Chapter 12 | Section 1
In Loco Parentis
Across the country and in Oklahoma, a lot of colleges let their administrators, staff, and faculty make rules for students on campus. Most students understood that there had to be rules on college campuses, but they also thought that some rules were too strict. Some students were okay with in loco parentis, meaning that college administrators acted “in the place of a parent,” but others wanted to be treated more like adults. They did not like having curfews or being told what classes to take or how to dress or when to study. Some did not think it was fair that colleges enforced different curfews or required different classes for male and female students. Students at schools in Oklahoma like the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, Cameron University, the University of Central Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma College of Women (called University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma after 1965) tried to change rules they did not like. They were not able to change everything, though. Nowadays students still have to follow certain rules and take required classes. But college students today also have more of a voice on college campuses. They serve on university committees and participate in student government. They play a bigger role in inviting speakers to campus. Campus study halls and dress codes have changed a lot too.
Censorship and Alternative Student Newspapers
Some Oklahoma students wanted to participate in debates and hear ideas different from their own, but administrators and parents often worried that if young people were exposed to controversial ideas about war, racism, and politics, they would just accept these ideas as their own. Parents wanted to protect their children attending college from ideas they considered dangerous. School administrators wanted parents to feel safe sending children to their college campuses. Oklahoma taxpayers and their elected officials wanted a say in what was happening on those campuses. Oklahoma college students, on the other hand, wanted to learn (but not necessarily agree with) new ideas and to be exposed to varied religions, economic systems, and forms of government. These students wanted something different from what school administrators, elected officials, and their parents wanted. This led to tension and conflict.
Many students wanted to change the content in administration-approved college newspapers. So they started publishing their own alternative newspapers, also called underground newspapers, which allowed them to write what they wanted free of control by school officials. The first alternative student newspaper in Oklahoma was the Free Press, which started in January 1962 at the University of Oklahoma. Bob Flexner was one of the OU students who founded the paper. He and his friends said that they wanted to debate ideas and find truth. They described the Free Press as a paper for students who think, and they said that students had the right to know. These alternative newspapers were a way for students to express frustration and raise issues they thought were important. Some papers ran stories about social justice issues such as civil rights, but others addressed things like the cost of textbooks or required courses that students did not think they should have to take. The Free Press only lasted a semester (mostly because all the editors graduated), but more underground newspapers followed at schools across the state.
Launched in January 1962, the Free Press was the first alternative student newspaper at the University of Oklahoma. Its stated goal was to encourage people to think, debate, and engage with important issues of the day. The paper’s editorial board, pictured here, received both praise and criticism for their paper. Bottom row from left: Frank McPherson, Irene Klaff, Andy Johnson. Top row from left: Kerwin Hill, Mike Ruby, Mike Crouch, Bob Flexner.
Courtesy of Bob Flexner Private Collection.
Papers like the Drummer at OSU and the Jones Family’s Grandchildren at OU, named after the group of socialist tenant farmers who opposed the draft in the First World War (as discussed in chapter 7), are just a few examples of new alternative student newspapers that came after the Free Press ended. In the first issue of the Drummer, the editors said that they hoped the paper would make their classmates “laugh, maybe cry once in a while, but first of all THINK.” These papers gave students a chance to voice differing opinions. But many students who wrote for the papers also got in trouble because administrators saw them as disrespectful. Sometimes administrators told the students they were being childish. That is what happened to Bob Flexner and his friends. But they ignored the backlash and kept publishing their paper until they graduated.
Sometimes the criticism of alternative newspapers was much more serious. Five students working on the Jones Family’s Grandchildren were arrested because of a drawing in their December 1969 issue. That issue included a page that boldly pronounced “Seasons Greetings” and listed the names of twenty-three federal and state leaders, including President Richard Nixon. The greeting was followed by a side sketch showing a man and woman in a naked embrace with only bare legs and arms visible. Beneath the drawing, the greeting concluded with, “From our family to yours—have a ball!” When news of the students’ arrest became public, students at OU raised money for their defense. Other Oklahomans were not so sympathetic. Governor Dewey Bartlett said that the picture was “very, very objectionable.” One Oklahoman went so far as to say that the drawing was “the most disgraceful thing that has happened in this state since statehood.” The state charged the five students with breaking an obscenity law. If they had been found guilty, they could have gone to jail for fifteen years. The students went to trial but were found not guilty due to a technical problem with the wording of the law. Judge Elvin Brown said that the court did not have to like its own decision. He then reluctantly ruled that the obscenity law was unconstitutional. He said that the way the law was written made it only apply to obscenity in print materials and not in films.
These five OU students who worked on the Jones Family’s Grandchildren alternative student newspaper were arrested in December 1969 on charges of breaking state obscenity laws. Among other things, the paper supported civil rights and criticized the war in Vietnam. At trial the students were acquitted on a technicality, and the obscenity law was ruled unconstitutional.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Free Speech Movement
Parents and administrators learned that telling students not to do something often made them want to do it more. They learned this when they took measures to limit free speech on campus. As free speech movements spread across the country, officials at Oklahoma State University (OSU) in 1967, for example, worried about students being exposed to speakers who said things that they considered radical. This included speakers who criticized the war in Vietnam or capitalism or even who raised complicated questions about religion in American life. Religious scholar Thomas Altizer was banned from speaking at OSU because of his work on what he called “the death of God.” Altizer’s words were actually not as extreme as they sounded. He was expressing his concern that religion and belief in God had become less important in people’s lives than they had once been. Authorities at OSU simply saw his views as disrespectful and thought such discussion had no place at the school. They began to require that speakers coming to OSU stand for ideas the larger community approved.
OSU school officials, including President Robert B. Kamm, also barred the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from meeting on the OSU campus. Students were very disappointed and angered by these limits on free speech. They made a huge banner that said “No Thought Control!” and held it up at a protest in front of the library in March 1967. More than four hundred students participated. Students later heard that faculty and graduate student instructors were told they could get fired for going to the protest. And this led to more anger and more protests. The entire Sociology Department faculty quit their jobs in protest. And students organized more demonstrations.
In March 1967, students voiced intense frustration with the administration at Oklahoma State University for their policies of limiting free speech. Over four hundred students gathered in front of the library to protest. This photo of the protest shows students holding a massive banner reading “No Thought Control.”
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
By fall 1967, students at OSU still felt that President Kamm and his administration were ignoring the need for a free exchange of ideas on college campuses. On November 8, students organized the largest demonstration in the school’s history with over five thousand in attendance. At the November 8 event, Bob Swaffer, president of the student senate, read aloud from a speech by OU president George Lynn Cross to explain how important free speech was on a college campus. Drawing from that speech, he said, “We should explore everything” and trust “the good judgment of the people” to decide “what is acceptable and usable and what is not.”
This is what the students at OSU wanted: a chance to hear and discuss new ideas. But many parents and other Oklahomans did not agree. They thought that college students were not mature enough to judge the value of ideas for themselves. For example, one person who wrote in support of OSU’s policy explained, “A 19-year-old kid has no business spending two hours listening to a speech by some nut on Communism or LSD or any other freakish fad.” The OSU speaker policy stayed in place for another four years until a group of students hired an attorney who convinced the administration that no court of law would uphold the policy.