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The Class of '68 has no one symbol. But Brian Weiss of U.C.L.A., who ap pears on this week's TIME cover, pointedly conveys many of its new mold characteristics, opinions and attitudes. His voice is amplified more loudly than most since it is reflected in the Daily Bruin (circ. 18,000); Weiss has made such an impact as editor of the paper that many call it the Daily Brian. Weiss allows that he has "always been a wise-ass — only my vocabulary has improved." He has called California Governor Ronald Reagan "a liar" for manipulating university financial figures to justify budget cuts, and tells matrons of Westwood who complain about obscenity in Bruin reviews: "If you don't like it, don't read it, lady." Despite such brashness, one of his frequent targets, U.C.L.A. Chancellor Franklin Murphy, praises Weiss as a conscientious editor who has made the paper "a provocative and enzymatic force on the campus." A tightly packed bundle (he is only 5 ft. 7 in., 128 Ibs.) of confidence, he is full of irrepressible assertions as to what is good and evil in life. As with many of his classmates, his sense of independence developed only recently. For 17 years he moved almost unthinkingly through a lulling sea of trim tract houses in the hot suburbs of Los Angeles.
He took for granted the middle-class values of his father, a proud, patient jeweler who is "the best watchmaker in the San Fernando Valley." At school, Brian was "the kind of kid who would run and tell the teacher if I saw another kid starting a fire with a magnifying glass."
Only two things really excited Weiss in his early years. One was reading Tom Swift at the age of seven ("It drove me crazy—I wanted to go to the moon myself; I was Tom"). The other was meeting a biology teacher who had "a whole garage full of tropical fish," and who "was the first person who got inside my brain and picked." Otherwise, Weiss was mainly untouched by social concerns or intellectual interests. Brian arrived at U.C.L.A. uncertain of what he wanted to be come. He majored in zoology, barely got passing grades for two years. "They were fact-piling courses, just rote." He turned to the campus paper because "I didn't know anybody." As a freshman, he dashed off a column for the Bruin, patly suggested that although U.S. involvement in Viet Nam was regrettable, the military at least ought to run the war right. So many older students grilled him about his beliefs that "I realized I'd accepted Viet Nam without acknowledging it was killing people. I emptied out my mind and started over."
After he began working on the Bruin, Weiss found a double inspiration in a U.C.L.A. husband-wife anthropology team, Lewis and Sally Binford. "They're heretics," he says. "Sharp, biting, absolutely brilliant." He switched to anthropology, wants to teach it because it blends his desire to be scientifically precise and his interest in people. He has pushed his grades up to a 3.8 average in his major, has a four-year graduate fellowship at the University of New Mexico. He hopes to avoid military service as a conscientious objector.