◆ SpookStack

Last spring the student body at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) elected heir undergraduate president for thc current academic year. Of 4,000 eligible votcrs only 32 pcrcent cast a ballot and Michael Albert, a twehty-two-year-old math m a j o r from New Rochelle, New York, won the election with a m e a g e r 16 percent plus of the potential electorate. I Albert is the personification of the contcniporary radical ' stiidcnt movement. H e campaigned on an cxtremc left platform advocating the ending of all war'-related r e s e a r c h at h31T, the cornplelc acceptance of campus Black Student Union dcmands, etc. mitted the usual over-exercised new left miasma (American Ini- perialism, Peoples wars, Che', Free Hucy, etc.). Albert dcs- tribes himself as a "Rosa Luxemberg" SDSer (She was a wcll known murdered and niartyrcd communist in Germany a t the turn o f the century). Albert in a reccnt feature article in the Boston Globe trarrs- Since Afbcrt holds tlrc highest electcd student office on the MIT campus he is charged with, among other things, the counsel- ing and guidance of entering freslimcn. In Iris discharge of this resmnsibility, Albcrt sees his SDS (Progressive tabor lactiun) mandhte clearly as any fillip which tends to radicalize thc students and disrupt the fragile administrative balance at MIT. Not only docs Albcrt propagandize the freshmen with a "packagc of literature" liberally laced with revolutionary invective but he reads, in an'orientation spcech, a "1ettcr tu frcsImieiitf (a copy of which is inclridcd in tho "package of Iitcraturcl') and follows the reading with d f r e e flowing diatribe, pouncing 6 n MITIS world famous llCc!ntcr for International Studies" ancl thc scientific trscarclr program along with anything clse in tho Icft radical attack bag. '- e 0 I-Icrc; as a ctAssic example of ncw left hypCrbCJlC is tlw tiian- * -.. . V . . . . . .... .......... . . . . . . . - ,_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . - .;-. -?? i z. * . ' .. ....a. - . . . * . : :. . . . . . . . . . . . C . . ;' Y ,:. ' ... - W ' ' -: . . , . ,.:-..,.. -. . .