CHARLOTTETOWN. P. E. l.

tion describe the vast dietance be- tween man and man today.

These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel management ,nor by improved gad- gets, but only when a love of man overcomes the idolotrous worship of things by man.

As the individualism we affirm is not egoism, the selflessness we af- firm not self-elimination. 0n the contrary, we believe in generosity of

akind that imprint one’s unique in— '

dividual qualities in the relation to other men, and to all human activity.

. Further to dislike isOlation is not to favor the abolition of privacy; the latter differs from isolation in that it occurs or is abolished according to individual will.

We would replace power rooted in possess-ion, privilege or circumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and? crea- tivity.

As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of in- dividual participation, governed by two central aims; quality and direc- tion of his life; that society be organ- ized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation.

In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in sev- eral root principles:

* decisi-onumaking of basic social 1

consequence be carried on ‘by public groupings; ‘

* politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an accept- able pattern of social relations;

* politics has the function of bring- ing people out of isolation and: into community thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of find- ing meaning in personal life;

* the political order should serve to clarify problems in a way instrumen- tal to their solution ; it should pro vide outlets for the expression of per- sonal grievance and aspiration; 0p posing views should be organized so as to» illuminate choices and facilitate

‘ the attainment of goals; channels should be commonly available to re- late men to knowledge and to power so that private problems —— from bad recreation facilities to personal alien- ation — are formulated as general issues. ‘

Work should involve incentives

worthier than money or survival '

The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles: ‘

* work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival. It should be educative, not stulifying; creative, not mechanical; selfadirect- ed, not manipulated, encouraging in- dependence, arespect for others, a sense of dignity and a willingness to accept social reSponsibility, since it is this experience that has crucial in- fluence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics; ‘

* the economic experience is so personally decisive that the indivi- dual must share in its full determin- ation; ‘ ’

*the economy itself is of such so- cial importance that its major re- sources and means of production should be open to democratic pation and subject to democratic so- cial regulation.

Like the political and economic ones, major social institutions—cul- tural, educational, rehabilitative and others —— should generally organs ized with the well-being and dignity of man asthe essential measure of success. -

In social change or inter- I change we find violence to be abhorent

In social change or interchange,

‘we find violence to be abhorrent be- cause it requires generally the trans- formation of the target, be it a hum- an being or a community of people, into a depersonalized object of hate. It is imperative the means of violence be abolished and the institutions — local, national, international —- that encourage nonviolence as a condition

' of conflict be developed.

\

These are our central values, in skeletal form. It remains vital to un- derstand their denial or attainment in the context of the modern world.

In the last few years, thousands ‘

of students demonstrated they at least felt the urgency of the times.

They moved actively and directly against racial injustices, , the threat

. of war, violations of individual rights

of conscience and, less frequently, against economic manipulation. They succeeded in restoring a small mea- sure of controversy to the campuses

after the stillness of the Joe McC‘ar-‘

thy period. They succeeded, too, in gaining some concessions from the people and institutions they opposed, especially in the fight against racial bigotry.

The significance of these scatter- ed movements lies not in: their suc- Cess or failure in gaining objectives ——-at least not yet. Nor does the sig- nificance lie in: the intellectual “com- petence” or “maturity” of the stud- ents involved — as some pedantic elders allege.

The significance is in the fact the students are breaking the crust of apathy and overcoming the inner alienation that remains! the defining characteristic of American college life.

The real campus is a place of commitment to business -as-usual, getting ahead, playing it cool

If student movements for change are still rareties on the campu s scene, what is commonplace there?

The real campus, the familiar campus, is a place of private people, engaged in their notorious “inner emigration.” It is a place of com- mitment to businesses—usual, get ‘ting ahead, playing it cool. It is a place of mass affirmation of the twist, 'but mass reluctance toward the controversial public stance.

Rules are accepted as “inevitable,” bureaucracy as “just circumstances,”

‘ irrelevance as “scholarship,” selfless-

ness as “martyrdom,” politics as “just another way to make people, and an unprofitable one, too.”

~ Almost no students value activity as citizens.

Passive in public, they are hardly more idealistic in arranging their private lives: Gallup concludes they will settle for “low success, and won’t risk :high failure.”

There is not much willingness to take risks (not even in business), no setting of dangerous goals, no real conception of personal identity ex- cept one manufactured in the image of others, no real urge for persOnal fulfillment except to be almost as successful as the very successful people.

Attention is being paid to social status (the quality of shirt collars, meeting people, getting wives or bus-

, bands, making solid: contacts for lat~

er on) ; much, too, is paid to academic status (grades, honors, the med- school rat-race). But neglected gen- erally is real intellectual status, the personal cultivation of the mind.

“Students don’t even give a damn about the apathy,” one has said; Apathy toward apathy begets a pri-

{vatelyconstructcd universe, a place

of systematic study schedules, two nights each week for beer, a girl or two, and early marriage; a frame- work infused wit h personality, warmth, and under control, no mat- ter how unsatisfying otherwise.

/ Apathy is the product of social institutions and of the structure

of higher education itself

Under these conditions university life loses all relevance to some. Four hundred thousand of our classmates leave college every year.

But apathy is not simply an atti-

tude; it is a product of social institu- .

tions, and of the structure and or— ganization of higher education its-elf. The extracurricular life is ordered according to in loco parentis theory, which ratifies the administration as the moral guardian of the young.

The accompanying “let’s pretend” theory of student extracurricular af- fairs validates student government as .a training center for those who want to spend their lives in political pretense, and discourages initiative from the more articulate, honest and sensitive students.

The bounds and style of contra versy are deliniated before contro— versy begins.

The university “prepares” the student for “citizenship” through perpetual rehearsals and, usually, through emasculation of what crea- tive spirit there is in the individual.

The academic life contains rein— forcing counterparts to the way In which extracurricular life is organ- ized.

, The academic world is

founded on teacher-students

relationship analogous to the parent-child relationship

The academic world is: founded on a teacher-student relation analogous to the parent—child relation which characterizes in loco parentis. Fur- ther, academia includes a radical sep aration of the student from the ma- terial of study. That which is stud- ied, the social reality is “objectified” to sterility, dividing the student from life—just as he is restrained in ac— tive involvement by powerlessness of student “government.”

’ Huge foundations and other

private financial interests, besides government, shape

‘ the university

The specialization of function and knowledge, admittedly necessary to our complex technological and social structure, has produced an exagger- ate-d compartmentalization of study and understanding. This has contri- buted to an overly-parochial View by faculty of the role of its research and scholarship, to a discontinuous and truncated understanding by students of the surrounding social order; and to a loss of personal attachment by nearly all to the worth of study as a humanistic enterprise.

There is, finally, the cumbersome a c a d em i c bureaucracy extending throughout. the academic as well as the extracurricular structures, con- tributing to the sense of outer com- plexity and inner powerlessness that transforms the honest searching of many students to a ratification of convention and, worse, to a numbness to present and future catastrophes.

The size and financing systems of the university enhance the perman— ant trusteeship of the administrative

bureaucracy, their power leading to a shift within the university toward the value standards of business and the, administrative mentality.

Huge foundations and other pri— vate financial interests, besides gov- ernment, shape the universities, not only making them more commercial, but less disposed to diagnose society critically, less open to dissent. Many social and physical scientists, neg- lecting the liberating heritage of higher learning develop “human re» lations” or “morale-producing” tech- niques for the corporate economy, while others. exercise their intellec- tual skills to accelerate the arms raCe.

Tragically, the university could serve as a significant source of so- cial criticism and an initiator of new modes and molders of attitudes. But the actual intellectual effect of the college experience is hardly distlng- uishable from that of any other comb munications channel —— say, a tele- vision set — passing on the stock truths of the day.

The student learns by his isolation to accept elite rule

within the university

Students leave college somewhat more “tolerant” than when they ar— rived, but basically unchallenged in their values and political orientations.

With administrators ordering the institutions, and faculty the curricu- lum, the student learns by his isola- tion to accept elite rule within the university, which prepares him to ac» cept later forms of minority control. The real function of the educational system—~as opposed to its more rhe- torical function of “searching for trut .”—is to impart the key infor-

‘ mation and styles that will help the

student get by, modestly but com- fortably, in the big society beyond.

There are no convincing apologies for the contemporary malaise. While the world tumbles toward the final war, while men in other nations are trying desperately to alter events, while the very future qua future is uncertain—America. is without com— munity impulse, without the inner momentum necessary for an age when societies cannot successfully perpetuate themselves by their mili- tary weapons, when democracy must be viable because of the quality of life, not its quantity‘of rocket.

. The apathy here is, first, subjec- tiveathe felt powerlessness or ordin- ary people, the resignation before the enormity of events.

But subjective apathy is encour- aged by the objective situation—the actual structural separation of people from power, from relevant know- ledge, from pinnacles of decision- making.

Just as the university influences the student way of life, so do major social institutions create the circum stances in which the isolated citizen will try hopelessly to understand his world and himself.

The very isolation of the individ- ual — from power and community and ability to aspire — means the rise of a democracy without publics. With the great mass of people struc- turally remote and psychologically hesitant with respect to democratic institutions, those institutions them- selves attenuate and become in the process less accessible to th ose few who aspire to serious participa- tion in social affairs. The vital de- mocratic connection between com— munity and leadership, between the mass and the several elites, has been so wrenched and perverted that dis— astrous policies go unchallenged time and: again.

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