“Well, frankly the only thing we had in common was Gaudino and the interest in doing this India program. So they ranged from being sort of touchy-feely – ‘oh, India, that’s so exciting’ – to conservative people like myself and my roommate, Scott Miller, who viewed it as an adventure. So you had, “Oh, we loved the people of India” to the people who said, “Oh, this is great, let’s have an adventure, we’ll leave Williamstown.” I was naturally inclined because I went to Williams in part to either go to London School of Economics or go to Hong Kong in my junior year so the idea that this India program came up it seemed pretty logical. I had already been to boarding school in England and I studied a little bit about Asia. My father had spent 14 years in Asia. My motivation again was adventure and I’d see Asia for the first time, which is different than having this idea that it’s a destination that would just be a wonderful place. I just wanted to because, again, my father spent all this time there. When China fell to the Communists he was in Shanghai. Before that he spent World War II in the Pacific. After that again a total of 14 years in the Navy in Asia but including, you know, he was taken prisoner in Shanghai and escaped, etc., etc. He was the aide to the senior American military officer in China, an admiral who then left and left him in charge with a Marine major and it was difficult times.

What I’d say is that some of the students were kind of touchy-feely, they were just excited that they were going to India, not meditating so much as being extremely liberal in their perception of India as a happy place and that they’d have a wonderful time there–who had this sort of false impression that this would again just be nirvana when it’s not nirvana, it’s India.

–Bill Loomis '71