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tactic was good enough in the sixties, it’s good enough for us.”
    â€œBut it wasn’t good enough in the sixties,” Dickie protested. “It never worked. Not at Harvard, not at Columbia, or Berkeley. Kids just got themselves like beat up by the cops.” His voice quavered. “I don’t want to get like beat up.”
    â€œMe neither,” said Betsy Betsy, a jittery sophomore who was small enough to fit into a case for a sousaphone, and had Betty Boop eyes without the allure. Effervescent at eighteen, in her fifties she would be a dead lightbulb hanging in a basement in Bridgeport.
    Betsy feigned loyalty to the party line of no gainful employment, but secretly wanted to forge a career as a media reporter. She rationalized her treachery by concluding that media reporting would not really be working.
    â€œCouldn’t we just walk around yelling things in unison?” she said. “I like it when we do that.”
    Jamie Lattice, a junior, said nothing, but his tiny old man’s face twitched at the thought that if he went to jail he might never realize his membership in the New York literati. What he most wanted was to be a New York Public Library Literary Lion, and he was debating whether to write a how-to book or a cookbook to win the honor. Before coming over to Matha’s room he’d spent twenty minutes at the mirror, practicing a look that combined Age of Innocence promise with fin de siècle despair.
    â€œFor shit’s sake!” Matha exploded. “They’re not going to beat us up. In the sixties, the colleges didn’t give a shit about their shit-ass image because they weren’t worried about money. But now they’re all going broke, and they’re oh-so-careful about how they come across on TV. These shitheads are not going to call the cops, I promise you. They’ll call the incident ‘unfortunate’ or ‘disturbing’ or ‘sad’ or some fuck like that.” Then she added: “You have to remember: The professors of today were yesterday’s protestors.”
    â€œBut I still don’t see why we have to close the college,” said Betsy.
    â€œIt’s a statement,” said Matha, who was about to add “shitnose,” but held back because she knew Betsy would burst into cartoonsize tears for little or no reason. “We close down Beet College, dear old much-sought-after Beet College, to show the world that college is useless. Who needs it? I mean, look at the situation this morning. That ass-shit Bollovate and his brains-for-shit trustees were about to close the place for a few bucks anyway. What difference does it make who shuts the college down? What is college for? Zip! And what do we do when we graduate? Make indie films about sex in Tribeca? Tread water in graduate school? An M.F.A., for fuck’s sake?” The group guffawed. “We’re toast! That’s the statement we want to make.” She considered a moment. “You know what? I think we’re the lost generation. That’s what I think. We should call ourselves The Lost Generation.”
    Her comrades were confused but aroused. “That’s a great name,” said Jamie. “The Lost Generation.” He thought of using it in his inaugural essay for Harper’s .
    â€œWhat building do you want to take?” asked Bagtoothian, who was watching Akim out the window, still itching to get at him.
    That required some discussion. If they took the administration building, it would not mean much because the dither of deans would vacate their offices gladly and await instructions from President Huey. If they took President Huey’s office, he would vacate gladly and await instructions from Bollovate or from anyone else with instructions. If they took a departmental building, that would do no damage at all because the faculty members were alwaysready to turn against the administration on the slightest provocation,