Volume 25 · Number 4 · Summer 2008
Aggies Remember
The Mighty Pen
A special edition of the Aggie leads to spectacular results.
After undergraduate studies were suspended at UC Davis during World War II, the campus came alive in February 1946 when I was among a tidal wave of ex-GIs that swelled opening enrollment to a record 1,200 Aggies. By that semester’s end, student activities were rejuvenated with student body elections and a renewal of athletic programs. I had enjoyed being editor of my high school paper and hoped for a career in agricultural journalism so applied to join the California Aggie staff. There was sparse competition for such extracurricular duties, since most former GIs were focused tightly on completing a college education and getting on with civilian life.
In fact, when I returned in the fall I learned that the previously selected editor had decided not to return, plunging me into the job by default! Fortunately I was joined by a bevy of coed contributors and also was able to talk a fraternity brother into becoming business manager. The Aggie was printed weekly by the Davis Enterprise from hand-set type. By fair appraisal, our product was pretty primitive, reflective of the limited time that our studies permitted us to put into it. My free time was spread even thinner when I learned the Aggie editor also served on the student body’s governing committee.
The paper was not long under way when I was confronted by an angry group of West Hall residents, outraged that nothing had been done during the summer months to address a multitude of badly needed repairs in their living quarters. They wanted the Aggie to give voice to their complaints and shame the administration into repairing or replacing numerous shattered windows, broken or missing screens, unreliable plumbing, etc. (West Hall was a landmark men’s dorm sited at the north end of the Quad where the Memorial Union now stands.) I soon learned of similar complaints at the women’s dorm, South Hall, and at North Hall, the other men’s dorm. Such explanations as were offered by campus administrators strongly implied that our status as a mere branch of UC Berkeley’s College of Agriculture had earned only a short end of the maintenance budget.
So, with a vigorous push from West Hall stalwarts, my career as a crusading editor was launched. At first, my editorial complaints were limited to campus distribution, but this did elicit many encouraging “attaboys” from disgruntled faculty members who harbored like dissatisfactions with the run-down condition of laboratories, classrooms and offices. Finally, I was won over to taking our campaign directly to the Legislature.
And so we produced a special edition of the Aggie with photos and captions documenting the deplorable state of building conditions at Davis. Next, a West Hall group snuck into the Capitol in dead of night, depositing a copy of that Aggie on each legislator’s desk. In those days most members of theLegislature were highly sensitive to rural constituencies, so our humble effort brought spectacular reactions. It also brought me a tartly expressed letter from UC’s top ranking lobbyist admonishing that such shenanigans would bring me to no good end.
Our Sacramento event received no mention in the yearbook, but much more important, long-standing campus problems with building maintenance were soon behind us — and thus began the renewal and later development of what we now know as UC Davis!
A busy member of the University Retirement Community in Davis, Bill Allewelt ’50 was CEO of Tri Valley Growers from 1966 until retiring in 1985. He was also founding chair of the advisory board of the UC Agricultural Issues Center at UC Davis and a past board member of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association and the UC Davis Foundation.