Protesting the Protesters

Amid the waves of campus unrest rolling across the U.S., the University of Maryland was a sea of tranquillity; not a picket had been visible on campus all year. Properly impressed, Maryland President Wilson H. Elkins last month commended his 22,000 students for "their orderly conduct and constructive criticism," and deplored "the small groups" at other campuses, "which flout regulations, oppose any authority and confuse freedom with license to do as they wish."

He should have kept his peace. Elkins' speech immediately set a "small group" of students at Maryland to feeling lonely. If there were no protests at College Park, they concluded, there must surely be something wrong with the campus. The local chapter of the nationwide Students for a Democratic Society vowed to "inject new controversy into the stagnant university system." Another group organized an Academic Freedoms Committee to "restore controversy to its proper place in academic life." The dissenters combined to form a united organization called Students for a Free University.

But what should they protest? After a long pause for thought, S.F.U. seized upon two yawning gaps in Maryland's academic life: the library closes at 10 p.m. instead of midnight, and students are not allowed to wear Bermuda shorts at dinner in the dining halls. S.F.U. began promoting a library study-in--even though the administration was already considering longer library hours, as well as abolition of all dress standards.

Hoping for bigger and better issues, S.F.U. appointed a committee to seek new problems to protest. One student found a long-forgotten and never-used rule under which the university could eject a student without explanation. That also proved to be a nonissue. "I don't see any point in keeping the regulation on the books either," said University Vice President R. Lee Hornbake, "and we are getting rid of it."

Hornbake charged that S.F.U. was promoting "dissent for dissent's sake." Other students thought so too. Proclaiming himself the "Supreme Defender of Tranquillity," Sophomore Warren Lewis organized the Collegiate Anti-Protest Organization Group to protest the protesters. CAPOG pickets turned up at meetings of the protest groups with signs reading PROGRESS THROUGH SANITY and VOUS NOUS DEGOUTEZ (You make us sick).

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