Permanence for Hayakawa

In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance.

--S. I. Hayakawa

During his seven months as acting president of San Francisco State College, doughty Samuel I. Hayakawa, 62, proved that an artful semanticist can become a national symbol of campus peace--at a price. In suppressing bloody disorders, Hayakawa both entranced millions of outsiders and embittered his faculty and students. Last week the result won him a dubious prize that he actively sought. By a vote of 16 to 2, the State College Board of Trustees, headed by Governor Ronald Reagan, elected Hayakawa permanent president of S.F. State--a move that almost guarantees more strife.

Until last year, Hayakawa seemed quite unlikely to turn into a campus warrior. The Canadian-born son of a Japanese immigrant importer, he came to the U.S. for graduate study and taught college English in Chicago, where he also wrote a jazz column for a Negro newspaper. In 1941, he became a famous popularizer of semantics with his bestseller Language in Action. At S.F. State, which he joined in 1955, he was a part-time professor with no administrative experience.

Obvious Leader. What transformed Hayakawa was his gut reaction to one of the worst campus situations in U.S. history. By last November, S.F. State had run through six presidents in seven years. A student strike had been called by the supermilitant Black Students Union to enforce ten "nonnegotiable" demands. Among them: an autonomous black studies department, full professor rank for the department head (who had been on the faculty less than one year), the firing of a white administrator and admission of all black students who applied for the next year. The militants enforced the strike with violent terrorist tactics, physical intimidation of non-strikers, invasion of classes, destruction of property.

Hayakawa urged the faculty to fight back--showing himself to be an obvious leader whom the trustees soon picked as acting president. When he took over, the campus had shut down --a battleground of arson, bombings and police raids. How would Hayakawa handle it?

Unlike other college presidents, Hayakawa-devised a hard-line strategy of keeping police power on the campus at all times. His predecessors had called in the police on occasion, but during the height of the strike Hayakawa deployed as many as 600 police on campus or on call nearby. "The revolutionaries said they would destroy the college," he explained in testimony before a Senate subcommittee. "I said they would not. We had police available before trouble started, instead of waiting for the situation to get out of hand."

Meanwhile he reopened the college, yielded on some student demands but rejected others. Always flamboyant and highly visible, he showed a gift for symbolism, appeared in a bright blue-and-red tam-o'-shanter, sometimes wore leis of flowers for press conferences, regularly delivered quotable and often provocative comments. Speaking of the day the first serious fighting occurred between police and students, he said, "This was the most exciting day of my life since my tenth birthday, when I rode a roller coaster for the first time." After he had become known statewide and was denounced by blacks as "Uncle Tojo Tom," he jokingly told reporters that he represented "yellow power" and that he was "Emperor of California."

At that point, most students deplored the extremists' tactics and were interested only in continuing their education. But soon Hayakawa's tactics were also being questioned. Dealing firmly with all opposition, he invalidated a student election when candidates unfavorable to him won, called the strike leaders a "gang of goons and neo-Nazis," suspended the student newspaper for printing anti-Hayakawa editorials. When four of the college's five black administrators, who had wide student support, resigned, he said, "I am glad to see them go; we can do without them." These moves, together with his massive use of police and his growing support among conservatives, combined to turn many moderate students against him.

At the same time, he repeatedly ignored the expressed wishes of the faculty. When the college's Grievance and Disciplinary Action Panel, made up of faculty members, found him guilty on four charges and demanded his replacement, Hayakawa made a joke of the whole thing. The panel's findings were addressed to the president, so Hayakawa, in his capacity as acting president, wrote himself an elaborately sarcastic letter, chiding himself for carrying out what he believed to be his duty.

What counted with the board of trustees, where the final counting is done, was the fact that Hayakawa stopped the strike. The cost included 731 arrests, 120 casualties, numerous fires and fights. Outside politics had been injected into a supposedly apolitical institution, and many students and faculty members had gone over to the opposition; but a degree of order had been restored, and the college was functioning once again. As for public opinion, as opposed to campus opinion, a recent poll showed that Hayakawa is now second only to Ronald Reagan as the most popular man in California--and a hot prospect for the U.S. Senate race next year.

A Call for Revolution. After the trustees' vote, Hayakawa hailed his appointment as "a vote of confidence in my policies in defense of academic freedom." Members of the official S.F. State presidential selection committee, whose nominees had not even been interviewed by the trustees, were not impressed. They plan to suggest a faculty vote of no confidence, and they intend to call on the chancellor and trustees of the state colleges to revoke Hayakawa's appointment as illegal.

The new president's new problem is how to maintain the precarious order he has brought about. While he was only acting president, students and teachers who opposed him could look forward to a change. Now that he is permanent president, the "silent middle" may increasingly support the radicals who yearn for permanent chaos.

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