Editor’s note: This editorial was written in March of 1965. The author is unspecified. The gendered language within this piece is a product of the time and does not represent the current practices of The ‘Burnian.
It appears as if the American college campus is rapidly becoming the stage for social, political and moral reforms. These demands for reform range from a demand for free speech (including the public use of obscenity–dubbed the “Filthy Speech Movement” of the U. of C. at Berkeley) to a threatened “sleep-out” by U. of Chicago coeds protesting curfew hours.
In this potpourri of countless “causes,” it becomes increasingly difficult for many outside observers, and college students alike, to distinguish the rational from the irrational, or to detect that thin line between a moral cause and an amoral cause. The trend seems to be towards an extensively liberal atmosphere on campuses. As one student put it, “It is the rapid emancipation of the chick from the egg….” But for many, it is only to find out they are destined to live in a cage or end up in a pot of hot oil. There is another world outside the egg which may turn out to be just as crude as the egg and less likely to be escaped.
Does the college student realize the magnitude of his action, or is he just searching for an unconventional cause—something useful to hit back at an extremely demanding society? Is this the birth of a new kind of morality which repudiates the old and often self-contradicting “Christian morality”?
It seems as if man has reached a point where his creative intellectual (technological) capacity has begun to outstrip his rational mind. We have learned to create bombs and rockets, but like children, we have not learned that our toys can kill us. We say that all men are equal; still some cannot see the equality in man. We say that education is the answer to modern problems, yet we are learning more but getting less out of it. For we have not learned how to apply our education. It is like continuously pouring water into a bullet-riddled tub without realizing that there is a leak—wasted effort. We say that there must be a God. Yet, where is He? Can we not even describe Him, or is He just another past cause?