Stiffening the Spine

At a time when student unrest on the University of California's Berkeley campus seemed to be simmering down, a handful of cause-hunting students and some off-campus beatniks suddenly began shouting obscene words into a public-address system at Sproul Hall and displaying them on signs. The reaction of Berkeley police against what quickly got dubbed the "filthy speech movement" was swift: nine demonstrators were arrested (six turned out not to be registered students).

The reaction of University President Clark Kerr was slower. Two regents from Los Angeles, Board Chairman Edward Carter and Oilman Edwin Pauley, telephoned him and told him that the student offenders must be disciplined by the university too. Kerr agreed that discipline was due, but hesitated. Since last December's student uprising, it has become customary at Cal to let civil courts handle students involved in violations of the law. Kerr feared that adding a university punishment would be taken as breaking an understanding with the thousands of students who had crusaded against such "double jeopardy." He foresaw a renewal of the whole Free Speech Movement uprising.

Triple Scolding. Given the widespread public and student repugnance to the supporters of obscenity, Kerr might not have had to be so fastidious. Instead, he passed the buck to two faculty committees that had been set up to handle problems of student conduct in border line areas between scholarly discipline and lawbreaking. But in this case both refused to act. Regent Carter telephoned Kerr again, told him that if he did not punish the offenders, the regents would do so. Kerr thought that left him too little room to maneuver. He and the able new head of the Berkeley campus, Acting Chancellor Martin Meyerson, debated a bit, then told Carter that they both intended to resign.

Kerr later put out an explanatory statement that seemed to scold the regents ("Offenders must be disciplined, but due process must have its due place"), the faculty ("Faculty committees should not seek to avoid their responsibility"), and students ("Academic institutions have traditionally set standards of moral and ethical behavior conducive to their principles"). But he implied that his resignation was not irrevocable, saying that it was "not my inclination."

A Lot More. It was revocable, all right. But it took an emergency weekend meeting of the regents nearly six hours to decide whether Kerr should be asked to withdraw his resignation, and on what terms. The board finally agreed not to interfere directly with Kerr's administration, but it stiffened his spine with resolutions declaring that 1) students must observe "proper standards of conduct in good taste," and 2) university chancellors of all campuses are expected to discipline those who misbehave. "A lot of air has been cleared," said Kerr. But the forecast was for still more smog.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.