Their outfits are different, and so are their hairstyles, their slang, their cars, and their tastes in body piercing. C. Arthur Sandeen has seen those and many other changes among college students. Nonetheless, he believes that in several important ways, today’s students are a lot like yesterday’s.
“Who am I? What do I want to study? How am I going to pay for this? How am I going to live? These are still the basic issues that they face,” says Mr. Sandeen, who was the vice president for student affairs at the University of Florida from 1973 to 1999.
Of course, each student has his or her own story. That’s why Mr. Sandeen emphasized the importance of sitting down with students and listening to those stories. Over the years, people often asked him what students on his campus were thinking. He would respond with a question: “Which one of the 50 groups of students do you want me to talk about?”
Mr. Sandeen now teaches a graduate course called “Issues in Student-Affairs Administration” at Florida. He urges his students to be wary of generational labels, which he calls hazardous, and gives them a list of 51 examples he has collected over many years.
Below is that list, in no particular order.
(Extra credit will be given for identifying the term that Vice President Spiro T. Agnew coined during a speech in which he mocked his political opponents, including those on the other side of the “generation gap.”)
The Lost Generation
Joe College
The Rioting Mobs
The Grinders
The Veterans
The Beat Generation
The Uncommitted
The Disaffiliated
The Underachievers
The Silent Generation
The Me Generation
The Collegiates
The Vocationals
The Nonconformists
The Disengaged Generation
The Shopping Mall Generation
The Organization Kid
Generation X
Generation Y
Generation O
The Draft Dodgers
The Digital Generation
Effete Corps of Impudent Snobs
The Bums
The Young Radicals
The Pampered Generation
The Searchers
The Hip-Hop Generation
The Sandwich Generation
The Echo Boomers
The Tidal Wavers
The Woodstock Generation
The 13th Generation
The Boomers
The Slackers
The Numb and Dumbers
The Ritalin Generation
The Twentysomething Generation
The Millennials
Gen Next
The Consumers
Generation Jones
The YouTube Generation
The Rock the Vote Generation
The Baby Boomers
The Whiners
The MTV Generation
The Dot-Com Generation
The War Babies
The Third Wave Feminists
The Greatest Generation
