VOL. LIX	LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1968	NO. 60
That's the way it is for me'
By STAN METZLER Editor
It is a highly sensitive feeling to realize, as you sit in your office at almost 11 p.m. with a photo-engraving machine buzzing light and dark, that this is the last night you are editor of the Daily Trojan.
It is the end not just of four years of work; not just of friendships and securities. It is the end of the you you have become, and understand. It is the end of being what you are every time you sit down and type your name. It is the end of something you really fought for and gave up any thought of getting until you got it, and then w'orked for and defended, and stayed up all night for until the 5G nights of your semester are gone, as they are tonight.
It is a highly personal feeling, of course. But it is one that cannot be fully appreciated unless it is shared. And so, like everything else I have put in the paper this semester, I share it for myself.
But in concluding the editorship of the Daily Trojan In perhaps another 1,000 words, six or eight more hours at the shop, a couple of arguments with the printers and probably a fewr “Well, I’m editor and that’s the way it’s going to be" inadequate explanations to my staff. I w'ill tuck the experience away, to increase as I remember it, and to grow as I use it on the experiences that I will have discovered even before I read this article in the morning.
It has been a wonderful life at USC. As wonderful as any four years of any life; as full of opportunities and new people and different goals as any four years I can remember.
I could spend a column thanking everyone without thanking any on the list that really count. But there is Prof. Roy Copperud, the paper’s advisor when we need him; teachers like Dr. G. Rigby and Dr. Richard Stone and Dr. John Cantelon, who I’m sure could never tell wrhen they actually did turn my mind on, but they did; kids on the staff like Nancy Gibson and Greg Hill, who wouldn’t let my stories go by the way I Wanted them to in my freshman year, like Mike Parfit, Ed Stapleton and Fred Swegles, who worked this semester like it was their paper; and all the other students who, being other students, moved me on one occasion or another to a new thought or new adventure, a new goal I still haven't conquered or ideal I’ve yet to reach.
But I would rather type my final editorial questions (call me William Randolph Hearst, Jr., telling the wrorld what he thinks it’s all about; or a Jimmy Breslin, showing us ourselves for the first time, or some weekly editor-report-
er-typesetter just talking to people) about the school I've lived with.
It came to me last week when I was walking dow'n the stairs into the VKC Library that was only dedicated a few months ago (it still seems), and noticed that the thick green rug was worn all the way through on the edge of each step. I noticed because I had just walked by the 12-story Education Building wondering what was going to be going on in the classooms and laboratories in that Norman-brick tower.
Will something learned be worth $12-million of time and effort, searching and planning? Will imaginative professors feel free to explore within themselves and encourage their students to risk the immediate degree, for the more idealistic dream? Will those students be able to think writh imagination and crave the chance to build their future and sit around talking over an exciting new program they might be able to get into?
Will the students here be able to talk to the professors about the quite specialized path of a single stellar orbit, and then about how come man is so entranced by the heavens?
Will the Row and the dorms be places for truly living and meeting people within the university; and will the search for the whole, concerned, caring educated man hold first place in the thoughts in more than a few students’ minds?
Will we be willing to root for USC, then work for ourselves; help the guy we don’t know some Saturday morning before the Big Game, and still want to get into the books the next morning?
Will the university open its administrative doors to its students, raise the shades of secrecy and’ get back to the business of community? Will it be possible t® start a program you want and have it work because it’s good?
I thought my questions a long time after I cleared the last frayed VKC step, and the last bright Phillips Hall pavement. As I thought, I saw the last shining glimmer of Tommy Trojan on my way to the print shop tonight.
I’ve already had my first “I’m editor” excuse and I’ll warm up for the printers. Tomorrow I’ll store it all away and continue with the living for my education wherever I get it—in classes, from my parents, in books, with friends, on a quiet walk or on a noisy beach, by thinking about it very hard or by talking it over with the Lord.
Wherever it comes, I want to grasp it. Especially while I still can at USC, because that’s what makes USC worth all the tuition and all tlie time.
Anyway, that’s the way it is for me.