Brooklyn College students have an ambivalent attitude toward their school. On the one hand, there is a sense of not having moved beyond the ambiance of their high school. This is particularly acute for those who attended Midwood High School directly across the street from Brooklyn College. They have a sense of marginality at being denied that special badge of status, the out-of-town school. At the same time, there is a good deal of self congratulation at attending a good college -- they are even inclined to exaggerate its not inconsiderable virtues -- and they express pleasure at the cozy in-group feeling that the college generates. ``It's people of your own kind,'' a girl remarked. ``You don't have to watch what you say. Of course, I would like to go to an out-of-town school where there are all kinds of people, but I would want lots of Jewish kids there.''

For most Brooklyn College students, college is at once a perpetuation of their ethnic attachments and a breaking away from the cage of neighborhood and family. Brooklyn College is unequivocally Jewish in tone, and efforts to detribalize the college by bringing in unimpeachably midwestern types on the faculty have been unavailing. However, a growing intellectual sophistication and the new certitudes imparted by courses in psychology and anthropology make the students increasingly critical of their somewhat provincial and overprotective parents. And the rebellion of these third generation Jews is not the traditional conflict of culture but, rather, a protest against a culture that they view as softly and insidiously enveloping. ``As long as I'm home, I'll never grow up,'' a nineteen year old boy observed sadly. ``They don't like it if I do anything away from home. It's so much trouble, I don't usually bother.''