On The Road In The 1970's: Part 81

By the end of June 1964, I was living back in Queens again and no longer living in Indianapolis. And, in retrospect, if U.M. & M had not been willing to let my father move back to some lower-paying job in "the Firm" in Manhattan (and I had then spent my senior year of high school at Broad Ripple H.S. in Indianapolis, instead of at Flushing High School in Queens), it's doubtful that Columbia University's undergraduate Columbia College would have admitted me--even with Mrs. Griggs's recommendation letter.

The Broad Ripple H.S. administrators apparently indicated, by correspondence to the Flushing High School administration clerks, that, under their school's letter-grading system, an "A" report card final letter grade for a class was equivalent to a "94 to 100 percent" mark; and a "B" report card final letter grade for a class was equivalent to an "87 to 93 percent" mark. So the Flushing H.S. clerks, who "translated" my class final grade letter marks from my three terms at Broad Ripple H.S. into the numerical final grade percentile number system that New York City's public school system used, magically transformed all my "A"'s at Broad Ripple into "97"'s and all my "B"'s at Broad Ripple into "90"'s.

And as a result of this numerical inflation of the final grades for each class I took at Broad Ripple, my high school academic grade average and senior class ranking status at Flushing H.S. rose much higher than what my high school academic grade average and senior class ranking would have been if I had attended Broad Ripple during my senior year and ended up graduating in Broad Ripple H.S.'s classs of 1965, rather than Flushing H.S.'s class of 1965, would have been.

So, despite Mrs. Grigg's recommendation, it's likely that the Columbia College admissions office would have considered my high school academic grade average and class ranking position, as well as my SAT verbal and math test result scores not high enough to "merit" my being admitted into Columbia College's Class of 1969, were it not for the inflation of my grades that moving from Indianapolis to New York City produced on my school record card.

Since, as it turned out historically, I was the Columbia College sophomore who, in the Spring of 1967, first discovered Columbia University's institutional connection to the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank (a discovery that eventually helped spark the 1968 Columbia University Student Revolt), my family's move from Indianapolis back to New York City in late June 1964 turned out to have some 1960's historical significance.

But if my family hadn't moved back to New York City, I likely would have spent my senior year at Broad Ripple H.S. and in Indianapolis taking a high school driver's education course, learning to drive at a younger age and getting more into cars; before likely just enrolling at Indiana University in the Fall of 1965 and spending the next 4 years at a much less politically alive and less politically radicalized campus scene than the campus scene that existed at Columbia between 1965 and 1969.  

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 78

 In the Spring of 1964, I assumed that, if I did apply for admission to Columbia College during my senior year in the Fall of 1964, it was unlikely that such a selective college would admit me. But NYU-Uptown's undergraduate college (which then had more dormitories on its campus than did NYU-Downtown's Washington Square campus did) had a reputation for being an undergraduate college for "dumb rich students," whose high school grade averages were too low to gain admittance to the then-more slective undergraduate CUNY commuter schools like CCNY or an Ivy League undergraduate college like Columbia College.

So I assumed, in the Spring of 1964, that even if I applied and was rejected for admission to Columbia College in the Fall of 1964, I would still have the option of attending NYU-Uptown's undergraduate college, if I didn't want to just attend Indiana University. Because NYU-Uptown was likely to consider me "less dumb" than the usual type of high school seniors who applied to or attended NYU-Uptown's undergarudate college in the early 1960's.

In retrospect, if I had realized in the Spring of 1964 that, despite Barnard College being across the street from Columbia University's campus, the undergraduate classes at Columbia College were generally much more "males-only" and less co-educational than the academic classes in the public schools I had always attended or the academic classes at NYU-Uptown, I probably would have just only had my PSAT exam score results just sent to NYU--even though Columbia College's catalog of course offerings looked more intellectually interesting than NYU's.

Realistically, though, if my family hadn't ended up moving back to New York City by the Summer of 1964, I likely would have just ended up enrolling at Indiana University in the Fall of 1965 (despite my desire to go to college in NYC), because my father's income would not have been high enough in the Fall of 1965 for me to be able to afford, even with the aid fo student loans, the cost of tuition, dormitory housing and travel to New York City from Indianapolis during my freshman year at either Columbia or NYU, given the lack of the $500/year New York State Regents cholarship that I only became qualified to receive by living in New York State rather than in Indiana.

In the Spring of 1964, the only particular thing I associated with the University of California-Berkeley was that its college football team generally lost more NCAA Pacific Coast League college football games than it won. So, prior to the Fall 1964 student revolt in Berkeley, the though ot possibly applying to University of California-Berkeley never even crossed my mind, despite my mother's chidless older sister and her husband then living near Berkeley.

Yet if I then had not been mainly focused on living in New York City near the world of theater during my college undergraduate years if possible, I might have been able to figure out a way to gain eligibility for California's in-state tuition to UC-Berkeley that residents of California enjoyed. By, perhaps, utilizing my aunt and uncle's California residential address when applying to the University of California-Berkeley.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 77

The second occasion when I entered a Butler University campus building in the Spring of 1964 was on a sunny Saturday when, along with some of the other eventually college-bound high school juniors from Broad Ripple (and perhaps from some other local high schools), I spent the day inside a classroom in one of Butler University's academic buildings; taking the PSAT class-biased and racially-biased standardized "idiot test" exams.

In the early 1960's, the PSAT tests were standarized tests (purportedly measuring a college-bound high school junior's verbal and mathematics knowledge, aptitude and intelligence), similar to the SAT standardized tests that high school seniors took during their fall terms, in order to have SAT exam results, then required by all the undergraduate colleges, they wished to be submitted in a timely way with their applications for college admission.

The PSAT exam results one scored during the spring of one's junior years were also submitted to the colleges a junior then thought he or she would apply to. But taking the PSAT was seen in the early 1960's more as a way of practicing for the SAT exams one would take in one's senior year. Because, in determining whether or not a college would admit you as a matriculated freshman, it was the SAT scores you had which was used to help finally determine whether a selective college would admit you--not your PSAT scores.

In the Spring of 1964, I had already examined the information about various U.S. colleges and universities contained in the most recent edition of Lovejoy's College Guide and read through the college catalog of Indiana University, which my sister was then attending, before I took the PSAT exams in the academic building on Butler University's campus.

And, at the time I took the PSAT exam in the second semester of my junior year of high school, Indiana University, Columbia College of Columbia University and New York University were the three colleges that I had indicated I wanted my PSAT standardized test results sent to, at that time.

During the late 1950's and early 1960's, I had watched on a fairly regular weekly basis, on every Sunday afternoon/early evening, "The G.E. College Bowl" television show, in which two teams of four undergraduate students from two different colleges or universities competed against each other; to see which college or university undergraduate team could answer correctly and most quickly the various intellectual/academic trivia questions that the show's moderator, Allen Ludden, would read. And, as part of the "G.E. College Bowl" television show, some film footage of campus scenes, of each of the two colleges whose schools were competing that week, were shown for a few minutes to viewers.

So, although there were no youtube videos advertising a particular U.S. college or university's campus visual scenes, in a way that might "sell" the idea to a high school student of applying for admissions to that particular school, available (like there is in the 21st-century), in the Spring of 1964 I did have a little familiarity with how other U.S. college campuses, besides Indiana University's, Butler University's or Queens College's campuses (that I had all personally been to) looked like.

Before the Spring of 1964, I had always associated going to college, after graduating from a public high school, with going away to college and living away from home while attending college; rather than just going to a commuter college for four years, while still living at home with my parents.

So when I looked through Lovejoy's College Guide, in the Spring of 1964, I don't think I even considered reading its description of Butler University; because that college was too close to the neighborhood in which I lived with my parents in Indianapolis; and, in the Spring of 1964, not just commuting when I lived so close to Butler University and, instead living in a Butler U. dormitory, would have made no sense to me. Even if I hadn't already been associating going to college with not being a commuting student.

So, for obvious reasons, if I ended up attending college in Indiana, beginning  in the Fall of 1965, Indiana University, with its in-state tuition for Indiana residents, its impressive-looking campus and its longer distance away from the neighborhood in which my parents lived and from where I attended Broad Ripple H.S., was where I was going to apply to. And that was why my PSAT scores were sent to Indiana University in the Spring of 1964.

Another reason why, if I ended up going to college in Indiana, I felt, in the Spring of 1964, that Indiana University was the university I would be applying to, was because many more young people attended a public state "Big Ten" university, like Indiana University, than the number of young people who attended smaller, private liberal colleges like Swarthmore, Oberlin or Antioch, etc. And, already seeing myself as some kind of writer, playwright or possible journalist, whose "thing" was to be an observer of people, who wrote the truth in a way that changed U.S. society in a more democratic direction, it seemed to make more sense for me to go to college where there were a lot of students; and, consequently, a greater variety of individual young people around me than a private small college, with only a limited number of young people to observe, would provide.

In addition, because the number of students attending a small private college was so much less than the number of students attending a large state university like Indiana University, I felt, in the Spring of 1964, that at IU I would be more likely to find other students to befriend and less closely noticed or monitored by either less non-conformist classmates or faculty members, than I would probably be if I attended a small private college.

Also, Indiana University had a Big Ten football team and a big football stadium, which most small private colleges lacked; and, in the Spring of 1964, I was still into being an NCAA college football fan who associated the going-away college experience with spending, at least five Saturday afternoons each Fall, sitting in your university's football stadium, with a lot of other students, and rooting for your collegel's football team. Even though, despite being in Broad Ripple High School's marching band, I don't think, by the Spring of 1964, I particularly envisioned myself as someone who would be in in Indiana University's Marching Band while attending there.

Yet, by the Spring of 1964, I also did not particularly want to attend college at a university in which most of the students were in college fraternities and sororities, and where fraternities and sororities dominated campus life. But in the early 1960's, Indiana University was still a university in which student campus life seemed to be dominated by the frat and sorority student members.

When reading through the Lovejoy's College Guide book pages in the Spring of 1964, I can recall generally checking out the information in the book which indicated the percentage of students at each college who were members of fraternities or sororities. Because, by that time, I felt that college fraternities and sororities were inherently undemocratic entities; since they allowed their members to exclude, even in a racially or religiously discriminatory way, anyone they didn't want to let into their social clubs.

So perhaps one reason I then requested that my PSAT exam score results be sent to Columbia and NYU, as well as to Indiana University (despite still then assuming that IU was where I would end up enrolling as a freshman in September of 1965), was because campus life at neither Columbia University nor NYU appeared to be as fraternity and sorority-dominated as Indiana University's campus life then was?

Yet the main reason I think I requested my PSAT exam results also be sent to Columbia College and NYU, as well as to IU, was because, by that time, I think I had then concluded that going away to college in New York City, in the Fall of 1965, would likely turn out to be a more intellectually stimulating, interesting and emotionally satisfying experience for me than just going away to college in Bloomington, Indiana would turn out to be.

In retrospect, there seemed to be two reasons for my conclusion, in the Spring of 1964, that going away to college in New York City might make more sense for me than just going away to college at Indiana University in Bloomington.

The first reason was that, after I began thinking of myself as a possible aspiring playwright in the theater world, it seemed to me that--despite Indiana University's reputation as being a university with an excellent theater arts departnet--it made more sense for me to, if I could, attend college in the city where the most Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theatrical productions were staged in the early 1960's: New York City. Why waste four years, after entering college in the Fall of 1965 before being able to watch live performances of plays in Manhattan and checking-out Manhattan's theater world activity on a regular basis, when, if I was attending Columbia or NYU in New York city, I would be able to begin doing the same thing as early as the Fall of 1965?

The second reason that I concluded, in the Spring of 1964, that applying to two colleges in New York City, like Columbia and NYU, made more sense for me (as a potential alternative to just attending IU) was possibly, in retrospect, that (because I was still then unaware of the history of Palestinian people or Arab people's history) I still did not question the validity of the liberal Zionist ideology I had been indoctrinated with in Hebrew School, prior to my birthday. And, as a member of a family of assimilated Jewish religious background, I then felt it would be more intellectually interesting to attend a college in which a larger percentage of the students would be of assimilated Jewish religious background than the percentage of students of assimilated Jewish religious background that there then was at Indiana University.

When reading through the Lovejoy's College Guide book, my recollection is that in that book there was some indication as to which U.S. universities or colleges had Hillel student chapters with larger number of students. So that may have been where I might have noticed that Columbia and NYU then had a greater percentage of students of assimilated Jewish religious background than did IU, in the early 1960's.

Because Columbia University's liberal arts undergraduate Columbia College catalog seemed to indicate that Columbia College offered more interesting college courses than what the courses that the catalog of NYU's then-uptown undergraduate college in the Bronx offered--and because Columbia also had a college football team, while NYU no longer had a college football team in the early 1960's--Columbia College, not NYU-Uptown was the one I was hoping to get admitted into more in the Spring of 1964, when I had my PSAT exam result scores sent there.

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 39

Rather than being some kind of academic center of political subversion or non-conformity, Indiana University in 1963, at least to me, seemed be mainly a campus in which most students seemed to still be more into fraternity and sorority life and attending Big Ten football and basketball games, in big college stadiums and sports arenas, than into either their academic work, hanging out in academic libraries or being involved in some form of political activism.

But  the new and old dormitory buildings and the big student union building on Indiana University's large campus still impressed me in 1963 and caused me to feel that I was in a small city of large numbers of young people in their late teens and early twenties, whenever I visited IU's campus; and in a city that was filled with even more physically attractive female "co-ed" students than Broad Ripple High School was then filled with.

I assumed, between January and June 1963, that my family would remain living in Indianapolis during the rest of the decade and did not think, at this time, that I would develop any particular desire to apply for admission in a few years to a college in New York City like Columbia or NYU.  So I also assumed in 1963 that, especially because now being a resident of Indiana would enable me to be charged the lower in-state tuition fee, after graduating from Broad Ripple H.S., Indiana University in Bloomington was where I would spend my 4 years as an undergraduate. Hence, as early as the spring semester of my sophomore year in high school, I had started looking through the IU college catalog and begun to consider which courses I intended to take, when I eventually enrolled there; and what subjects I would want to major or minor in when I got there.

What's surprising, in retrospect, is along with considering a major or minor in subjects like history, journalism, music or theater, in 1963, at least, I also was thinking, for a brief period, that "police administration" might be an interesting major or minor subject for me to get into. Perhaps I had been influenced by watching too many cops and robbers shows on television, like Dragnet, during the 1950s as a child?

So, for a brief period, I thought being prepared at IU to become a "detective" for some police department, after graduating and fulfilling the then-required two years of U.S. military service for U.S. men under 26-years-of-age, was a possible road I might follow. But by the Fall of 1963--perhaps after viewing on the television screen more images of white cops brutalizing and arresting singing Civil Rights Movement demonstrators on the streets of Southern cities like Birmingham--I had completely ruled out forever the possibility that I might want to major or minor in "police administration" when, as I then expected, I would enroll at Indiana University in the Fall of 1965. 

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 38

I still have some memories of my life in Indiana unrelated to school between January 1963 and late June 1963, during the time I spent part of each day earning money on my own for the first time, as an Indianapolis Times newspaper delivery carrier.

In 1963 the most influential newspaper in Indianapolis was the Indianapolis Star morning newspaper, which was then owned by a white right-wing anti-communist conservative publisher named Pulliam. Pulliam was a political supporter of the right-wing anti-communist "New Right" conservative and then-U.S. Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, who, the following year, was the 1964 GOP presidential nominee who ended up losing to then Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in a big way in the November 1964 election.

Pulliam's newspaper publishing firm also owned and published an afternoon newspaper in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis News (which competed with the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain's Indianapolis Times afternoon and Sunday morning newspaper that I delivered), that was distributed on every afternoon except Sunday afternoon. Not surprisingly, the editorial slant of both Pulliam's more influential Indianapolis Star and his less influential Indianapolis News generally reflected his right-wing anti-communist conservative politics. So the politically influential Indianapolis Star's version of the daily news it provided its Indianapolis readers in 1963 resembled the version of the daily news provided New York City readers in 1963 by newspapers like the then-right-wing anti-communist conservative Chicago Tribune--owned New York Daily News tabloid, rather than the version of the daily news provided by the more liberal anti-communist newspapers like the New York Times in 1963.

Consequently, when a local District Attorney in Bloomington, Indiana decided to apparently attempt to prosecute or jail some of the students involved in the Socialist Workers Party's Young Socialist Alliance [YSA] Trotskyist sect group at Indiana University around this time, front page coverage of the D.A.'s case against "the Reds" at Indiana University was provided by the Indianapolis Star, to encourage this kind of 1950's-type McCarthyite red-baiting in Indiana as late as the early 1960s.

But because I was still just an anti-communist liberal in 1963 and 1964 when I lived in Indianapolis, I have to confess that I didn't realize the degree to which the right-wing extremist-owned Indianapolis Star was unfairly characterizing in its headlines what the political goals and nature of the Socialist Workers Party/YSA activists' work in Bloomington was actually about. 

Yet because my parents and I spent around one Sunday a month between January and June 1963 either driving my older sister, who was then a freshman at Indiana University, back down State Route 37 thru Martinsville and back to IU's Bloomington campus after a veekend visit or driving down to visit her on campus, I also realized that the Socialist Workers Party-supporting students, that the D.A. in Bloomington was attempting to prosecute, did not reflect the then-political mood of  the vast majority of IU's student body or faculty in the early 1960s.