I read Corey Shoock's column ("Where Is Our Volume?" 10/9/2002) with enjoyment. You are right, today's college students should care about issues and many do. Although the protests in the '70s were effective, the times were desperate, and desperate measures were called for. Today we are more comfortable. College students can afford to become educated and further their education until they are deemed qualified to effect changes in the system from within, as they themselves become administrators and leaders. Perhaps you can address the benefits of working within the system as well, hopefully with the same idealist goals that you are espousing. Perhaps the kind of column that offers such advice could teach the Yale newspaper a thing or two. I see great examples of hard working and goal-oriented students in my own department as I am sure you also do in engineering. Maybe you should try to communicate why engineering is so attractive to you and your friends instead of assuming that the general populous would tune out. Some of the best and most popular current books and plays are telling the stories of science.
[Editor's Note: Shoock majors in political science, not engineering]
