Taking A Second Look
Not all college students are demonstrating. In the March 25, 1967 issue of the Fort Smith Times Record there is an article, accompanying three pictures, telling of the college student disturbance at the beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. But directly under this article, on the same page, is another article describing another element of young people. It is titled "Students Swarm On Library, Armed With Notepads, Pens." This article, published in Washington by the Associated Press, states: "You're hearing a lot again this year about the college kid invasion of Florida for spring vacation — the beaches, beer and Bikini blast. But how about the student swarm at the Library of Congress, where the only emphasis is on books, books and books. It's the annual, traditional, Easter march-in of college students with term papers to write. They come not with blankets and transistor radios, but with notebooks arid fountain pens. They're the reading regiment, as opposed to the beach brigade. 'It's been building up for two weeks,' Brian N. Wilson, who works in the gigantic main reading room, said today. The library keeps count only of the calls for books, now running about 5,000 a day — double the normal total — with an estimated three-fourths of the requests from college students. The two reading rooms of the library will seat 446 persons. They've all been filled every day this week. For many years, college kids have been spending vacations reading at the Library of Congress, and their numbers grow larger each year." These two articles pretty well tell the story. While some young people are out getting into trouble with the law, a great host of others are seriously going about their own business. I would like to think that this "library crowd" is typical of the average American teen-ager today. And the over-all picture of our nation's future seems bright.
— 1900 Jenny Lind, Fort Smith, Arkansas