1970 Utonian

Page 18

It is answered by cheers and boos. Everybody is saying it should end-on Moratorium Day the RM's were out marching and learning right there with the SDS. The University of Utah grows. Buildings shoot up, a research park appears, the golf course is eaten away by a new Fraternity Park; courses change, educational goals alter, Free U becomes a scene; more students enroll, tuition goes up; state control increases. Uptight people run into the seeds of discontent and paranoia increases rapidly among the long, undisturbed powers that be. Who can tell what this seed will grow into when its shell of local values eventually sloughs away? It might even be dangerous to the peace of Zion. Every morning the weather falls down on an endless procession of automobiles streaming into the University-vehicles of every possible or probable size, shape, color, capacity, speed and decor. Fords and buses and trucks and Porsches and station wagons and jeeps and.. they all have a parking problem. Like as not, they will run into mud and blockages where old thoroughfares are being removed, inch slowly through packed lots only to find a space on the opposite side of campus from class. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps on this petty pace. . . Life is a parking slot for a Caddy with a Volksie in the center. "Apathy!" scream the people in places to scream. But it isn't apathy as much as self-interest and a parking problem. All these cars bring students; and all these students live at home, so that campus life and activity de-pendslargely on willingness of students to leave home, drive in and participate. How do you spell Fat Chance? It has to be SOMETHING to get people here. Participation in the extracurricular is directly dependent on the handy-dandy portable American smog machine, and our lack of faith in it is often justified. "Apathy!" scream the people in places to scream. But it isn't apathy as much as self-interest 18 and a parking problem. The commuter campus attitude is not conducive to enthusiasm. Is this "home-centered" attitude a good thing? President Fletcher believes it makes the student at the University of Utah more responsible, studious and less prone to violence. Most of the administrators and many faculty members agree with him. A general opinion among the constituted powers at the university is that living at home makes a student more prone to study and be involved in his major. This involvement is cited as a counter to apathy claims by pointing to the academic departments and saying, "THAT is the involvement here!" Not one of the academic department heads we interviewed believes there is general apathy on this campus. So where are the students after six? Out riding in their cars, and the weather blows down on the vast multicolored serpent as it winds its way down the hill and out into the valley into dusk. In the darkness of our ignorance, in the abyss of our minds, one question lights the night with glowing blue neon-sign letters: WHAT SHOULD A UNIVERSITY BE? There are a thousand pit-falls hidden in the blackness wh,ch must be avoided to approach the answers. Is a university local, state, national, football, research, self-supporting, responsible to the legislature, large, small, comprehensive, preparatory, student oriented, community oriented, productive, receptive, a grade mill, rigidly structured, centrally administered, departmentally autonomous, controlled by students, challenging, conservative, leader, follower, institution, hotbed of discontent or what? Are we on a game preserve for the Rare Thinking Man, or in a degree machine? To whom do we address all these questions? A Postulation: The major views of importance are those possessed by the members of the University community which have a direct effect on what it will become. These are: The Administration, The Faculty, The Student Government, Student Radicals, and the students as a mass.