March 26, 1969

Common Sense Creeping Into Campus Problem

Don't look now, but perhaps a little common sense is creeping into our treatment of campus unrest.

President Nixon has taken a hard look at student violence in view of demands for federal involvement and come up with a recommendation so obvious everyone is exclaiming, "Why haven't we thought of this sooner?"

Simply, Nixon says the universities themselves should figure out how to handle their problems in accordance with individual teaching systems.

He hints rather broadly that the federal government will cut off government loans and grants to students convicted of law breaking.  However, the administration will not propose any new legislation, strict or otherwise.  Enforcement of existing laws will be adequate to the task if the will to use them is there.

The thought there ought to be a variety of solutions to fit the variety of grievances seems obvious to you and me.  Yet we have endured so long the single, mammoth, uniform, stultifying federal solution that small, sensible steps have become unique.

Another blow for reason was struck a few weeks ago when the U.S.  Supreme Court ruled that rebellious students who disrupt universities with violent demonstrations are not entitled to plead "freedom of speech."

The ruling came in rejection of an appeal by 10 undergraduates of Bluefield, W.  Va., State College.  They were suspended immediately after a demonstration at a 1967 football game when police had to use tear gas to escort the college president out of the stadium to safety.

The basic problem of rioting is the traveling agitators who shift from campus to campus stirring up trouble.  Five leaders of a recent disturbance at Harvard were arrested and discovered not to be students at all - at Harvard or anywhere else.

By crossing state lines, agitators become subject to Federal prosecution under anti-riot legislation enacted last year by Congress.  Attorney General John Mitchell has made it plain he intends to use the law ignored by the Johnson administration.

College administrators in many parts of the country are waking to the danger that violence poses for education.  Encouraged by support from concerned parents they are speaking out more forcefully for law and order.

Dr.  S.  I.  Hayakawa, president of San Francisco State College, has become a national celebrity for refusing to bargain with shaggy-haired hoodlums who had nearly destroyed that institution of learning.

The juvenile Students for Democratic Something or Other has written letters to all Democratic congressmen demanding they renounce the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame University.  Rev. Hesburgh incurred the wrath of anarchists by writing a letter to Notre Dame faculty members, students and their parents outlining his policy on campus disorders.

The bully boys scream "brutality" and "censorship."  In reality, the policy is so reasonable and effective it may go into the National Archives as a basic document of freedom.

Says Rev.  Hesburgh:

"Anyone or any group that substitutes force for rational persuasion, be it violent or nonviolent, will be given 15 minutes of meditation to cease and desist.  They will be told that they are, by their actions, going counter to the overwhelming conviction of this community as to what is proper here.

"If they do not within that time period cease and desist, they will be asked for their identity cards.  Those who produce these will be suspended from the community.  Those who do not have, or will not produce, identity cards will be assumed not to be members of the community and will be charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace on private property and treated accordingly by the law.

"After notification of suspension - or trespass in the case of noncommunity members - if there is not then within five minutes a movement to cease and desist, students will be notified of expulsion from this community and the law will deal with them as nonstudents.

"There seems to be a current myth that university members are not responsible to the law, and that somehow the law is the enemy - particularly those whom society has constituted to uphold and enforce the law.  I would like to insist here that all of us are responsible to the duly constituted laws of this university community and to all of the laws of the land.  There is no other guarantee of civilization versus the jungle or mob rule, here or elsewhere.

"If someone invades your home do you dialogue with him, or do you call the law?  Without the law, the university is a sitting duck for any small group from outside or inside that wishes to destroy it, to incapacitate it, to terrorize it at whim.

"The argument goes - or has gone - invoke the law and you lose the university community.  My only response is that without the law you may well lose the university - and beyond that - the larger society that supports it.

"May I now say in all sincerity that I never want to see any student expelled from this community because, in many ways, this is always an educative failure.  Even so, I must likewise be committed to the survival of the university community as one of man's best hopes in these troubled times.

'We cannot allow a small minority to impose their will on the majority who have spoken regarding the university's style of life.  We cannot allow a few to substitute force of any kind for persuasion to accept their personal idea of what is right or proper.

"We only insist on the rights of all, minority and majority, the climate of civility and rationality, and a preponderant moral abhorrence of violence or inhuman forms of persuasion that violate our style of life and the nature of the universes."

All of this is but a good beginning.

Let us now establish out behind every Student Union building on every campus a modest woodshed where spoiled kids can be hustled whenever they throw a temper tantrum.

Let us then apply a sharp lesson in maturity to the seat of their britches so the young adults enrolled in the university can get on with the serious business of education.

Author: Lindsey Williams