Were Campuses Really Quiet?

Kingman Brewster, President of Yale University, described last year's campus mood as one of "eerie tranquillity." FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's annual report said that the number of campus demonstrations, logged chiefly from press reports, was down two thirds from the year before. Scores of other commentators, including TIME, concluded that at the very least the campus uproar that had culminated in the protests after the Kent and Jackson State shootings had given way to a new calm. Last week a report by the American Council on Education put that view up against the wall.

Things were indeed quieter than in the chaotic year before, the report said. But neither "calm" nor "tranquillity" were the words for what went on. According to the new findings, campus disruptions did not disappear but declined only to just below the level of the 1968-69 academic year, when Harvard and Cornell erupted into national headlines and many a parent wondered what the world was coming to. The chief difference, ACE argues, is that back then 40% of the troubled institutions got national coverage; last year only 10% did.

Not Pacific. The report's authors, ACE Research Director Alexander Astin and his deputy, Alan Bayer, solicited their information from campus officials, pinning them down on specific details to guard against exaggeration. The researchers discovered that far from being pacific, nearly half of the campuses had experienced protests. Astin and Bayer estimate that last year 462 campuses (about 20% of all higher educational institutions) experienced at least one "severe" protest--severe being defined as actions that resulted in injuries, building occupations, class disruptions or destruction of property, as opposed to picketing or vigils.

Astin and Bayer are quick to point out that the figures represent a clear "downturn" from 1969-70, when incidents were so numerous that no one counted them precisely. No campuses experienced uproars on the same mass scale as those in the bloody spring of 1970. In addition, eruptions did taper off at the highly visible elite colleges and universities that often set the pace. Instead, last year's turmoil became "diffused," moving to the "invisible" campuses that newsmen rarely visit and educational leaders seldom discuss: public four-year colleges, Roman Catholic colleges and two-year private colleges. "Unrest," says Bayer, "has permeated into the Podunks."

What about this fall? The researchers, generalizing almost as much as the "myopic" educators and journalists they reprove, predict more trouble.

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