Chenango Forks High School 1971 Yearbook (Chenango Bridge, NY) - Full Access

A DEDICATION It is the traditional policy of this yearbook to include a Dedica– tion, a sympathetic commemoration of someone within this school building who is more than merely a teacher or administrator, but who is a personage, and individual within the miasma of pro– grammed education and indifferent educators. This year we have broken that policy. For this book is not dedicated to those who have become, but rather, to those who will become. We dedicate this book to the Students of Chenango Forks Jun– ior-Senior High School. But we qualify this. We restrict our thoughts, our dedication, to those who do not fear involvement, who do not choose to drop out, who do not shrink from a tough task. Let's face it; you are being asked to assume command of a sink– ing ship. Technology and economic growth have stampeded us to the brink of destruction; our food is racked with chemicals; our cars rip a man's lungs with gasses and hot metal; blind fear and propaganda have marched us to a war no one understands; mass media has so innundated us with statistics and films of death that we have become almost indifferent to it; the Army keeps records of those who sign petitions; drug paranoia is rampant in pot smok– ers and frenetic authorities; and man is on his own list of endan– gered species. Your parents lack the answers; they barely had a hand in the making of the problems, for the world they were handed was far from perfect. Your teachers and other adult authorities are them– selves groping for answers, and their time is running out. The strength for the future is not with them; it is within you - your awareness and sensitivity, your intelligence and willingness to be yourself, your youth. Love will not feed millions of starving human beings, but it may erase bigotry and fear of those who are different from the majori– ty. Sincerity will not end organized corruption, but it may allow you to touch another human being's soul and let you feel the unity between all men. Compassion will not free the air of mankind's bad breath, but it may bring you to question the authority conjur– ing you into killing someone against whom you have no quarrel. If you now, as young men and women, feel you have been cheated out of rights, pressured into conformity, bargained out of individuality, brought up in a too unhappy world, remember your own position in time. When it is your time to pass the world to your own graduating children, will they feel the same as you do? Will you now, when you are young, lower your eyes and let the madness prevail? Will you allow the unjustices to continue while you carve out your split-level cave, satisfied to remain silent and add to the population? If you do, then you will yourself feel the disappointment and bit– terness of a generation who saw you as once a hope, b'-!t now merely as round-bellied and bald, and pawns in someone else's game. Paul D. Meddleton