From the Cornell Daily Sun, November 29, 1973.
Four and a half years ago America was electrified, and scandalized, by newspaper photographs of black militants emerging from Willard Straight Hall brandishing rifles, bandoleers, and clenched fists.
Today's Cornell student shrugs his shoulders in indifference, but for one who was there at the time, the recollection of that dramatic scene evokes a mixture of awe and even of nostalgia.
It is hard to believe how much Cornell has changed since the violent upheavals of 1968 and 1969: in barely half a decade the campus has been transfigured Gone, for better or worse, are the Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Liberation Front. Gone are the activists Burak, Marshall, Dowd, and Jones - the provocateurs.
Gone is Daniel Berrigan.
Gone, too, is the heady, disingenuous, talk of “alternatives”. Gone are the weekly demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, the daily blitz of leaflets and position papers, and the sheer physical and emotional tension and (let's admit it) excitement of living in a community of controversy, of being involved - revolutionaries, moderates, reactionaries all in what was sincerely felt to be great cultural, political and generational Confrontation. Remember the dictum: “Don't trust anyone over 30?”
Gone is the drama: it seems strange today, but when, on that tense, tingling evening in April 1969, Tom Jones warned the thousands nervously huddled together on the floor of Barton Hall that if the BLF's nonnegotiable demands were not immediately met Cornell would not “live past midnight" - we (I was a freshman) were inclined to believe him.
In contrast to the ferment and unrest of the late Sixties college life today strikes the veteran observer as astonishingly quiet. Almost vacuous. Activism has given way to careerism and professionalism: hence the intense sometimes bitter. competition for grades and the significant, if not astounding, increase in the number and proportion of students applying for admission to law and medical school. Hence the increasing, widespread skepticism regarding the real value of a liberal arts education and the "relevance” of the humanities.
For those who, with whatever degree of enthusiasm, can rally to the new banner of vocation, success and security and perhaps even intellectual fulfillment seem at least tentatively assured.
For those who cannot - surely a large fraction of the undergraduate student body there looms ahead the haunting spectre of Probation, or Suspension, Expulsion or Withdrawal, or, as is most frequently the case, the indefinite Leave of Absence. These are the brooding nowhere men one notices at night in the dimly lit corners of sleazy Collegetown bars, slumped in chairs, nursing stale beers, smoking cigarettes: a new Lost Generation, of sorts.
Communalism is dead Students, suspicious of groups, have atomized themselves, restricting their personal contacts to small, secretive, invisible cliques. A recent survey taken by the Office of the Dean of Students indicates a striking decline in virtually all forms of student organizational activity; a significant decrease in the number of campus political, social, honorary, and recreational organizations and clubs; а thinner schedule of lectures, panels, conferences and debates, and even fewer dances and concerts. “Leave me alone,” the new student mumbles, “I have a prelim tomorrow.”
Armed with a million-dollar budget and remarkably vast powers to alter the quality of campus life, the Cornell University Senate may very well be the most powerful and effective legislative body of its kind in the country. Yet few, outside the media, seem interested in its workings.
There are plenty of grievances and complaints, but no issues. The community of controversy has lapsed into an awkward silence.
Interestingly enough, the change in climate seems even to have affected the Safety Division. No longer required to deal with the threat of demonstration, riot and-or sabotage, but, rather, with the threat of bicycle theft and nude marathon races, the men of the campus police find themselves wondering about the value of their role.
There remains nothing for the Cornell student to be identified with or by, except, perhaps, his fraternity (which, incidentally, may account for why the fraternity system, after an extended period of moribundity, has recently regained a fair portion of its earlier appeal).
The counterculture has been turned inside out. The cooptational process has been absurdly successful: a local snowmobile dealer adopts “Power to the People" as his new advertising jingle. A large pen company exhorts students to “Write On!”
It is all at once both funny, and sad.
The campus may not look too different from the way it was four or five years ago, but it feels different, very different. In place of the old sense of community, the old fire, one feels cynicism and disillusionment; in place of the extinct student spirit, anomie.
The thrill is gone.