(The following eflusion appeared in the Harvard CRIMSON on June 12, the day before Mr. Lerner commenced.)

TALKING with my classmates on the eve of their graduation has not evoked a particularly festive response. Some are down at the mouth because of the draft; others are simply at a loss as to what to do with themselves. One would imagine that after four arduous years of travaille the end of the academic moratorium would be greeted with a sense of rejoicing, relief, and ven liberation. Instead, I have become increasingly impressed with a muggy mood of despondence which hovers over this year's celebrations like a lazy mosquito: annoying, menacing, frustrating, and depressing.

What will you remember about your senior year at Harvard? The gloom of December when the war got worse, when draft calls increased, when your thesis tumbled from your frostbitten fingers like a heavy stone, and the future looked as dead as the icy eyes on a frozen pigeon which lay in the trash, claws outstretched, stiff, scratching the clouds--too cold to even interest the maggots?

Or perhaps you were one of those who, bravely, went on with the work to be done, as usual, knowing full well the weighty perils you faced but taking them in your stride, like a man, with a stiff upper lip, as you munched buttered toast in the late morning, surrounded by friendly fellows in the warmth of the drawing room of your favorite club.

Is this you? Or perhaps you were the one we didn't see much of this year. The one who got up a little later every day until one day you never got up at all. Were you the guy who spent most of his waking hours in the Coop Record Department, waiting for the new release? Or did you sweat all day over a hot mimeographing machine, the unsung hero of the student activists?

Do you remember what they used to say about us in the National Press? We were their hope and their fear. First, the generation of activists: the ones who had overcome the "apathy of the sleeping '50's." But then at the prep schools some clever Life magazine correspondent had dubbed us the Negos," the super-sophisticate boys, the kids who were negative, sarcastic, caustic, alienated, and bitter about everything that touched them. We were the ones who thought it was uncool to show emotion, to become involved, to be loved or engage.

And then we were the beats, and then the Love Generation, and then the Flower Power People. The hippy, mini, teenie-boppers who wouldn't cut their hair or take a bath. We were many things to many people. Black Power advocates, peace marchers, community organizers, desperate student power desperadoes, and members of many movements. We signed petitions to eradicate the II-S deferment and then petitions to reinstate it. We circulated "We Won't Go" statements and "We Might Not Go" advertisements, and "We'd Rather Not Go" petitions.

Yes, we were all of these things and some of these things and none of these things at all. The press played us for what we were worth and then dropped us like the younger sister of a two-bit whore. But there were parts of us they never touched. We had our honor and our price. There were levels of profundity and nuance they could never fathom. So be calm because I'm not about to unveil our mystique here. Probably I had you scared, woried at least that I would attempt to expose our secret. Fear not, I'm no stoolie. And besides the world isn't eady for the real news about us yet. They'll learn...when the time comes.

Until then let's make light of it. Have you been keeping up with the Times? It's a lot. A couple of weeks ago column eight told of Parisian students occupying the Latin Quarter; column one had the word on the insurrection at Columbia; at the bottom of the page, on the left, was a story about 500 students in Brussels taking over the university; deep inside the first section ther was news of students rioting at th London School of Economics; section two told of the continuing "problems" with young radicals in Germany; the next day Brooklyn College was hit; and a week later 1000 students and faculty had taken over the main administration building at San Francisco State.

Is this simple youthful exuberance, an international conspiracy, or a chance convergence of mystical patterns in the stars? Perhaps. But the student demonstrations around the world are also symptoms of a now tangible malaise which has, during the course of the years we have been at Harvard, become part of the fabric of the college education. Whatever one wants to call this sense of anxiety and unease, it has become the focus of the college experience.

"Focus of the college experience," come now. Beginning to sound like another Dunlop Report. Big words are cheap this year. Where's the nitty-gritty beneath all the verbiage? Underneath the asparagus tree written in the tea leaves I see the words: JESUS SAVES. So, appropriately, I pray to be saved, to be delivered from the tedium of the lecture halls, to be thrown out into the real world where real things happen to fleshandblood people. But soft, a voice harkens unto me: SON, FORGET IT. "It ain't so great to be on the outside," the logic flows, "stay awhile and be protected by mother Harvard." And so I remain ambivalent, undecided, shuttling in that twilight betwixt the real and the unreal.

RECIPE: Take the above and shove it up your stove. Boil at 450 degrees farenheit until only sediment remains. Then smoke it and the resulting hallucination may approximate the state of mind of the seniors who have haunted these hallowed halls this year.

EXERCISE: Put your right hoof in your right cuff, bend your elbow behind your ear, take a snort and sneeze. The consequent sensation will parallel the pretzel-like contortion which most of us have sustained all year.

RECREATION: Plug into your Thirteenth Floor Elevator earphones, sit crosslegged on the floor, take a puff enjoy the stuff, write a rhyme to pass the time, make a movie or something groovie.

DIALOGUE: