The American Age
Years of Crises: the 1960s
The typical Penn State student, asserted Undergraduate Student
Government president Robert Katzenstein on 1966, "is passive,
conscientious, law abiding, responsible, and [socially] ultraconservative. He
is content to study, date, and perform the rituals of existence. . . . The term
system has reduced his extracurricular activities and has increased his
concentration on his books." Katzenstein's observation was equally
applicable to any year of the late 1960s. Yet these years are best
remembered as the era of student activism, a time when youth rebelled-
sometimes violently-against established authority. The popular attention
that this rebellion received often obscured the fact that at Penn State and
most other institutions, a majority of students took no part in protest
marches, sit-ins, flag burnings, building occupations, and other such
activities favored by campus dissidents.
The importance of the student activist movement should not be measured
by the relatively small number of participants. Although only a few students
were outspoken in their opposition to established policies, they effectively
changed the relationship between administrators and all students. As
administrators and students themselves came to realize, the passive
majority often embraced the goals, if not the methods, of the activist
minority.
AUTHORITY CHALLENGED: STUDENT ACTIVISM
The beginning of the student activist era is usually dated from the unrest
that occurred at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1964.
What began as an apparent drive by a small band of students to preserve an
element of free speech burgeoned into a massive display of student
,displeasure with the general administrative policies of the university.
Berkeley students began to raise questions about the relevance of the
curriculum and their power in shaping it. They complained about their
alienation from faculty and administrators and demanded that they, not the
institution, set the rules that governed their lives outside the classroom. The
issues aroused strong feelings. Violence threatened to erupt several times in
the course of three months of unrest as buildings were occupied, strikes
called, and police summoned.
The campus in 1964
What was significant about the disorder was not which side was right but
rather that the same issues were being raised at colleges and universities
across the nation. In loco parentis, for example, had been a point of
contention at Berkeley. It was the concept whereby the university exercised
parental-like authority over the social lives of undergraduates, and it was to
be the issue that sparked the first major confrontation between students
and administrators at Penn State.
In this case the activists were representatives of the Undergraduate Student
Government, the Association of Women Students, and the Town
Independent Men. They submitted that the in loco parentis doctrine was
outmoded: The time had come for the University to recognize that social
customs and attitudes had changed dramatically over the previous twenty
years. For two years, student leaders pressed the administration to allow
women students to visit men living in off-campus apartments. Finally, early
in 1966, the Administrative Committee on Student Affairs, headed by Vice
President for Student Affairs Robert Bernreuter, agreed to study the matter
and make recommendations for an updated visitation policy.
The committee presented a preliminary report in April. Although it had
voted 11-1 to approve unrestricted visitation, Bernreuter considered the
vote a tie, insisting that Dean of Men Frank Simes had good reasons for his
lone dissent. The committee then recommended that women be permitted
to visit men's apartments without chaperones, provided that at least three
,couples were present and the visits had been previously registered with a
board of control composed of students from AWS and TIM. Members of this
board were also to have the right to make unannounced inspections of
apartments to make certain that no sexual misconduct or violations of
drinking laws occurred. Students regarded the proposals as still too
restrictive and were outraged by the 11-1 "tie." To show their
dissatisfaction, over 2,000 undergraduates gathered at a USG-sponsored
rally on the lawn of Old Main on April 30. It was the largest such assemblage
the University had yet seen.
(Left) Women students stage "Heel and Hose" demonstration in front of Old
Main in March 1966 to protest the University's regulation prohibiting them
from visiting men living in off-campus apartments. (Right) Vice President for
Student Affairs Robert Bernreuter observes student speakers at the pro-
visitation rally on Old Main lawn, April 1966.
The Bernreuter committee referred its report to the University Senate. The
senate had fewer qualms about abandoning the doctrine of in loco parentis
and in June approved a visitation plan having only one constraint. Women
could visit men living off campus only after placing on file with the
University, at the beginning of each academic year, written parental
consent. By giving parents an opportunity, at least in theory, to participate
in changing University social regulations, the new policy represented a
skillful face-saving gesture for administrators.
Students did not let up their campaign to eliminate other restrictions on
their social lives, and on some items they won without a struggle. Dress
codes that demanded men wear jackets and ties and women skirts or
dresses to evening meals were soon abolished. Women also gained an
extension of weeknight curfew until 1:00 A.m., and then curfew was
dropped altogether. But on the two biggest issues-allowing women to live
off campus and letting men and women visit each other's residence hall
rooms-the administration refused concessions.
, Both of these issues drew the same kind of widespread support among
students that apartment visitation had received earlier. By 1968, however,
the drive to liberalize regulations governing social conduct became
enmeshed with other activist campaigns that commanded the allegiance of
a relatively small number of students whose objectives extended beyond
the routine operation of the University. Student dissent at Penn State was
about to enter a new phase. The movement had no agreed-upon leader or
group of leaders. The very description of it as a "movement" implies a
cohesiveness that never really existed. Student activists had a diverse and
sometimes mutually exclusive series of objectives and were united only by a
common dissatisfaction with the status quo.
This new union was exemplified in September 1968 by the largest protest
demonstration the University had seen since the apartment visitation rally
of 1966. Ostensibly, the protesters were objecting to a lack of student
housing. Enrollment at University Park had increased by over a thousand
students from the previous year, but the University had failed to give due
consideration to housing them. It had announced in 1966 that no new
residence halls would be built, although enrollment was expected to
increase well into the 1970s. This was supposed to be the cue for private
developers to construct more apartments and other dwellings for students,
but planning and construction took time. Meanwhile, students came in ever
larger numbers. As the fall term of 1968 got under way, more than eight
hundred students were squeezed-almost literally-into recreation rooms,
study lounges, and other temporary quarters in dormitories already filled to
capacity. As many as four hundred were reported to be searching for places
to live in town when classes began.
Hoping to force the University to do something to alleviate the housing
shortage, a small group of students (some homeless and some not) pitched
a few tents on the lawn of Old Main. But "Walkertown," as the little
settlement was christened, came to symbolize more than just anger over
housing problems. An open-air platform was erected on that part of the
lawn nearest President Walker's second-story Old Main office. From this
Years of Crises: the 1960s
The typical Penn State student, asserted Undergraduate Student
Government president Robert Katzenstein on 1966, "is passive,
conscientious, law abiding, responsible, and [socially] ultraconservative. He
is content to study, date, and perform the rituals of existence. . . . The term
system has reduced his extracurricular activities and has increased his
concentration on his books." Katzenstein's observation was equally
applicable to any year of the late 1960s. Yet these years are best
remembered as the era of student activism, a time when youth rebelled-
sometimes violently-against established authority. The popular attention
that this rebellion received often obscured the fact that at Penn State and
most other institutions, a majority of students took no part in protest
marches, sit-ins, flag burnings, building occupations, and other such
activities favored by campus dissidents.
The importance of the student activist movement should not be measured
by the relatively small number of participants. Although only a few students
were outspoken in their opposition to established policies, they effectively
changed the relationship between administrators and all students. As
administrators and students themselves came to realize, the passive
majority often embraced the goals, if not the methods, of the activist
minority.
AUTHORITY CHALLENGED: STUDENT ACTIVISM
The beginning of the student activist era is usually dated from the unrest
that occurred at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1964.
What began as an apparent drive by a small band of students to preserve an
element of free speech burgeoned into a massive display of student
,displeasure with the general administrative policies of the university.
Berkeley students began to raise questions about the relevance of the
curriculum and their power in shaping it. They complained about their
alienation from faculty and administrators and demanded that they, not the
institution, set the rules that governed their lives outside the classroom. The
issues aroused strong feelings. Violence threatened to erupt several times in
the course of three months of unrest as buildings were occupied, strikes
called, and police summoned.
The campus in 1964
What was significant about the disorder was not which side was right but
rather that the same issues were being raised at colleges and universities
across the nation. In loco parentis, for example, had been a point of
contention at Berkeley. It was the concept whereby the university exercised
parental-like authority over the social lives of undergraduates, and it was to
be the issue that sparked the first major confrontation between students
and administrators at Penn State.
In this case the activists were representatives of the Undergraduate Student
Government, the Association of Women Students, and the Town
Independent Men. They submitted that the in loco parentis doctrine was
outmoded: The time had come for the University to recognize that social
customs and attitudes had changed dramatically over the previous twenty
years. For two years, student leaders pressed the administration to allow
women students to visit men living in off-campus apartments. Finally, early
in 1966, the Administrative Committee on Student Affairs, headed by Vice
President for Student Affairs Robert Bernreuter, agreed to study the matter
and make recommendations for an updated visitation policy.
The committee presented a preliminary report in April. Although it had
voted 11-1 to approve unrestricted visitation, Bernreuter considered the
vote a tie, insisting that Dean of Men Frank Simes had good reasons for his
lone dissent. The committee then recommended that women be permitted
to visit men's apartments without chaperones, provided that at least three
,couples were present and the visits had been previously registered with a
board of control composed of students from AWS and TIM. Members of this
board were also to have the right to make unannounced inspections of
apartments to make certain that no sexual misconduct or violations of
drinking laws occurred. Students regarded the proposals as still too
restrictive and were outraged by the 11-1 "tie." To show their
dissatisfaction, over 2,000 undergraduates gathered at a USG-sponsored
rally on the lawn of Old Main on April 30. It was the largest such assemblage
the University had yet seen.
(Left) Women students stage "Heel and Hose" demonstration in front of Old
Main in March 1966 to protest the University's regulation prohibiting them
from visiting men living in off-campus apartments. (Right) Vice President for
Student Affairs Robert Bernreuter observes student speakers at the pro-
visitation rally on Old Main lawn, April 1966.
The Bernreuter committee referred its report to the University Senate. The
senate had fewer qualms about abandoning the doctrine of in loco parentis
and in June approved a visitation plan having only one constraint. Women
could visit men living off campus only after placing on file with the
University, at the beginning of each academic year, written parental
consent. By giving parents an opportunity, at least in theory, to participate
in changing University social regulations, the new policy represented a
skillful face-saving gesture for administrators.
Students did not let up their campaign to eliminate other restrictions on
their social lives, and on some items they won without a struggle. Dress
codes that demanded men wear jackets and ties and women skirts or
dresses to evening meals were soon abolished. Women also gained an
extension of weeknight curfew until 1:00 A.m., and then curfew was
dropped altogether. But on the two biggest issues-allowing women to live
off campus and letting men and women visit each other's residence hall
rooms-the administration refused concessions.
, Both of these issues drew the same kind of widespread support among
students that apartment visitation had received earlier. By 1968, however,
the drive to liberalize regulations governing social conduct became
enmeshed with other activist campaigns that commanded the allegiance of
a relatively small number of students whose objectives extended beyond
the routine operation of the University. Student dissent at Penn State was
about to enter a new phase. The movement had no agreed-upon leader or
group of leaders. The very description of it as a "movement" implies a
cohesiveness that never really existed. Student activists had a diverse and
sometimes mutually exclusive series of objectives and were united only by a
common dissatisfaction with the status quo.
This new union was exemplified in September 1968 by the largest protest
demonstration the University had seen since the apartment visitation rally
of 1966. Ostensibly, the protesters were objecting to a lack of student
housing. Enrollment at University Park had increased by over a thousand
students from the previous year, but the University had failed to give due
consideration to housing them. It had announced in 1966 that no new
residence halls would be built, although enrollment was expected to
increase well into the 1970s. This was supposed to be the cue for private
developers to construct more apartments and other dwellings for students,
but planning and construction took time. Meanwhile, students came in ever
larger numbers. As the fall term of 1968 got under way, more than eight
hundred students were squeezed-almost literally-into recreation rooms,
study lounges, and other temporary quarters in dormitories already filled to
capacity. As many as four hundred were reported to be searching for places
to live in town when classes began.
Hoping to force the University to do something to alleviate the housing
shortage, a small group of students (some homeless and some not) pitched
a few tents on the lawn of Old Main. But "Walkertown," as the little
settlement was christened, came to symbolize more than just anger over
housing problems. An open-air platform was erected on that part of the
lawn nearest President Walker's second-story Old Main office. From this
