BUREAUS and stringers across the country flooded us with the names and qualifications of dozens of candidates for this week's cover.

Choosing one person was a singularly difficult job, for no one student can be expected to symbolize or typify a group as large and as varied as the one made up by the 630,000 seniors who are being graduated from the nation's 1,593 four-year colleges. Ultimately, the editors selected Brian Weiss, 21, a U.C.L.A. anthropology major, to appear for the concerned Class of 1968.

As the school year ended, Weiss was triple-timing between lectures, cramming sessions for exams and his extracurricular work as editor of his campus paper, the Daily Bruin. All that recalled a familiar routine to Writer Ed Magnuson, who, as a student at the University of Minnesota 18 years ago, was a reporter for the Minnesota Daily. In those days, the most burning campus issue was not the draft; it was fraternity discrimination--both religious and racial. "We tried our best to be impartial," says Magnuson, "but of course the paper wound up flailing the Greeks."

While our correspondents on campuses contributed much to the story, many key interviews were handled by Education Reporter Peter Babcox. At his alma mater, Columbia College (Class of '60), he taped the thoughts of Rebel Student Leader David Shapiro during a taxi ride to Queens, where the Phi Beta Kappa poet was to give a reading. Later, Peter sat in on a midnight bull session with students in Buffalo, then drove the next morning to State College, Pa., with Sociologist Edgar Friedenberg, interviewing him en route. Babcox ended his school swing in a talk with a Penn State senior while flying back to New York. Checking out the facts in Manhattan was Researcher Erika Sanchez (Hunter College, '60); the final grading was done by Senior Editor John Elson (Notre Dame, '53).

Even without the prompting of a cover story, each spring hundreds of students write us about on-campus job opportunities with TIME. Most want to be campus representatives to earn both money and experience selling Time Inc. publications at special student rates. They also assist in marketing surveys for our advertisers --polling their peers on subjects as varied as shirt styles and cosmetics, as well as attitudes toward business recruiters. Students who want to become campus representatives should write for application forms to the TIME College Bureau, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, N.Y. 10020.

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