OUR TIME IS NOW: Notes From the High School Underground

Mr. Birmingham, who edited his Hackensack, New Jersey high school underground, paper Smuff, has excerpted here from others all over the country which discuss roughly the same issues and demands. He also indicates in his introduction that the high school movement is a ""gap"" apart from that of the colleges, and that these youngsters won't settle for any of the ""standard proposals"" handed down by the SDS. About 5% of them are involved in this underground and whether or not you'll find that these ""sansculottes have just summed up what student power is all about,"" you will find them extremely verbal on the ""apathetic majority,"" obscenity, demonstrations and ""cop-frontations,"" censorship, marijuana, privacy invasions, suspensions, appearance, ""the student as a nigger"" or black problems (a major segment) and rock (another prominent one) along with such incidentals as a local garbage strike. Certainly not everyone will go along with a manifesto such as ""We believe that high school students are legitimately adult. They shouldn't have to bother with parents; they Should be allowed to control their school"" but Kurt Vonnegut is casually eloquent in his introduction (""The striplings discuss life as it is and it should be as intelligently as did the authors of The Federalist Papers"") and certainly this rash of strawberry statements provides very lively reading.