Vance Packard made his name as a social scientist when he wrote "The Hidden Persuaders" in which he put forward the thesis that modern advertisers were buying

psychologists to help them manipulate people's mind in such subtle fashion as to reduce the capacities to make decisions to a significant degree.

Hardening Barriers

Recently he published another work entitled "The Status Seekers," a work that achieved best-seller status in a fortnight. Packard claims that people in the U.S. regard Social Status as an end in itself; further, the barriers to changes in S.S. are hardening He also discusses the indices of such status and, by implication, how one may break through the barriers concerned. The popularity of this book in the U.S. can be attributed to the feverish preoccupation of the members of that nation with the subject which, of course, is of only academic interest here.

Today's ' University student is certainly concerned with status. Some seek status in the metaphysical world. They have some fairly clearly defined code of behaviour, based upon belief in a personal God to whom the student regards himself as responsible.

Desire To Serve

Love for God means love for fellow students as creatures of God, and hence desire to serve fellow students. Please note that love isn't meant in the barn-yard sense. This love, with a restricted meaning in relation to such modern men of letters as Carter Brown, leads the student to wanting to influence the mind of his fellow students as well as secure amenities for them. Such a student sees his fellow students as blinded to reality, suffering from a spiritual tragedy which occurred very early in the history of mankind.

A rather smaller section of the University population believes in ideas, though they're not quite sure why. They want the status associated with influencing other people's opinions. These people can generally be found in the thick of student journalism religious and political societies current affairs and debating clubs.

They have an importance in student affairs out of all proportion to their numbers but it is quite well earned.

These people assume very special significance when we consider that the majority of the future's decisionmakers will get their training and their basic pattern of attitudes from the University.

The Intellectual Tapeworms

There are two groups between which it is hard to distinguish on the margin. The first is the group which is so frightfully advanced, ready to prove it with an impressive stream of misunderstood quotations from authorities who suit them. Such people swarm in coffee bars at the slightest chance to be daring when there's no risk involved, ever ready to attack someone else's point of view, believing that it's the things to believe nothings.

The second are the party types, desperately keen to be popular, and generally ready to gossip with anybody about anything.

These two varieties are perhaps the hardest to put up with Apparently bereft of all vision of the future, happy to be intellectual tapeworms in an ideal climate with a perpetual source of partially digested food, not needing to grow a shell for protection because their very way of life postulates the absence of anything from which they need to be protected.

In contrast to both these groups, there exist the students who seem to want to be unpopular, always taking the contrary view and not particularly keen to do anything for anybody. Such people irritate, if only because they earn respect. They invariable have something stimulating to say and have a weird capacity to find corners of irrationality in other people's mind.

Genuine Interest

Perhaps, in reaction to the groups mentioned above, there exist a very small group of students who are genuinely interested in ideas, but tend to avoid the rough and tumble of student life.

They are intensely interested in their own specific disciplines, getting very sound exam results, but with no great desire to influence other people's ideas. Indeed, they tend to regard the people in the limelight with the greatest suspicion. The general belief that such students are quite helpless outside their special fields arises from their attitude to wasting time nattering, but is often quite wrong.

The Trojans

We must not forget the students who want academic status, whether for its own sake or to ensure a sound financial future These people have few redeeming features, working like Trojans in private, but keeping their knowledge very much to themselves.

They make no contribution to the University and will never be scholars. Such people deserve only to be allowed to open reference books for less talented, but more thoughtful students.

Old School Type

We also see a few examples of another group which is fairly reticent about its ideas, but is deeply concerned about its status But this group regards its status as Part of the natural order of things, something which need not be earned, or, rather something which cannot be earned. I refer to those who regard themselves as being near the the top of an elaborate caste system. They are