The Mail: On Berkeley

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am at a loss in my effort to ascertain just what Mr. Gordon's message was in his February 23 commentary on life at the University of California. Mr. Gordon gives an accurate, if superficial, factual account of college life at Berkeley. But his conclusions leave me puzzled.

He says: The "large, polymorphous student body" poses a "frightful prospect of insecurity and alienation." Last we get too cosmic, sir, is one to conclude that this "prospect" is peculiar to this particular campus?

In addition, the two sexes are blatantly thrown together" at such inappropriate gatherings as dining hall meals and Friday night dances. The resulting social pressure is too much for the 17-18 year old to take. The problem of the sexes, the need to mix the social with the academic, is again acute only on this campus. Nowhere else do students concern themselves with the Saturday night date.

The "implicitly hostile environment" and "loneliness" eventually drive the student into joining small groups. This is another startling discovery. Moreover, these groups are too diversified. Unfortunately, the school is not a "meeting pot of left wing non-conformists." Several ways of life are "in."

Surprisingly, the student who has weathered the initial impact, and some have, finds that he is at once being exposed to several realities: the frat-rats, the dormies, the pseudos, the adicts the real things. It's football on Saturday afternoon and "pot" that night. It's all there to be tasted by the 17,000 undergraduates, and if all 17,000 these are not living in ivory towers, that may be because Harvard take 4,500 off the top and there just aren't enough in the world to go around. Michael Gettelman, 1L   University of California, '64