From the Daily Calendar, November 5, 1969:
 

Bethel Community

In the interests of clarification of policies that have been taken as a consensus of the campus community, and that now need to be explicitly stated and critically examined, the Student Services Office publicizes as its current operating principle:

 " . . . that recreational dancing is viewed as detrimental to the psychic health of the community and is forbidden as a form of campus and/or Bethel-directed activity."

Student Services Office

From a book by Piet Hein called Grooks:
 

CIRCUMSCRIPTURE

As Pastor X steps out of bed
he slips a neat disguise on:
that halo round his priestly head
is really his horizon.

Given that hard rock has a potentially dangerous power over the biology and psychology of American youth.  Given that this power is often used dangerously.  That it is nowhere near as dangerous as Mr. Larson claims it is I am prepared to argue, but that would take the kind of time (and opportunity to choose appropriate facts) that Mr. Larson had, so I won't do it here.  Find me on campus sometime and I'll talk to you--unemotionally.

But one thing I will say now.  Larson's main point was that the effect of rock music, because it is unconscious and because it is above our poor power to resist, is evil and must be fought.  Agreed.  He stretched his case completely beyond the limits of logic and his evidence, but he was right that many rock musicians use their power dishonestly and immorally.

So you can talk about the psychological and biological effects of hard rock.  But you can also talk about the psychological and biological effect of a persuasive speaker, about the emotive power of words, about the overpowering effect of a barrage of well-chosen illustrations, and the even greater power that the invocation of the Holy Spirit as the guiding force in a meeting can have over the emotions of an audience.

Tent-meeting evangelists since Jonathan Edwards have used their persuasive power to pull tears from audiences and to pull audiences to altars.  They have used that power dishonestly and immorally.  Adolph Hitler used the same methods to make a whole country watch while he killed six million Jews.  The means were the same--and the fact that the ends were different in no way justified those means.

The music Larson played was neither in volume nor in quality representative of rock.  His logic was faulty.  And he used the same type of power to sway an audience that he condemned in rock musicians.  So I still say, with Chuck Berry (grandfather of rock), that "it's gotta be rock 'n' roll music."  And I'll still keep the Beatles at the top of my column.