DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Student protests, 1972-1973 | 1972-01-30 New York Times Magazine Article: ""Metamorphosis Of A Campus Radical"" Page 6

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Student protests, 1972-1973

1972-01-30 New York Times Magazine Article: ""Metamorphosis Of A Campus Radical"" Page 6

they say make people subject to them, rather than the other way around. The projects they seek are necessary services they can provide free, or nearly so, to everyone. They have found plenty here - the Crisis Center ( a community referral service for every sort of serious problem), day care, free medical and legal services, the Women's Center. 

Characteristically the radicals separate their "careers" from what they must do to earn a living. They will work 18 hours a week driving a truck to get what they need to live, and that's it. The rest is career time, which they freely admit may be no more than "smoking a little grass with my friends," but will probably include giving service to day care, antiwar work, women's rights or whatever. The livelihood pattern is a reaction to their parents' spending 60 hours a week at a job, only to find life has become complex and unsatisfying. The concept of saving yourself for yourself has even emerged in the fringes of the professional schools, where it is regarded with the kind of alarm that might greet the diagnoses of a case or two of cholera. 
Radicals do not buy new cars, but prefer old trucks and buses (sharing again, being together) and they avoid new clothes and haircuts, which, like all finery, they see as success symbols and an enslavement. 
Straights, although just as leery of the barber, have no objection to new cars and are very much into organization. The daddy of them is Jim Sutton, who came to the university's Writers' Workshop in 1965 and is one of those perennial graduate students here. He is a short fellow with a 
(Continued on Page 16)

... UNEASY PEACE: Bo Beller, who as Iowa student-body president had the thankless task of trying to keep order during the 1970 confrontations, pauses by a campus sign that suggests the mood of 1972. Yet, at Iowa, as elsewhere, both "straights" and radicals are seeking new, if less destructive ways to assert student power. 

JANUARY 30, 1972
N.Y. TImes Magazine

"Metamorphosis of a Campus Radical"

6 (of 12) 
15

Saving...

they say make people subject to them, rather than the other way around. The projects they seek are necessary services they can provide free, or nearly so, to everyone. They have found plenty here - the Crisis Center ( a community referral service for every sort of serious problem), day care, free medical and legal services, the Women's Center. Characteristically the radicals separate their "careers" from what they must do to earn a living. They will work 18 hours a week driving a truck to get what they need to live, and that's it. The rest is career time, which they freely admit may be no more than "smoking a little grass with my friends," but will probably include giving service to day care, antiwar work, women's rights or whatever. The livelihood pattern is a reaction to their parents' spending 60 hours a week at a job, only to find life has become complex and unsatisfying. The concept of saving yourself for yourself has even emerged in the fringes of the professional schools, where it is regarded with the kind of alarm that might greet the diagnoses of a case or two of cholera. Radicals do not buy new cars, but prefer old trucks and buses (sharing again, being together) and they avoid new clothes and haircuts, which, like all finery, they see as success symbols and an enslavement. Straights, although just as leery of the barber, have no objection to new cars and are very much into organization. The daddy of them is Jim Sutton, who came to the university's Writers' Workshop in 1965 and is one of those perennial graduate students here. He is a short fellow with a (Continued on Page 16) ... UNEASY PEACE: Bo Beller, who as Iowa student-body president had the thankless task of trying to keep order during the 1970 confrontations, pauses by a campus sign that suggests the mood of 1972. Yet, at Iowa, as elsewhere, both "straights" and radicals are seeking new, if less destructive ways to assert student power. JANUARY 30, 1972 N.Y. TImes Magazine "Metamorphosis of a Campus Radical" 6 (of 12) 15