Youth Is Wasted On The Young

FRESHMAN year you woke up one morning after what you knew had been a particularly exciting, sweaty keg-in-the bathtub party only to realize that you had trouble remembering what exactly had happened the night before.

Two decades later, you find out. After building a lucrative law practice and serving two very successful terms in the state senate, you decide to make a run for Congress. You may have forgotten that you passed out on your favorite section leader's doorstep with a nasty rejection note taped to your forehead, but apparently your roommates and your section leader could clearly recall the night, your advances, even the hand gestures and anatomical descriptions you used. In fact, they were generous enough to recount the story repeatedly--for every television station and newspaper that asked.

So much for the campaign. So much for running an issues-based offensive against your opponent. You're stuck with defending your record--your college record, that is. Everything from your S.A.T. scores to your dispute with a section leader over a grade to the one-night stand you tried to forget everytime you saw your classmate in the hall.

Far be it from an ardent supporter of the free press to call for obstacles to be thrown in our path. But, frankly, from the perspective of a college student writer, the recent microscrutiny of vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle's achievements in youth was enough to instill trepidation into the heart of any young person.

After the entirely above-board dissection of Quayle's National Guard service and charges of undue influence, reporters lept into the vast chasm of Quayle At College. Who were his girlfriends? What do they have to say? What were his L.S.A.T. scores? His grades? Exactly how embarassing are they? What else did that 20-year-old get away with?

It was all fair game. It was something to be poked fun at--after all the guy was pretty stupid. But what was fair game for political commentators can still pose an incalculable threat to college students.

ANYTHING and everything you do-in the darkest of dorm rooms, in the drunkest of moments, in the most clueless of exam sessions--is on the record. That's what the coverage seemed to suggest.

Yes, dissecting a candidate's military career is fair game because it is scrutinizing part of a public service. And asking whether a candidate abused the system to succeed is a good gauge of his respect for rules and equity.

But tearing apart the vagaries of a young person's character--which is constantly evolving--is catching a person at one of the most unpredictable stages of their life. This is as it should be, and the retrospective writers and readers should expect no different.

It seems that any account of a fulfilling college career would include items not destined for parental notification. Planning a public career needn't forestall the carousing, pranks and otherwise embarassing events of a normal youth.

If more is expected, than maybe youth will rise to the challenge--keeping sparkling clean records with no tales we would be embarrassed to hear on the evening news. If we forgo the embarrassments and pleasures that accrue to those having few responsibilities, we will miss out on one of life's rarest, most precious opportunities--freedom from mortgages to pay, families to raise and daily jobs to work.

The freedom is short-lived, and after a few years, our sense of fun may begin to take on a different tenor. But for now, briefcases and business cards and early bedtimes have their place-in the future.

Sending the press back into the document stacks of the federal bureaucracy to ferret out misuse of funds or public trust would be a far better use of its investigative might than searches into the college date books of potential office seekers.