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Though very much its junior member, Rhodes has had considerable influence on the scope of the commission's investigations. He has also conducted some on his own. Some 50 volunteers, mostly students, now produce detailed accounts for him of campus disruptions and also draft written studies on everything from police tactics to contemporary student life. To help pay his staff's expenses, Rhodes successfully solicited money from, among others, John D. Rockefeller III.
His forthrightness did not sit well with Vice President Agnew or even, at first, with members of his own commission. But they have listened to his ideas. What is more, he is ready—often, it seems, before he is asked—to counsel the White House on anything he believes germane to the problems of American youth, from the legalization of marijuana to the war in Viet Nam.
Helping the Commission. More important, Joe Rhodes believes that disorder on campus is only a part of the country's cultural upheaval, and it is to this problem that he intends to speak. "I'm not interested," he says, "in finding ways to solve campus unrest if that means damping out student dissent. My ultimate goal is to tell the President in no uncertain terms what can be done to save lives this fall." He means throughout the country, not just on the campus. "We're like a vast system only a few millimeters from building up to its explosive point.
We're getting into an unanticipated revolution. Nobody seems to grasp the degree to which people are fed up." Rhodes' rhetoric notwithstanding, it is up to the whole commission to ascertain who is fed up with whom, and it is still possible that this fall will bring dialogue instead of a dustup.