Article March 23, 1968 Issue

Truth Seekers on the Campus

[For young adults]

NANCY L. SNIDER

It is clear to many thinking persons that young people today are seeking the answers to fundamental questions about themselves and their world with greater intensity and seriousness than ever before. On college and university campuses the age-old query "What is Truth?" is being examined and explored in depth. In searching for a response to this basic question, students are also searching for answers to the more practical questions arising from it, such as What is my true identity? What is my real purpose in life and how can I best go about fulfilling it? What are my responsibilities toward my fellowmen? How can I maintain a sense of honesty and integrity in a world teeming with hypocrisy, fear, and hate?

These questions are not new. Indeed they have been posed by each succeeding generation throughout the ages. What is different today is the adamant refusal of many young people to accept standard replies which often seem to them to be only half-truths or nostrums glossing over difficulties, rather than tools for getting at the heart of the matter being discussed.

The younger generation is critical of traditional responses and of the formulas accepted by previous generations, considering them irrelevant and inapplicable to the problems of the nuclear age. This "inapplicability gap" in turn leads young people to the conclusion that their elders are hypocritical, callous, or ignorant, or perhaps all three. They want practical, provable answers to their questions, and are willing to cast off all customary approaches in trying to gain new perspectives and objectivity in getting these answers. They want to get down to what they term the "nitty gritty" of things. It is within this framework that the behavior of youth today must be viewed and their actions understood.

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