Farewell, Mario Savio—Hello, Delta Mu

UC-Berkeley, long known as a seat of student rebellion and radicalism, is slowly moving away from its politically turbulent past. The majority of students here today have ceased to direct their energy toward controversial national and international issues and are concentrating instead on campus matters. Admittedly, there is pride in the tradition of protest at Berkeley; but most students today simply do not have an active interest in off-campus issues. They are practical and careerminded, and are taking their education very seriously.

The rapidly diminishing number of radical groups on campus try to keep Berkeley’s leftist tradition alive by attacking university policies. A small number of students, for example, are leading a crusade for economic and racial justice in South Africa. UC investments there are not within the jurisdiction of state officials, as state university investments are in most other states, but are controlled by a Board of Regents. Thus the student denunciation of apartheid is aimed at a highly visible and accessible university administration. Similarly, it was at the UC-operated Los Alamos and Lawrence/Livermore laboratories that the neutron bomb, as well as 85 per cent of the other nuclear weapons produced for the U.S. military establishment, was designed. The Lawrence laboratory is a brief stroll from the Berkeley campus; it runs daily tours and, like the university administration, is vulnerably visible. Meanwhile, the precedent-setting Bakke case on reverse discrimination began less than a hundred miles away from Berkeley at a sister campus, UC-Davis; the cry of “Reverse the Bakke decision,” following a state supreme court ruling in favor of Bakke, was taken up by socially concerned Berkeley students.

JN

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Jeffery Nelligan

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UC-Berkeley, long known as a seat of student rebellion and radicalism, is slowly moving away from its politically turbulent past. The majority of students here today have ceased to direct their energy toward controversial national and international issues and are concentrating instead on campus matters. Admittedly, there is pride in the tradition of protest at Berkeley; but most students today simply do not have an active interest in off-campus issues. They are practical and careerminded, and are taking their education very seriously.

The rapidly diminishing number of radical groups on campus try to keep Berkeley’s leftist tradition alive by attacking university policies. A small number of students, for example, are leading a crusade for economic and racial justice in South Africa. UC investments there are not within the jurisdiction of state officials, as state university investments are in most other states, but are controlled by a Board of Regents. Thus the student denunciation of apartheid is aimed at a highly visible and accessible university administration. Similarly, it was at the UC-operated Los Alamos and Lawrence/Livermore laboratories that the neutron bomb, as well as 85 per cent of the other nuclear weapons produced for the U.S. military establishment, was designed. The Lawrence laboratory is a brief stroll from the Berkeley campus; it runs daily tours and, like the university administration, is vulnerably visible. Meanwhile, the precedent-setting Bakke case on reverse discrimination began less than a hundred miles away from Berkeley at a sister campus, UC-Davis; the cry of “Reverse the Bakke decision,” following a state supreme court ruling in favor of Bakke, was taken up by socially concerned Berkeley students.