4. The culture of the students: By now there are enough students associated together in large enough groups and for long enough periods of time and with enough freedom so that an independent student culture can develop with its own dress, style of behaviour, code of ethics. It can have a particularly strong hold on a large campus which provides little contact with faculty, administration and parents. Such a student culture reinforces itself and gives a sense of protection against external threats. It may attract to itself the related culture of the non-student and draw in some faculty adherents. It is like an island culture--an island often in the sun, partly dependent only, partly rebellious toward, the usually benevolent imperial power that supports it.

5. The explosive issues: The 1960's have seen some explosive issues torment the United States--particularly the Civil Rights issue internally and the Vietnam war externally. Internal justive and external peace are both inherently compelling issues for idealistic youth. Coming together they have abetted each other. Beyond these two issues lie others of great concern--control of the bomb, adjustment to the computer, accommodation to the mass corporation and government agency, and much else.

6. The new tactics: The sit-in, the teach-in, the mass meeting or the march covered by the press and TV have given some students new weapons, in addition to the older petition and picket line and strike, to call attention of the public at large to their views. They can gain potency through the headlines and TV screens. They can communicate with each other quickly across the nation about their concerns. They can travel readily. They can have a loose network of friendships and contacts. As a consequence, they can concentrate their talents and their attention at selected pressure points quite readily. A form of guerrilla warfare has been possible with few student casualties but much impact--a strange war where the casualties often lie elsewhere and the impact may owe more to the exaggeration of the enemies than to the aid of the allies. The new style of flamboyant dress and flamboyant speech fits the headlines and the TV screens as no milder performances would do.

THE TONE of a campus, even of the national student body, can be set by a minority. In the 1920's it was set by the collegiate group--the athletes, the fraternity men, the Big Men on Campus. These students concentrated on activities, the fraternity men, the Big Men on Campus. These students concentrated on activities, on social life, on occasional pranks.

It is remarkable how so few can set the tone for so many. The central fact is that most students remain the same from generation to generation. They remain quite recognizable. But in each generation a few thrust themselves forward, or are thrust forward by the situation--in the stadium, in the classroom, before the microphone--and come to stand as changing symbols for the largely unchanging multitude. They are those who ride with the spirit of the times, those who are under the circumstances the most vocal and aggressive and, also, those who are seized upon by the public as "typical." The coon-skin coat and the flapper were as rare on the campuses in the 1920's as the beard and black stockings in the 1960's, and yet each of these visions came to stand as symbols for a whole generation.

The Peace Corps Types

This dominant political activist tone ignores two other partially related and relatively new segments of student life: the Bohemians who are even fewer in number and the Peace Corps types who are the most neglected group of all but, in my judgment, potentially the most significant in the long run. The members of the first, the Bohemians, have been rather frequent but also rather unreliable followers of the political activists, and the Peace Corps or "service-types" occasional followers.

Some student tones cause more trouble for more people than others. The collegiate tone occasionally troubled the Dean of Students; the vocational and academic tone of the 40's and College and the Dean of the Graduate School; the political activist tone of the 60's, the President and the Regents. From scandals to grades and revolt, the tone of each generation has affected the temper and the tenure of a different layer of campus administration. There are those who look back with longing to the days when it was the Dean of Students or the football coach that got the sack.

The life of an institution and the public reaction to it are greatly affected by the tone of its dominant student minority. The nature of this minority is quite volatile--now one thing, now another. At the moment, the nature is political.

Confrontation Politics

THE STUDENT political movement of the 1960's is, in the totality of its means and ends, unique in American history. No single element of its approach is entirely new but the combination of these elements is new. To speak of a "movement" at all is to over-state the situation, for the very nature of the activity makes it dispersed and diverse. There are changing localities of action, vehicles for expression, tactics to pursue; and no developed ideology. It is a movement that can be seen and has been seen by many different people in many different ways.

"Confrontation politics" is the essence of the new student movement--confrontation with the power structure on main street, or the campus, in Washington. This is the particular form that political action has taken. Civil Rights tactics are the great source of inspiration. The tactic is to pick an issue and confront the power structure with it as dramatically as possible. There are a series of acts and events, with a certain style to them and moving in the same general direction.

There are two elements inter-twined in this new political activism. The first is composed of the issue-by-issue protestors; the second by adheresent to one or another of the organized groups on the Left. It is the first element which is unique and has set the decade of the 1960's aside as different from the past.

The Meaning of the "New Left"

The phrase, the "New Left," has been used to describe this whole development but this term implies a greater connection with the "old Left" than actually exists and an ideology that is "left" and thus in some sense socialist. While there are socialistic elements there is rather more emphasis on distrust of big government, preference for local action, nostalgia for a "Golden Age" that never existed, and emphasis on the individual and his personal choice. The Right of Goldwater is in evidence as well as the Left of Marx, but what is most in evidence is a vision of the good life under American democracy.