Six weeks later, she was writing a proposal for action to solve the problem. The 1971 proposal was called the Upper West Side Air Pollution Campaign, and later developed into the Clean Air Campaign.

"By 1973 the city came under new requirements to reduce pollution in order to meet minimum standards for clean air," says Benstock.

She says her efforts to reduce pollution led naturally to the battle against the Westway Project, which she describes as "spending billions of dollars to build a highway and real estate in a precious area of the Hudson."

"There was a battle for 12 years. It was a tremendous citizen's victory. It was the only real major victory that ordinary New Yorkers have ever had," Benstock says.

The past and present activists say their lives have been shaped spiritually as well as pragmatically by those years.

"It's an experience I look back on, despite the student naivete that we were the center of the universe, and think we really were onto something," says Hochschild.

Felstiner says the 1960s left her with, "a fundamental assumption that you should never stand still. Struggle is perpetual--you'll never be able to stop, feeling as though you've come to an end. Everything you accomplish opens up the responsibility to continue."

"My experience at Radcliffe," she continues, "and knowing and caring about women there gave me a base for believing that women should turn to each other for help."

"It was not the '60s themselves [that affected me]," says Benstock. "It wasn't the model of activists, but the absence of materialistic values, power and money. If I had been concerned primarily with making money, there wouldn't have been time to notice or think about the things I did. I couldn't have done the work I did."

By contrast, Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and Sociology Roderick Harrison '70 says his somewhat later generation of activists did not all pursue their ideals after graduation. "I get a sense today of very different groups who went different ways," he says, charging that many quickly abandoned their commitments to social change, pursuing careers in law and business.

Harrison was active in both the Black Students' Association (BSA) and the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and was among the radicals who occupied University Hall in 1969.

"I began working with the Urban League in Boston in their demand that Blacks be hired on construction sites at a proportionate rate to whites," he says. "We were a liaison between the Black construction workers and the companies. A lot of students involved were unwilling to risk suspension for the cause when it got to that point."

"That disillusioned me. I became wary of student movements where people are too young to make serious commitments. We made promises to people that we didn't keep. I never wanted to be involved with that type of thing again," he says.

"A lot of people who were going to die for the revolution went on to law school. I tend not to meet the people who were active and then went on to Wall Street, [but] I know they're out there and I know a lot of them voted for Reagan," he says.

"By the time I left here, I was disillusioned with the movement," says Harrision. "Now I'm involved in more indirect ways. The times have changed and social change is not likely to be brought about in those ways. That period represented a window in American history. It's not too easy to generate the same kind of mass involvement today. As one grows and moves into a profession, one is in a position to address these issues in more official ways. Certain of us have chosen to work within institutional frameworks."

"There's a certain amount of social consciousness that categorizes that period," he says. "It was a period of Black identity formation. I think it is difficult not to feel some kind of obligation to social change. I would probably not be too proud of some of the things I sported as truth then," he says.

"Today I'm involved with minority recruitment issues. It's not just enough to take advantage of an opportunity. You have to give something back," says Harrison.