Student unrest ‘complex problem’

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32406, 19 September 1970, Page 18

Student unrest ‘complex problem’

“It is a really complex situation. It is very difficult to put a finger on the cause. If you make generalisations you are bound to be wrong,” said Dr C. T. Dougherty, senior lecturer in agronomy at Lincoln College, yesterday, summing up hi s impressions of student unrest in the United States, where he has recently spent 11 months.

Dr Dougherty left New Zealand almost a year ago to! be assistant executive secre-| tary of the American Society! of Agronomy at Madison in Wisconsin. Before returning to New Zealand he spent two months as a visiting professor in the agronomy department at Purdue University at Lafayette in Indiana. The University of Wisconsin at Madison, with about 40,000 students, was probably next to the University of California at Berkeley as a hotbed of student unrest, he said. It had always been a liberal campus with a liberal staff and this had tended to attract some undergraduate students who were described as activists or anarchists. It had been the scene of many disturbances, particularly about the time of the American invasion of Cambodia. and more recently of an explosion in the mathe-

matics research centre causing about ssm damage. Dr Dougherty said that since he had last been in the United States in 1966 when he was completing a doctorate an increasing number of students seemed to have become disenchanted with society, the Government, the war in Vietnam and the internal social situation. Not constructive Many students talked about “the revolution,” but he was convinced that among the large student body only a relatively small hard core of activists or anarchists believed in tearing down the establishment and rebuilding a new society. Unfortunately I they did not have many feasible or workable ideas for improving society or else their cause might have more sympathy. When those causing trouble were arrested it had, at Madison for instance, been found that probably not more than half were full-time students —they included “drop-outs" from college, high school pupils and unemployed youth. It appeared that antagonism to the establishment and authority had also penetrated down to the high schools, so that at the time of the Cambodian invasion there were demonstrations in these schools and pupils-who refused to go to classes. A puzzling aspect of the trouble was that some of those opposed to the establishment were the children

of the most affluent people. They had motor cars, education and all the money that they needed, Dr Dougherty said. But 95 per cent or more of students were still normal college youth who were very patriotic and pleasant people and not activists. Even many of the .latter were also quite decent individually, he said. Most unaffected And 99 per cent or more of the American people were unaffected by the student troubles and only saw it on! television or read about it. Outside the trouble centres!

life in the smaller towns was normal. At the same time,. Dr Dougherty said, it was now becoming harder for graduates to get jobs and there were surplus schoolteachers, physicists and chemists—and this was also leading to some disenchantment. Universities were facing a reduction in funds for staff and research programmes. As well as a cut in Federal funds, the student troubles meant that state Governments tended to be more critical about funds for universities and less money was cbming from industry and former student groups The universities were raising their fees and particularly to students from other states, thereby causing antagonism among students and parents. Associated with the student problem was the rapidly increasing drug problem. It appeared drugs were readily available on the campus at the University of Wisconsin and were also readily available in high schools. This was something that the authorities could not do much about. But America was still affluent and apparently progressing commercially, industriallv and agriculturally. It could be that the student troubles, like pollution, were a corollary of progress and an in- [ dication that the modification lof societv was not keening nace with other develop-! Intents, said Dr Dougherty. I