University Dally Kausan
Friday, October 26, 1979
Chancellors remember their roles, past and future
By DAVE LEWIS
Staff Reporter
Raymond Nichols
E. Laurence Chalmers Jr.
Mount Oread has seen some drastic changes in the last 10 years. A calmness has swept the University while the dust has settled from the heyday of the Vietnam era.
Archie Dykes
To guide the University through the violent times was E. Lawrence Chalmers, who inherited much of his legacy.
In the late '60s and early '70s, student unrest dominated the University as the entire country struggled with high turnover.
The Kansas Union was burned in 1869. Violent demonstrations threatened the welfare of the University.
Chalmers said he had mixed emotions about taking the chancellor's job.
"For three weeks in May 1970, it was really tranquil. We had a great director of the Chicago Art Institute." There were a couple of nights when there was rifle fire on Mount Rushmore. The State Patrol was called to patrol the area.
"I if wouldn't have known what was ahead of me, I would have done it all over again. I was being offered a job like this at a prestigious University. But If I knew it was going to be a full hall, I would have let it bounce on someone else."
"However, my years had some positive aspects. The faculty and staff drew together in a remarkable sort of way. The bond could also be felt on campus the students as well, as I know, there were no casualties."
Chalmers said he still felt a closeness to KU.
"You can't spend three years at a job like this without being permanently attached to the Univer-
I'M MISS THE interaction with the students most of all—the discussion groups and my classes. That's how I feel.
Although Chalmers' tenure was marred by violence and conspiracy, his expedition was ex-esser in the war and figured in the war.
"They were growing years," he said. "They were building years. One year, we added 60 new faculty."
"Wescow Hall and other projects sprung up at this time. The enrollment was booming and the economy
However, Chalmera noted, the growth in enrollment and economy have declined during the period.
"Projected cutbacks and taxpayer revolts are problems we didn't have in the early seventies," Chalmers said. "Chancellor Dykes faces the changes in the enrollment and the economy."
CHALMERS, AN HONORARY member of the KU Alumni Association, said he thought KU would be better off in the U.S. than Canada.
"I think KU has a good future because it will be able to continue attracting talented students."
After Chalmer's resignation in 1972, Raymond Nichels served one year as interim chancellor and
launched a massive public relations program in Kansas.
Nichels' connections with KU date back to the 1920s when he studied for a bachelor's degree in journalism. He was student body president and editor of Diversity Daily Kansan and the Jahawker weekbook.
In 1929, he was named executive secretary to Chancellor Ernest Lindley. He was appointed vice chancellor for finance in 1962 by Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe.
HE IS NOW chancellor emeritus for KU, and the director of both the KU Endowment and the University of Oklahoma.
Nichols said he knew he should serve as chancellor only a year, but accepted the job for "the good of the class."
"I wanted to turn around the sentiment," Nichols said of his house in Lawrence. "Chalmers had great influence."
public misunderstood him. Consequently, we lost a lot of alumni support."
He said every county in the state had some kind of KI-affiliated organization.
"I SERVED TO accten active public relations. I wanted to carry to the University all over the state and to Kansas City. The University is a long way from here, but it is definitely necessary after the trouble 10 years ago."
1. last summer, there were 2,000 parents up here for orientation. It was an amazing number and a cornucopia of friends.
Nichols said his main concern about KU was economics.
"The Legislature has been very supportive, but it has not increased support in relation to inflation, he has not,"
'a personally reef it has leadership. The university has quality academic programs, good teachers, and
Nichols praised Archie Dykes' administration.
imaginative administrators. I think it will increase its lead in the future."
DYKES, WHO SERVED as chancellor at the university for six years, became KU's chancellor in 1972.
"I felt the University of Kansas was a new and important opportunity," Dykes said. "I was atrium-filled."
Dykes said inflation was the University's biggest problem and that it would continue to be a pressing issue.
Dykes said he was optimistic about the University's future.
"The biggest issue we have to face now is to guarantee that the University will not be seriously hurt by inflation. We cannot let the double-digit rate rise and undermine the economic welfare of our faculty."
THE UNIVERSITY is very favorably situated in comparison to other universities in the area and is part of national registration.
"We are the leading University in the Regents. We has an outstanding faculty and the most loyal and committed staff."
Dykes said students were more serious about their education than students were 10 years ago.
"There is much more concern about quality of education. Students are much more serious about it."
Although "student activism" has not been rampant since Vietnam, Dykes said at the university
"It is a different kind of expression. It is not aptity.
Students are channeling their interests through
appropriate means."
Dykes said he looked forward to homecoming every year.
Campus leaders during'60s still tied to universities
"It is an exciting time. Friends and alumnals are back in school and many groups that makes the University the outstanding educational institution."
By CINDY WHITCOME
Staff Reporter
Waste was brewing at the University of Kansas 10 years ago. The Vietnam War, racial equality and student rights were issues that couldn't be ignored.
Leaders were emerging from student groups ranging from the newly formed Student Senate to the farcical First Artaud Romantic Tautological Society.
Today, a few of these leaders still are in Lawrence. The others are scattered throughout the country. Although some have been associated with the KU Alumni Association, many others have vacated Mount Oread permanently, leaving few clues about their present lives.
Here are the stories of some of those newsmakers and what they are doing today.
DAVE AWBREY was elected student body president in May 1969, during a time of upheaval in student government. A new student code had just been adopted to give students more voice in the affairs of the university. It increased in the area of monetary spending.
Awbrey was the candidate from the Independent Student Party and was counseled by the party's armed prosecutor for disturbing the peace and viding curfew restrictions in the summer.
After graduating from KU, Awbrey worked for the Lindsay-Schaub newspaper chain and United Press International. He then joined Harvard University on a graduate fellowship.
Marilyn Bowman was the vice
presidential candidate on the IPS ticket with Awbrey. Wreath a few weeks after her election. Bowman participated in an anti-war demonstration that cost her office at
THE DEMONSTRATION took place in mid-May, just before school was out, during which the demonstrators were the ROCT at Memorial Stadium. The administration had banned demonstrators from the review, but the demonstrators had also been required to down an entrance gate and disrupted the review with anti-war shouts and chants until the chancellor had to discontinue the review.
Pictures on the front pages of campus and local newspapers showed Bowman standing in the middle of the demonstration, her hand raised in a defiant peace sigh.
Action to have Bowman impeded was introduced into the Student Senate, but was suspended by the administration and consequently resigned. At the time,
HOWEVER, SHE did come back to KU and earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology. Later, she attended Dartmouth and N.H. Her recent activities are not known.
The student that proposed Bowman's theatrical education in student politics by Awithew and Bowman. That student, Mark Retonde, was Intrafraternity Council president and active leader of the student body.
Retonde said he proposed Bowman's
impeachment because he felt that the students should police themselves without outside control. Betton said he was against the move, but the institutions were just causing more problems.
"EVERYBODY THOUGHT that what they did and did so was important. In retrospect, I really wonder," said Rétonde, now an executory secretary for a real estate firm.
On the other end of the spectrum from Retonde to a Belleville graduate student, Rick Attkinson. Attkinson was a controversial radical leader associated with the "new left" movement. New left supporters advocate for economic change and felt that revolution was necessary.
ATKINSON WAS also the vice president of the First Artudal Romantic Tautological Society, known for its satirical and obscene statements on campus events.
Atkinson participated in a well-publicized anti-Marine demonstration in 1989. After the administration rejected students' request to disarm the campus police, Atkinson asked the administration if he could have persecuted them or protect himself against attacks by police.
It is unclear what happened to Atkinson. He, like other new left leaders at KU, has left no reflections on his participation in student movements.
A student that was instrumental in making changes in student government was Rick Von Ende. Von Ende was chairman of the All-Student Council in 1969 at a time
when the ASC was being phased out to make way for a revised student government.
Von Ende received his master's in political science in 1971 and became Executive Secretary to the Chancellor at KU.
"We were living history then with the concern about the Vietnam war. Today, the years of the marches and sit-ins are past," said Von Ende.
now is an associate professor of philosophy at Central Connecticut State College.
ANOTHER GROUP advocating social reform at KU was the Black Student Union. In 1890, 90 percent of the black KU notionulated to the BSU.
Clarence Reynolds was president of the BSU at the time. He received his bachelor's degree in African Studies in 1972 and his master's in business administration in 1977. He lives and works in Lawrence today, but he also about his activities at KU or his present life.
Another Lawrence resident, a KU alumna from the early 78s, is Charli Jenkins. Jenkins was the assistant manager editor for the National Journal and last year it received the All-American award.
IT WAS DIFFICULT to be an objective journalist during all the turmol, according to Jenkins.
"Everything hit so close to home," she said. "It was a time when we were confronted daily with so much unrest and didn't know how to react."
Jenkins is now public relations director for the theatre department at KU and helps manage the Harbour Lites tavern in downtown Lawrence.
Jenkins best described this feeling
As past students look back at KU 10 years ago, there is confusion as to how to describe the times.
"It's almost like it all didn't happen to you," she said. "It's a distant memory. When I think about it now, though, you ate, drank and slept it."
This year, Senator Jake Garn, R-Utt, spoke against a decrease in defense spending. The streets and sidewalks now are filled with students whizzing on roller skates, while religious converts promote religion awareness in converts of the Kansas Union.
Abbie Hoffman called for the destruction of the Abie House because it would yearen students hold demonstrations, filling the streets with pamphlets, posters and violence. The Kansas Union burned in the
"While there isn't the street action in the '10s, the concern and the issues are the same," consumer advocate Ralph Nadler wrote on ATU this year and nine years ago.
Kent Lengencker, SUA president in 1969, who assisted in decisions on guest speaker invitations, said issues were black-and-white at that time.
"You either were for an issue or against it," Longenecker said. "Students today have a lot more choices to sort through."
William Fletcher, who coordinates
"Garn probably would have been booted down in 1983," Fletcher said. "We're getting back to the concept of the university as a marketplace of ideas."
speakers for former Kansas Sen. Janne Pearson's, class,"U.S. and World Affairs", said students now are more willing to listen to both sides of an issue.
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"People were really uptight then," according to Jeff Lough who headed the SUA Fine Arts Committee in 1969.
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"There were bombs, people throwing rocks through windows, demonstrations—people more likely to make decisions without hearing all the sides," he said.
Campus politics in 1969-70 were fired by such speakers as Lee, Demin Muskie, D-Maine; draft resister Ari Talum; Adam Nordwall, an Indian who wanted Alcatraz island restored to his tribe; and Saul who spoke on how to effect social change.
Representing the black movement were Ralph Ellison, who authored the novel "Invilest Man" and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an associate of Martin Luther King Jr.
Clair Keizer, the current SUA president, agreed that issues today are treated in a more personal fashion. But if activist movements are on their march best in resting in Knoxville and not approaching to Knoxville.
"There isn't one big movement on campas
"but many splitter movements," Keiter said.
"They aren't all going to run out and
conserve say, but students are more conserved.
"People are concerned, if they don't carry signs about it," he said.
Diversification, however, is the key to 1979 involvement, accorded to Keizer.
"They take more time to reach a decision."
According to Fletcher, weighing the pros and cons defuses student activism.
"Students don't just go charging off when someone makes a controversial statement," Fletcher said. "They want to get a few facts before they go on the line."
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