2 The Tar Heel Thursday. June 2?, 1977
Students of 70s seek security, fear uncertain future
By GREG PORTER
SUff Writer
When Dow Chemical Co. recruiters came to the UNC
campus in March of 1968, twelve students protesting the
company's manufacture of napalm blockaded the door of a
Gardner Hall interview room. The students, among them a
mother with an infant strapped to her back, were arrested
and convicted on misdemeanor charges.
Today, in an era when a protest is a novelty rather than a
common occurrence, recruiters from Dow and a host of
other, companies are greeted by dozens of neatly-clad
students seeking to make the best impression and get a job.
Students aren't as vocal today as they were 10 years ago.
And the mysterious silence of the campuses has prompted
"Instead-of bonding together into even larger unions,"
Murphy says, "Contemporary students have disintegrated
into self-sufficient units. They are proudly alone, a
generation of existentialists, arrogant in their integrity. They
are not massed in the streets but neither are they mobbing the
library. Their laid back insouciance is sincere.
Both Dahrendorf and Murphy express two of the more
prevalent conceptions of the modern student. But there is
more to the student mind than a preoccupation with job
security and an arrogant unconcern about the world at large.
A recent survey of UNC undergraduates, along with the
comments of experienced faculty a'nd staff, give a more
detailed, complete picture of student attitudes today.
"It's (the survey's) a pretty accurate picture of student
opinion as it existed in the spring of 1977, said Dr. John
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'Today's student is more skeptical about
their capacity to solve issues quickly
than the students of the sixties were. '
Former Chancellor J. C. Sitterson
interesting speculation on the character or lack of
character of the modern student.
"Students today reflect the plight of many groups in our
society, clinging to what they have got rather than groping
for something new," wrote Ralph Dahrendorf, director of
the London School of Economics in a recent Times of
London article.
Dahrendorf said a tight job market, fear of an uncertain
future, has forced students to demand a "defense of the
status quo, of existing privileges. The students of the 70s no
longer seek their "place in the sun" as the students of the 60 s
did, Dahrendorf says.
Kent Murphy, an Atlanta student internship director and
a self-proclaimed child of the 60s, has a different view of the
modern student.
Reed, a UNC sociology professor who directed the campus
wide mail survey.
Eighty percent of the 600 undergraduate students polled
responded to the survey. Reed said the response rate was
"amazingly high" and the results are accurate within a
margin of plus or minus five percentage points.
Reed's survey shows that most students at the University
have abandoned traditional sexual roles and mores, but still
cling to the established institution of marriage, stand at odds
on the gay rights issue and display little activism in behalf of
the ideas they espouse.
The survey, which measured attitudes concerning sexual
issues, feminism and religion, showed that 61.2 per cent of
students at UNC are in favor of "abortion on demand" while
24.4 per cent oppose it.
Sixteen per cent of the student body said they had
cohabitated out of wedlock. The survey defined cohabitation
as spending at least four nights a week with a member of the
opposite sex for a minimum of six weeks.
Of those who cohabitated, 3 1 .3 per cent said they did not
plan to marry, while 34.3 per cent of the cohabitators had
marriage plans.
"As students increasingly accept sexual behavior,
contraception, living together, they increasingly accept
abortion as an unfortunate but viable alternative" to
unplanned births, said Sharon Meginnis, a counselor in the
Student Health Service.
But eighty per cent of all students surveyed, and
overwhelming figure according to Dr. Reed, oppose "the end
to marriage in its present form." M ost students apparently do
not consider cohabitation a substitute for marriage.
Students seemed significantly divided on the issue of gay
rights. The survey found 48.5 per cent in favor of "equal
rights for lesbians under the law," while 30.8 per cent
opposed it.
I n April the Southeastern Gay Conference, held in Chapel
Hill for the second year in a row, was marked by several
incidents of harrassment and heckling directed at conference
attendees. The conference and the incidents raised a
controversy among students as to the place of gays on
campus and the open-mindedness of the Chapel Hill student
body.
Dr. J. Carlyle Sitterson, a history professor and University
chancellor during the late do's, said many students tolerate
the gay life style but are as yet unwilling to sanction it.
"Students are still strong (as they were in the 60's) on the
rights of individuals to deviate from the socially approved
norm, to have their own lives," Sitterson said. "But I'm not so
sure that would extend fully to the next stage that would
require society to fully embrace all those (deviations) "
"One stage is a toleration, the other an active recognition."
Although students do not whole-heartedly support gay
rights, a larger number, 57. 1 per cent, favor the Equal Rights
Amendments.
Despite the fact that 57.4 per cent of students said they also
approve of the efforts of women's rights groups, only 3.2 per
cent of students are involved in women's rights groups.
Campus activism has reached a low level. Dr. Sitterson
explained, because today's student is "more skeptical about
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