Education: Discontent of the Straights

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In a seeming classic of circumvention, the Nixon Administration last week staged the White House Conference on Youth at a Y.M.C.A. camping center in the Colorado Rockies, 7,500 ft. above sea level and 1,800 miles from the White House. To compound their isolation, the 1,400 delegates (420 of them adults) were soon blanketed by more than two feet of snow that fell on the site near Rocky Mountain National Park. While manfully debating the great issues that a preconference poll showed are most troubling youth, the delegates had to borrow Army parkas from nearby Fort Carson and improvise boots from chartreuse plastic grocery bags.

In this hermetic atmosphere, two young rabbis were overheard discussing whether to make a side trip to the nearest hamlet, five miles away. "But Rabbi," said one, "nobody lives down there, not even Eskimos." Replied his companion: "I just want to see if the real world still exists."

Cheek to Cheek. All this grew out of a top-level decision to split youth problems away from the regular once-a-decade White House Conference on Children and Youth, which took place in Washington last December (TIME, Dec. 28). But why Colorado? Stephen Hess, 38, the conference chairman, explained that the site freed everyone from distractions, to say nothing of saving $180,000 in big-city hotel bills. With considerable logic, critics sensed that the Administration was trying to avoid a confrontation on its own doorstep.

Few delegates arrived with disruption in mind. Many sported crew cuts; one wore a T shirt from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Many were nominated by Governors, party youth groups and organizations ranging from the Boy Scouts to the Sierra Club. One girl from San Francisco was a veteran demonstrator: she had organized a pro-Nixon rally during last spring's nationwide protests against Administration policies. When a rock band deafened the proceedings, the kids promptly began dancing in 1950s style, cheek to cheek.

The few radicals who did drift in were taken aback. Said James S. Kunen, a veteran of the 1968 Columbia bust and author of The Strawberry Statement: "I didn't think they could find this many straight kids in America."

Recycled Reforms. Even so, Hess & Co. had good reason to support their choice of delegates. They said they carefully used census reports to reflect the U.S. youth population. Example: 20% of the young delegates were college students, slightly overrepresenting the 16% of young Americans who are in fact collegians. Blacks (12% of the youth population) accounted for 16% of the delegates. Others included working youths (27%) and young housewives (9%).