All quiet on Berkeley campus

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32775, 27 November 1971, Page 12

All quiet on Berkeley campus

(By 1

HOWARD W. YOUNG)

The University of California at Berkeley is famous for many things. It is noted for scholarship. Of all the 2500 institutions of higher learning in the United States, Berkeley graduates more students who go on to earn doctoral degrees than any other.

Berkeley is also noted for its leadership in campus upheaval. Since the first widespread disturbance took place in Sproul Plaza in 1964, the name Berkeley has been almost synonymous with student unrest. Now, something has happened. Or more precisely, something is not happening —protest demonstrations. The students of Berkeley are less restless. Why? Theories are many. Some say the students have achieved what they wanted, such as representation on faculty and administration committees. This is true. They have a voice in policymaking that they didn’t have before, and they are being listened to. Mr Robert L. Johnson, vice-president for administration for the entire nine-campus University of California system and number two man under President Charles J. Hitch, meets regularly with the student body presidents who also have the opportunity to speak before the Board of Regents, the over-all governing authority. This is new.

Some issues resolved Other theories point to international, national and local issues that, because they have been or are on the way to being resolved, no longer disturb the students. The war in Indo-China is being “wound down.” The City Council of Berkeley now has some avowedly radical members, democratically elected in the spring of 1971 as a result of effective student politicking. “The moderates worked with the radicals and helped elect the people they felt would best represent them,” said Miss Toni Martin of the Class of 1972, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper "The Daily Californian.” Now that the voting franchise has been extended to persons of 18 years and older, many expect that the students will find in active politics a means for expressing their concerns without having to take to street demonstrations. Then there is the matter of economics. College is expensive, and students feel they had better take full advantage of their academic courses, look to the future and to the post-college job

that is getting harder and harder to find. They seem to want to spend more time studying, and certainly the university has found that their grades have been improving. Stricter code Discipline today is more exact. The students know better where they stand, what they might expect from certain infractions of rules, and what the rules are. The faculty at Berkeley has recently adopted its own code of ethics.

Finally, there are those who say that the students themselves have been changing. Many of the radicals of the 19605, they say, are being replaced by quieter types in the ’7os, similar to those in the so-called “silent generation” of the 'sos. Mr John H. Raleigh, vice-chancellor for academic affairs, believes this is true. He finds there are fewer radicals on campus today, and even those who are considered “radical” are not so anti-establishment as they used to be. Some students disagree. They feel that it is just a question of time until a cause of sufficient magnitude appears to galvanise the student body into action once again.

The fact is that there has been no demonstration or upheaval at the University of California in Berkeley since May, 1970, after President Nixon’s announcement of troop deployments into Cambodia and the killings of students at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State College in Mississippi. But even that disturbance was not a riot.

Berkeley has changed since 1964, when it “invented” the kind of student protest that became widespread in American colleges. “Invented” was the word used by the Scranton Commission, appointed by the President last year to investigate campus unrest. “Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the Berkeley invention,” said the commission report, “was its successes in combining two impulses that previously had been separate in student disruption. The high spirits and defiance of authority that had characterised the traditional

school riot were now joined to youthful idealism and to social objectives of the highest importance.” The 1964 events began when the university administration decreed no political activism could take place on the campus. The students objected. There were student sit-ins (based on the successful civil rights sit-ins in the south), followed by police arrests. This resulted in increasing student support for the Free Speech Movement. Classes were halted by students on strike, and the chancellor took a leave of absence. Four years later, the university refused to allow the Black Panther leader, Eldridge Cleaver, to lecture more than once on the campus, and the students were in turmoil again. Not a year went by that Berkeley was not in the forefront of student unrest. In 1969 there were street riots over a piece of real estate known as the People’s Park that the university wanted to use for a building and the students wanted to use for a park. The property, several blocks from the campus, today is designated as a parking lot but students refuse to use it as such.

The university now pays the salary of a young lawyer who handles student relations with the state government in Sacramento. So many students live in “communes” off campus that the university has experienced difficulty in letting all its dormitory accommodations. I More sensitive Sproul Plaza, hard by the administration building, is alive with young people of various persuasions and dress, students and non-stu-dents alike. Guitars are strummed. Recorders are played. Dogs run loose. Behind a card table, a young man collects contributions for a political candidate. There is some haranguing of passersby. When I told the Dean of Men, Mr James Lemmon, that I admired his ability to concentrate in an office overlooking— and overhearing all that, he said, “This is quiet today. You should hear it when they really get going.” Mr Johnson, a vice-

president, told me he thought the university had become more sensitive to student needs. Another vice-pre-sident, Mr Angus Taylor, who is responsible for academic affairs, believes that while the generation gap remains, communication between the generations has been improving.

The student newspaper moved its offices off campus this summer to maintain a greater independence of editorial judgment. Last spring, the Publishers’ Board, representing the Board of Regents, ordered three of the editors dismissed from the staff for having printed what the board considered an incitement to riot through an editorial urging students to return to the People’s Park for an anniversary observance of the 1969 affair. The editors refused and moved the offices instead. The paper will continue to receive administration support, but the Board of Regents will enjoy less control.

Unpredictable future

So what of the future? No-one can predict. Change, perhaps, is the only certainty as the university moves into the 1971-72 academic year with another new chancellor, Mr Albert H. Bowker. He achieved considerable success as chancellor of the City University of New-York. His predecessor, Mr Roger W. Heyns, who will become president of the American Council on Education, was appointed six years ago after the turmoil of the Free Speech Movement.

Today, agitators are finding it more difficult to stir up a crowd from among the moderate students. Radicals, both off as well as on the campus, appear to command less sympathy. Students are more inclined to take their own counsel, to do their own thing. In the student bookstore, a poster advertised special jet flights to Europe. The flights left from various cities in the United States and at various times. But every one went to only one place Amsterdam. That apparently was where the action was in the summer of 1971—not in Berkeley.— United States Information Service.