Editorial : Baby boomers fought for much that today’s students take for granted

Looking back on the lives of baby boomers when they were young adults reveals how many things our generation, Generation Y, takes for granted.

Most young women today cannot fathom the idea of adhering to the 11 p.m. curfew once enforced on campus. Regardless of what that would mean for nightlife, women would be banned from a number of basic activities: pulling an all-nighter in the library, attending most Westcott Theater concerts, celebrating after an Orange victory or standing among peers when the next president of the United States is elected.

Women wouldn’t even be able to work as editors at The Daily Orange.

Our generation was able to push Syracuse University into allowing men and women to live together in campus housing last year. This victory would have been impossible if not for the progress made during the boomers’ time at SU. This fight to end old stigmas about men and women living together started with the baby boomers gaining coed residence halls.

The boomers also began breaking down the stigmas attached to certain professions, whether that meant a woman pursuing math and science or a man studying nursing or elementary education. The ongoing struggle for professional equality between the sexes started with them.

Taking their education with an ounce of financial realism, the boomers also expanded the number of professional schools, led to the creation of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and refocused the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. Rather than spend more than $40,000 to read Plato and dissect Shakespeare — though valuable endeavors — students are encouraged to study practical and applicable skills.

The drive to speak out, to incite change and to be subversive would never have been as acceptable, and indeed revered, as it is today without the courageous movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

And surely, there’s no need to ramble off the musical and artistic legacies — not to mention some great stories — this generation has passed on to us.

Though the surveys predict boomers won’t be retiring very quickly and that they may burden today’s young adults with a very expensive health care and Social Security bill when they do, it’s fair to say, ‘We owe you one.’