The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

Several days ago, the Los Angeles Times reported the results of a

survey of almost 300,000 college freshmen in this country. For the first

time since the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there is a strong trend

toward active participation in our society. It’s been awhile. Quite

awhile.

Said Alexander Astin, the UCLA education professor who started this

annual study in 1966: “It’s a real change, a broad-based trend toward

greater liberalism on almost every issue we look at.”

I was teaching at UC Irvine when the last broad-based trend took

place: a drastic and abrupt distancing from the political and social

activism of the ‘60s and ‘70s to student apathy in public affairs and a

turning inward to self. This was strongly reflected in the subjects

students in my classes chose to write about. Quite suddenly in the

mid-1970s, social comment was out and such self-improvement topics as

how-I-found-God-and-the-stock-market were in.

This distressed me enough that I wrote a piece for Harper’s Magazine

called “Silence on Campus,” prompted by a visit from one of my former

students. Susan (I don’t recall her last name) was the daughter of a

conservative family who turned from a passive to active opponent of the

Vietnam War when the Santa Barbara police beat up a number of her friends

during a peaceful demonstration.

Two years after the war ended, she stopped by my office, angry and

frustrated. She had just finished visiting several UC campuses to gather

signatures on a petition against a proposed new California statute that

would disenfranchise many students newly eligible to vote under the

18-year-old law Susan had worked so hard to bring about. “There wasn’t

the slightest interest among those students in what was being taken away

from them,” she told me. “I just couldn’t believe the change that has

taken place in college students in the last few years.”

Neither could I. So I wrote the Harper’s essay and said so -- and had

the hide taken off me by the letters that poured into the magazine,

mostly from current college students and teachers. Two examples will

illustrate. A Wellesley student wrote: “Would you wish another Vietnam on

us just so the students of today could also be activist?” And the parent

of a UCLA student wrote: “From the comfort and safety of a tenured

professorship at a leading university, it is easy to bemoan the fact that

your new recruits won’t charge the pill boxes with the verve of the old

platoon.”

There were two oft-repeated arguments against what I had written:

First, that all of the serious social problems had been fixed so there

was nothing left to agitate about; and, second, that cynicism was the

only rational attitude toward both the public and private institutions of

our country. As best I can perceive, both of these attitudes have

continued to be embraced by a large segment of our young people until the

study last week suggested otherwise.

It is unfortunate that this change is taking place at the same time

that four members of the Symbionese Liberation Army who kidnapped

Patricia Hearst were arrested for the murder of a customer during a bank

robbery almost 30 years ago. There may be an attempt to bridge these two

events by those who fear a resurgence of student activism. So it becomes

important to point out that the crazies who kidnapped Hearst are no more

related to student activism than the World Trade Center terrorists are

related to the core tenets of Muslim belief.

I had a lot of confrontations with the student activists of the

Vietnam period. They were uncomfortable dealing with old-line liberals

like me who persisted in asking whether they wanted to be effective or

just noisy. But it needs to be stressed that they were both. They

produced a lot of rhetorical smoke, raised some mindless hell and broke

some laws. They were accused -- with some merit -- of dropping their

activism when they were no longer threatened with the military draft. But

they also left behind a legacy of highly affirmative social change.

These young people marched -- and several of them gave their lives --

in Alabama and Mississippi on behalf of civil rights. They pushed hard

for long overdue educational reforms and broke down outmoded social

castes and attitudes. They fought for the 18-year-old vote and women’s

rights. They helped get us out of a war that was eviscerating this

country. They even unseated a president of the United States in New

Hampshire. But most of all, they believed strongly enough in our society

to work at changing it.

Maybe the new crop of young people identified in the poll can also

find a few things in our society to fix. I could offer some suggestions

if they want to check with me. Meanwhile, I think we can all be

encouraged by just knowing that they care.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.