new University VOL. 3/NC. 1/THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1970
PORTRAIT OF THE
SEVEN-DIGIT FRESHMAN...
who gobbles on about kinship linkages in a heavy
by T. Norville Turnbull Slobbovian accent. Your fascist comparativelit. teach-
er assigns THE BIBLE, THE DIVINE COMEDY,
and PARADISE LOST for Friday and informs you
Walking across central park towards the (you check that since the quarter started on Monday but his
your notepaper again) Registrar's Office, you are first class day was Wednesday you are all a weelci
WAR AND PEACE also. You
sure that you are the only person in that vast sump behind and must read in
who doesn't know everyone else. At the point when need to change sections a class. Arrogant secre-
i two people walking toward you wave in your direction taries shield you from anyone of importance and un-
and you know instantly they mean some unseen blinkingly refuse all your requests. Your advisor, all
—
person behind you, you are thoroughly into the whole done up in
freshman thing i.e. incurable anxiety. Your parents
heavy tweeds with a peace symbol on his
lapel, puffs on his pipe and advises you solemnly
met as freshmen at Black Duck Teachers College, to take a look at the catalog's suggested schedule.
your older sister at UCLA knows hundreds of people, He says he's heard that the Advanced Swedish class
and the movies and TV have told you that college is is filling up slowly, that the ATLANTIC MONTHLY
violence on campus this year (what do
where people are really "getting it together" in predicts less that
groovy ways. And you, a well-knownbon vivant and you think?), he's going to take pictures of his
socialite at Tustin High School, after a whole week wife bearing another man's twins, and that he's have
meeting to catch.
at the big U. You know your roommate, one person to leave now lie's got an NAACP
down the hall, and a strange pasty-faced little guy Come back sometime. You are impressed by the
who tried to persuade you to join the Young Conser- man's breadth of interest and his knitted tie.
vatives League. Your roommate snores loudly and Well, one does get settled eventually. There's a
falls asleep when you try to talk seriously about routine for you to follow, the people you live with
ecology, the guy down the hall has a girlfriend al- become closer friends. You discover Crescent Bay
ready, and you are not the young conservative type. at sunset, the Cottage in Laguna Tor midnight tea and
You try to handle the isolation by keeping busy. The honey, you turn on for the first time, you go and retch
a; a cliquish party on the Island, you meet people you
university obliges.
Waiting lines for class confirmations stretch out really like, and you finally get into portions of your
into areas of the campus untouched by architect classes.
Pereira's hands. You are given the class confirma- organizations want to visit as pretty sure you're
You definitely manyof the "radical"
tion card of a graduate engineering student with the as possible. You're
repression, social injustice,
same last name. You need another class and try to hip to time, political oppression. A! the end of first
add the interesting-sounding Graduate Seminar in racism, and economic
Metaphysical Psychobiology 741 and are greeted with quarter, the annual takeover of the writing center be-
hoots of derisive laughter from the professor. You gins in support of striking Afghan hemp workers, a
cringe and get hopelessly lost amidst rows of closed jailed Black Panther, the re-hiring of a popular pro-
brown doors in some nameless building.You emerge fessor convicted of child molesting, and the libera-
to find a scowling mivtermaid writing up your car for tion of the Student Center II as a hydroponic organic
you can get behind one of
overtime parking. You plead that the meters don't vegetable garden. You think
tell how much time is left, she says the check is those issues (after all NEWSWEEK said the Afghans
payable to the Orange County Municipal Court. ARE underpaid) and you go to a strike meeting. You
"O" Week is a bewildering nonentity. Someone find assembled there perhaps the most bizarre group
in charge (you assume without proof that there IS of bitter misfits and .supporting thrill-seekers in
someone in charge) has so skillfully planned the acti- existence. They argue about which wave of strikers
vities that over 23-1/2 hours a day are unoccupied will bare their heads to the attacking police first,
by. any sort of orientation events. The administrators they ask if any FBI agents present will identify them-
introduce each other as "vital parts," "concerned selves. They ramble on in 20-minute soliloquiesabout
about students," "working closely with me," etc. repression, wage slavery,class systems,racism, etc.
Everyone DOES know everyone else; little knots of They parade around in surplus army jackets andboots
people cluster around chattering about the weather, striking poses stunningly reminiscent of Omar Sharif
the price of a lid in Laguna, the party on Ruby to- playing Che Guevara. You soon tire of their rhetoric
night, etc. You want to find som3one to share the and intics and turn to the New University Conference
worry with. Your dad had joked, "If you can't be good for solace. There, you feel sure, you'll find a rational
be careful, ha, ha," and your mother had mumbled radical outlook to imitate. They're better but dismay-
something about finding a nice someone out there at ingly unimaginativeat times for your tastes andprone
Irvine as quickly as possible. You feel hopelessly to cruel generalizations they'd deride if the source
inept and impotent. You try the stag dance routine were different.
but find it marginally successful and somehow pa- You begin to realize the subtle forms of racism you
thetic. But you find rationalizations you can survive practice every day and go to a black or brown and
with quickly. white dialogue where personal abuse is heaped upon
your guiltily liberal shoulders. You are unhappy and
The first week of school is boggling too. You knew
the competition would be rough but everyone you've confused. T'lis is normal; so is everyone else. In the
met so far is a National Merit Scholar, C3F presi- end you learn how to sham your way through the dull
dent, and has turned Yale down. You hear horrible classes, feel the excitement of studying something
stories o: smart kids flunked out after only one because you're really interestedin it, bypass secre-
quarter. The geeics in your chemistry class are so taries, ignore radical cant, ignore administration
competitive they snarl across the bench through the ca.it, and enjoy the people you have to be around.
pipes at you. Your anthro. prof is a mindless turkey You can hardly expect more from yourself.