Uprising at Bowling Green by Norbert Wiley Joseph B Perry Jr Arthur G. Neal

Author:Norbert Wiley, Joseph B Perry Jr, Arthur G. Neal [Norbert Wiley, Joseph B Perry Jr, Arthur G. Neal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317249696
Google: WgPvCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-17T03:20:01+00:00

FACULTY VOICE

Where does this leave the faculty and its voice? During the period of the demonstrations it was frequently said that the students were doing the faculty’s job. It was the faculty that was present at BGSU for decades, not just years, and it was the faculty that had the institutional memory. Also, the faculty probably had the most to gain from a liberalization of the McDonald regime, at least in terms of ordinary rewards.

The students had a deeper psychological desire for liberalization, however, for they were doing developmental tasks, matters of psychological growth, at the same time that they were going to college. The college experience should be a bridge from adolescence to adulthood, building on those teenage qualities that can be formed into adult capabilities. Perhaps the main task is the building of a value system and an identity—one that will serve the student as a base for moving into and through adulthood. This transition, while not without its own stresses, should still be one that can move the student reasonably smoothly into adulthood.

By contrast, at Bowling Green the students felt themselves being infantilized. They were kept in a high school level of constraint and they did not see themselves becoming prepared for adulthood. The rules of this college made it harder for them to construct an identity. In particular, the dating and courtship system was being blatantly interfered with by the administration.

So perhaps we should say the faculty had more at stake in terms of routine adult rewards (such as class, status, and power) while the students had more at stake in terms of building psychologically healthy selves. In any case the students acted much more aggressively than the faculty did, suggesting that the stakes in this drama were at least different if not higher for the students.

During the fall of 1960 there were rumors about the coming spring demonstrations, and occasional graffiti on that topic appeared on campus walls. The liberal faculty, though aware that these rumors could come and go, were interested in the idea of some kind of student voicing to slow down the highly confident, and to them oppressive, administration of Ralph McDonald. The faculty were fully aware that McDonald’s strict regime, strict both for the students and for them, was out of date and against their interests, but university governments are a bit like monarchies, with top-down control. So the faculty could not just walk over to the levers of power and change McDonald’s policy mix. With only modest countervailing powers, the faculty pretty much had to just sit there and accept what came down to them. Unlike the students, they had no explosive riot tradition. That is why Stanage’s rebuttal of McDonald at the post-demonstration faculty meeting was so electrifying. It had been, or had been thought to be, impossible for a professor to stand up after McDonald spoke and dispute him. No one had walked it through in his or her mind, that is, tried to figure out what might happen if one did this, but it was assumed that something bad would nevertheless happen.

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