Sunday, July 27, 2014

Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (xxiv)

I also left New York City by bus on at least two other Fall 1971 weekends while I was working at Greff Fabrics: once to check out the Douglas College and Rutgers University campuses in New Brunswick, New Jersey and once to walk around the Penn State University campus in State College, Pennsylvania.

On weekends, the Douglas College and Rutgers University campus seemed more dead and empty of students walking around than did the Penn State University campus. Perhaps because New Brunswick was much closer to a big city like New York City than was Penn State University, which seemed far from Harrisburg and even further from Philadelphia, and was also located in a more scenic rural area than were Douglas and Rutgers's campus.

But, on a political level, Penn State University seemed politically dead in the Fall of 1971. Walking around the campus of Penn State University in the Fall of 1971 reinforced my feeling that, for the early 1970s U.S. students, what had happened at places like Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, SF State, Kent State and Jackson State during the late 1960s and in early 1970 was ancient history and of no relevence to their current lives.