CHAPTER VI
Creating a University in the 1960s
etween 1959 and 1962, Albany changed its name three
e times. In the Fall of 1959 it became the New York State
University College of Education at Albany. Two years later
the “of Education” was dropped, and in the Fall of 1962
the institution became the State University of New York’at Albany. The
final name symbolized a major change in mission: an institution which
for more than a century had trained teachers was now commissioned to
become a university.
Why this new direction? The answer is summed up in two words:
“demographics” and “Rockefeller.” Educational planners realized in the
mid 1950s that the “baby boomers” would generate very strong demands
for higher education in the 1960s. A SUNY Trustees’ study released in
1956 showed that even assuming a 40 percent increase in the capacity of
private institutions, SUNY would have to expand by 186 percent to meet
the demand for higher education. Subsequent events showed that the
study underestimated the total demand and overestimated private expansion,
(Opposite) Gov, Nelson A. Rockefeller throws
a shovelful of dirt on the Albany Country Club’s
16th fairway to mark the ground-breaking for the
University at Albany's new campus in 1962. Left
to right: Lt. Gov. Malcolm Wilson; Governor
Rockefeller; SUNY President Thomas Hamilton
and President Collins. (Photo by Times Union
staff photographer Wilder.)
119
One of the earliest stuclent protests at the
State Capitol occurred over the imposition
of tuition in 1962 when the college became
a university.
120
It was Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller who provided
the drive and political skills to transform SUNY and
with it the Albany College. The State University of
New York had been established in 1948 in response
to the post-World War II surge of college enrollments
created by returning veterans. Governed by its own
board of trustees, SUNY was initially composed of
the state’s teachers’ colleges (including Albany) and
grew modestly in the 1950s, its budget and enrollment
tising about 50 percent. SUNY took over two medical
schools, offered liberal arts programs at Harpur College
in Binghamton, and encouraged the development of
eleven community colleges during the decade.
Why was SUNY’s development so slow during the
1950s? Part of the problem was politics. Governors Dewey and Harriman
showed lictle interest in the system. The private institutions continued
to protect their educational turf, and relations between Regents and
Trustees were at best wary. Chancellor Samuel Gould in the early
1960s realized the extent to which SUNY had been a creature of New
York State politics; the effect, he said, was “a little like looking into the
eyes of a snake.”
By the late 1950s, SUNY seemed without energy and direction.
In 1957 a construction bond issue for SUNY was approved by the
voters, but trustees and administrators seemed uncertain just what to
do with the money, In the same year SUNY President William Carlson
persuaded Theodore Blegen, a distinguished historian and dean of the
graduate school at the University of Minnesota, to survey the system's
research efforts. Blegen opened his report by asserting that the “State
University is an academic animal without a head.” He argued that
SUNY needed a central campus devoted to a full range of academic
instruction and research through the doctorate. The Trustees, who had
known little about the study, quickly rebuffed the report and reiterated
their established policy of decentralization. The political fiasco cost
Carlson his job.
It took the political drive and skills of Governor Rockefeller to work
the revolution within SUNY that occurred in the early 1960s. Rockefeller
first appointed a three-man commission headed by Henry Heald, president
of the Ford Foundation. The Commission confirmed the alarming
numbers of students who would be seeking higher education and
proposed to meet the need with a politically astute program of expanding
public higher education while offering state aid to private institutions:
SUNY’s 1960 Master Plan proposed expanding the community
colleges, gradually conyerting the teacher-training institutions into liberal
irts colleges, and creating graduate centers at four locations (in accord
with the principle of decentralization). Such expansion required major
construction. To avoid politically complex and uncertain bond issues,
Rockefeller turned to the notion of a public benefit corporation to
finance construction. The State University Construction Fund, authorized
in 1962, borrowed money to be repaid through tuition income. The
Construction Fund concentrated on academic buildings; the State
Dormitory Authority took care of campus residential facilities. It was a
brilliant stroke even if it did raise the politically prickly issue of tuition.
Rockefeller placated the private institutions with a Scholar Incentive
Program, regulated in such a way that initially all of the money went to
students paying substantial tuition at private institutions.
Albany was more acted
upon than actor in this un-
folding political and educa-
tional drama. At the dedi-
cation of the campus in 1909,
Commissioner of Education
Draper noted that Albany “is
to be a pedagogical college. It
is to give liberal training to
men and women who will be
teachers, It is not intended
that it shall grow into a state
university.” Whatever the
thoughts of individual faculty
members or students, the
College never wavered from
that central charge.
“Rivalry” in 1962, Both Rivalry and Moving
Up Day, traditions of longstanding,
disappeared between 1963 and 1966. (Alumni
Memorabilia Collection.)
he aes
121
Alumni Day, 1962, included a donation from
the Quarter Century Club of a silver service by
Henrietta Brett, '15, Jacob Epstein, '15, and
Florence Linindoll Hilton, ’31; and the presen-
tation of the Agnes Futterer Award to Robert
Steinhauer, '62, by Dr. Arthur Collins, "48.
122
Yet in many ways in the 1950s the College longed to grow out of its
existing niche, Collins regularly pushed for the idea of the College
preparing college teachers (which would have required doctoral work) as
well as high school teachers, and the College worked on a proposal for
the Ed.D. throughout the decade. Nor was the College unaware of the
approaching demographic crisis. A 1956 meeting of Capital District
institutions revealed that area private colleges planned to increase
enrollments between 1955 and 1970 by about 40 percent; yet statewide
enrollments between those years were expected to increase 142 percent.
The implications for Albany were clear: it would surely grow. Yet
projected enrollments were far below what they were
to become in the 1960s, in part because the College
never envisioned itself as a multi-purpose university
center, and in part because even the modest expansion
envisioned in the late 1950s was blocked by long-
standing space problems.
The change in Albany’s mission took place between
1960 and 1963. The first Ed.D. program was approved
in 1960. Two years later the name change to State
University of New York at Albany was accompanied
by non-teaching baccalaureate programs, reorganization
of the school, and plans for Ph.D. programs. Rockefeller
put the final imprimatur on the change in his budget
message of 1963 when he noted that “the long
established academic tradition of the college [at Albany],
its fine faculty, the breadth of its curriculum, its
experience in graduate programs, and its strategic
location in the capital district will make it possible for
the college to become a source of strength in graduate
education and research.”
Albany was expected to become a “university center.”
But what kind? In October of 1965 sociologist David
Riesman visited the campus to give a lecture. “What
is your model?” he asked of everyone he met. “What
kind of a university will you become?” He received no
clear responses. In a very real-sense, Albany in the
1960s was a university in search of an identity, and an important part
of that identity was to be a new campus, already under construction as
Riesman asked his question.
Construction at the College between 1945 and 1962 made only a
dent in longstanding space problems, and the space available on the
existing campus permitted no further expansion. Several nearby possibilities
were explored in the mid 195Qs: the St. Mary’s Park area near the
residence halls, land between the academic buildings and residence
halls, the old Albany High School west of Milne and the Annex east of
Hawley, and finally about ten acres south of Western Avenue in the
Thurlow Terrace area. The first three sites were rejected on grounds of
cost. Site plans and tentative building designs were drawn up for the
area across Western Avenue, but ultimately that plan too was abandoned;
it would cost $1.7 million, displace an estimated eighty-four families,
and remove $670,000 from the property tax rolls. Most important, it
would provide space only for a campus serving 3,200 students, and by
An aerial view of the Albany Country Club
circa 1960. When the move to acquire the
land for the University was stalled, Governor
Rockefeller threatened to move the entire
institution out of the city, (Photo courtesy
of the Albany Country Club.)
123
Albany Mayor Erastus Corning and Governor
Rockefeller look over the model of the planned
campus.
124
then expected enrollments at the College were moving above that figure.
The alternative was to search for a site a reasonable distance from
the $7 million Alumni Quadrangle. Under the Harriman regime it
appeared that 150 acres would be available on the state office campus,
but the Rockefeller administration decided after a space study that it
would need all that land for state offices. Hence the state turned to the
adjacent Albany Country Club.
The proposal to appropriate the Albany Country Club for a new
campus for the College generated a heated public controversy. Members
treasured their old and handsome club and strongly resisted the move.
Mayor Erastus Corning, concerned about the state abandonment of
downtown Albany, was clearly opposed, although his concern was
eased two years later with the proposal for a major state office plaza
south of the Capitol. The state argued that if the College was to expand
beyond 3,200 students, it needed’ much more space within distance of
the existing residence halls. Which, it asked, should the state take, a
country club or a large number of existing homes?
The country club stalled until September of 1960, when Rockefeller
issued an ultimatum: either the club would be sold to the state or the
College would be moved lock, stock, and barrel out of the city. A local
newspaper headed its editorial, “L’Etat~C’Est Nelson.” But there was
simply no other acceptable location within the city. In January of 1961
the state filed appropriation papers. The issue remained in the courts
for a couple of years before the final price was settled on; subsequent
purchases enlarged the site from the 292 acres acquired
from the country club to about 360 acres.
Building plans moved ahead quickly. Harrison
and Abramovitz, a prominent New York architectural
firm which had designed Rockefeller Center, by June
of 1961 completed a comprehensive site plan for the
country club property. Then a sudden change occurred:
Wallace Harrison withdrew from the SUNY Albany
project after taking on another state responsibility.
The new architect was Edward Durrell Stone. At the
time of his selection, Stone was at the peak of his
power and influence and had just completed a church
{
i
i
fs ey
in Schenectady in his mature architectural style. Stone worked quickly,
and by June of 1962 Rockefeller was able to unveil in the rotunda of
Albany's Capitol a model of the design for the new campus.
The plans were both striking and highly formal. Stone proposed to
Scenes from the construc:
tion: (above, left) aerial
view shows completed
Dutch Quad circa 1965;
(left) the Main Fountain
area and lecture centers
under canstruction, 1966;
(above) a section of precast
conerete is hoisted onto
the Education Building,
1965. (Photos of fountain
and Education Building
by E. M. Weil.)
125
|
Walter Tisdale, a retired U.S, Army Engineer,
served as the University’s liaison with the
architect and successfully influenced the final
design of the campus in several- important
ways, including location of buildings.
126
level the country club property. He clustered the academic buildings
together, integrated by a platform (the famous academic “podium”). It
was, he told reporters, foolish to scatter buildings around a site and
thereby increase the need for roads and utilities on the campus, At each
corner of the academic complex, Stone designed a three-story dormitory
quadrangle with a high-rise building in the center. In order to create a
calm, cloistered atmosphere for the University, the 10,000-student
campus was to be free from automobiles, which were confined to
parking areas on the perimeter of the campus. Construction used
technologically advanced pre-cast concrete segments whose repetitive
patterns produced some striking formal effects.
The College had almost nothing to say about the choice of architect
ot the basic site and architectural plans. Still, within limits, Collins and
his assistant, Col. Walter Tisdale, a retired Army engineer, were regularly
consulted and tried to influence things. There were some victories,
some defeats. A plea to preserve the old clubhouse and swimming pool
for University use fell on deaf ears. But the architect accepted some
suggestions for changing the locations of certain buildings on the
academic podium,
The most important campus input to the design was the allocation
of academic space. Stone had provided an “envelope” containing enough
space for a 10,000-student university, but it was largely up to the people
at the College to allocate that space. [t was not an easy job. As Collins
later observed, the planning process “involved, literally scheduling an
imaginary student body for an imaginary program for a plant that
hadn’t been developed.” For example, the College had to plan space.for
an anthropology department when there was not yet a single anthropologist
on the faculty.
Rockefeller broke ground for the new campus on August 24, 1962.
Site preparation took place in the Summer of 1963. By October of that
year the service buildings were half up and construction on Dutch
Quad residence halls was beginning. Work on the academic complex
began the following summer. Some of the statistics are mind-numbing.
The contract for the first half of the academic complex was purportedly
the largest single academic construction contract ever let. lt was estimated
that the construction used over 270,000 cubic yards of concrete and
fifty miles-of copper tubing. Someone reported that if the 500 architectural
irawings were put side to side they would reach for a half mile.
Speed was important. Enrollments were rising fast, and the new
university desperately needed additional academic space and student
wousing. Construction delays were inevitable, however. Earth-moving
tivities in the Summer of 1963 generated irritating sandstorms that
seemed appropriate accompaniments to the screening of Lawrence of
Arabia at the nearby Hellman Theater; the project manager observed
chat “Itis the only place where I ever saw a snowstorm and a dust storm
at the same time.” Fires, explosions, and the collapse of cranes set back
schedules. Both work stoppages and shortages of key crafts slowed the
nace of construction.
Meanwhile the University “made do” with a variety of rented space
near the Downtown Campus: former churches, warehouses, synagogues,
crores, and the U.S. Navy Reserve Training Center were all temporarily
converted to academic facilities. One new sociologist was startled to find
shat his office was located above a shop selling baby clothes; another
faculty member, housed in a former auto supply store, reported that
people periodically wandered in off the street in search of car mufflers.
Students found living quarters in dorms, private housing, and even
hotels and motels; often the only thing they had in common was crowding.
The great move began in October of 1964, when students, temporarily
located in motels, moved into the first units of Dutch Quad. By
February of 1965, 1,100 students were housed on the new campus and
- In the
were shuttled by bus back to the Downtown Campus for clas:
Fall of 1966 the first part of the academic podium was occupied; most
classes were now held there, and the buses hegan carrying students and
faculty housed near the Downtown Campus to the new facilities.
Buildings were occupied as they were completed. The administration
moved up in the Fall of 1967, and by early 1969 only the Mohawk
Tower and a few halls in the Lecture Center area were uncompleted.
In a 1972 interview, Stone expressed great satisfaction with the
results. He defended the original design and took pride in the facts that
there had been no major plan changes and that the campus had been
built within the budget and standards established by the state.
Not all were so satisfied. Stone’s attempt to keep the automobile off
The laying of the cornerstone on Dutch Quad
in 1964 included the burial of a time capsule
by students
127
\
(Top) The final graduation at the Downtown
Campus in 1965.
* (Bottom) The 1965 Homecoming Queen
Harriet Ticker.
128
the campus failed because Americans seemed unwilling to walk more
than fifty feet if they could drive; campus parking bedeviled Albany as it
has every other American university campus. The integrated academic
complex purported to shelter its users from upstate New York weather,
but faculty and students, shivering as they traversed the wind-swept
podium, often retreated to the service tunnel that connected the academic
buildings. Classroom acoustics were poor. It was probably a mistake to
put the Performing Arts Center and the library in the center of the
complex; access for outsiders attending performances at the PAC was
not easy, and the location of the library meant that there was no simple
way to expand it when it reached its capacity in the mid 1980s.
Some of the errors could not have been foreseen. It was impossible
for the faculty in 1961-62 to forecast accurately the space needs of
departments and programs not yet in existence. Fortunately the original
designs involved few interior load-bearing walls, facilitating rearrangements
of interior space. Nor could anyone foresee the skyrocketing energy costs
of the 1970s that showed how energy-inefficient the construction was.
Perhaps, most crucially, while Stone believed that his integrated
design would facilitate the development of a sense of community, the
opposite seems to have been true. The massiveness of the buildings,
the formal design with its lack of warm colors and textures, and the
absence of natural small-group informal gathering places on campus all
contributed to a sense of individual isolation.
Yet the new campus remained an immense achievement. The job
was completed quickly, the quality of workmanship was high, and costs
were reasonable. The formal design and the massive buildings made
the campus above all impressive. The contrast between red carpets and
white walls, the play of the fountains, and the spectacular exterior
lighting, all produced eye-catching effects. The new campus helped
provide the University with an identity. It gave both faculty and students
a sense of what the old New York State College for Teachers was
becoming and helped define the institution that rose on the former
country club golf links.
The academic complex designed for 10,000 students was stuffed a
mere five years after the University began occupying it. Between the Fall
of 1962 and the Fall of 1970, enrollments rose from about 4,000 to
i
over 13,200. Undergrad-
uates made up between 65
percent and 70 percent of
the student body. Financial
resources to support this
astounding rate of growth
were there too. The $3.5
million operating budget of
1962-63 multiplied ten
times by 1970-71. Budget
increases were not automatic; even in the flush years of the 1960s there
were periodic threats to reduce the following year’s budget. Proposals
for reductions in University funding or tuition increases generated
~ student (and sometimes faculty) protests in the 1960s.
Such extraordinarily rapid growth posed major leadership problems
for the University. In the 1950s, Collins had practiced centralized
decision-making and had depended on a strongly personalized leadership
style. He tried to maintain those practices into the 1960s, The annual
presidential reception for the entire freshman class continued, and he
retained his weekly open meetings with students and faculty in the
Campus Center. One of the public relations staff observed that “You
can tell when there’s trouble brewing by the number of coats piled up
outside the door. The more coats, the bigger the problem.”
Yet Collins was hardly so naive as to believe that the organizational
methods he had used in the 1950s would serve for the University of
the late 1960s. Beginning in 1962 the administrative structure of a
conventional public university began to appear. At its heart was a
College of Arts and Sciences (1962) surrounded by a cluster of professional
schools: Education (1962), Library Science (1962), Business (1962),
Social Welfare (1963), Criminal Justice (1963), the Graduate School of
Public Affairs (1966), and Nursing (1968). University College (1964)
dealt with undergraduates in their first two years. Four vice-presidencies
were established: Academic Affairs and Student Affairs in 1965, Business
and Research the following year.
Not all of this was accomplished without contention. Within Arts
and Sciences there was a long debate about splitting the College. The
A new mascot for Albany athletics: from
“Pierre the Ped-guin” to a “Great Dane,”
suggested by Kathy Earle, ’67. She won the
Mascot Nickname contest in 1965 with her
suggestion of the Dane, which she argued had
“size, strength, character, courage, speed and
stamina.” The Dane is also “amiable and
dependable.” (Pierre donated by Mary Young
Osielski, 64; Dane banner gift of University
Bookstore.)
129
An old tradition on a new campus: Torch
Night in 1966. (Opposite) Governor
Rockefeller addresses the first graduation
on the new campus in 1966.
130
reason was simple: department chairs were eager to gain direct access to
alLimportant new resources, usually controlled by the Vice President
for Academic Affairs; they viewed the College structure as a wasteful
barrier between them and the Vice President and felt disadvantaged
relative to the professional school deans in the competition for funding.
Albany's absorption of the Graduate School of Public Affairs generated
some problems as well. The GSPA had originally been developed by
ities to offer work in public administration
Syracuse and New York Unive:
to state employees in the Capital District. While it became part of the
State University in 1962 and was attached to Albany in 1966, it
cherished both its autonomy and its clusters of faculty in public
administration, political science, and economics. Ultimately, its economists
moved to the economics department in Arts and Sciences, but political
scientists remained with the GSPA.
New academic structures had to be created as well. A graduate
faculty and an elected Graduate Council appeared in 1961. By 1965 it
became apparent that’ the faculty had grown too large to fulfill its
responsibilities through general faculty meetings, Hence a committee
was formed, by-laws were written, elections were held, and in the Fall of
1966 a newly created Faculty Senate with an elaborate array of councils
overseeing almost every aspect of University life took over.
Long-time members of the University staff exercised leadership roles
during these critical years. Only seven out of thirty-seven administrative
officers in 1965-66 had arrived on campus after 1962. But by February
of 1970 only twenty-one of the fifty-eight people occupying administrative
positions had come to Albany when it was a college.
The very rapid growth and rising pressures of the 1960s made
administrators. feel like bronco-busters: ‘they used all of their time and
energy staying on top of things and had remarkably little control over
what happened! There were endless battles over resource allocation, it
was often difficult to get decisions made, and routine paper flows were
often dammed. Every University leader of those years can recount
horror stories of administrative confusion. There is a story that at least
one faculty member received tenure because the appropriate authorities
simply overlooked the need for a tenure decision. Yet no major scandals
emerged, and the job of building a university got done.
In the Spring of 1969, as Collins approached his retirement, he
appointed an internal Committee on the Organization of the University.
Committee laid out some principles to guide Albany into the
1970s. It was a useful moment of stock-taking, and the Committee's
principles were sound, even if their assumptions of future growth were
prove false. Effective reorganization of the institution was left to
another generation.
A faculty of around 115 in the early 1950s doubled to 244 by 1962-
2 and then trebled to 746 by 1970, Recruiting a faculty of such a size
would have been a huge task at any time, but recruitment in the 1960s
was complicated by some special circumstances, Competition for qualified
ulty was fierce. Every college and university in the nation was seeking
faculty to meet the flood of students, and Albany was not the only
former teacher-training institution trying to become a university. The
ademic marketplace was ill-organized in the early 1960s, and success
or failure often depended on personal contacts. Albany sensibly required
that every candidate be interviewed before being offered an appointment,
“ur the University had no funds to bring people in for such interviews.
Some candidates paid their own way to Albany, while others were
interviewed by department chairs in airports or at professional meetings.
‘n the early 1960s, Collins let it be known that
he thought some chairs were afraid to recruit
taculty more able than they were. One chairman
v~esponded flippancly that he just hadn’t been
able to find anyone smarter than himself!
Recruitment was helped by rising faculty
salaries. In the early 1960s, Albany did not fare
well compared with other public doctoral-granting
universities. In 1963-64 Albany got mediocre
“C" ratings in the annual AAUP faculty
compensation studies. But that changed. The
old system of ranks and salary grades which
governed promotions and salary increases slowly
broke down, and by 1969-70 Albany achieved
an “A” or “AA” rating for its faculty
compensation,
30
Students moved into the new campus begin.
-ning in 1964 with Dutch Quad, the first
residence hall completed. Most classes were
held uptown by 1966. (Opposite) Fraternities
and sororities continued to be an active part
of campus life throughout the 60s as this
Sigma Tau Beta rush in 1968 illustrates,
(Photo by Steve Lobel, '70.)
132
Albany clearly had become competitive, and it showed in the credentials
of the faculty. The proportion holding the doctorate rose from roughly
half in the early 1960s to more than two-thirds in 1970. The University
recruited both young people and senior professors, although the most
effective strategy was fiercely debated. Turnover was relatively low. In
1968-69 only 11 percent of the full-time faculty had to be replaced for
all reasons: death, retirement, movement elsewhere, and failure to
reappoint. But the faculty had grown so rapidly that by 1970-71, 61
percent of the full-time faculty had been ‘on campus less than five years,
and 38 percent had arrived since 1968, From 1966 to 1970, between
75 and 104 new faculty arrived on campus each fall.
Faculty recruited before 1962 were in an uncomfortable position. As
Collins observed in a 1984 oral history interview, “the senior members
of the faculty who had been selected and who developed according to
one pattern, now were no longer the wise old heads.” They lost their
leadership positions and watched new faculty with research reputations
get the promotions. “At the same time,” Collins noted, “we were asking
these old timers to hold things together and to do this planning for the
future.” “It was,” he added, “an agonizing time for a lot of people...
change was being forced on them faster than they could accommodate
to it, or should be asked to.”
He cited Ralph Beaver as an example of this process. Beaver had
been a long-time chair of the mathematics department and leader of the
College for Teachers faculty, Like most of those faculty, he was a
superior teacher who had done no publishable research. Collins was
deeply grateful when Beaver offered ‘to step
aside as chair, permitting the President to recruit
seventeen people in two years and create a new
mathematics department oriented toward graduate
instruction and research.
AliMest’two-thindaioh the {aculey lik place 1A
1961 were still there a decade later. Their
fortunes varied: some retired, some made the
transition and played productive roles in the
new university, and others lingered on, feeling
under-appreciated,
|
{
tI
The hallmark of a university is graduate study
through the doctorate, and the College had begun
developing plans for an Ed.D. in Educational
Administration in the early 1950s, By 1958,
Collins was seeking an Ed.D. in student
personnel services and was proposing develop-
ment of a Ph.D. in humanities or social studies
to prepare college teachers. But authorization
was slow to come. The Ed.D. in Educational
Administration was approved only in 1959-60
and began accepting students in the Fall of 1960.
The new mission given the University in
1962 meant very rapid expansion of graduate
work. To oversee this development, Collins
formed in the Spring of 1961 a Graduate Faculty
which in turn elected a Graduate Council. The
Graduate Council (which became the Graduate Academic Council with
the organization of the Faculty Senate in 1966) and the Office of
Graduate Studies under the watchful eye of Dean Edgar Flinton took
the responsibility for reviewing and tracking the new programs. The
growth was explosive. The 1962-63 Bulletin showed one Ed.D, program
in Educational Administration, one University Certificate program,
and nineteen master’s degree programs, six of them in education. The
1970-71 Graduate Bulletin revealed twenty-six doctoral programs, seven
university certificate programs, and fifty-two master’s degree programs.
Roughly 200 new graduate courses were added during the 1967-68
academic year alone. Three to four new doctoral programs were introduced
annually between 1962 and 1969.
The process varied greatly from field to field. Many arts and sciences
departments modified a few requirements and generated new master's
programs from existing teacher-education-oriented programs. Graduate
degrees in the School of Education multiplied logically from the original
Ed.D. and used long-established faculty. English and history Ph.D.s were
based on presumed faculty strengths in the’College of the 1950s, although
the faculty there had to develop doctoral programs while teaching rapidly
Mmcreasing numbers of undergraduates. The School of Business had to
133
The two campuses were, and still are, con-
nected by University-operated buses.
134
build a completely new staff
oriented toward business rather
than business education. Other
schools, such as social welfare,
started from scratch, building a
faculty and program concurrently,
while criminal justice had the
luxury of being able to assemble
a high-quality faculty and plan its
program carefully before teaching
a single student.
Inevitably, the results were
mixed. The number of master’s degrees awarded rose rapidly from 293
in 1962-63 to 1,108 in 1970-71. The number of doctorates awarded
grew much more slowly; the first two were awarded in 1962-63, there
wete twenty for 1968-69 and fifty-two in 1970-71. The School of
Education flourished. It offered a broad range of programs to a large
constituency of public school teachers and administrators, eager to
enhance their skills and credentials. Education enrolled about 40 percent
of the graduate students in the University and conferred the majority of
the doctorates, Other schools had greater difficulty in attracting qualified
students and helping them complete their degrees in a reasonable time.
A few such as criminal justice achieved almost immediate distinction.
By the end of the decade a few warning signs. began to appear. A
1967-68 ad hoc committee, charged with examining many facets of
doctoral study at Albany, concluded “that a good case can be made for
the thesis that this institution has proceeded too rapidly on too many
fronts in developing graduate work.” Three years later the visiting team
from the Middle States Association expressed similar reservations. In the
exuberant atmosphere of growth at the time, few took note of such cavils.
At the heart of advanced graduate study is research—faculty and graduate
students working at the forefront of their disciplines to advance human
knowledge. If the research achievements of the 1960s seem sparse, the
institutional arrangements for future success were being put in place.
Universities encourage faculty research by providing incentives.
Characteristically, Albany used both the carrot and the stick. Research
slowly but surely became a central consideration in appointments,
tenure decisions, promotions and salary increases, fueling endless debates
about the relative importance of teaching and research.
Faculty members needed time for their scholarly pursuits. One way of
i ing it w d hing loads. Bi had ach th
i getting it was to reduce teaching loads. But someone had to teach the
i burgeoning numbers of undergraduates. The practice of varying teaching
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loads was inevitable, but it also raised some serious problems of equity. At
the end of the decade the student/faculty ratio in social and behavioral
sciences stood at 19:1 as compared with 12.5:1 in sciences and mathematics
and 13:1 in the professional schools. The first group's faculty felt
‘ aa deed S nsf ly | teaching loads within 2 tm ftom Albany competed on the
f I" a aga st. milarl rerentia a acls v
discriminated against. Similarly di ntial teaching. loads within. ionally televised G.E. College Bow! in
departments produced complaints of inequity. Faculty support services January 1966, the first time a State University
often seemed inadequate. The sciences complained of shortages of laboratory pi New Tork’instituiannwas represented,
The team lost by the narrowest margin, “by
equipment and supplies, and there was never enough travel money to the split second of a reflex action at the final
support trips to professional meetings, much less research-related travel. whistle,” according to a reporter.
135
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Administrators for the new University: (below)
Webb Fiser, Vice President for Academic
Affairs; (Opposite page, top) Clifton C. Thorne,
Vice President for Student Affairs; (Opposite
page, bottom) and Milton Olson, a faculty
member since 1948, Dean of Business 1962
to 1966, Vice President for Business 1966 to
1973. (Olson photo by Liz Hannock.)
136
A research library did not exist in 1962. The library had been
inadequate even for the College of the 1950s, and a new building
always ranked high on the list of institutional priorities. The new
campus for the first time provided adequate space, and the size of the
collections began to grow at an astounding rate, The Middle States
visitors in 1971 noted that research libraries in the 20th Century
generally doubled in size every sixteen to twenty years; Albany's had
increased seven times in the previous five years! By the Fall of 1970 the
Library had grown to over 650,000 volumes, subscribed to about 7,600
periodicals, and had an annual acquisitions budget of over $850,000.
The University also began to encourage organized research activities.
Late in 1960, Dean Oscar Lanford took advantage of some local
opportunities to organize the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center.
Approved by the Board of Trustees in February of 1961 as a unit of the
State University, it was attached to and its benefits redounded chiefly to
the Albany campus. In 1963 a newly organized Department of Atmospheric
Science, separate from but related to the ASRC, began offering
undergraduate programs in the field, and by 1970 it awarded its first
Ph.D. Vincent Schaefer, the first director of research for the ASRC and
later its overall director, and weather forecaster Ray Falconer became
well known in the Capital District and had a knack for generating
popular interest in science, During the 1960s the ASRC both produced
serious scientific research and persuaded the general public that organized
scientific research in a university was an important enterprise, well-
deserving of public support.
The University also began the search for external research funding.
The program of individual faculty research awards begun by the SUNY
Research Foundation in the 1950s continued to provide significant
financial encouragement to faculty. By 1971 the University was also
able to report several substantial development grants from the National
Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation.
Undergraduate education remained the bedrock of the growing
University. Albany's long reputation for providing a quality education,
the new image provided by the new campus, and the Albany location
proved attractive to large numbers of students.
The evidence of test scores and rank in class suggested that incoming
Albany students were of very high academic quality. In the Fall of 1964,
r example, Albany chose 1,800 from among 5,000 applicants to
create an entering freshman class of 1,100. The liberal arts options
made Albany more attractive to males; by the Fall of 1971 there were
d imost equal numbers of men and women in the undergraduate student
body. The University admitted several hundred transfer students annually,
partly to better populate upper division courses, partly to provide
portunities for baccalaureate study for the growing number of students
in New York’s community colleges.
The conversion of a teacher-education institution to a liberal arts
hool went smoothly, although more slowly than some had predicted.
Departments quickly adjusted their teacher-education majors to create
conventional liberal arts majors. Departments newly established in the
"960s gave undergraduates access to areas of knowledge not available to
earlier generations. By the Fall of 1971, undergraduates could choose
trom fifty-eight majors, some of them interdisciplinary. They could
! pend a semester abroad at one of five foreign study centers operated by
Albany. In 1973 the first-ever undergraduate exchange program with
the Soviet Union brought cight to ten language students to the campus
hile a similar number of Albany undergraduates studied in Moscow.
An increasing number of foreign students arrived in Albany, mostly for
graduate study in the sciences and mathematics.
Albany's reputation for teacher education combined with a strong job
market for teachers meant that teacher-education programs remained
well-populated, In the Fall of 1964 about two-thirds of entering freshmen
expressed a desire to become teachers, and four out of every ten members
of the graduating class of 1969 had prepared for the field.
The undergraduate academic experience changed in many ways during
the 1960s. Certainly the old College tradition of small classes, close
faculty attention, and some degree of individualized attention slowly
disappeared. The average undergraduate class size rose, and some very
large classes appeared. By early 1970 Acting President Kuusisto told the
i faculty that in his weekly conferences with students, two concerns
continually surfaced: academic advisement (faculty seemed both uninterested
and ignorant) and too large undergraduate classes. For their part,
faculty interested in undergraduate teaching expressed comparable
137
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Faculty in the 1960s: (Top, left)
Merlin Hathaway joined the staff in
1944 and oversaw the rapid expansion of
physical education and intercollegiate athletics
in the 1960s. (Top, right) Helen Horowitz
came to Albany in 1960 in economics and
became one of the most respected under-
graduate teachers in the University. (Bottom,
left) Mathematics professor Violet Larney
began teaching at Albany in 1952 and saw
the transition of mathematics from an under-
graduate teaching department to a graduate
and research-oriented unit. (Bottom, right)
Catherine Wolkonsky, a Russian émigré
scholar, had retired from Vassar College when
she came to Albany and established a tradition
of interest in Russian language and literature.
138
frustrations: crowded classrooms, poor
acoustics, equipment shortages, and heavy
faculty workloads.
The University had made efforts to forestall
such developments. In the early 1960s the
traditional freshman week orientation was
abandoned in favor of summer planning
conferences for incoming students. The
University College, organized in 1964, sought
to provide guidance for students in their
first two years before they chose their majors
and came under the academic supervision
of the departments. Ultimately such efforts
were not fully successful. Undergraduates
had to take a larger share of the responsibility
for their own. education. They seized that.
opportunity in the late 1960s and wrought a
major educational revolution (to be discussed
in the next chapter).
Between 1844 and 1962 the Normal
School and the College for Teachers, with
a clear mission—to train public school
teachers—had developed a tightly knit college
community. For the first four years of
University life, that sense of community
seemed to hold. Faculty, students, and administration intently debated
the future of the University in the coffee house, “The Golden Eye.”
Successive all-University symposia in 1964 and 1965 brought in
distinguished speakers and generated large audiences from both the
University and the surrounding community, Students busied themselves
modifying traditions, making them more appropriate to Albany's new
university status. The “Great Dane” became the new mascot. The old
State College News, after a brief period as the State University News,
was transformed into the Albany Student Press. The Pedagogue became
the Torch. The Latin motto of the institution was suitably modified
(with the aid of classicist Edith Wallace), The Alumni Association
acquired its first full-time director and a new charter in 1964.
All of that seemed to change with the move to the new campus in the
Fall of 1966. The sense of a small, closely-knit community with loyal
faculty, students, and alumni began to decline as centripetal forces took
hold. Some with strong ties to the University were disturbed, but in
retrospect it is clear that the shift was inevitable.
It was difficult to develop traditional faculty institutional loyalties
when seventy-five to one hundred new faculty appeared on campus each
fall. Research-oriented faculty developed stronger ties to their disciplines
than to the University. Within the University, loyalty to the department
or professional school supplanted loyalty to the institution as a whole.
Faculty resided all over the Capital Region; many
rarely came to the campus other than to meet their
academic obligations.
Graduate students, concerned with discipline-
oriented or professional rather than general education,
were separated from their undergraduate counterparts.
Those who looked for graduate student organizations
ora “graduate student ambience” on campus mostly
searched in vain.
Unifying undergraduate student traditions also
declined. MovingUp Day and the traditional freshman-sophomore
rivalry disappeared between 1963 and 1966, For many students tradition:
(Below) Randolph Gardner (left) came to Albany
in 1947 and led the College of Education as its
dean during the critical transition of the 1960s.
Richard Teevan (right) arrived as chair of the
psychology department in 1969. (Botvom left)
The Collegium Arcanum, from left, M. I. Berger,
*50, '52, education; Richard Kendall, '58, history;
Harry Staley, English; Walter Knotts, English;
Morris Eson, psychology; Kendall Birr, history;
and Arthur Collins, '48, English. Paul Wheeler,
sociology, was also a member of Collegium
Arcanum, which met eight to ten times a year
en 1958 and 1971 to discuss a book they
had read in common. (Bottom) Samuel McGee-
Russell (left) and Robert Allen (right), chair of
berw
the biology department, were character-istic of the
research-oriented faculty who were recruited in
the late 1960s and early 1970s.
139
In the 1960s the
University organized
the Atmospheric
Sciences Research
Center, one of the
earliest ventures into
research, which has
distinguished itself
since as one of the
world’s leading cen-
ters for the study of
the atmosphere. Pic-
tured (above) on field
research at Yellow-
stone are researchers
(standing) Vincent Schaefer, Larry Proctor, Dale Hartlief,
August Aver, Griffith Morgen, John Stockner, Austin Hogan;
(seated) Richard Layton, Charles Robertson, Thomas
Henderson, John Hirsch, Robert Smith Johnson. Schaefer
and Ray Falconer (right), became well-known figures who
generated a great deal of popular interest in scientific
research.
140
building seemed irrelevant. “Traditions are important to
some of the older people,” a young history student said,
“but we just do things we want to do, and stuff like no
freshman can look Minerva in the face, or patting her
nose or something, is gone.”
Albany’s students were socially less homogeneous than
they had been in the 1950s. Although most were white
and middle class, more came from the metropolitan New
York area than heretofore. Student educational and
vocational goals were clearly more diverse than they had
been a decade earlier. Undergraduates were separated by
residency: some commuted, others filled the residence
halls, and still others occupied private facilities, mostly
around the Downtown Campus. While the University in
1963-64 forced the Greek societies to give up their houses
and move into the residence halls, they continued to
flourish throughout the decade; there were nine each of
fraternities and sororities in 1969, some newly organized.
After 1966 the University operated two campuses tied
together by a bus service consisting of the University’s
“green monsters.” The downtown seemed remote from
the centers of University activity while the Uptown Campus
mained curiously isolated. Standard urban services
(shopping, entertainment and general service facilities)
never developed within easy walking distance of these
towners. A “set of wheels” became essential for those
eager to live the good life during their four years at Albany.
Student government tried to oversee student activities
a growing and increasingly diverse community. An
elected student Senate had already replaced the Student
assembly in 1956-57, but in preparation for the move to
new campus, the students wrote a completely new
constitution in 1965. The heart of the new system was
ene broadly representative Central Council; while it provided
‘.» diverse inputs, it lacked strong executive leadership
until early 1970s’ changes provided for a directly elected
otudent Association president and vice-president. Myskania
tained some judicial functions but became more and
more of an honorary group. SA budgets rose from $52,800
tn 1960-61 to more than $330,000 in 1969-70, exclusive
f intercollegiate athletics.
Much of the money went for the Albany Student Press,
sorch, and the new student radio station, WSUA, Student
cublications multiplied during the 1960s, Some, like the
Primer, the principal literary magazine, were supported
oy Student Association. Others remained independent.
The most interesting was Suppression, a weekly
mimeographed journal begun in’ 1962 in reaction to
David Boroff’s assertion that Albany students were “dull.”
As if to demonstrate the falsity of Boroffs charge,
Suppression’s pages were filled with provocative material,
especially opinion pieces dealing both with University
affairs and issues in the larger world. It showed considerable
ability to irritate. In late 1962, for example, the Roman
Catholic chaplain blasted the journal for alleged
pornography. In the late 1960s ir became increasingly
Vincent Schaefer
Vincent J. Schaefer, a self-taught chemist whe invented
cloud: “seeding” and created-the first artificially induced
show and rainfall, was perhaps the first person in history
who actually did something about the weather. Grand
hopes for his discovery—moderating droughts, reducing
hail, quenching forest: fires—-were never’ realized, but
lesser uses have proved valuable. And possibly of even
more value was his founding in 1961 and later ditectorship -
of the University's Atmospheric Sciences Research Center.
His deserving fame proved a magnet for attracting talent.
to what has become one of the leading research centers
on the weather in the world. Beginning in 1962, Schaefer
began broadcasting four to five-minuté weather forecasts
twice a:day over local radio, a duty that was in later years
assumed by his ASRC colleague, Ray. Falconer. So popular
were. his. readings of the latest and. future conditions,
delivered in layman’s terms, that he would have to phone
in teports even while ‘on vacation from as far away as
Canada, New Orleans; and Yellowstone National Park:
His forecasts in:1964 won the Seal of Approval from the
American: Meteorological Society.
A selfmade genius, Schaefer's only formal educaion
was asia teen at the Davey Institute of Tree Surgety.
Later, without'a high school diploma, he went to work
at General Electric Company in Schenectady and pestered
his way. into lab research. His ingenuity there caught
the eye of Dr. Irving Langmuir, the Nobel laureate: In
1931 he became Schaefer's nientor, supplying the young
(age twenty-two) man with science books that resulted
ina home-made. education. Together. during World
War Il they developed gas mask filters, submarine detectors,
and a machine to concéal militaty maneuvers by genera:
ting smoke ‘ 2g
Schaefer's. invention of cloud seeding began with
successful attempts to form crystals in his home ice box.
Soon he was able to duplicate the feat in the aemosphere
from an airplane, injecting dry ice into natural clouds.
The inventor died in Schenectady at age eighty-seven,
in 1993. (Vincent Schaefer is’ pictured in photo..on
‘Opposite page.)
141
“The Cave” in Husted Cafeteria in 1965-66,
142
radicalized. Whatever its ideology, it played a lively role in campus life
until its demise in 1969.
SA expenditures for arts and entertainment burgeoned during the
1960s. The Council for Contemporary Music, Dramatics Council,
Music Council, and Homecoming each received 1969-70 appropriations
in the $10,000 to $25,000 range. Student support shifted from traditional
high culture (classical music) to popular music and rock groups. The
1968-69 year included visits from folk singers like Judy Collins, Theodore
Bickel, and Tom Paxton, pop groups like Union Gap, and above all
others, the icon of late 1960s rock, Janis Joplin.
Student interest groups multiplied. SA appropriations for 1969-70
supported among others the Albany Film Making Society, Black Students’
Alliance, Chess Club, Fencing Society, International Film Group,
Judo Club, Outing Club, and a long array of academically oriented
student groups.
Students in the 1960s paid increased attention to community affairs
and social change. Student groups raised money and offered their
services to a variety of charitable causes. An annual “Telethon” in 1967
raised funds for mental health; two years later it provided twenty-four
hours of entertainment and had become the culminating event in a
week long “Campus Chest.” Interact, a student organization supported
by SA funds, worked with local orphans, while Greek societies collected
clothes for Albany’s poor or became involved in “big brother” operations.
One of the most interesting student
ventures into social change was the
Ebenezer Howard project of 1971, a
kind of experiment in community
building. It proposed building student
housing as part of a major
neighborhood development project in
Albany and sought to construct a
completely new community in Greene
County, south of Albany. The projects
never came to fruition, but drawings
of some of the proposed buildings
serve as a reminder of the ambitious
idealism that informed at least part of the student
body in the late 1960s.
Rising revenues from the athletics tax combined
with the facilities on the new campus brought a
considerable expansion of intercollegiate athletics.
Lacrosse, track, and swimming moved from club to
varsity status in the late 1960s. Women’s tennis,
solthall, field hockey, basketball, and swimming appeared
«s major sports. Intercollegiate football was approved
in 1968, and in the Spring of 1970 Bob Ford was
hired to teach physical education and to coach the
eam. With the opening season in 1970, Albany had
belatedly gained a central element in traditional
American collegiate culture.
As SA income rose, so did the claims on it, and by 1969 a crisis was
at hand. The problem was two-fold: student apathy and a legal challenge
to the student tax. In 1965 a faculty member of Central Council
uestioned an appropriation for the Religious Affairs Commission on
the grounds that it violated the separation of church and state. SUNY
lawyers approved the appropriations, arguing that payment of the
tudent tax was not requited for r
gistration at the University. By 1969
about 30 percent of the undergraduates were refusing to pay the tax.
The authorities finally ruled that students could make the tax compulsory
** they so approved in a referendum. One was held in the Spring of
1969. Less than 22 percent voted (a valid referendum required a 20
percent turnout), but the compulsory tax was approved.
Perhaps the most important change in student life in the late 1960s
was the abandonment of the principle of in loco parentis. The practice
had long been justified at Albany by the need to inculcate students with
the values and behavior acceptable in the communities in which they
would teach. But most students in the 1960s were not headed for
teaching careers. Many came under the influence of the “counter-
culture,” with its emphasis on individual freedom and self-expression,
and pressed for less University supervision. Faculty had neither the will
nor the energy to resist. Some had joined the counter-culture themselves,
all applauded the principles of individual freedom and responsibility,
ULN. Secretary General U Thant visited the
campus in 1966 as part of a Unive:
Seminar Series on Peaceful Change.
sity
143
144
Tiaked $y sate at ip
eon eae At aw,
Aha tl Cece Sebo ng
Sheed
State. Catloge.
Friday, Fels GIPO2
No. 1
Why "suppression"?
Davia Boroff, in an article for the Saturday Review, classified the State College student mentality
as "Tene and unimaginative,.,hardly intellectual.,.peevish about school regulations rather than
critical.” "suppression" is our rebuttal to Mr. Boroff, We welcome any intellectual endeavor, all
intelligent criticiam, All subjects will be considered: political, sociological, mathematical, etc,
We are out to prove a point.
Controvérsy gives rise to the intellectual, Rational criticism is a means of expression. Those
who would condem "suppression" are as myopic as Mr. Boroff, are as quick to generalize. We do not
seek to create controversy, but investigate situations which give rise to it and create from it.
Every member of our student body and faculty may write for "suppression". The freedom we enjoy gives
us 4 greater sensitivity. We all are capable of reacting to our environment on an intellectual plane,
“suppression is an optimistic endeavor, It denies “Intellectual life on campus is low-voltage”.
It welcomes dissent not for the sake of sensationalism but as evidence that Mr. Boroff leaned too
long and hard on Minerva and consequently was stoned by obvious and superficial. "suppression"
needs you and your ideas and we believe you and your ideas need "suppression". Place your contribu-
tions in the student mail under 5; address all correspondance to “suppression”, We are self~
supporting and would appreciate any size monetary contributions,
Yesterday Dark
Whisking about sharp pointed stars, these clouds
Blow from the sea dust, dusting the ironwoods
With cloudy feathers, They are movement and shadow,
Blow to this shallow rock from the windy trades
Dusting our calm night with outwaters,
With worlds of oceans and long, thready skies.
Sea wind whistles in the meshed fronds of dates
And coconut palms; it garnishes the corel coast
With swirly spume that luminescently lifts
Beneath the starlight; the libidinous breeze
Rustles stealthily the grasses, and makes
Tne long roll of the sea to roar,
Distance is desolate with the ocean,
‘The nights not close but world sbout,
And desire shifts nervously as the stars,
Stare puncturing electric sky, stars tusbling
In the ocean, distant, tumiltuous,
‘The night is sad and loud in cloud’ dust;
Pale ginger and the red hibiscus rise
Breeze lifted to scent the hollow ocean}
‘The dark leaves us behind, And it stirs
Flesh, the breeze, shocks the skin roots,
And then, in yesterday dark, the night
Blew out of the ocean distance you,
Blew promise and you to chasten dark sense
Of the stealthy tropical clouds, and it was Like
To the helmeman a Salem wind in a Clipper's rig
Beating down the gusty northeast trades.
Thomson Lyttlefield ~ Angaur, 1945
T.DsSalinger: Public Enemy Ho.1
ID Salinger has been probed and prodded from more
angles, from more points of view, than a microbe
when 1 was a freshman
i used to get blind on four beers
and write profound poetry
on the backs of beer coasters in myriad bare
and incredible dreams of hot-sweatered coeds
with buttered breasts and chocolate nipples
nights 1 used to lie there in bed the room
rolling around me delirious
and talk in great drunken voices of truth
never to be again or since = - Ken Taylor
Conservation
Who's this creature chopping at the tree
‘That's lived a century?
A thousand eyes of nature curse him
And when the tree falls
4n entire forest groans.
What's that, Mather?
What's thet noise?
Sleep little one-=
On the window taps the rain,
A candle shivers and goes out,
In the darkness below
Is the scrapping of a dragged tre
Mother, I shout
Tell him to put it back, - = Andrew Nedderman
Do you dare paint murals on the side of a house
when you're paid for production, not creativity,
with one color paint--white, and not care, But
why dare, in that you become an artist. The al~
ternative, I don't know...I don't expect to meet
him. B, Baker
being studied under a Ford Foundation grant. Another
consideration, therefore, of the creator of Holden
Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye), Franny and
Zooey (from the novel of the same name), can do
Little harm, and perhaps some good.
Selinger is a paredoxical figure. At one and the
same time, he is an anonym, and the most widely
acclaimed author of our time. That he should be
voth is a tribute to bis talent for, and devotion
to, writing, and that the public world should in-
sist upon trying to peep into the anonymity he has
chosen to embrace 1s a crime against his integrity
and his privacy, Furthermore, such publie prying
is an invasion of the tabernacle of artistic en-
deavor, and threatens the solitary freedom of all
artists everywhere, (over)
and most were otherwise occupied with pressing academic obligations.
Signs of change occurred everywhere: Dress codes faded, In 1960,
faculty frowned on female students wearing shorts to class, even in the
summer session. Viewpoint '73-'74, a volume of information and advice
for students, asked the question: “What to wear?” The answer was
“ANYTHING GOES! The ‘basic’ blue jeans or dungarees (depending
on what part of the state you're from) form the foundation of the well
dressed college student's wardrobe. The grubbier they ate the better
(wash at least six times before wearing). A patch sloppily sewn on here
and there, also enhances the appearance So, dress away. Be
yourself—sweaters, T-shirts, slacks, shorts, sweatshirts, jeans, mini, maxi—
it's up to you, Remember, ANYTHING GOES!”
Alcohol, drugs, and sex became important symbols of student liberation.
In January of 1968; alcohol became legally available in the Campus
Center, the Mohawk Campus and
Dippilill, and fourteen months later
the University Council approved a new
policy that permitted alcohol in the
residence halls. Albany students experi-
mented with the drugs of the day. Drug
arrests of Albany students were often
reported in the local press, particularly
from 1969 to 1971. Some students
apparently claimed for themselves a
traditional right of sanctuary on the
University campus. The Student Health
Service director argued that heroin use
was an infectious health problem that
should he dealt with in a non-punitive
fashion, but the University also under-
took vigorous anti-drug educational
efforts,
Faculty chaperones were no longer
required for student social affairs. Fa-
culty applauded the move for they no
longer felt comfortable performing an
(Opposite) Suppression, an alternative news-
paper, arose following David Boroff’s Saturday
Review article which charged that “intellectual
life on SUNYA’s campus is low voltage.”
Suppression’s editorial policy was that “all
subjects would be considered.” That stand
was condemned by at least one local clergy:
man, but President Collins stood up for the
students’ tight to free expression.
Rock icon Janis Joplin appeared on campus in
1968. (Photo by Ed Potskowski, Torch, 1969.)
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increasingly ambiguous function at such affairs. Regulation
of students in the residence halls rapidly came apart.
Women’s “hours” were first expanded and then eliminated
altogether; student “sign-outs” ended in the Fall of 1968,
Visitation hours in the residence halls were eased, and in
1969 the University Council approved a policy that allowed
each residence hall to establish its own visitation policy
by a two-thirds vote of the residents. Traditional concern
for student discipline was replaced by concern for protecting
students who might be arrested; alcoholism became a
matter for counseling rather than disciplinary action.
Faculty and administrator-enforced University regulations
were replaced by a mostly student-operated judicial system.
The demise of in loco parentis was complete.
In May of £969 the University dedicated the new’
campus, noted the retirement of President Collins, and
observed the 125th anniversary of the founding of the
Normal School. U.S. Commissioner of Education James
E, Allen, the principal speaker, described the process of
moving “Toward Tomorrow's University,” There were
special symposia on topics of the day such as pollution
and pornography. A committee identified and honored
125 notable alumni(ae) of the
College and University. But there
were also athletic events and a
chicken barbecue, and the alumni
magazine reported that students
spent a lot of time splashing in
the fountains. The celebration
reflected the many facets of the
new University culture. But there
hardly seemed time for calm
reflection on past accomplish-
ments, for the University was
about to experience several years
of turbulence.
Intercollegiate athletics during
the late 1960s included such new
sports as women’s softball and
men’s soccer.
147
148
[arin hen,
Students in the 1960s paid increasing attention to community affairs. TI
“Teleth
he annual
on” raised money for community organizations, (Pictured is a 1971 Telethon.)
“he most significant change of the late 1960s was the disappearance of the concept
of colleges serving in loco paventis (in place of parent). The University Council
pproved a policy in 1969 allowing each residence hall to establish its own visitation
Policies, Alcohol was permitted in residence halls the same year. (Exterior photo by
Tae Moon Lee, MLS, '66.)
149
Alumna Judith Mysliborski, 69, like many Albany students from this
era, ultimately pursued a career other than teaching. Dr. Mysliborski is
a dermatologist in Albany today,
Robert Peterkin, '66, MA '76, is director of the Urban Superintendents
Program and Francis Keppel Senior Lecturer on Education at Harvard
University’s Graduate School of Education. Formerly he was superin-
tendent of the Milwaukee schools.
150
Drew Zambelli, '70, is Secretary to New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.
Harriet Dyer Adams, MLS '60, was former head of the University Libraries
Special Collections in the 1970s. In 1993 she provided for the establishment
of the Biodiversity Program at the University in memory of her father, conserva-
tionist Charles Adams.
151
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Homecoming Parade. Sigma Tau Beta, winners of the prize for best float in the 1969 Parade. (Gift of Steve Lobel, ’70.)
President Collins speaks at the formal dedication ceremonies of the new
campus on May 17, 1969
Alice Hastings Murphy, MLS '40, director of the University Libraries,
addresses a gathering at the dedication of the libraries in 1968. She was
the daughter of English Professor Harry Hastings and Louise Clement
Hastings, a critic teacher in the Milne School.
153
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