, the students. Both of those things would be seen as products. The university is something in our society which serves to allocate human resources. So people come into the university at the beginning of their college careers, and they are processed. They're put through certain kinds of procedures in order to make them marketable. Furthermore, when they leave the university, the university imposes certain kinds of quality control standards so that it can indicate that the product is grade A, grade B, grade C, or otherwise. The buyer will be able to pick the grade of product that he wants. Now just from the societal perspective, this is a very, very useful kind of thing. The society needs to have the knowledge produced, and it has to have the people

process. Further, Mr. Mayor, I think, suggested earlier than there's another thing that the university serves to do, and that is to hold on to this youth population for a number of years where they might cause havoc with the unemployment rate if they were thrown into the labor force. So there are certain kinds of social functions that the university serve, and this is the reason why they're subsidized. This is the reason why society, why taxpayers put in their money for universities, why the federal government and why business firms make research grants to the university. Economics is the key of what's going on in the university. Now, some of the students are quite happy about the whole thing. Indeed, I think the majority. It's not only a vocational orientation, it's another one. The college is a fun place. It's a place where the collegiate culture thrives. It's

a place where people try to find that right balance between study and fun. And it's vocational, and it's a place to study and get high grades and make your parents happy. But there is a small proportion of students who are upset about this matter of being processed, of being ignored, of having professors feel that their work consists of the stuff which is done in the office or in the laboratory after the chore of talking to the kids is over. And they object to what they see as a dehumanization in this whole process of being put through the knowledge factory. Why don't we clarify the situation, friends, by separating the college from the university and say that a college is a place where school teaching goes on and a university is a research institution. And that students, undergraduate students who are not preparing for precisely

preparing for professional careers will go through the college at some point in their careers. And those who are going to be researchers will go through the research institution. We would then be able, possibly, to eliminate the student complaint, which I suppose we all of us feel is somewhat justified that having the instructors having to be an instructor, having to teach, is the price he has to pay for the free time he gets to do not only what he wants to do, which is not teach, but the only thing that gets him advancement. When I try that for a start, I have something else I'd like to ask Gerry Allen about. Gerry, you were once a respectable schoolmarm like the rest of us before you failed to being an administrator. What if a university and a state, one university and a state

university at that? Where to say to the world, the university is not a juvenile detention home. The university is not an employment agency, a playing field, a military barracks or a cooking school. A university is an independent community of students and scholars, and nothing that is non-educational goes in that community. And if you to the world don't want such an institution, all you have to do is to withdraw your support, and we will fade away. That's a nice question. My fall isn't complete. I have an eight o'clock class tomorrow morning. Administrators always hold on to one class, and I think all of this else has to teach in order to get a salary for doing research or administrative. No. Well, I think the question is unanswered, won't be because to take just one

difficulty. You said, what if a university were to say? Well, the point I tried to make earlier is that no one group even is the university. So who, a university is not a person, it has no single voice. The faculty has no single voice. I attended a meeting of a faculty committee last night, and we got off, oddly enough, on the subject of what was academic and what was not, what was professional education, what was liberal education, if you will. No two persons on that committee, all faculty members were able to agree. It's a highly hypothetical question. I suspect that the institution, which, if this could happen, institution did that, would continue to receive modest support. I know of one institution in a state

that shall be nameless, which has lost all its utility, was originally founded as a highly utilitarian institution. It continues to be supported as a kind of monument to a more amend metals mining industry. Well, everybody wants to be great. Every institution wants to be great, wouldn't this be a way, a good way for an institution to be great? If we could somehow or other solve the problem of corporate anonymity and figure out who the university is, maybe close the place for a couple of semesters while we did so. And having found that out, then proceed, if we could obtain anything resembling unanimity or even majority rule, and come up with something, some announcement of the sort that I have suggested

and leave it to the people, to the Commonwealth, to the state, to the nation, to the benefactors, to do as they will with us. But say, this is our understanding of the only function, the only way in which we can serve, serve the interests of the community. Well, I don't want to denigrate the idea of what I think you're suggesting a community of scholars, students and faculty both, not even to say that it isn't possible. I'm sure it is, but I think that the academics, as opposed to the technical service people in our universities today, wouldn't be able to provide the faculty for that, because they're predominantly, again, not oriented towards a university or a college community, they're oriented towards their professions, so that your academic, be a psychologist, or a historian, or a political scientist, or a sociologist, tends to see himself as a member

of his professional association. And I think this has bred a type of narrow professionalism, which excludes the type of community that you're thinking of. That is, the sociological association of the Psychological Association is a sum of all the departments of sociology and psychology in the country. And there is all kinds of very narrowly, professionally-oriented research that goes on. That good or bad is not student-related. I think you'd have a hard time finding faculty if you want to choose them among the new PhDs or the PhD candidates in any of our academic professions. I'm staying field. I can get another tough one here. Students, some students are violating the law. They're doing it in the name of one higher or lower law than another or another. I wonder if there is such a thing as a law above the law of nations and of cities and of

universities. And if so, how are we to determine what it is? Some of these students are claimed to be, and I believe indeed are moved by what they call conscience. Is it our business to enforce the law of nations upon them? And if we don't, are we not condoning anarchy? Well, it seems to me that the sociology is the wrong person to put that question to. I've already told you. You were a man before your associate. Well, I've already told you that sociologists are notoriously amoral and there is something about their concern with looking at society the way it is, which makes it difficult for them to entertain notions of transcendent laws or things of that sort, of higher moralities. Having gotten above the age of 30 somewhere in the past few years, I've gotten a very,

very cynical view, for instance, of the law. I think the essence of law is in morality, it's force. In the sense that the person who can impose his will in large measure determines what the law is. Now, very often, the person who uses that force makes his appeal on the basis of the higher morality. But nevertheless, what really makes that higher morality stick eventually is his power to back up his decisions, his commitments, his ideas. That is, force and power. I think that the appeal to a higher morality is something that's available to each side, and I don't feel competent to tell which of the sides is more accurate in pursuing a basis in this higher morality. Who does, if not you? Well, I suppose if you're going to put it to me just as a man, if you put it to me as a sociologist, then I'll remove from the question.

Now we let you be a man. Well, you're going to let me be a man, then I'll plead agnosticism again here. I think maybe let me put it this way, or my feeling about this. I think that what happens on American colleges and universities produces a considerable amount of soul searching in people. I think possibly that this is one of the plus factors about what's happening on the colleges and universities. That is, that people are being challenged on this. I think possibly there's a good deal of hostility in America toward what's happening on the colleges, because people are beginning to be uncertain of what they felt they were certain about. I think that my own view of what morality would be is changing as a consequence of what I see. I'm not at all one sympathetic to natural law notions, but I think they've been

gravely abused by rather naive and passionate young people. There's a great tradition to natural law, even though most of my colleagues rejected, and it's impossible in a minute even to define the problem, much less a solution to that. I would say, though, that one thing that has struck me about students, and not just the leaders, the leaders find two sources of support, that is, when it suits them, the activists, they'll refer to democracy. But on the other hand, it's precisely the activist leaders who systematically plant contempt for the student senate, and they claim, quite explicitly, that they act on the basis of the good rather than the majority. So when democracy comes out on the wrong side, then they're quite ready to chuck it in the name of higher purpose or higher law. But what strikes me is that the relatively passive and gentlemanly and really rather sweet young people nevertheless have a radically anarchic attitude that shocks me to the core. I don't mean that I'm worried that they're going around breaking windows, but they do have a highly consensual notion of law, that unless they have consented to and

to prove out the particular law, it is not law. It has no binding force. I might add, for the record, that I disagree quite highly from Professor Stanford, that the essence of law is force. I think that a community built simply on force would be quite untenable. The essence of law is probably consent. That's what you would like. I'm telling you what is. No, I'm saying what is. But again, the essence of law was love. Oh, no, that. No, I didn't say that. No, no, no. Well, as a matter of fact, I think that the students have come up with a, not a new idea, but a radical idea for this century. And that is that if you speak about law and power and its relationship, that the source of power lies not in a hierarchy of an administrator or a president or an executive and then the people beneath him, but rather lies within a community of people coming together. Now, this may be the an artistic point that you're making, but that when a community of people come together without a hierarchy, there exists, therefore, a means of living and that this living is based upon some type of a consensual relationship that is not possible within the

hierarchy. The same people who use force, though, the love of community, the love of love, the love of peace, and at the same time force, some paradoxes. Gentlemen, we are a quintet of old straits sitting around this table, and I'm the oldest strait in the crowd. Lou Mainser said that he was occasionally shocked by some of these campus capers. I suspected, at least in my own case, possibly in yours and in that of all of our colleague 's across the country, we are the revolutionized Zs, and the characteristic reaction of revolutionized Zs is always indignation. We think that we know something, and we seem to being told that we don't. Thank you very much. What does the campus upheaval mean? Today's five cottage forum with Milton Mayer of the English

Department, Jeremiah Allen, Associate Provost, Louis Mainser, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, Alvin Winder of the School of Nursing, and Robert Stanfield of the Sociology Department, all at the University of Massachusetts. Five College Forum, a time for candid conversation about a variety of issues, ideas, and events, is a production of WFCR. Five College Radio in Amherst, Massachusetts.