How bracing it is to see at least a handful of MSU students putting themselves on the line in their idealistic quest for a better world. I refer, of course, to the courageous petition drive ("Students petition policy" SN 9/24) mounted against the fascist oppression of East Lansing's new noise policy. It warms the heart to see students in this era of political passivity standing up to be counted for what really matters - which, as so many students have noted in the pages of The State News, is their innocent desire to have "fun."

At a time when America faces a runaway federal deficit, the inability of states to fund higher education adequately, the coming disasters in Social Security and Medicare, the threat of terrorism and a deranged war in Iraq with no end in sight, petitioning on behalf of "fun" is nothing less than a noble enterprise.

During my student years at MSU, in the late 1960s, campus activists protested over such issues as the Vietnam War (nearly 50 young men from my hometown died for nothing in that war), civil rights and the rights of women.

Today, concerned students address the grave threat the city council poses to their precious and inalienable right to engage in drunken, boorish behavior in public and to act, generally speaking, like self-absorbed, solipsistic cretins in their pursuit of "fun."

Why, it makes this old activist proud of the new breed - especially while lying awake at 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday, listening to drunken fun-seekers in the street below trying to find their way back to their apartments.

As President John F. Kennedy said, "The torch has been passed to a new generation" - and they have barfed on it.

Grant Burns
1969 graduate