CHAPTER III - Illinois State University

CHAPTER III

A YEAR OF FRUSTRATION

The first year of President Braden's administration ended on a justifiable note of optimism about the University's future. Whatever the angle of vision, whether that of student, facuity, or administrator, it appeared that the long-heralded potentiality of the institution would be realized through the cooperative efforts of governing boards, the university community, and state government. But in the months following his investiture to the time of his departure in 1970, conditions within and without the University turned that optimism into disillusionment, if not despair. The University fell victim to the turmoil of campus un­rest, political reaction, and educational miscalculations that plagued higher education generally in the late Sixties. In the end, the high institutional aspirations which were once thought realistic became instead something far less.

The budget requests for the 1969-71 biennium upon which program development and institutional growth depended became the first area of difficulty. An early indication of potential financial trouble came in January, 1968, when construction bids on the $19 million union complex were opened and found to be far in excess of the architect's estimates, a consequence of the in­flationary trend of the national economy and a condition also found in the spiraling interest rates in the revenue bond market relied upon to finance such projects. Though the project was eventually scaled down to $11 million to include only limited facilities and a 3,500 seat auditorium, construction would be delayed until 1970 because of the unfavorable condition of the bond market. Difficulty was also encountered on the state level in obtaining release of funds needed to purchase properties for campus expanSIon, a problem resolved when the Board of

30

A Year of Frustration 31

Regents authorized the University Foundation to purchase land and hold it for the University until such time as state funds became available. These were small matters, but along with other information, they suggested to President Braden that further dif­ficulties could be expected. As he warned the Regents in August, 1968, "The status of the state's treasury and the tenor of the legislature are such that we may expect more careful scrutiny of our activities and our appropriation request in the future. The tight money situation in Springfield appears so serious that all ap­propriations will be screened very carefully." He predicted serious problems for higher education in the 1969 session of the Illinois General Assembly.

As it turned out, the state's fiscal troubles were more serious than anyone imagined and a budgetary crisis for the University came sooner than anticipated. Unexpectedly, the Board of Higher Education, in reviewing the budgets for all state univer­sities, cut back the University's requests for 1969-71 and did soin such a way as to cast doubt on the viability of the institution's new purpose as defined in Master Plan-Phase Two. The capital budget fell victim first when the Higher Board, on September 30, 1968, cut the University's proposals by two-thirds, eliminating buildings for science and business and reducing substantially the funds for land acquisition and planning. Only the library project was saved because the need was so obvious, but even at that the Board of Higher Education judged that the University did not need as large a structure as planned. President Braden argued to no avail that without the science and business buildings it would be impossible to expand the graduate programs in chemistry, physics, and biological sciences and to develop undergraduate programs in business areas. When the day was over, the Univer­sity's budget reduction proved to be one of the largest among the state's twelve colleges and universities.

What the actions of the Board of Higher Education signified was not immediately clear, though it suggested that the Univer· sity's development migh: not be as rapid or as directed in the Board's own Master Plan. That possibility was not lost on Presi­dent Braden. In his annual fall address to the faculty, he alluded to the larger issue of the University's mission and its relation to budgetary matters. A strange topic to talk about when the Master Plan "seems to be so clear and so specific," he admitted,

32 A Year of Frustration

but the recent capital budget reduction by the Board of Higher Education was based on a different reading of the Master Plan, an interpretation which "very clearly limits the scope of graduate work at the Regency universities." Reconfirmation of the Univer­sity's multipurpose mission or clarification of the new interpreta­tion was essential, President Braden told the faculty, in order "to resolve the questions that have been kindled in the minds of our colleagues whose aspirations recently seem to have been somewhat dampened." But even if the University and the Board of Higher Education agreed, the inadequacy of state revenues was an equally pressing problem, posing a threat to the operating budget containing requests for the support of new program development. Though these conditions made the future less cer­tain, President Braden urged that the planning work of departments and committees continue.

When the Board of Higher Education reviewed the 1969-71 operating budgets in December, the differing interpretations of the University's status became more apparent. Most of the Un­iversity's request was unquestioned, but the $7.1 million for new programs was another matter. In presenting the institution's case, President Braden emphasized that the University had been preparing for this time since 1962 when its first doctoral programs were approved. The request for new money, therefore, was "neither precipitous, not does it transcend the boundaries of a liberal arts university." The Board disagreed, ap­proving only $2.3 million for new and improved programs as a cost saving action and as a way to bring the University's devleop­ment into line with its own view of the purpose of regency univer­sities. The deletion of an electron microscope was especially gall­ing, justified by the argument that it was science equipment too sophisticated for the University. In the end, President Braden could only tell the Board of Higher Education that its decisions raised "inimical implications" for the institution's future and that the Board apparently did not mean what it had earlier stated in its master plan.

The University community had barely adjusted to the Board's decisions when it received another budgetary blow. Ac­cording to the assessment of the state's new governor, Richard Ogilvie, Illinois was nearly bankrupt, which required an im­mediate ten percent reduction in current spending by all state

A Year of Frustration 33

agencies, a tax increase, and legislative restraint to keep ap­propriations within expected revenues. Under pressure from the Governor and the Department of Finance, President Braden on February 27, 1969, ordered a freeze on unencumbered funds, faculty and staff positions, out-of-state travel of all kinds, and the elimination of the summer session program. But that provided only short term relief. As the spring legislative session unfolded, several long-term changes became evident. Budget making would no longer be biennially but an annual affair and under con­trols exercised by a new Bureau of the Budget. A Senate Republican Task Force undertook the responsibility of examin­ing the budget recommendations received from the Board of Higher Education, a review process that resulted in further reductions for higher education. The University's final ap­propriations of $26.9 million for 1969-70 was 85 percent of what it had originally proposed many months earlier, barely sufficient to support an anticipated enrollment of 14,000 students. But the ap­propriation was a bitter disappointment for academic planning, allowing only twenty percent of what the University wished to un­dertake in striving towards its Master Plan mission of multi­purpose. Under the circumstances, the University had either to abandon its dreams or draw upon existing resources and proceed at a slower pace, which at the time proved to be no choice at all.

In considering the reasons for the University's unsuccessful efforts during 1968-69 to secure funding for its development as a multipurpose institution, the state's revenue difficulties was a suf­ficient factor by itself. But in addition to the fiscal problem, there also appeared a growing public resistance to accepting uncritical­ly the demands and justifications of higher education. Campus unrest across the nation-sometimes violent and destructive, always noisy, and reported fully by newspapers and television­was a root cause of the public's disenchantment with higher education. Everywhere it appeared that universities served as nurseries of radicalism, spawning numbers of young people hostile to American institutions and values, and coddling those students who would destroy the very place which gave them safe refuge. Bewildered and dismayed by the self-indulgent life-style, vulgar language, and political activism of some in the academic community, vocal elements of the public did not hesitate to

34 A Year of Frustration

criticize university officials for failing to maintain a proper cam­pus order, demanding that student and faculty radicals be dis­ciplined. And matters only worsened when university people justified their tolerant policies and actions (or inaction) on the high ground of academic freedom, replyin~ to their critics as President Braden often did, that the University's commitment was to the open, untrammeled pursuit of truth rather than a single perception of life.

As the public shock intensified in the wake of serious disrup­tions at Columbia and Cornell Universities, and incidents at Il­linois schools, direct action was inevitable. During the legislation session of 1969, fourteen bills were introduced that would in one form or another impose penalties on students who disrupted classes, occupied buildings, or otherwise interfered with the orderly functioning of a unviersity. While most of the proposed legislation was beaten back by the arguments of university presidents and the opposition of fellow legislators, the 1969 Il­linois General Assembly did establish penalties against students and university employees who promoted campus disturbances. In an indirect way, the public through the legislature also dealt with administrators and faculty by severely reducing budget re­quests as a way to compel university officials to give attention to the public's unhappiness and criticisms of the conditions of tax­supported higher education. If universities refused to listen to the public's demand for orderliness among students and faculty, protect the taxpayer's property, and concentrate upon traditional academic purposes, then universities could not ex­pect a cordial reception when it was time to ask for more money, especially when other interest groups and state agencies were in­creasing their demands on the state's limited resources. In short, higher education was losing its preferential status as the in­strumental means by which society would improve the quality of life. Instead of contributing to the resolution of society's problems, higher education was now seen by political leaders as one of society's problems.

Although Illinois State University was quiet compared to other schools in the state, certain conditions and events at the University gave the appearance to some people in the local com­munity that the disturbances and violence occurring elsewhere might happen here. It is impossible to determine the extent and

A Year of Frustration 35

depth of that concern or to isolate those factors most productive of alarm; indeed, perhaps most local people understood the changes among the college young and the issues which concern­ed them, especially the Vietnam War. But in seeking to relate the University to the political distemper of the times (the institution did not exist in a vacuum), several elements suggest themselves-though none is completely convincing.

The very size of the institution was a new and strange phenomenon in a town accustomed to a small, quiet "normal" school. From a compact campus in 1960 with 4,400 students and 395 faculty, the University had become by 1968 a sprawling, crawling place of tall buildings and over 13,000 students and 950 faculty, with every indication of continued expansion. While that growth was a valuable cultural and economic contribution to the area, problems inevitably arose from the University's demands upon municipal services strained to the limit, costing the tax­payers more, and requiring further expansion to keep pace with the University's rate of growth. As an aroused member of the Town Council informed University officials in late 1968, townspeople had never been consulted on whether they wanted such a large university in their midst and he for one did not like what was happening to the community. The University did as much as possible to soften the impact of institutional growth upon the community. President Braden relied on regular meetings of a town-gown committee to discuss common problems and to keep town officials informed of the University's plans. Administrators and faculty welcomed opportunities to ex­plain to local groups institutional development and the changes occurring. The University and the Board of Regents also sup­ported the town's efforts to persuade the state legislature to grant impact aid for street improvement, fire protection, and new water resources-all made necessary by campus growth. But there was a limit to what the school could do to help the town, and it certainly could not unilaterally decide to limit its growth. That reality did not help town-gown relations.

Neither did the changing character of the student popula­tion. In addition to more of them, the values and behavior of students were not those of other generations of college youth seen in the community, a changed condition which ranged from a counter-culture life-style of a few to the greater number simply

36 A Year of Frustration

enjoying the new found freedom and importance of the young in American society. While it was a cliche of the times to portray all college youth as shabbily dressed with unkempt hair, using foul language, rebellious and given to drugs, alcohol, sex, and rock music as ways to demonstrate their rejection of the constricting standards of the adult world, enough of the stereotype was true to emphasize the differences between the students of the Fifties and those of the Sixties. The conversion of an old house on the north end of Normal into a communal-type student center, called the "Abyss," where noisy weekend drinking parties attracted scores of students, was viewed as a particularly brazen assault on community standards, prompting a police raid in the spring of 1968, which in turn brought an SDS demonstration at the next meeting of the Town Council.

But perhaps the most striking difference between various generations of students noted by older residents in the communi­ty was the determination of those of the late Sixties to be heard on public problems-civil rights, poverty, environmental protec­tion, and the Vietnam War-and to have a role in the making of University policy. Whether the local open housing marches and picketing of City Hall, the meetings of radical antiwar groups as fully reported in the local press, the issue-orientation and actions of the Student Senate, or the content of the student newspaper-all were evidence of a rising student consciousness of their numbers and a willingness to use their collective strength to achieve their ends. Where student power would end no one could say, not even by the students themselves, much less townspeople. But, nonetheless, it was student activism that caus­ed the Mayor of Normal, Charles Baugh, when speaking to a campus group, to emphasize that students must maintain order and self-discipline; and it was that activism, or the unreasoned dread of it, which stimulated the McLean County Regional Plan­ning Commission to apply for federal funds to conduct a local law enforcement study because of the possibility of "large scale civil disorders" in the Bloomington-Normal community.

Three unrelated developments during the 1968-69 year produced an over-reaction from a few in the community toward the University. The first came in October when black students protested the results of the homecoming queen contest. Accor­ding to the Black Student Association, irregularities had taken

A Year of Frustration 37

place in both the campaign and balloting because of racial pre­judice, and the organization demanded a public apology from those responsible for managing the contest, invalidation of the election results, and termination of future single-queen contests. The University had three days to fulfill the demands, but when the Homecoming Board and the Student Senate approved the election outcome, 45 BSA members staged a two-hour sit-down in the reception area outside the President's office while an ad­ditional 30 students paraded in front of Hovey Hall. Altogether it was a peaceful demonstration, intending to bring to President Braden's attention, and to the whole University for that matter, the larger issue of institutional discrimination symbolized by the queen election, and the urgency of eliminating discrimination in all forms. The administration, though apprehensive about the af­fair, took no action against the demonstrators because none was deemed necessary. But through the protest was brief, the fact remained that part of the administration building had been for the first time occupied by students demanding action, indicating that the University was not immune from the troubles occurring on other campuses as seen in television news programs. And the University's vunerability was revealed again two days later when the newly formed self-styled revolutionary Peace and Freedom Party joined the BSA pickets protesting the homecoming parade and football game.

The second incident developed during the first period of warm weather of 1969, suggesting some sort of climatological im­perative to student activism. In the early evening of March 17, the men of Wilkins Hall staged a panty raid on the women of Atkin­Colby; it was nothing more than the ritual fun of the first warm night, but campus security came running, as did the deans of Stu­dent Services, to control the situation. The next night the ritual continued when women from several dorms marched on the men of Manchester Hall who welcomed the opportunity to chase the girls across the campus to the Tri-Tower dorms. It was then suggested that everyone should march through the town to visit the Illinois Wesleyan campus, and according to one estimate, 2,000 students set off for Bloomington. Though the marchers were orderly for the most part, only enjoying the weather and the fun-filled moment, the spontaneous happening had taken a potentially dangerous turn in the view of local residents on the

38 A Year of Frustration

streets and the city police; to those who saw them coming, the students were a menacing intrusion upon the peace and order of the community, and who could say what the outcome would be. When another march developed on the third evening of warm weather, over the warnings and pleading of student counselors that everyone should remain on campus, the patience of com­munity authorities was strained to the limit. The marchers' goal was the County Court House several miles away, a convenient turn-around point, but when the 1,000 students reached their destination, they found county police in riot dress prepared to de­fend county property. But nothing happened, for nothing was in­tended. The marchers returned the way they came, only to en­counter near the campus another line of riot equipped police in­tent upon chaneling the students to the dormitory area. Beyond a bit of verbal abuse directed at the police, and the unsuccessful ef­forts of radical student to turn the crowd against the "pigs," nothing serious occurred; even turned-over garbage cans were dutifully set right and the streets picked clean. It was clear, however, that community authorities were alarmed by large numbers of students marching about the town at night. In a meeting with University officials on March 20, the police chief of Normal made the community's attitude unmistakenly evident: "If you cannot keep your students under control, we will do it for you." Fortunately, the fourth day was cold and wet and the marching stopped.

Springtime also brought a surge of political activity on cam­pus. The 50S protested the Vietnam war by several short noon­time vigils before Hovey Hall, and when Marine Corps recruiters came on campus to work in the Union area most frequented by the 50S, student radicals seized the opportunity to demand that the Marines be ejected. After several stormy meetings with SOS leaders, President Braden ordered that all recruiters, whether military or civilian, use other University facilities. Far more serious was the discovery several days later of a homemade ex­plosive device in an entry way to Watterson Towers, but who was responsible and why was never determined. Compared to antiwar protests at other universities, these actions were not even a ripple on that larger scene. Yet, the very presence of a small handful of self-styled revolutionaries, whose efforts had not gone much beyond verbal and written assaults upon American

A Year of Frustration

Students at the Court House. March 19. 1969 Courtesy of The Daj/y Pantagraph

39

40 A Year of Frustration

institutions and practices, had been a sore point for months to a few in the community. Since its founding in 1966, meetings of the SOS on draft resistance seemed to attract more outsiders than students and then only for the purpose of disrupting the meetings. Townspeople entering the lower lobby of the Union, a favorite haunt of SOS people, were shocked by the posters and literature condemning American society in barnyard language. Now, in April, the SOS calling itself Students Against the War, were on the Quad and it mattered not that the faculty and students who happened to see them, though probably also an­tiwar, were more amused or indifferent than supportive or that a rival group staged counter-vigils in favor of the war. Several business men demanded the dismissal of the faculty member most often associated with the SOS, and when that was refused on grounds of academic freedom, a local legislator made an effort to eliminate the faculty member's salary from the University's ap­propriation bill.

Viewed a decade later, it is easy enough to dismiss these in­cidents as unimportant, involving as they did only a small percen­tage of the campus population. It was true at the time that most students and faculty members were tending their academic business, having neither the time nor the inclination to become active participants in other directions. It is also easy to discount the public's concern and criticism of the University as the un­founded alarm of a few who were not reflective of community sentiments at large. But whether from the perspective of com­munity leaders or the University's central administration, local events were seen as neither trivial nor harmless because those events fit too neatly into a national pattern of higher education's politicalization and turmoil. To the extent, then, that some peo­ple believed that all hell was ready to break loose on university campuses-and the surveys and other indicators of public opi­nion at the time suggest that that view may have been more widespread than thought at the time-what transpired on every campus in the late Sixties contributed something to the growing public disenchantment with the condition of higher education.

But sit-ins, marches, and antiwar vigils, no matter what the public may have judged, were unrepresentative of the activities which claimed the primary attention of faculty, students, and ad­ministrators. This is not to say, however, that University people

A Year of Frustration 41

did not feel strongly about national issues, for they did. As in the nation as a whole, the morality of the Vietnam War, for example, had become a disturbing element in the lives of students and faculty, and in the course of the 1968-69 school year they discuss­ed the war with the same intensity of feeling as people were doing on other campuses. What went unnoticed was the fact that such discussions most often took place within the accustomed pattern of academic life, not as a disruption of the University's educational functions. And beyond the routine of institutional life, it was the condition of the University-what it would become, its educational quality, and its system of shared governance-that was still of first concern to people in the Un­iversity community.

One of the most important and time consuming activities of faculty outside the classroom was the expansion of course offerings and the formulation of new degree programs made necessary by the changing pattern of enrollment growth and the University's new multipurpose function. As the institution grew larger during the Sixties, the most rapid enrollment increases oc­curred at the upper levels, altering the composition of the student population and requiring the academic departments to make scheduling adjustments and course additions to meet the demands and interests of greater numbers of undergraduate ma­jors and graduate students. In the two year period 1967-69, for example, the number of freshmen and sophomores increased 27 percent while juniors-seniors and graduate students increased 73 percent. The University's holding power (made possible by higher admission standards), growing numbers of community college transfers, and greater emphasis generally on graduate studies were responsible for this shift in the student body. Multi­ple sections and larger classes of traditional survey courses were common methods employed by departments to accommodate more freshmen and sophomores, but those practices were less satisfactory for advanced students whose interests were more sharply defined. The creation of new courses was the most viable solution to the problem of more upper level students, a solution which also satisfied the more specialized scholarly interests of department faculties also incr easing rapidly in numbers. In the period 1967-1969, therefore, advanced courses for un­dergraduate majors increased 43 percent and graduate seminars

42 A Year of Frustration

38 percent in response to the changes in, as well as expansion of, the student population.

It is impossible to determine the amount of time given by faculty to that work, but the number of hours required to develop the 395 new offerings and review them in department, college, and university curriculum committees must have been tremen­dous. But it was a necessary task to which the faculty was com­mitted, one which allowed the University to meet the onrush of students, provided departments with a broader capability to serve the interests of their majors, especially those intending to enter professional or graduate programs at other universities, and contributed to the University's ability and readiness to es­tablish and expand its own multidisciplinary and doctoral programs as directed by the state's master plan.

F acuity time was also given to program developments, an in­tense effort which occurred in all colleges and on all academic levels during 1967-69. New majors and/ or minors were initiated in journalism, geology, philosophy, anthropology, threatre, speech pathology, and audiovisual instruction. Interdisciplinary study was made available in a new Arts and Sciences major and a Latin American Studies minor. All of the degree programs in music were reviewed and revised according to the guidelines of the National Association of Schools of Music. The College of Educa­tion established new admission-retention requirements for all teacher education programs. Centers for Economic Education and Higher Education were approved by the University Council, which also created a Center of Allied Health Professions to facilitate program development in that area. In addition to the doctoral proposals in history and geography-geology, then being considered by the Board of Regents and the Board of Higher Education, department faculties were drafting doctoral programs in English, mathematics, speech, psychology, and curriculum and instruction. In the College of Business, accoun­ting and business administration faculties were developing their sequences to parallel the established program in business educa­tion. International education also claimed the time of some facul­ty who planned for summer programs in Taiwan, Israel, Mexico, and France.

The faculty and administration were not alone in promoting institutional development. Student leaders, whether elected to

A Year of Frustration 43

offices by their peers or self-appointed in that role, insisted that they too must have a voice in determining the University's future. Whether in sessions of the Student Senate, election platforms and campaigning, letters and editorials in the Vidette, discussion groups with administrators and faculty, or the committees to which they had been recently named, little about the University escaped student attention and comment. Certain values seemed to be shared by all students. The most frequently expressed were an insistance that students were responsible young adults fully capable of managing their own lives and that the University was their school, that it belonged to them. To some students, these values simply meant that no rules should exist separating the sex­es in dormitories, determining the proper age for off-campus apartment living, or when and where drinking should take place, matters which each student must be allowed to decide individual­ly. But in other areas, student interests were not uniform nor did they constitute, taken altogether, a comprehensive program for action. Nor was the number of students actively intent upon or interested in changing the University to something else ever a large number. As several campus-wide elections and polls revealed, no more than a quarter of the student population, and frequently less, was sufficiently aroused to express an opinion. Most students appeared intent only upon pursuing their educational goals and a freer life-style, thereby being judged as "apathetic" by crusading student politicians whose aspirations were in different directions.

Activists in student government, on the Vidette staff, and in politically-oriented groups such as the SOS, went beyond criticism of the few remaining parietal rules to academic issues of broader significance. Of particular concern were general educa­tion, considered prescriptive, inflexible, and irrelevant; final ex­aminations, described as futile and mindless exercises in trivia; and the quality of teaching, which was judged by a second edition of Dyad to be uniformly poor. As one guest lecturer put it, in an obvious play to his student audience, the University was a "high school with ash trays." These were old campus issues by 1968 and 1969, emphasized by earlier student leaders, but now stu­dent advocacy of change was more strident and insistent. Two new issues were added to the list when the academic plan appeared in draft form in late 1968. The University's efforts to

44 A Year of Frustration

Samuel E. Braden, 1967·1970 Francis R. Geigle, 1970-1971

PRESIDENTS

David K Berlo, 1971 ·1973 Gene A. Budig, 1973-1977

A Year of Frustration 45

Richard R. Bond, 1966-1971 Arlan C. Helgeson, 1971-1972, 1973- 1975

ACADEMIC VICE PRESIDENTS

Gene A. Budig. 1972-1973 James M. Horner . 1975-

46 A Year of Frustration

develop graduate programs was seen as inimical to the interests of undergraduates who would receive even less attention from a faculty already ignoring them. The University, student leaders in­sisted, must remain an undergraduate institution. The academic plan's cal1 for increased research and publication, also stressed in statements to the faculty by President Braden and Dean Bond, was considered by student leaders as a major obstacle to any im­provement in the quality of teaching. No relationship existed, students argued, between a professor's scholarship and teaching effectiveness. Whatever the issue, whether old or new, students emphasized that their motives were noble, their criticisms in­tended only for the larger purpose of improving the quality of the University. But they left no doubt of their conviction that the Un­iversity's future rested in their hands, not the faculty who were resistant to change and interested only in professional advance­ment.

Student views on academic affairs, and other campus issues as wel1, presented the University's administration with a delicate situation. It was a common conviction of the time that one of the root causes of campus disorders was the failure or unwil1ingness of adults to listen to student complaints, and to now ignore or dis­miss student views as unfounded, naive, or the voice of only a few, ran the risk of widening the generation gap already evident on campus, perhaps even fueling more serious student discon­tent. Yet there could be no abject capitulation to student demands, if for no other reason than the faculty would not tolerate it. The solution was "communication," a popular term of the time, between administration and faculty on one side and students on the other, a sharing of opinions and ideas by al1 segments of the University community, as a way to defuse cam­pus tension and make institutional development a common enterprise. Hopeful1y, the disorders plaguing other universities would thus be avoided.

Various actions were taken in 1968 and 1969 to establish that communication, to explain the University's condition and plans and to obtain student responses. President Braden, along with Jim Peterson, political science major from Bloomington and student body president, made the rounds of residence halls dur­ing the fal1 of 1968 to "rap" with students. When the ten year academic plan came out in draft form that fall, Dean Bond ex-

A Year of Frustration 47

plained the document to the Student Senate, reassuring the members that University development would not ignore un­dergraduate interests as doctoral programs were established. Dean Hulet's associates in Student Services worked overtime with campus organizations and individuals to allay suspicions and distrust. Instead of dismissing out of hand student views on faculty research, Dean Bond patiently pointed out the impor­tance of scholarship and its relationship to quality teaching. When the second edition Dyad appeared in the spring of 1969, with comments on individual teachers that were juvenile in character, Dean Bond condemned the publication as a deviation from that mature responsibility students claimed they possessed; the Student Senate agreed and ended Dyad's life. The University Council, as the faculty-administration body, took steps to im­prove "communication" within the University by increasing the number of committees with student members, giving them full voting power. On several occasions the Council delayed action on academic policy changes until student opinion could be measured; it also recommended that students be consulted whenever program changes were contemplated at the departmental level. The Council, however, stopped short of ap­proving a report of its Committee on Committees which recommended that students have equal numbers with faculty on all University committees and boards. This recognition of stu­dent power, however, proved to be only a beginning. As Jim Petersen told the Student Senate, students were entitled to nothing less than full participation in University decision-making; only then would true "communication" within the University become a reality.

An opportunity to achieve that goal arose when the Univer­sity Council in March, 1968, named a committee to prepare a "constitution" that would reorganize faculty governance in the University. A new charter was made necessary by the faculty's growing numbers, the University's collegial structure im­plemented in 1966, and the bylaws of the new Board of Regents requiring the institutions under its control to have constitutions on faculty government. Chaired by Fred Fuess, with Helen Cavanagh, Mort Waimon, C. A. White, and Robert Singer as members (Stanley Rives replaced Singer several months later), the constitution committee recognized the complexity of its task

48 A Year of Frustration

and, as its work progressed during the spring months, it sought the advice of the vice presidents, college deans, and college facul­ty councils on specific matters. * The committee also asked the Student Senate to comment on that group's relationship to Un­iversity governance. Student officers side-stepped the question and replied that the committee should include student members and that any constitution drafted should encompass the whole University, including students, not merely faculty and ad­ministration. Given the value students placed on themselves and the broadened inclusion of students in the University's com­mittee system, the Student Senate's position was a logical next step in the rise of student power. After mulling over the Student Senate's request, the constitution committee in the fall agreed to a broadening of its membership by the addition of student and civil service representatives. President Braden and the Universi­ty Council approved, and students John Freese and Douglas Poag, and John Wolter, president of the Civil Service Council, were named to the committee.* The committee, as well as the Council, still assumed, however, that "each part of the University community ought to have in the area of its own self-government as much autonomy as it can demonstrate its competence to han­dle." That is, faculty, students, and civil service would each have their own form of organization and participate in differing degrees in institutional governance. But that was not to be the case.

With the addition of student and civil service members, the committee's task of writing a constitution was more complex than before. How would each major segment of the campus com­munity govern itself? What functions of the academic enterprise would become the responsibility of each group? How could the actions of each be managed to avoid overlap and conflict? The committee found few mndels in higher education that suggested answers to those questions, and after a brief consideration of some sort of a coordinating council, the committee resolved its

* Fuess was in the Department of Agriculture, Cavanagh in History, Waimon in Education, Singer in Men's Physical Education, and White was head of the Speech Department.

* Freese was a senior in political science and Poag a freshman in psychology; both were from Normal. Wolter was Director of Alumni Services.

A Year of Frustration 49

problem by approving a student proposal that administration, facuity, and students join together to form a single governance body with responsibility for academic matters affecting the whole University. With that agreement in November, 1968, the next five months were consumed in working out the details of the gover­nance structure. On April 21, 1969, the committee published a draft constitution and scheduled hearings for students, facuity in each college, and administrators and staff. The proposed con­stitution consisted of six articles covering the relationship of un­iversity governance to the Board of Regents, the rights and responsibilities of students; the definition of faculty, with strong statements on academic freedom and tenure and dismissal procedures; administration and staff; the structure of university governance; and the mechanics of implementation, bylaws, and amendments.

During committee discussions on the details of those ar­ticles, several questions caused difficulty, such as whether the teachers in the laboratory schools should be included in the definition of faculty, which the committee rejected. But the most vexing and crucial issue was the proportion of faculty, students, and administration members of a university senate which would have primary determinative and advisory responsibilities in the governance structure. Student members of the committee in­sisted on an equality with faculty, while faculty who comprised a committee majority would allow no more than 40 percent representation in the unicameral body. Outvoted on the issue, student members requested that at least three additional students be appointed to the committee and that its meetings be opened to visitors. After lengthy discussions, the committee ask­ed President Braden to name several additional student members. Frank Bowen, ajunior from Phoenix, Illinois and presi­dent of the Black Student Association, and Tom Bowling, an arts and science major from Galesburg and newly elected student body president, were added to the committee. The committee also decided to present both sides of the representational issue to the University community for reaction and perhaps resolution.

The campus hearings conducted in early May, 1969, revealed that campus sentiment was divided over the proposed constitution. The few students who expressed an opinion merely picked at details, but seemed content with a six-to-four ratio of

50 A Year of Frustration

faculty-student representation. And well they might, for they had achieved within a short period of time a momentus victory for student power. Not so for faculty and administration, who saw in the committee's proposal a dramatic dilution of their accustomed power in governance. Faculty and administration reactions were comprehensive in scope, as might be expected from those of ex-perience. The essential view of both groups was that the constitu­tion required substantial revision, especially that section which provided for separate student and faculty assemblies and a campus-wide deliberative body, but whatever the structure, the faculty must comprise a large majority.

Meeting weekly through much of the summer, and again in the fall, the constitution committee used campus reactions as a basis for numerous changes in detail, resulting in a clearer and shorter document. The most important revision came in the arti­cle on the governance structure. The committee abandoned the troika concept in favor of a unicameral academic senate of 80 members, consisting of 4 administrators, 45 faculty, and 31 students. Student members had argued again for equality with faculty, but a slim committee majority rejected for the last time that principle. By late October the committee was ready once more and the University community was asked to comment on the revised constitution. Reactions the second time around were less negative, the only serious criticism being the large size of the academic senate. Taking that cue, the committee reduced the unicameral body to fifty members, using this time a three-to-two ratio of faculty to student representatives. December 3 was set as the date for a campus referendum on the final version. If the members of the constitution committee were apprehensive about the outcome of the bailoting, it was needless worry. The final draft of the constitution was approved overwhelmingly. But the results of the referendum were disappointing in one sense: while 70 percent of the faculty voted, only 12 percent of the stu­dent body thought the matter of sufficient importance to cast their votes. In any case, the University now had a new constitu­tion and system of shared governance.

The framing and adoption of a University constitution was an important event of the decade. It represented a bold (if not uni­que) experiment in shared governance by formalizing student participation in University decision-making in a manner and to a

A Year of Frustration 51

degree not dreamed possible only a few years earlier. But such was the temper of the times in higher education-for what oc­curred at Illinois State University was also happening across the country on other campuses. The common inclusion of students in institutional governance represented an effort to lessen cam­pus tensions and the possibility of disorder. As the faculty members of the constitution committee explained to their colleagues: "We believe that the genius of our system at ISU in the formation of the University Council some years ago was that we created a system of shared authority between faculty and ad­ministration. Our governance document. . .forced both groups to deliberate in a common body, which made confrontation outside the deliberation process unnecessary. We see the new Constitu­tion as extending this idea of shared governance to include students for precisely the same reason-to avoid confrontation outside the deliberative process, to require all three basic elements of the academic community to share their thoughts and votes in a common body." And through the summer of 1969 at least, whatever was happening elsewhere, the system of co­optation seemed to be working. While other campuses were literally exploding, Illinois State University remained com­paratively quiet except for isolated and minor incidents. Presi­dent Braden, as he contemplated the coming school year, counted on the enlarged structure of shared authority to main­tain campus order.