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Show Alumni Board Praises; Encourages 565 Class 17 By PAUL CRACROFT Modern education: Diet. Buy it. Try it. Riot! For good or ill, education has faced, and survived, many struggles, not only in the 1960s, but also as far back as one man first sensed the need to learn from another. AMONG MANY milestones along the way, however, two have given education some new directions recently and have world, but as a cultural cadre forced a change of pace. These would be, of course, Sputnik and Berkeley. Some wonder which had more Communist inspiration. in-spiration. Sputnik awakened the thinking think-ing elements of our nation to an awareness that the United States has no monopoly on the technological skills that grow out of education. Berkeley proved that the "new student" has a wisdom far beyond his years and a sense of active commitment that can be directed di-rected toward destiny or disaster disas-ter but cannot be ignored. THE BOUNCE back from each of these dramatic events will be good tests of the resiliency re-siliency of American education. I use the future tense, because the answers are not yet all in; even all the questions raised by both have not yet been asked, despite the plethora of words which has built up around each event. Alumni work, too, has been, and will continue to be, affected af-fected by both happenings. The common image of alumni activity activ-ity is reflected in cocktail glasses that some how drink in some hateful substance called "school spirit" and pour out a magical potion of under-the-table aid for athletes and unlimited money for dear Old Siwash. If ever this were true (it's about as accurate as typecasting type-casting Mario Savio as the Grand Dragon, of the Ku Klux Klan), things have changed. Or they should. IT'S THE college-trained citizen citi-zen who has sought for, demanded de-manded and been willing to pay for more meaning in education. The college-trained citizen (goaded by his alumni director and alumni magazine editor), as an alumni worker, as a trustee, as a legislator oras a citizen, has called for the re-establishment of student-faculty relationships rela-tionships that alone can avert other Berkeleys. Close to home, this has been a year of increased awareness by the University Alumni Association As-sociation of the importance of the student as a potential alumnus. Near the end of the year, both the ASUU President and the Senior Class President were added to the UUAA Board of Control as ex-officio members. mem-bers. This improved liaison brought about some benefits, the most dramatic of which are reflected in some new approaches ap-proaches to the Senior Dinner Dance, a Senior Class brochure, the first miniature diplomas in five years and the opening of several student-alumni doors. AS MANY students know, the UUAA has resisted the complete com-plete abolition of class officers for at least four years. Our resistance re-sistance has not been based merely on tradition but on the practical aspects of our need to maintain contact with graduates, grad-uates, particularly for class reunion re-union purposes. While the dilution dilu-tion of sophomore and junior class identity still bothers many alumni, we withheld further opposition op-position when steps were taken by student leaders to provide representation of the Senior Class on our board. Without knowing much about it botani-cally, botani-cally, the UUAA is delighted, organizationally, with "Loos- PAUL CRACROFT Moss" for 1965-66. We are convinced that the line between students and alumni is but a thin one. Just as a high school graduate doesn't magically become an adult between June and September, Sep-tember, neither does a university univer-sity graduate change from a hard-working, concerned and commited thinker into some caricature of humanity interested interest-ed only in football, 'coonskin coats and foggy memories of "the good old days" just because be-cause someone hands him a sheepskin. So the UUAA welcomes the Class of 1965. Its officers have been ambitious and imaginative. imagina-tive. Its heritage is excellent, its days on campus tempered by a variety of political, social and historical events that have shaped us all. Its members need pay no dues, but we hope that they will not forget that the debt they owe the University is a heavy one, best paid off in dedicated work. THE UUAA exists primarily to preserve the best things of student outlook and to help each former student somehow to apply those things to a lifetime life-time of service to the many communities (including his Alma Mater) into which he will fit . . . and to himself. Good luck! |
