Campus Meets Legislature

Like many legislatures elsewhere, the Illinois house of representatives has been fuming about campus disorder. So last week it called an extraordinary "committee of the whole" session to ask university presidents and student leaders why campuses are boiling over and what can be done about it. The 21-hour hearing was not the hostile inquisition some had feared it might become; responding to House Speaker Jack Walker's call for moderation, both sides were mild and thoughtful.

The Carbondale campus of Southern Illinois University has been closed since May 12, following a post-Kent State week of violence and vandalism. "In simple terms," S.I.U. President Delyte Morris told the house, "the disruptions have arisen from the conversion of a peaceful assembly into a mob--through the deliberate efforts of a small number of people, students and non-students." But, he added, "that small number cannot succeed without the support of the assembly they seek to manipulate. There was enough dissatisfaction to involve five or six thousand people the night of May 12, and this dissatisfaction is manifested in student unrest that has disturbed campuses across the nation for many months."

Rejected Role. Jon McAtee, cropped and kempt, is the right-of-center president of the Northern Illinois University student association. Said he: "It is no longer possible to think of curing campus ills simply by advocating the dismissal of a few disruptive students. As a conservative, I have been astonished --as you should be--by the dismay with which students at my university and others have responded to events. Without being on a campus," he told the legislators, "you cannot easily comprehend the suddenness and reality of what I am saying: the recent trouble has been possible only because of the widespread involvement of thousands of students."

But why the dissatisfaction? As Morris sees it, students reject the "role prescribed for them by society."-So they put up resistance "to social requirements, such as the draft; to social commitments, such as the Viet Nam conflict; to social flaws, such as pollution; to social practices, such as conformity in clothing and hair styles. When the university finds itself associated with these social pressures, it becomes a focus for student resistance. Higher education must adjust to these realities."

Given the post-Kent State expansion of student dissent, said President Rhoten A. Smith of N.I.U., "force of arms is the least satisfactory way imaginable of dealing with the genuine concern of students about the war and national conditions." Edward Pinto, a student leader at the University of Illinois, agreed: "When disorder has roots in frivolous activities--panty raids or water fights--a stern disciplinary approach will succeed. But if repression is employed in response to disorder arising from basic, valid grievances, the problems will only get worse."

Constitutional Cleansing. The administrators took a particularly hard line on so-called "street people"--non-students who help stir things up. Morris urged the legislators to find a constitutional way "to cleanse ourselves of them." President David D. Henry of the University of Illinois cited the "guerrilla hit-and-run tactics--bombing, arson and vandalism--of dedicated destroyers." He deplored the "delay between arrest and trial" of such activists, who usually are "free on bail and tend to remain in the area and participate in continuing events."

The hearing ended inconclusively. The testimony will go to the committee on higher education, but the house has adjourned until late fall. Still, the educators and students had clearly made a favorable impression. N.I.U.'s Smith had set the tone of the session by saying, "We have, since May 4, been dealing with a new phenomenon--student opinion too wide and too serious to be dismissed as 'a few radicals.' " The House members had swallowed that without difficulty--and they applauded heartily when Undergraduate Pinto observed, "A society that hates its youth has no future."

The California assembly was so upset over campus unrest last week that it lopped nearly $1,000,000 in education funds from Gov. Ronald Reagan's proposed state budget for next year. The cuts, made by the Ways and Means Committee, included $409,000 ticketed for the University of California's Academic Senate, which may be disbanded as a result. Moreover, the committee voted to exclude state college teachers from a 5% pay hike for all state employees. The actions may be modified by a joint assembly-senate committee, and the professors may yet get th~ir pay boost, but the fate of the Academic Senate is less certain. Why the cuts? Said Assembly Ways and Means Chairman Frank Lan-terman: "To shake them up. What does the Academic Senate do but make themselves obnoxious?" Some state senators voiced similar sentiments. Said Senator Howard Way: "The world of academia is not in touch with the rank-and-file citizen of California."

-According to a recent study under the aegis of the American Council on Education, a prime source of campus tension is that "adolescence is prolonged beyond all reasonable limits." Many college students feel "socially obsolescent," the report suggests, because they are "kept too long in a state of dependence when what they most need is opportunity to feel socially and personally useful."

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