Slow Death of Fresno State

By Kenneth Seib

The events related to this book took place over thirty years ago. Since that time it would be nice to report that higher education has improved considerably. But that is not the case. If anything, it has gotten worse.

Today, the Falks and Baxters, the Volpps and Reas, are everywhere, firmly entrenched in leadership positions throughout the colleges and universities. Their model for the institution is the corporation, its president a CEO hired –often at a six figure salary—to oversee its workers (faculty and staff) for a Board of Directors who have little contact with the daily activities of the institution itself. Its clients are complacent consumers looking mainly for vocational training and steady employment in today’s suffering economy. In this age of Benny Madoff, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and a host of other corporate crooks, our educational institutions imitate models the vast majority of Americans are fed up with, preparing our young people to be the very executive types that are destroying society.

Departments of Arts and Sciences that were once thought to carry the core values fundamental to the survival of the republic suffer low esteem, severe budget cuts, and impossible work loads. English Departments largely teach remedial classes to students who can barely read, write, or think critically. Philosophy Departments, if they still exist, compete with religious fundamentalists who demand equal time. Science classes are filled with students who insist that “creationism” be taught along with the theories of evolution and cosmology. Polls show that a vast majority of Americans believe in extra-terrestrials, angels, ghosts, Biblical miracles, apocalyptic predictions, and a whole range of utter nonsense, while they remain ignorant of the most basic scientific precepts and cannot find on a simple map such countries as Iraq or Afghanistan, where they are often eager to go and die. Students know little of their own culture, know little of history, and embrace Tea-Party slogans rather than genuine political thought.

What happened at Fresno State thirty years ago was part of a major rupture in American society, a rupture from which we have never recovered. But I have always been guardedly optimistic about higher learning in America. Things go in cycles, and there may come a time when students and faculty, Americans in general, will become as fed up with our educational system as they have with corporate America and our current political system.

But as I said thirty years ago, that is sometime in the future.

Kenneth Seib
September, 2011

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth Seib
• Release date: Nov 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301902514

Kenneth Seib

The Fresno Free College Foundation is a non-profit in Fresno, CA which owns and operates KFCF-FM Fresno

Book preview

The Slow Death of Fresno State

A California Campus under Reagan and Brown

Kenneth A. Seib

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 1979 The Fresno Free College Foundation

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Ramparts 'Press

Palo Alto, California 94303

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Seib, Kenneth.

The slow death of Fresno State.

Includes index.

1. California State University, Fresno - History - 20th century.

2. Brown, Edmund Gerald, 1938-

3. California, Governor, 1975-

4. Reagan, Ronald. 5. California, Governor, 1967-1975 (Reagan)

1. Title

LD729.6.F7S44 378.794'83 79-63112

ISBN 0-87867-007-7

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-63112

Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 - AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

2 - MEZEY, MARIJUANA, AND MARVIN X

3 - THE CONSERVATIVES TAKE OVER

4 - PROFILES IN POWER

5 - THE WAR AGAINST THE YOUNG

6 - THE EDUCATION OF NORMAN BAXTER

7 - BOLTING THE DOORS

8 - BATTLES IN THE COURTS

9 - THE REAGANIZED UNIVERSITY

10 - THE BROWNING OF CALIFORNIA

11 - THE SLOW DEATH OF FRESNO STATE COLLEGE

Photographs by Steve Soriano and Don LeBaron

Robert Mezey

Acting Pres. Karl Falk and Exec. Vice Pres. James Fikes

Vice Pres. Fikes Followed by Minority Students

Acting Dean Phillip Walker at Trial of Fresno Five

Harry Jeffery, One of the Fresno Five

Trial of the Fresno Five

The Reverend Julius Brooks and Black Student Leaders

Student Body President Doug Broten

Hunger Strike of Chicano Students

Encounter between Chicano and Agriculture Students

Encounter between Chicano and Agriculture Students

Anti-war Protest at ROTC Building

Anti-war Protest at ROTC Building

Student Anti-war Protest

Campus Security Police and Members of Phys Ed Dept.

Anti-Falk Protest in Free Speech Area

Student Protest Rally at Student Union

State Police Prepare to Meet Campus Protesters

Campus Destruction During 1970 Student Protests

Student Protest Along Shaw Avenue

Student Protest Along Shaw Avenue

Students and Police Confront Along Shaw Avenue

Students Arrested on Shaw Avenue

Campus Anti-war Protest

Campus Security Policeman on Duty

Chicano Students Disrupt 1970 Registration Process

Barred Doors of English Department Office

Locked Files in the English Department Office

Security Policeman Guarding the English Department

THE SLOW DEATH OF FRESNO STATE

The FRESNO FREE COLLEGE FOUNDATION is a non- profit California corporation committed to the cultural and intellectual development of society. In addition to sponsoring traditional education and cultural events, it owns and operates KFCF-FM, a listener-sponsored radio station which simulcasts the signal of KPFA, a Pacifica station in Berkeley, California. During the past ten years the Foundation, in cooperation with the United Professors of California (UPC), has made a substantial commitment to academic freedom cases throughout California. Proceeds from the sale of this book are earmarked for the Foundation's UPC Academic Freedom Legal Fund.

This book is dedicated to

Gil Acuna ,Don Albright , Anselno Arrelano , Carol Bishop , Bob Brooks , Julius Brooks, Dale Burtner , Bill Buzick , Roger Chittick , Osby Davis , Ed Dutton , Everett Frost , Rudy GalIardo , Sam Germany , Thomas Gonzales , Elton HalI , Nathan Heard , Marvin Jackman , Harry Jeffrey , Adan Juarez , Kenneth Kerr , Richard Keyes , Vince Lavery ,Charles Lewis , Rip Lhamon , Lavert Lucas , Ren Mabey , Bob Mezey , Walker Munson , Paul Murray , Albert Nieto , Richard Nieto , Gene Orro , Katherine Panas , Eli Riscoe-Lozada , Robert Rubalcava , Erving Ruhl , Steve Santos , Ming Be Sia , Harriet Tavasti , Don Teeter , Joe Toney , Dick Toscan ,Harold Walker (deceased) , Eugene Zumwalt

and the many other faculty and students whose professional and personal lives were damaged or threatened at Fresno State.

INTRODUCTION

Much has been written, reported, documented, and debated concerning what the Scranton Commission called the crisis on American campuses. This report, the findings of a Presidential commission established on June 13, 1970, shortly after the tragedies of Kent State and Jackson State, went on to say that the crisis has roots in divisions of American society as deep as any since the Civil War. The divisions are reflected in violent acts and harsh rhetoric, and in the enmity of those Americans who see themselves as occupying opposing camps. Campus unrest reflects and increases a more profound crisis in the nation as a whole.

Since the Scranton report, numerous authors have written about specific academic crises: James Michener and I.F. Stone on the tragedy at Kent State, Michael Baker and others on the Columbia University crisis, still others on the tragedy at Jackson State. Hal Draper's Berkeley: The New Student Revolt chronicles the unrest of a major university; James Simon Kunen's The Strawberry Statement is a student's view of what it is like to be at such a university. Simply a list of titles conveys the upheaval that American higher education has undergone in the last few years: Confrontation: the Student Rebellion and Universities; Students in Revolt; The Academy in Turmoil; The Student as Nigger; Bayonets in the Streets; Riots, Revolts and Insurrections.

But a large portion of what has taken place in higher education has still gone unnoticed. Larger scandals like Watergate have taken precedent in the news media over the smaller, quieter ones. Perhaps this is as it should be, but the smaller story is equally important - in some ways, more so. For there has been in the last few years a silent and effective erosion of the main underpinnings of the academic community - the free discussion of ideas, democratic participation in academic governance, intellectual leadership that youth can learn from and respect, a sense of purpose. The aftermath of student uprising has brought about precisely what student activists thought they were protesting - a centralized power structure in the control of men who cherish neither academic freedom nor the free play of the intellect, a managerial minority preoccupied with maintaining an image of corporate efficiency, retaining the perquisites of power and position, and appeasing its community and board of trustees. At the highest level, state officials, legislators, chancellors, and trustees have either been openly contemptuous of educational needs or have allowed them to suffer in benign neglect; in California, ambitious politicians have risen to national prominence by building their ladder of success from the wreckage of higher education. And little has been written about this state of affairs.

Fresno State College, a relatively unknown California State College of about twelve thousand students, is in many ways an ideal source of study, for what happened at Fresno State during the past decade is largely what has happened at similar colleges and universities throughout the United States. The purpose of this book is to chronicle the events that took place at Fresno State under Governors Reagan and Brown, and to show what impact these events have had on higher education in general.

The story of the slow death of Fresno State College was compiled with the aid of a vast body of letters, newspaper reports, memoranda, eyewitness accounts, court transcripts, legal briefs, and various written materials. What is here might have been thoroughly footnoted, but in order not to bog down the reader in a mass of footnotes and dates, formal documentation has been omitted. Wherever possible, dates and sources are given in the text. When statements are attributed to certain people, the statements have been public ones that appeared in the news media or written documents. No sources were used for this book that cannot be found by anyone interested in the incidents described.

I am indebted to a great many people for making this information available to me. I owe a special debt to Dr. Eugene Zumwalt for allowing me to use his file of material pertaining to this period in the history of the college. Because of Dr. Zumwalt's foresight, almost every document that appeared - literally every scrap of paper - found its way to his file. Whatever was not found there was found in similar collections made available to me by Dr. Alex Vavoulis, Dr. Robert Shacklett, and retired graduate dean Phyllis Watts. Their penchant for collecting made this book much easier to write.

I am equally indebted to many others. In the first two chapters, I leaned heavily on two documents written by Dr. P. Dale Bush, a series of excellent articles he wrote for the Daily Collegian between February 19 and February 25, 1971, and an article entitled Free Speech and the Mezey Case that he published in the 1968 Yearbook of the Committee on Freedom of Speech of the Speech Association of America. Dr. Bush kindly permitted me to use this material, and I have used it freely.

Others to whom I am grateful include Dr. Dale Burtner, Dr. James Smith, Dr. Roger Chittick, Dr. William Cowling, Dr. Robert Billings (who first outlined the Reaganized University in an excellent university lecture), Professor George Lewis, and Mr. Ronald Mahoney, who permitted me the use of important material in the Special Collections section of the CSUF library. I am most recently indebted to Jessica Mitford for her excellent suggestions after reading this work in manuscript, and to my wife Jane for her typically incisive editorial work. I would also like to thank the Fresno Free College Foundation and the Committee for Constitutional Government at Fresno State, the latter for the use of a document that I helped to prepare back in 1969 and the former for authorizing me to expand that document into a full manuscript. Finally, I must thank Sharon Peters, typist extraordinaire and friend, who typed this manuscript several times in every stage of its development and all of its manifestations.

I absolve, of course, all of the above for any judgments or conclusions in this book, for they are my own and are based on the facts I could amass. For the most part, I hope the facts will speak for themselves.

K.S.

Fresno, California

September, 1978

PROLOGUE

The Fresno Free College Foundation had its genesis in August 1968. At that time it had a symbiotic relationship with California State College, Fresno because the founders of the FFCF were professors at the College. These professors were people of the spirit and were sensitive to the meaning of academic freedom and academic due process and viewed learning as an important human activity.

In the early months there was despair as the College, aided and abetted by segments of the outside community, trampled over its own academic and intellectual values. But, at the same time, it was a period of solidarity for those defending the University against those who did not appreciate academic values. It’s as if these defenders of the academy were following the counsel of Nikos Kazantzakis: Do not seek friends seek comrades-in-arms. Life is a struggle—constantly battling with forces which seem to prevent efforts to evolve a more humane and peaceful society.

Herbert Marcuse, a philosopher and social theorist, has been said to be the father of the new left. He has used the term contagion effects to indicate that seemingly independent effects are actually interconnected. The wave of student protests that reached the Fresno campus in 1968 was part of this effect because it was part of a world-wide eruption of new social movements that profoundly changed the world. From Paris to Chicago, from Prague to Mexico City, popular struggles unexpectedly erupted in a global challenge to the established order. Daniel Singer writing in The Nation, said that the French student movement in May 1968 raised questions about the nature and purpose of growth, the deadly weight of a hierarchical society and of an unwithering state, about the inanity of frontiers. . .

The Founders of the Fresno Free College Foundation produced an organizational structure that was to take care of the immediate issues raised with the dismissal of the poet Robert Mezey (this included financial help for his family and support of his legal proceedings). Apparently, middle class Fresno could tolerate an eccentric professor who dressed like a hippie and wore a beard that covered his face like Socrates, but it could not tolerate a professor who articulated ideas contrary to its own, in this case the wisdom of the marijuana laws. As a result, the poet’s academic freedom was violated as well as his First Amendment rights. The institution whose name in 1968 was Fresno State College, provided the name of the new organization with a slight but significant change: Fresno Free College Foundation. And so, the word Free was substituted for the word State, transforming material (political) into immaterial (spirit). This seemingly simple change was to have a profound effect on everything the organization did from 1968 to the present. It supported Mezey’s case in the courts as it did with other faculty and student cases that involved a violation of constitutional rights; the motto a free and open society, was put on its banners as it sponsored lectures, films, entered as amicus in nation-wide cases that involved constitutional violations and established KFCF-FM, a listener-sponsored radio station. The radio station provided the Central Valley of California with alternative news, public affairs and entertainment.

The Founders of the Fresno Free College Foundation wrote into its Articles of Incorporation that the non-profit corporation was committed to the enhancement of the cultural and intellectual life of the community. It is an organization that has kept its word and, with a democratic structure, developed into an important cultural group in the Fresno area. This is reflected in an editorial in The Fresno Bee, on January 10, 1988 in which it said: In its 20 years, the foundation has made an important contribution to Fresno’s civic, intellectual and artistic growth.

The book, The Slow Death of Fresno State, so skillfully written by Kenneth Seib, is a tribute to the people who joined the struggle for a better society. In a real sense, this ebook also honors the author, and we thank the Foundation’s Board and Executive Director for having the wisdom to publish it. Ultimately, The Foundation is engaged in a struggle for freedom, which means striving to produce an environment where the creative impulses of people can be actualized. There is no more urgent need than ending the mindless adherence to conventional wisdom that suppresses a free and open society.

Alex Vavoulis

May 2011

FOREWARD

The events related to this book took place over thirty years ago. Since that time it would be nice to report that higher education has improved considerably. But that is not the case. If anything, it has gotten worse.

Today, the Falks and Baxters, the Volpps and Reas, are everywhere, firmly entrenched in leadership positions throughout the colleges and universities. Their model for the institution is the corporation, its president a CEO hired –often at a six figure salary—to oversee its workers (faculty and staff) for a Board of Directors who have little contact with the daily activities of the institution itself. Its clients are complacent consumers looking mainly for vocational training and steady employment in today’s suffering economy. In this age of Benny Madoff, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and a host of other corporate crooks, our educational institutions imitate models the vast majority of Americans are fed up with, preparing our young people to be the very executive types that are destroying society.

Departments of Arts and Sciences that were once thought to carry the core values fundamental to the survival of the republic suffer low esteem, severe budget cuts, and impossible workloads. English Departments largely teach remedial classes to students who can barely read, write, or think critically. Philosophy Departments, if they still exist, compete with religious fundamentalists who demand equal time. Science classes are filled with students who insist that creationism be taught along with the theories of evolution and cosmology. Polls show that a vast majority of Americans believe in extra-terrestrials, angels, ghosts, Biblical miracles, apocalyptic predictions, and a whole range of utter nonsense, while they remain ignorant of the most basic scientific precepts and cannot find on a simple map such countries as Iraq or Afghanistan, where they are often eager to go and die. Students know little of their own culture, know little of history, and embrace Tea-Party slogans rather than genuine political thought.

What happened at Fresno State thirty years ago was part of a major rupture in American society, a rupture from which we have never recovered. But I have always been guardedly optimistic about higher learning in America. Things go in cycles, and there may come a time when students and faculty, Americans in general, will become as fed up with our educational system as they have with corporate America and our current political system.

But as I said thirty years ago, that is sometime in the future.

Kenneth Seib

September, 2011

Note: Ken Seib passed away in 2012.

1 - AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

In the mid-1960s, when Fresno State College selected Dr. Frederick W. Ness as its fourth president, the choice seemed a fortunate one, for Ness had impeccable academic credentials. A Ph.D. in English from Yale, he had been Executive Vice President of Hofstra University, Vice President and Dean of Long Island University, and Academic Vice President of Dickinson College. He was a teacher, a published scholar, and an experienced administrator, a man whose credentials were defined by the motto he took as a guideline for the future of Fresno State - Excellence, Diversity, and Service. The faculty could find no fault with his excellence, the agri-business community believed he would be of service, and everyone admired his diverse interests.

Furthermore, Ness looked like a college president - a high expanse of forehead which some might have called noble, quick and intelligent eyes which could penetrate the center of thorny academic problems, and an erect, confident figure. Small and dapper, he exuded a quiet self-assurance and an urbane manner. Ness was affable, friendly, thoughtful - just the sort of man to greet wealthy alumni and to speak to Rotary clubs. He even smoked a pipe.

When Frederick Ness was formally inaugurated in 1965, therefore, there was much to look forward to in education, both locally and across the nation. The decade of the sixties had been a period of rebirth for many of the nation's small colleges. Like state educational institutions everywhere, Fresno State was just beginning to emerge from its antiquated normal school origins. (The California State Legislature established the Fresno State Normal School in 1911.) The mission of the old normal schools was to train teachers in the art of instructing and governing the public schools of the state. The first president of the Fresno school, Charles L. McLane, sent out a notice in 1911 stating that course offerings would prepare teachers and would give them special work in manual training, domestic art, science and agriculture. Furthermore, the San Joaquin Valley's basic agri-business interests were to have a place in the course of college study for the first time. The normal school was established to serve a specific vocational goal and, although the schools were tuition-free, they essentially served a middle-class clientele committed to preserving the vested interests dominant in their community.

But it was not until after World War II, under the presidency of Dr. Arnold E. Joyal, that Fresno State College began to develop into a full-fledged center of learning. In 1950, the State