Concern on Campus

Dismay over the decaying state of the environment is fast replacing peace as the gut issue among the nation's young. Underground newspapers that once denounced the Viet Nam War are now aiming their vitriol at the auto. Students are demonstrating to ban everything from pesticides to offshore oil wells. Well versed by now in the techniques of protest, they are even turning to the courts for help. A group of Washington law students recently brought legal action to force the capital's transit authority to muzzle the fumes from its diesel buses.

Those scattered voices of protest are scheduled to be united soon in one chorus of concern. The occasion will be a nationwide "teach-in" on April 22 to dramatize the ecological ills of the earth. The idea for the teach-in was given impetus by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson last fall in a series of speeches. Since then, a full-time organization called END (Environment Near Death) has been formed in Washington to coordinate the demonstrations, lectures and study sessions that will be held on more than 300 campuses. Under the direction of Dennis Hayes, an intense, ascetic activist who was the student-body president of Stanford University last year, the END staff is taking inventory of the country's polluters. They are also looking into the voting records of individual politicians on environmental issues--an investigation that has already caused some uneasiness on Capitol Hill.

Meantime, several schools are planning their own teach-ins to lead up to the national day. The first teach-in will take place this week at Northwestern University. Because it will be first, "Project Survival" has attracted many leading scientists, including Biologist Barry Commoner, Population Expert Paul Ehrlich and Ecologist Lamont Cole. Northwestern's activists say they expect as many as 10,000 people to attend half-hour sessions throughout the night on such issues as the depletion of natural resources and the psychological problems of overcrowding. The organizers hope to awaken a public awareness that survival itself is at stake. Says Hayes: "We're going to have to bring about some very profound changes in our society."

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