CAMPUS APOCALYPSE: The Student Search Today

A chaplain active on the campus (Kenyon) for twenty years posits that the seemingly disruptive activity from coast to coast is essentially a ""search for salvation"" rather than an updated version of the generational rebellion, or an identity crisis, or a ""game model'."" Whether or not you accept his by no means doctrinaire label, a ""religious model,"" the discussion is cogent, contemporaneous (the frame of reference might be Marcuse or Merton, Ramparts or the Berkeley Barb) and multi-sided. He examines, if only to dismiss their effectiveness, drugs (which were also salvationally used), the new sensitivity techniques, the rejection of structured religious observances and on the other hand private search for meaning via the Eastern religions. He also discusses and justifies activism (with the vatic comment ""student power has not even seriously appeared"" yet), relevance, revolution, all pointedly to show that students today are repudiating not only educational institutions but the complacent society they represent (""security and status and prosperity, without soul""). In their term or on any terms--he makes a statement. Well worth reading, considering, discussing.