The Cavalier daily :: Wednesday, October 8, 1969 :: University of Virginia Library

WASHINGTON - (CPS) - Like
the star too distant to be viewed
clearly through a telescope or the
germ too small to be seen through a
microscope, the U.S. college student
has remained an unknown and
therefore enigmatic quantity since
the start of the 1969-70 academic
year.

This fall, he has scurried about
busily preparing for the Oct. 15
Vietnam War Moratorium, protested
the University of California's
dismissal of a communist instructor,
launched rent strikes at four
schools, and held a boycott of
classes at the University of Michigan
in support of demands for a
student-operated bookstore.

Despite this bit of empirical
evidence and despite the postulations
and predictions offered by
sociologists, psychologists, the commercial
press, government-commissioned
task forces, etc., it's
anyone's guess as to whether the
issues of the war, the draft, racism,
and educational and social reform
on the campus will incite this year's
student to the same level of
frustration and dissent as occurred
last year.

Armed Guards

Some apparently saw the student's
nature as being close to
innately evil. The City College of
New York, for example, stationed
armed security guards in the building
where students were registering
for classes. Temple University
formed its own 125-man campus
police force.

The University of Wisconsin and
University of Michigan both have
developed over the summer vital
defense plans to employ in the
event of building occupations or
violent demonstrations. Michigan
also fire-proofed and bomb-proofed
files containing important documents.

Other instutitions, while
following the law and order on the
campus theme so overtly, equipped
old discipline codes with new ones
aimed at chomping down on
so-called disruptive activities.

Cornell University, which endured
an armed building occupation
by militant blacks last year
added a disciplinary clause prohibiting
"misconduct sufficiently serious
as to constitute a violation of or
threat to the maintenance of the
public order." The clause covers
faculty members as well as students,
and the maximum penalties
are the dismissal of the former and
expulsion of the latter. A 21-member
hearing board with four
student members will have jurisdiction
in misconduct cases.

The University of Illinois sent a
letter to parents of undergraduates
warning: "When . . . a student is
found to have knowingly engaged
in a disruptive or coercive action,
including knowing participation in
a disruptive or coercive demonstration,
the penalty will be dismissal
or suspended dismissal." Other
schools, including Ohio, Indiana,
Purdue, and North Carolina have
released similar conduct statements.

At the State University of New
York at Stony Brook - the scene
of several mass drug busts during
the past two years - students now
face suspension for an arrest on a
drug law violation and expulsion
for a conviction. On many campuses,
including Stony Brook, students
have demanded in recent
years that administrations stay out
of the policing business, particularly
when drugs are involved.

Structural Changes

Returning students were greeted
with curricular and structural
changes, as well as warnings, at
many schools. Whether they were
intended as appeasing gestures or in
sincere recognition of the students
to relevant learning and self-determination
is a matter for conjecture.

Black students programs have
burgeoned across the U.S., paralleling
an increase in the number of
blacks attending colleges. Dartmouth,
a school that has graduated
fewer than 150 blacks in its
200-year history, has 90 blacks in a
freshman class of 855.

Other eastern colleges have
taken similar steps. Brown University
has increased the number of
blacks in its freshman class from
eight in 1966 to 77 currently;
Wesleyan, from 30 to 51; Yale,
from 31 to 96; and Harvard, from
40 to 95. Harvard also recently
announced it had established a
Department of Afro American
Studies, offering 15 courses, including
one on the "black revolution."
The Ivy League institution has
appointed a 35-member committee
to prepare proposals for structural
change based on a report on last
year's disorders.

For Stanford's 6,000 returning
students, new educational reforms
meant an end to most graduation
requirements, including those in
foreign languages. Individual departments
have been asked to
design options to permit a student
to take at least one-half of his work
outside the requirements of his
major. The number of freshman
seminars conducted by senior faculty
members has been expanded so
that 369 of 1,400 freshmen are in
the seminars.

Open Committees

Previously closed committees
have been opened up to student
membership. The American Association
of State Colleges and Universities,
representing many smaller
state and community colleges, reported
recently that students were
sitting on administrative councils at
over half of its member schools.

Massachusetts recently became
the first state to pass a law giving
students a voting membership on
state college and university governing
boards. One student will sit on
each of the state's give governing
boards, overseeing the University of
Massachusetts, Southeastern Massachusetts
University, Lowell Technological
Institute, 11 state colleges
and 12 community colleges.

And the battle against "in loco
parentis" still goes on at some
schools. The University of Maryland
this fall abolished women's
hours for all women, and Ohio
University has added sophomore
women to its no-curfew list.

Students Organize

Meanwhile, though the campuses
have been quiet in the early
weeks of 1969-70, students have
been organizing.

At the University of Colorado
students have formed a tenants
union and are ready to begin a rent
strike. Rent strikes already are
underway in the communities surrounding
the universities of Michigan,
Wisconsin, and California at
Berkeley.

Promotion of the Oct. 15
Moratorium appears to be the
major student political activity of
the fall. Leaders of the national
Vietnam War Moratorium Committee
claim students at more than
500 colleges are committed to
spending that date in teach-ins,
rallies, and vigils against the war.

Activities are proceeding at such
disparate institutions as Berkeley,
where the city council voted 5-4
recently to support the Associated
Students of the University of
California in their planned "day of
demonstrations," and Western Illinois
University, where 1,200 have
signed petitions supporting the class
boycott and moratorium rallies
have drawn crowds of 600.