Chapter 5
“So Impossibly
Happy”
John
Stringer embodied the spirit of the early 70s at Amherst College. He took the
place by storm.
As a small liberal arts college in western
Massachusetts, Amherst enjoys its reputation as one of the most exclusive and
demanding schools in the country. When I attended from 1960-1964 and when John
attended from 1969-1973, it was an all male institution of 1000 students. The
highly competitive male culture combining intense academic study with a
boys-will-be-boys tradition of drinking, pranks, and genteel hell- raising
continued through the mid-70s, when Amherst “went co-ed.” In my day the college
featured a rigorous “New Curriculum” consisting of required freshman and
sophomore courses as well as distribution requirements that would shape each
student into a “whole man.” Specialized training was reserved for graduate
school, which most attended. Part of our “whole man” shaping included a post-Titanic
requirement to swim 100 yards, plus required attendance at morning chapel –
though the subject matter of chapel presentations was overwhelmingly secular.
In John’s day there was a considerable
loosening of requirements at Amherst and around the country. The New Curriculum
was gone, replaced by an ever-expanding freedom for students who were judged
wise enough to know what was best for them. Chapel became optional. The
swimming requirement quietly went away.
Amherst was ready for John not only
because it had long welcomed jocks who could do the work as well as contribute
to college life in other ways but also because its culture, like that at many
colleges and universities, increasingly valued freedom and self-expression.
What’s more, the existence of the draft and the Vietnam War made college officials
reluctant to flunk students out.
In the spring of John’s freshman year the
United States invaded Cambodia, and classes at Amherst shut down for the final
month of the term. There were no final exams, and students had the option of
taking a Pass/Fail grade, taking the grade they had earned to date, or
finishing course work at home over the summer. I do not believe many chose “Fail,”
as that would have meant a likely trip to the Far East. The message here, part
of the obvious one of “No Business as Usual in the Ivory Tower,” was that there
are things much more important than academics.
This was a message that John took to
heart. In his case those more important things seemed to be frisbee and fun. If
he could frame these activities – and for him, drug use was soon dominating the
list – in terms such as “antiestablishment” or “counter-culture,” so much the
better.
Years later John wrote that he had learned
that a former President of Amherst College, Calvin Plimpton (John actually wrote
“George Plimpton”), had been a conscientious objector during World War II. John
was delighted that, while living in Phoenix, he was also a conscientious
objector - but what he was objecting to was work.
Following John’s murder and the
publication of my “In Memory” piece about him in the Amherst College alumni magazine,
I received a series of emails from his former classmates and teammates. Those
who wrote remember John as a radiant, charismatic figure filled with an
infectious energy: the embodiment of freedom, joy, and fun.
Chris Johnson, a classmate of John’s,
recalls an incident that reveals much about the college culture of the time. On
the first day of freshman orientation one of the dorm proctors – a senior assigned
to help freshmen with their transition to Amherst – plunged to his death from a
fourth floor window. Johnson suggests it was a drug-aided flight and that it
played a larger role in the orientation than the victim intended. The example
apparently did not help my brother.
John made a big splash when he arrived.
Ted Wright, a classmate, writes:
John was
one of the first guys I met at Amherst. We lived across the hall on the 3rd
floor of James. If I’m not mistaken, his freshman roommate was a quiet baseball
player from Maine. John was anything but quiet! He had this
wild look in
his eye – a cross between a child’s fantasy and a mad genius gleam.
Like, what will he come up with next? John
was the one who organized and led the midnight attack on Stearns [the
freshman dorm next door] in October.
(Your family may have gotten a bill for that one.) More water was spilled
than on a good day at Niagara. He
had SWAT teams go in: taking over bathrooms, plugging drains, turning
on showers, filling trash cans with
water to lean against doors. Then for good measure he turned on
North, then Morrow. And did I mention the
water balloons?
Art
Boothby was that quiet freshman roommate from Maine. He describes a sociable
John whose character had not yet been assaulted by the demons associated with
drugs and schizophrenia. Boothby recalls:
John was the first person I met
at Amherst, as he had arrived on campus before I did. It was a strange time for
me, as I was from a public high school in Maine and really not sure what Amherst
was all about. I was recruited by the baseball coach and was very jocky at that
time, as I had played three sports all though high school and expected to play
at least two in college. Also, coming from Maine, I had never been exposed to
gays, blacks, Hispanics or drugs of any kind. I was, to say the least, quite
innocent.
I found John to be very gregarious, a jock also, and
we got along very well. His hair was very short and he was very into sports at
that time. I do remember that he had just been to Woodstock, and that left a
huge impression on him. I, of course, didn’t know what Woodstock was.
I brought some 78’s from home that my older sister had,
and they were recordings of the Lone Ranger. John loved to point his speakers
toward Mead [the nearby art building] and let the William Tell Overture rip! We
also decided to paint the two rooms we had in James, and we were both very
meticulous about the job – I remember us painting the three parts of the door
jambs all different colors! The other guys on the floor liked it, and we had a
couple of walls that had different colored squares that made our rooms
different from any others.
One of my fondest memories of John is when he
organized the water balloon attack on Stearns. I believe he said his older
brother had told him this was a must, and he drew up a large map of Stearns
with all the exits and organized a meeting of all of us in the basement of
James to set up the attack. We were all given wastebaskets full of water
balloons with newspapers on the top to hide the balloons, and we were given
specific rooms to attack. It was an unbelievable surprise on Stearns, and they
were decimated, much to John’s delight!
As we got into the second semester, John seemed to change.
I guess he got into the drug scene, but I honestly never saw him do any drugs.
He certainly did not use our room for any of that stuff, and I don’t even
remember him smoking grass there. I am one of few that actually made it through
four years without even trying marijuana, as I had that baseball thing going on
and I didn’t want to mess that up. I had a sweetheart who was still in high
school, and she and her parents used to come to visit quit frequently. John was
always wonderful to Susan and her parents, very affable with a ready smile.
I really don’t know what happened with John... Over
the years we would see each other on campus infrequently, as we traveled in
different circles. His hair got very long and dirty, and he got that scary look
in his eyes, I am sure you know what I mean. He became a guy who played a lot
of frisbee, and I remember seeing him on the football field at halftime winging
that thing like a true pro.
John in
his freshman year is the young John I recall: presentable and courteous to a
roommate’s girlfriend’s parents but with unusual resources of energy.
Struggling with his incipient schizophrenia, he took on a narrowly prescribed
identity: “He became a guy who played a lot of frisbee.” It may be that he
fixated on expressions of physical energy as a way to quiet the demon voices.
Turn up the William Tell Overture! And on days when the demons were winning,
“he got that scary look in his eyes.” By his senior year he was flinging the
frisbee during halftime of the Amherst-Williams football game – barefoot in the
snow.
I witnessed “that scary look” that Boothby
recalls. When I visited John in Phoenix his eyes were deep-set and intense, and
when he stared it me it made me uncomfortable. I felt that he was trying to
read me for hidden motives and criticisms of his life choices.
John’s energy found a surprising channel
in the discipline of crew. Wright continues:
John joined Psi U, but I don’t
recall him living in the house too much. He was likely to be seen almost
anywhere, any time. His favorite phrase: “Fuck THIS shit!” said playfully. We
may have been together in Anthro 11 and possibly the History of
Philosophy.
But academics were not his first love. That would have been drugs, or beer, or
rowing.
We rowed together all four years: John on port side, me
on starboard. I loved his enthusiasm. He made me laugh sometimes, but he also
made me grit those last 500 meters. I was usually too tired or absorbed in the
practice or race to say much of anything, but John would yell WHILE we were
rowing the way some tennis players grunt while serving.
John and I were co-captains in ‘73, a disappointing season
after our previous championship. The team never clicked. The coach ignored John
and me in favor of a pedigreed senior and junior, neither of whom rowed the previous
year. If there was one thing John and I could do, it was motivate. But often we
were getting overlooked by theoreticians who emphasized technique.
No story of John and crew would be complete without mentioning
the famous bus. When the team picked up a school bus for transport to/from the
river, it had to be painted some neutral color other than bright yellow. So naturally
we chose purple [Amherst’s color], and you can imagine John with a can or two
of paint and freedom to express! The only thing that topped this was a ride one
evening to Amherst, when your brother went to the door in the back and mooned
the whole town of Hadley.
I only went back for one reunion – the 25th, in 1998 –
but I often asked classmates via letters or calls, “What do you know of Stringer?”
At the 25th I heard he was living beneath a bridge, and I wasn’t sure whether
or not to believe. (With John, all things are possible.) We went in vastly
different directions after Amherst. I am a Presbyterian pastor. Since I saw no
signs of schizophrenia – or at least didn’t recognize at Amherst – I suspect it
was drug-induced. John was a wild, free spirit, and what made him so unique
also brought him down. Like Samson. Since our Father has special love in His
heart for prodigal sons and daughters, I hope to see John in a place where the
demons cannot touch. May his childlike passion be reborn.
No
mention in this tribute of John’s quitting crew after being demoted to the
second boat. John said the demotion came because he was masturbating a lot. And,
of course, there were the drugs.
Wright’s parenthetical “With John, all
things are possible” is echoed in this story from Barry Reingold:
“Joe”
was quiet, retiring, almost mousy; the exact opposite of John. They knew each
other, but were not friends. During the spring of our senior year, the college
organized an outdoor talent show and for some charitable purpose. A group of us
(including John) wandered over. There, standing alone on the stage, was Joe. He
was wearing a red-and-white striped jacket, a bow tie, and a white boater hat.
Swinging a wooden cane, he was doing a soft shoe routine to recorded music
played over a loudspeaker. We were stunned. Then John said out loud – but to
himself – “If Joe can do that, I can do anything.” I thought then (and think
now) that John was reminding himself that the limitations under which we live
are largely those we impose on ourselves. If Joe were free to envision himself
as a soft shoe dancer, John’s freedom to dream was limitless.
Not, in retrospect, as limitless as he thought.
Reingold also recalls John’s magnetism: “John was the most memorable student
during his time at
Amherst. He was energetic, smart and funny. In his
own way, charismatic.
People liked to be around him. Men and women both.”
John had been shy around girls in high
school, getting his friends to phone them to set up dates. Amherst classmate
George Starkweather notes: “John
never had any lasting male to female relationships
that I was aware of. He
liked to meet women, mainly
hitchhikers, and return to the room for intimacy. No strings attached. The proverbial one
night stand. No commitment.
‘If it feels good, do it.’” It is unclear whether this
is a symptom of John’s illness or a symptom of the times in which he lived. It
also may be a bi-product of an all-male institution where women existed as
dates rather than fellow human beings with whom we studied, worked and lived.
Reingold continues:
I am saddened by the way John died, but
not surprised. Any of us can, on an unlucky day, run into the wrong people.
That day becomes our last. What saddens me beyond words is the thought that
John spent two years living under an expressway. That John’s energy, humor and
intelligence should come to that reminds me that, as someone wrote, human life
is fragile, puny and temporary.
No, it was not just a matter of John, on
“an unlucky day,” running into “the wrong people” – though I appreciate the
attempt to comfort me. As a student of Greek tragedy
I learned how a person’s entire life can
be shaped toward an inevitable outcome. Character is destiny. My aesthetic sensibility
prefers Wright’s version: “What made him most unique also brought him down.”
But saying this does not mitigate the sense of waste and loss – and the gnawing
injustice.
John joined Psi Upsilon fraternity in
spring of his freshman year and moved into Psi U as a sophomore. In 1970 at
Amherst, belonging to a fraternity was the rule rather than the exception –
about 70% of upperclassmen were fraternity brothers. Fraternities were informal
social clubs where, as one Psi U writes, you got “a nice place to drink cheap
beer and play.” At one point John’s fraternity had 105 members, one tenth of
the student body. John was very much a social being, so joining a fraternity would
be natural. His tenure at Psi U, however, took a turn for the strange. John’s
fraternity brother, George Starkweather, describes the first of
John’s many unconventional housing choices:
For the
better part of his sophomore year, he was my roommate. We fit well, comfortable
with the casual interaction that came with no expectations. Our other roommates
were a bit more compulsive. We lived in Psi U, third floor, until March break,
when John’s choices forced a change. He then took to residing behind the
basement wall, a place he made comfortable as he had few needs and for which he
took no offense.
Starkweather elaborates that John’s
choices include having a kilo of marijuana shipped in from Arizona – he thinks
from one of John’s high school friends. John decided to dry it out in their common
room on the third floor, a choice that led to his “banishment.”
Chris Johnson describes in more detail
John’s living quarters in the basement of Psi U: He had taped to one wall of
the windowless room a large photograph of a view out a window, on which he had
mounted a working pull shade. Another “wall” of his room was a sheet that hung from
the ceiling, illuminated from behind by a spotlight. John and his buddies spent
hours projecting shadows of one another playing air guitar to Led Zeppelin, the
Fugs, and other favorites onto the sheet, to the delight of the spectators.
When I first learned of John’s withdrawal
to the fraternity basement, it seemed to be a sign of the withdrawal associated
with schizophrenia. The world is overwhelming because of the mind’s inability
to sort and process the “voices” and delusions, so the natural response is a retreat
into isolation. But this image does not square with what people who knew John
said about him. His basement “cave” became a social center, and John continued
in his role as charismatic entertainer.
John’s many high school and college
friends loved him, as these letters show. Another classmate, Chris Torem, writes:
There was a wedding during college, a
Jewish wedding. We all went and somehow John, in his gray winter overcoat and
his shaggy hair and beard, found himself in the receiving line as a greeter. I
remember the yarmulke perched on a mass of hair well above his head. I watched as
John enthusiastically greeted dozens of honored guests as if he had done this
all his life. John was always up for a party, particularly if there was food.
This is not the social isolate described
by schizophrenia literature. John was actively seeking interactions – the more,
the better.
John’s famous VW beetle, the Phantom Phart,
was another center of social activity. Chris Torem recalls:
John was always going on runs, for pizza,
or over to Smith or Mount Holyoke, or just to the dining hall. There was always
room in the ‘Phart’ for anyone who wanted to go somewhere or just to keep him
company. Sometimes, it would seem that the overloaded car would not make it
over the hills of Massachusetts and we would all have to get out and push. Yet
John always allowed for four, five, maybe even six riders in a car built for
four at best.
Chris Johnson describes being a passenger
in the Phantom Phart when the odometer reached the 200,000 mile mark. John had
everyone get out of the car and push it the last 1/10 of a mile. He would drive
anyone anywhere in that car, cramming in six or seven bodies for trips to Smith
or Holyoke, or just around campus.
John’s car was my car – my college
graduation present. The fact that my car had been reincarnated as John’s in the
spirit of freedom and mock-defiance gives me pleasure to this day. I was the
responsible brother, the good citizen teaching in the public schools and paying
taxes. John led the life I did not live, driving the Phantom Phart.
Torem underscores John’s capacity for
friendship:
There were many things unspoken in the
friendship, a sense of trust and acceptance. John rarely criticized anyone or
tried to make someone feel low. He preferred to look for the good side, to find
the sunny day. Once the spring hit, John was the first to be outside playing frisbee
or rowing, often in bare feet. It was John who would crank up the rock music,
open the windows to our common living room and drag us out of our separate study
rooms into the fresh air. ‘C’mon,’ he would say, ‘just five minutes!’ Then we would
be out over hills overlooking the dormitories with the frisbee soaring and the
exams and term papers forgotten.”
Here again is the energy, with John always
up for a good time. His circle expanded beyond fellow athletes and fraternity
brothers, and Stephen Goff describes John’s openness, his “sociability,” in the
deepest sense of the word:
He was one of about a dozen people – max – that I would
count as my real friends at Amherst, and I will always be grateful to him for
his friendship when I was there. I have probably thought fondly about him at
least a few times every month over the last thirty years – sometimes more often
– and that I had long wanted to contact him. But it’s always too late.
For me, Stringer was an incredible person. I don’t remember
meeting him in our freshman year, but I somehow bumped into him sophomore year
and made a connection. He had a life definitely far outside mine – he was a
jock, after all, with all that that implied, and I was a complete nerd – as
anti-jock as possible.
He did crew, I think, and track, and was incredibly strong
and athletic. There was a whole universe that I am sure knew John and
appreciated his abilities. None of this meant much to me but I was willing to
let these talents pass, at least, and since I had no interest in this world at
all, my friendship with a jock like John was singular – it had to come from
elsewhere else. But John was not your typical jock. Our connection was through a
group of wildly radical friends – the common interests were Vietnam drinking,
philosophy, and maybe drugs. We certainly shared a lot of beer and dope during
that year. My more legitimate friends and I just found him unbelievably
energetic and fun to be with and were pleased to invite him into our circle.
After his sophomore year John moved out of
Psi U, though he remained a member. Goff continues:
I spent the summer of ‘71 in Washington DC and then came
back to Amherst to start junior year, moving into a “social” dorm of bedrooms
connected into a common living room. John was either an official suitemate or close
to it, and he certainly lived with us much of the year, no matter what his
formal status was. Our other suitemates loved him too.
It was a wonderful year. There were many, many all-night
sessions – this is likely the time and the life I remember most, or most
fondly, about college – and John was a major figure in these sessions. John was
so funny – so enthusiastic and energetic and intense and just so happy. He was
modest, and unassuming, and kind – nobody was more sweet and humble. I have
this image of his grin and his laugh and his pure pleasure – I loved it. We
would sometimes all be sitting around the room and John would be telling
stories and be so happy – just so impossibly happy – and passionate about some issue.
I don’t think I’ve ever been fortunate enough to be as happy myself, ever,
before or since then. What I remember most about John was his huge grin – I see
it now in my mind – and his laugh. I owe Stringer more than I can ever repay
for those nights. I agree that he may have indeed been a shaman.
I think John was genuinely happy, even
ecstatically happy. Was this happiness a sign of mental illness? If the answer
to that is yes, what does that say about the human condition?
Even in the early 1970s, Amherst included
academics with the frisbee, drugs, and all night bull sessions. John found his
own way. Barry Reingold remembers John’s academic pursuits:
During
his senior year, he was overdue submitting a term paper. It became an emergency
group project. I remember the scene in his room: Several friends were sitting on
the floor, going through books, finding source materials and citations for him.
John was sitting on his bed with a portable typewriter in his lap. He was doing
the actual writing. At one point he read a paragraph out loud. I was surprised.
He was using standard, dry academic language appropriate for a college term
paper. The language did not reflect John’s energy or eccentricities. I was
reminded that, under the beard and long hair, John was very much a
well-educated son of the professional class of Darien. I suspect that this
creative process, now praised as “collaborative,” was not unusual at Amherst.
Chris Johnson describes John’s final exam
in Professor Mishkin’s Introduction to Music course, taught by the Department
Chair for non-music majors. Johnson helped John construct his final project, a
multi-media effort having something to do with the Fourth Movement of Brahms’ Fourth
Symphony. John brought to Professor Mishkin’s office two milk crates filled
with carefully chosen stuff, and he proceeded to blindfold his professor and
then guide his hands through a series of tactile experiences. Johnson recalls
thumbtacks and warm applesauce. It’s in keeping with John’s character that he
took things a notch too far, parodying the non-academics of his age. John did not
mention the assistance of his music major friend, and he received a grade of B
for the course.
And Stephen Goff recalls:
John was not an academic star, as you probably know. We
all were cheerleaders for each other in academia, and we hoped he would find
his niche. He wandered about over the years in various courses and fields
looking for something that would interest him. I don’t think the anthropology
was a calling – it was a significant pursuit, but not a life, for him.
Somewhere in there John realized that he had an
interest and talent at art – especially sculpture. I remember he spent a huge
amount of time that year molding a life-size human hand out of wax – I guess in
principle to make a bronze casting, maybe. It was spectacularly perfect and
realistic, down to skin fingerprints and creases. It was amazing.
He also made a small skull, I think it was, in wax, and
attached it to the horizontal bar of my floor lamp. I carried it with me to
graduate school at Stanford and, I think, even back to Boston, for about ten
years. I finally, reluctantly, scraped it off the lamp in the 80’s, I think. Anyway,
after our junior year we seem to have drifted apart and didn’t do so much
together senior year or thereafter.”
Goff’s saying that John was “not an
academic star” is accurate. His grades were in the B/C range, with his lone A-
in a sophomore year course in “Eastern Philosophy Centering on the Hindu
Tradition.” His senior year featured a course at the nearby University of Massachusetts:
“Food Science 101: the Struggle for Food.” The course featured a true/false
final examination, a welcome relief from the essay writing in most Amherst
courses. John elected this class after a summer of landscaping work for our
brother Bob in Colorado. He did not want to return to college, but the family
persuaded him to finish.
Behind all this good fellowship, creative
freedom, athleticism, and charisma, some of his friends could detect ominous
signs – though none of them saw the incipient schizophrenia, except in
hindsight. The drug culture hid a lot.
Starkweather puts John’s accelerating drug
use in context:
At the time, God, acid was available and
had significant personality altering effects. One of my classmates and frat
brothers did the drug five days straight. No sleep, no eats...just drugs. When
I came back from the NCAA’s in swimming, he was on the front porch staring at
the sun. He never finished college. He was institutionalized for a while. He
killed himself a few years later. No one intervened when he went off the cliff,
they just stepped over the corpse a few years too early. John and he were friends,
and I suspect they shared some experiences.”
Stepping over the corpse seems too extreme
a metaphor to describe people’s treatment of John. He was vibrant, energetic,
and happy – the opposite of a corpse. And yet the tenor of the times was to
look the other way.
Starkweather recalls:
The college had a no ask, no tell approach, perhaps reflecting
a bias that the drug culture could be contained to mj and not progressive to
other substance abuse.
I remember [football] Coach Ostendarp
wishing that his players would go back to alcohol. (I was getting a whirlpool
treatment at the time.)
Drug use was viewed as a legitimate aid in breaking down
barriers of self-delusion and in exploring who you were and what you could
become. Zen Buddhism and Alan Watts were in vogue, along with the religious ceremonies
of Native Americans – John was an anthropology major – and the use of peyote.
Drugs were also seen as a way to enhance creativity. The
most popular past time reading was Alice in Wonderland. Amazing how we could
intellectualize and ignore the horrific side.”
Stephen Goff begins his letter to me by
saying, “I was deeply saddened to learn of his end (even if I cannot say I’m
completely surprised).” He concludes:
I think all of us in our group suspected Stringer was likely
to have a hard time after college, because it was not obvious what he would do
for a living, and if he could settle down to a normal job. This was not
something we worried about at all, of course – none of us knew what any of us
were likely to be doing either. Many of us did drugs of various sorts, in
various levels of moderation, and I think I knew he was often doing drugs more
than some of us did. I remember having some wonderful times with Stringer when
he was on acid – he was incredibly funny and exciting. I imagined all this was
manageable, and that he would stop when or if needed. I had no idea at all
about his schizophrenia, which I don’t guess was obviously happening at the
time. I have since lost another good friend to this disease – making me wonder if
I have some affinity for the type – and learned that it is basically
untreatable even today. I can only guess about the circumstances of his murder,
but I hope it was a closure if there was anguish. I wish I had made contact to
hear his rowdy laugh one more time before this ending. I will remember Stringer
‘til the day I die – nothing will change that.
I hope very much you have access to the 1973 yearbook,
because it has a phenomenal photo of John. It was absolutely characteristic of
his life. He was in the stands at the football field – it was pouring rain and
John was working on a 2-quart bottle of beer – and he was unaffected by the
rain and completely happy. The wave he’s giving to the camera is exactly how I
remember him – I can see that wave now in my mind. I think it perfectly captures
his attitude about life.
George Starkweather concurs, reflecting as
much on the tenor of the times as on John’s character:
I guess John never grew up. Consequences
of choice were never a consideration as long as the moment was pleasurable. I
don’t say that in a judgmental way. Again, we were much alike. ... He wasn’t
too far from the mainstream of the time.
Chris Torem strikes a similar note:
Although I sensed that he felt unable or
unwilling to follow a path to success which had been put before him by family
or heritage, it was easy to assume that John would simply find a different
road. This was the late sixties and early seventies and there were many alternative
lifestyles. Now I know John was struggling and unable to reach out for help.
But also, according to Peter Fox:
You have to remember that in a time when
many people suspected that you had to do your own thing, a time which is very
much past, not many people had the guts or imagination to even try. John was
brilliantly imaginative.
I didn’t know my brother then. I was in
Michigan starting my family and launching my career as a high school teacher. I
could not have prevented John’s drug abuse, schizophrenia and death. But I did
miss out on the magic of his life. And magic it was. Peter Fox spoke for many who
knew John before Phoenix:
John was beloved, he was a legend... I
must tell you, and I mean this, John was one of the most extraordinary people
I’ve ever known.
These people who did know him loved him –
that much is clear – and they could see him moving away. The most touching
sentence in all the Amherst reminiscences is this
from Mark Beckwith: “We could see him slip
away, even in college, and wondered how to invite him back.” Love is not
enough.
The culture of Amherst values being smart,
analytical, skeptical, reflective, and insightful. And – more difficult to achieve
– Amherst values being engaged. While the counterculture of the 70s urged political
engagement, at least in the form of anti-war activities, it also encouraged disengagement
– through the use of drugs. The danger signs of this disengagement were apparent,
at least in retrospect. Drug use was common and drug abuse, sometimes a mask for
schizophrenia, unnoticed. These were innocent and dangerous times, especially
given the way young people believe in their immortality.
