College Officials and the Morals Revolution

COLLEGE OFFICIALS AND THE MORALS REVOLUTION

THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT:
NOTES OF A COLLEGE
REVOLUTIONARY

In 1968 Random House published The Strawberry Statement, the random thoughts of nineteen-year-old Columbia University student protester James Simon Kunen, who drafted the book on "napkins, and cigarette packs, and no-hitchhiking signs." Kunen defends his disjointed critique of his world this way: "People want to know who we are, and some think they know who we are—a bunch of snot-nosed brats. It's difficult to say really who we are. We don't have snot on our noses. What we do have is hopes and fears." He talks about himself: "My father talks about the bad associations people make when they see someone with hair. I come back with the bad associations people make when they see someone replete with a shiny new Cadillac.…But as for bad vibrations emanating from my follicles, I say great. I want the cops to sneer and the old ladies swear and the businessmen worry. I want everyone to see me and say, 'There goes an enemy of the state,' because that's where I'm at, as we say in the Revolution biz." And he defines the players and the issue in the Columbia University riots of 1968:

Students for a Democratic Society—just that. Defies more specific definition. Mixed bag. Activist, but often hampered by internal dissension. Called "pukes" by the jocks. Students Opposing SDS—never could get their sh—together; majority coalition. All powerless because totally disorganized. Called "jocks" by the pukes.

The gym—An eleven-story private building to be built on public land, Morningside Park, which separates Columbia from Harlem. The community (blacks) could use a certain section of it at certain times, through a certain door (the back). The important point was that the community was not consulted as they had not been consulted with regard to the purchase of one hundred and fifty buildings and the eviction of ten thousand people over the past seven years. The gym served as a symbol for all Columbia expansion.

Easing of In Loco Parentis

In the 1950s and early 1960s, college authorities stood in loco parentis. This fact permitted the colleges to have almost unquestioned authority over students' lives. By 1965, when college enrollment had risen to 5.5 million from 2.5 million in 1955, and when new social, economic, and ethnic groups had entered this broadened world of postsecondary education, college authorities began to lose this traditional control. The sheer numbers of the new college population and demographic changes in the college population made in loco parentis a difficult position for college administrators to maintain.

Colleges Watch as the Morals Revolution Occurs

Institutions soon realized that the parental control they had previously exercised over students' sexual behavior was quickly waning. Although chastity remained an accepted virtue for many college students, attitudes were changing. As an Ohio State senior explained, "We have discarded the idea that the loss of virginity is related to degeneracy. Premarital sex doesn't lead to the downfall of society, at least not the kind of society we're going to build." Harvard sociologist David Riesman, who had been on campus for thirty-one years, said, "There's a change, a real change, even though you can't prove it statistically." And Gael Greene, who interviewed 614 students on 102 campuses for Sex and the College Girl (1964), became convinced that "there's more premarital sex now than when Kinsey published his study in the early 50s." Although many campus officials in the 1960s abandoned curfews and dropped strictures against dorm-room visitations, not all administrators were willing to give in to students' demands. As Notre Dame's president Theodore M. Hesburgh put it, "If anyone seriously believes he cannot become well educated without girls in his room, he should get free of Notre Dame."

Sources:

William A. Kaplan, The Law of Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986), pp. 6, 59;

"The Morals Revolution on the U.S. Campus," Newsweek, 63 (6 April 1964): 52-56.