September 19, 1968
In a recent news story in one of the Madison papers it was reported that, ""led by influential Republican leaders, the finance sub-committee of the Coordinating Council for Higher Education question proposed faculty pay increases, new programs and administration priorities.""
Aside from the usual financial haggling reported in this story, the article, by accident or otherwise, clearly illustrates the nature of top-level education administration in this state.
The reference to the ""influential Republican leaders"" was not just a convenient journalese handle, but, in fact expressed the essence of the orientation of several of its key members. If the allusion had been to similar Democratic leaders, the situation would be no less contemptible.
For whenever such importantly placed individuals are politically oriented and motivated in their public duties, the vital concern of education becomes a political volleyball, or in some areas, a bombshell.
But this parlor game of the Old Politics can be a dangerous affair. New York and other major cities have already experienced violence as politics and education have become irrevocably entangled there.
And on the college campuses above all, both students and faculty alike have shown that they will no longer passively be the pawns of the political animals in the country. It is only a matter of time before these small-time politicians take the final step of harassment and repression and bring on further campus violence and quite possibly street violence.
But these politicians failed to realize this. Nor do they realize the new character of student activism on this campus. At their recent meeting, one of the committee members went through the usual harangue about cutting back out-of-staters, in particular, graduate students.
Although in this case the attack was not quite as direct or volatile as at other times, the implications remained crystal clear - get rid of those damn commie agitators from the East, and you'll have a good clean All-American campus.
A few years ago, this neat formula might have worked. This is now no longer the case. Typical campus ""agitator"" can no longer be stereotyped as having a New York or other Eastern accent. Today, the Wisconsin twang is growing louder within the movement. And the movement itself is no longer confined to Bascom Hill but is spreading to Sheboygan, Oshkosh, LaCrosse and elsewhere in Dairyland.
