Word: happeners
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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EVERY NIGHT that week Martin had one of his funny dreams, and by day the tension was unbearable for him. Something was going to happen to him soon; he knew it. Every minute seemed to heighten the anticipation. He couldn't study any more--he couldn't even concentrate on wasting time. He began sitting in the armchair again and staring at the phone; why, he didn't know. He just sat and started...
...having one of his dreams in the daytime. He was an earthworm, burrowing through a telephone cord into the receiver; Betty was in the other part of the telephone, and he was getting closer and closer to the receiver there, and something was about to happen--but before it could, he would see pictures, wildly distorted, of his old biology book's photographs of the cells, and the little cells would be swimming around trying to get to the big black one--but then he would see the telephone again...
...long time, many, perhaps even most members of the Harvard community thought that "it couldn't happen here." They were wrong, mainly for two reasons. First, they probably underestimated the ease with which a "confrontation" can be created. It takes only a small group of determined students. There will always be some diffuse discontent which they can hope to mobilize through action. To be sure, the scope of the drama still depends on two other factors: the catalytic impact of the initial act, and the nature of the response...
Suppose, for example, the University were to decide that science plays too large a role in the university, that a major restructuring should be undertaken, and that all science departments (including research funds, faculty, research assistants and students) should be reduced by one third by 1974. What would happen? Presumably some faculty, choosing to place a high priority on research, would accept positions elsewhere, taking with them some graduate students. No undergraduates would have to leave. Since the reduction in faculty and students would be proportional to the reduction in research money, the financial gap to be filled...
However, he continues in the instruction manual, "you will quickly observe how every member of our little group here detests bigotry in the deepest part of his or her heart. (Most of us happen to be political Conservatives rather than Liberals, but this has nothing to do with our unanimous views toward inhumanity.) In an infinitely smaller sense, it is bad business (and bad sales) to be depreciatory toward geographic locations or abnormal unfortunates. Say 'For the tourists from Cornville' rather than 'For the tourists from Sioux City.' Say 'For the Gay Boys,' or similar, without scorn. We sell books...