UC Davis fielded a multipronged program of intrinsically valuable educational and student life programs designed to meet the needs of a growing campus, spanning 10 years and two campus administrations. They provided opportunities for students to participate in planning and conducting their own affairs at every level of university life, consistent with the prudent management of the institution. Academic Senate resolutions provided for free speech on campus, especially on the Quad, save only for time, place and manner. Student interns and representatives were appointed or elected to many administrative committees; students initiated, sponsored and funded nationally recognized programs like the double-decker bus service and the Coffee House
A good example of the UC Davis way was Project Involvement. It was announced by Chancellor Mrak as a "gathering together of all interested residents of the campus and community at Davis for the purpose of discussion and action." The first meeting on Oct. 8, 1968, attracted more than 2,000 people. Thirty task groups were formed. The titles of some tell the story: "Student Involvement in Academic Senate Affairs," Educational Reform," "Opinions of the Silent Majority," "College Entrance for the Underprivileged" and "General Studies." Some fell by the wayside, others evolved into bona fide campus programs like the General Education Program.
One outcome was the formation of a loose-knit group of about 30 to 50 students, faculty and administrators who worked together to individually and collectively develop proposals, anticipate and respond to crises. I thought of them as the Davis Irregulars, ready to go, day or night. Rhetoric lecturer John Vohs once told me, "If the phone rings after midnight, I know it's you!"
One day in May 1969, I returned to Davis from a seminar I had given at Berkeley--cut short by tear gas wafting in the windows--to find that the campus was on strike to protest the violence at Berkeley that had resulted in the death of one student and the mass arrests of many others.
That same afternoon, Chancellor-designate James Meyer had met with several thousand UC Davis students who had congregated on the steps of Mrak Hall. Student leader Mel Posey dramatically asked Meyer to take a stand, asking him whether he was against the violence at Berkeley and for students at Davis doing something about it. Meyer says he looked out at a sea of faces of students he had come to know and trust, including those of his own children, and said, "I am with you!" The campus was on strike!
Gov. Reagan was sharply critical. But subsequent events proved Chancellor Meyer had not misplaced his trust in the UC Davis student body. Campus student leaders set about organizing students into a giant March for Peace.
Except to meet my classes and keep track of my laboratory, I virtually took up residence in strike headquarters in Lower Freeborn as the faculty adviser to ASUCD to run interference between the administration and the students. I remember one evening my 4-year-old son was crying in the driveway, wanting me to play with him, as I drove off to yet another organizing meeting. (Free speech is never really free.)
The march on the Capitol was the largest protest rally undertaken at UC Davis and CSU Sacramento, too. It was led by Mel Posey and organized by a remarkably competent and responsible group of students, with representatives from all nine campuses. My role was strictly secondary; I helped organize faculty monitors for the march. Many faculty, some members of the Executive Committee of the UC Davis Academic Senate, stepped forward to stand with their students to demonstrate that we were a peaceful community and wished an end to the violence.
On May 26, 1969, more than 5,000 students packed the mall approach to the State Capitol. The line stretched from about First Street to the Capitol steps. Onlookers both cheered and jeered.
By chance, I was standing on the steps beside Linus Pauling, the keynote speaker of the march, surrounded by an honor guard of crisply uniformed 6-foot-plus Black Panthers. I remember a student having his pocket knife confiscated when he attempted to cut off extra cloth from his armband. "No weapons!" said the Panther, making certain we were on our best non-violent, no-Swiss-Army-knife behavior.
"What are the students like?" asked Pauling. "Middle-class," I answered. "Non-political, good folks; they are marching against violence and for peaceable solutions, not for any single issue." Pauling could tell I was getting a kick out of the excitement of seeing thousands of people marching toward us down the mall. He looked first at the long line of students and then at me, and nailed down the tone of the era, taking the wind forever out of my sails. "Barry," Pauling said, "in the 1950s, it was the professors who led and the students who followed. Today, in the 1960s, it's the other way around!"
