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Bridging the Gap. For all its deep commitment to protest and activism, the Class of '68 nevertheless seems to be more restrained than the Class of '69, '70 or '71 is likely to be. At many campuses, the instigators of the most violent demonstrations were sophomores or juniors. The seniors still see more in U.S. life worth saving, and have a far greater willingness to accept its traditions. English Major Thomas McKenna of Notre Dame rather pretentiously defines the Class of '68 as "the in-between class. We are the last of the old radicals, those who are willing to revolt in the systematic American way. We could be the salvation of everyone if we can just bridge the gap, for we have a foot in each view of American life."
The American way of life, though, has to prove itself. Introspective and analytical, this year's graduate may buy it after all—but not without a good deal of criticism and suspicion. "People have always accepted our system without question," says Penn Senior Dennis Wilen in one of those crashing oversimplifications that ignore history. "My class will not stand for that." The questioning extends well beyond the Johnson Administration's rationale for the Viet Nam war to the inevitability of capitalism and the viability of present political systems. The graduates insist that there is a need to fight injustices at home, not to "shoot peasants in Viet Nam"—an argument, of course, that is not the exclusive insight of youth. Some students have thus concluded that going to prison as a protest against the draft is a sacrificial act by which one "votes" his own concept of duty to country. Last week more than 100 Woodrow Wilson Fellows from across the nation said that they would not fight. As Stanford Senior Hugh West sees it: "Jail is where patriotism and morality intersect."
Compassion v. Coercion. Beyond the war, the prevailing ethics of the Class of '68 place justice above the need for order, social welfare above creature comforts, compassion above coercion, people above institutions. In talking about these values, students sometimes act as if they had discovered justice and love. They also ignore the reality that undergraduates throughout history have always had ideals—some of which have been fulfilled by adult society. Condemnation of their elders occasionally comes too easily for the young today—witness the Berkeley coed who glibly condemns men who "sell their soul for higher salaries, then sink into suburbia, where the deepest thing they read is TV Guide."
One book that the Class of '68 does not read very much is the Bible; by and large, graduates dismiss institutional churches as irrelevant or unimportant. Nonetheless, Roman Catholic Philosopher Michael Novak of Stanford thinks that there may be "more religion among students who now act on their conscience than among those who sit in church every Sunday seeking to be blessed." The Protestant dean of chapel at Stanford, the Rev. B. Davie Napier, enthusiastically endorses this year's seniors, who, he says, "embrace an authentic, courageous morality that sees obscenity where it really is—in all schemes that thwart the realization of full humanity anywhere, from the campus to Saigon, or to hell and back."