CHAPTER II: THE EARLY CONFLICTS

It had to do with architecture, but it also had to do with government . . . insisting that students be part of the formation of those decisions that will affect their lives.

-- David Finke, class of 1963[1]

Agreement on the values of civil rights and free speech did not mean that radical students and the administration had a common vision of community, however. In order to understand the roots of the protest described in the introduction, we must look back to the fall of 1961. At the beginning of the semester, students arrived on campus to discover a new building going up behind Burton Hall. It was a new dormitory, North Hall, which was shortly followed by South and East Halls. Students were quite surprised; they had not heard about any new dormitories. Even worse, these building were to be the by far the largest dorms on campus, built in the impersonal style of perhaps the least liked dorm on campus, Dascomb Hall.[2]

These events raised a number of issues for Oberlin students. Who makes decisions in the College and using what criteria? Why is there so little communication between administration and students that a major building project could be undertaken without student knowledge? Who is best qualified to make decisions that directly affect students’ lives? These were questions about the nature of the Oberlin community and the place of students within that community.

In October 1961, a group of students formed the Committee of 42 to address these concerns. They drafted a petition to President Carr, which called for “the establishment of machinery to ensure that faculty, alumni, and students have an effective voice in the decision-making process.”[3] Many of the 42 students in this group, including Rennie Davis, Barbara Bovee, Bliss Cartwright, David Finke, Pete Guest, Hoon Kwak, William Schechner, and Edward Swartz, were also involved in the civil rights movement and/or the campus political parties movement. It was no coincidence that these students were the first to act on the issue of student power.

This petition emphasized the importance of all opinions within the community, not simply those of students. It stated that “major long range decisions are the business of the entire community -- faculty, administration, trustees, alumni, and students.”[4] Students were not simply concerned with implementing their own views, but with creating meaningful communication that would strengthen decisions made by the entire community. After all, everyone had the best interests of the College at heart, and students believed that in open discussion they could convince the administration and the faculty of the importance of their perspective.

The idea of students as equal members of the community who deserved to be included in the decision-making process ran contrary to a longstanding doctrine of the College -- in loco parentis. Many faculty members and some administrators, particularly the Dean of Men and the Dean of Women, felt responsible for students’ moral development. Oberlin’s traditions at this time were a mixture of political liberalism and social conservatism consistent with an activist religious perspective. Faculty who were committed to this perspective tended to view the Oberlin community as a family and believed it was their responsibility to act as parents to students in an effort to guide their moral and social development.[5] Professor Albert J. McQueen remembered that “the very strong sense of faculty responsibility for the institution and its reputation and for students and their situations” was extremely important.[6]

The tradition of co-ed education in a religiously conservative environment led to a strict system of social rules. Students were not permitted to possess alcohol, own or operate a car, or marry without permission. There were dress codes for dinner, and women were locked into their buildings at a given hour at night. And perhaps most frustrating to students, men and women were permitted little opportunity to be alone together.[7]

Often these rules were even stricter than those students had had to obey at home. This led to widespread disrespect of the rules, and violations were commonplace. Since enforcement could only be achieved through constant monitoring, punishment of violations was largely arbitrary, based more on who happened to get caught than who committed the most flagrant violations.[8]

This system served administrative interests in some ways. Administrators could tell parents that they had these rules in place, and offer the examples of the few students who were caught and punished to show that the rules were enforced. At the same time, student pressure to change the rules was lessened by the fact that one did not really have to obey them. But once students started raising issues, as they did in the case of housing, about who makes decisions and why, more direct protests against the social rules began.

A critique not voiced by students was the fact that social rules were based on gender roles that were repressive to women. Part of the philosophy behind social rules was that the virginity of young women needed to be protected from aggressive young men. That is why women students had to be in their dormitories at a specified hour. Women’s hours also limited the extent to which women could be involved in making decisions in activist organizations, which sometimes occurred late at night when women had to be in their dorms. (For example, the planning of the Navy recruiter demonstration, discussed later, was done late the night before by men who could move around campus and do organizing work at that hour.) At the time, women students were usually not conscious of these problems. In retrospect Susan Kerr recalled, “I wasn’t aware of it at the time . . . the positions of men and women, any consciousness of myself as a woman . . . but looking back on it, I felt really angry about how male dominated things were, definitely in the College, but also among the students.”[9]

An alternative to the highly regulated dormitory and dining hall system was the student cooperatives. The first co-op, Pyle Inn, was founded in 1950. It provided housing for 28 women and board for an additional 28 men. The original values behind Pyle Inn included self-governance and revitalizing the “Learning and Labor” motto of the College.[10] In the sixties, the idea of participatory democracy came to be a prominent value of the co-ops, which served as an alternative institution where students could enact their community ideal while working to transform the College. The co-ops were student controlled and offered an opportunity to work together with other students in running dormitories and dining halls. Although most of the cooking was done by College-hired cooks, students performed many of the other necessary tasks. The co-ops were run democratically since they did not have a housemother to oversee enforcement of the rules. They were important to the student movement because they put into practice the community ideal which the movement expressed, and because they served as an organizing base for activism by bringing many radical students together on a daily basis for dinner and discussions.[11]

Every year the co-ops received more than double the number of applicants they could accept, demonstrating the immense popularity of this style of living and eating. Many students believed that the co-op system should be expanded to accommodate the demand. President Carr and the trustees were not certain that this level of student autonomy was a good thing and were concerned that students who ate in co-ops did not have to adhere to the same social rules that other students did. In addition to fears that the co-ops hurt the image of the College, there were also concerns about whether the co-ops hurt the College financially.[12] Although in 1961 the faculty voted to add a third co-op, Carr and the trustees delayed expansion and attempted to institute housemothers in the co-ops. One student recalled that “it was widely rumored he [Carr] wanted to abolish the co-ops all together.”[13]

The trustees established the Co-op Advisory Committee to conduct a study on the effect of cooperatives on the Oberlin environment. In March 1962, the committee issued a report, which demonstrated some of the reasons that co-op expansion was so important to debates about student power and community on the Oberlin campus. It found three ways in which co-ops had a positive impact on community at Oberlin,

First, student attachment to the Co-ops inevitably extends to the entire college as they fell happy to be part of an institution which provides satisfying experiences. Second, the enthusiasm for studies and extra-curricular activities carries over to their many contacts with other students and helps integrate all of them into an active community life. Third, far from isolating students, the Co-op environment generates the curiosity and desire to do things which lead its members to increasing involvement with other students in a multitudes of activities.[14]

Another noted advantage was the experience with self-government. The report observed that though co-opers had greater freedom, they also had greater responsibility. Overall, the impact of cooperatives was seen to be beneficial for community at Oberlin. The fact that many activist leaders were involved in co-ops shows the importance of the ideals that they represented to these students. These ideals included participation in decision making and working together with other students. Combined they provided a supportive environment for political activity which in turn attracted more activists to the co-ops.

The co-op controversy highlighted the different notions of community held by students, administrators, and faculty during this period. Carr and the trustees, from their corporate perspective, were concerned about both the direct financial impact of co-ops and the impact on the College’s image and consequently donations. They were also concerned the co-ops might undermine their authority. Carr expressed his fear that if the co-ops system were expanded “it would be difficult or impossible to alter its character or abolish it entirely, however strong the case against its continuance might seem to be at some moment in the future.”[15] Many of the faculty members were concerned about students’ social, moral, and intellectual development. They were inclined to support co-ops if they believed that they were a valuable learning experience for students. The Co-op Advisory Committee Study seemed to indicate that this was the case.

Students saw institutions like the co-ops as invaluable in the development of the Oberlin community. Co-ops provided a desirable example of the use of participatory democracy to create community. The large number of applications the co-ops received was seen as an endorsement of this type of community by students. The goal of activists was to transform Oberlin into such community.

These issues led to confrontations in the 1962-1963 school year. In October two male students were suspended for violating the alcohol rule and 400 students protested this decision at an Arch 10. Students saw the suspensions as an attempt to frighten students into compliance with the rule, which was an “unwise infringement of student rights.”[16] In February 1963 a group called the Committee for a Greater Voice in the Decision Making Process organized a mass exodus and all-night off-campus protest meeting. Over three hundred students had agreed to participate when the event was canceled because the administration had been informed.[17] The planned protest was criticized by many students as irresponsible and the Committee for Saturday Night Open Houses encouraged students to work through proper channels to achieve reforms.[18]

Much of the frustration focused, rightly or wrongly, on President Carr who seemed inaccessible and stodgy to many students. On April 1, 1963 a group of 150 students held a spontaneous midnight protest in which they marched on President Carr’s house to protest current administration social policy. They chanted, “We want a voice!” President Carr was horrified.[19] A second nighttime march to Carr’s house occurred the following week, but was far more orderly. A representative of the 200 students presented Carr with issues on which they wanted him to take a stand at the following Thursday’s assembly.[20]

That Thursday, April 18, 1963 at eleven in the morning, 800 students gathered with picket signs and flyers in a silent protest. This demonstration involved more students than almost any other during the decade. Their reasons for protest spanned housing, co-op expansion, social rules, and student-administration communication. Many of the organizers were seniors, including Pete Guest, William Schecher, Bob Ellickson, Daniel Gomez-Ibanez, Dan Kosman, Anne Mathers, Ken Mostow, and Georgia Tufts; these students represented the last class of current students that remembered Oberlin before President Carr. They appealed to the “Old Oberlin” in which the individual was valued, student opinion was solicited, and morality was more important than image; in other words, they are appealing to what they believed the substance of the Oberlin community should be. In a statement to the press, one senior said, “[T]he basis of the demonstration was the feeling that Oberlin is changing from an individualistic and pluralistic college . . . and that students are worried for the future, that it will become less individualistic, that opportunities for activity on the part of students as individuals are diminishing.”[21]

The protest itself was silent and dignified. Men wore jackets and ties; women wore dresses. Although students had planned to stand during parts of Carr’s speech to which they objected, no one actually stood. Carr’s talk was in no way disrupted, and he was able to outline his views on a variety of the issues students had raised in debates and demonstrations during the year. He largely dismissed all student concerns except to say that “from this point on [the administration] is committed to the construction of only small dorms.”[22]

Students, even those who had demonstrated beforehand, sat quietly and listened. The integrity of the community mattered, and this dictated that everyone, including the administration, have an opportunity to present their views. All the student protestors wanted was the same in return. One senior stated unequivocally, “We’re not looking for a dictatorship of the student body.”[23] Students at this point were just asking for a more meaningful dialogue.

The student notion of community was articulated best by Bliss Cartwright, Student Council President, in his “state of the campus” address in February 1962. He was responding to an address given by President Carr the previous fall, which had called for Oberlin students to give up lesser freedoms, like dressing however one likes, in exchange for the greater freedoms Oberlin offers, such as free expression. Cartwright challenged Carr’s portrait of Oberlin as a democratic community and instead argued that Oberlin was run “as a corporation composed of trustees who rule, professors who teach, students who learn, and administrators who administrate.”[24]

Cartwright contended that it was not community that obliged Oberlin students to give up the right to regulate their own social and community life but the requirements of the corporation. Cartwright pointed out that there is no direct connection between social rules and free expression. As a result of the Oberlin-as-a-corporation model, many students felt isolated and unable to participate in a true community.

Cartwright challenged students by asking,

(1) What kind of community should Oberlin become, and (2) What can we do as students to work toward this goal? . . . as students, I think we have a right to question this view of the Oberlin community. More specifically we have a right to question the restrictions and duties which have been placed upon us as part of our acceptance into Oberlin College.[25]

Not all students embraced Cartwright’s analysis, but many of the progressive students thought that he had hit on a core idea by making democracy a necessary condition for true community. He and others argued that if Oberlin truly wanted to educate its students to be responsible citizens, that this education would have to start with being responsible citizens of Oberlin College. That meant that students should participate in running every aspect of the community that affected them, and if the administration did not allow students this opportunity, then the College would be undermining the education of its students. In this way, student power was formulated as fundamental to the mission of the College.

These ideas appeared in the Joint Board discussion on philosophical issues related to social rules.[26] Joint Board, a committee of faculty and students, saw the ideal of community “reflected in the prohibition against secret societies, lack of emphasis on belonging to a certain college class, prohibition against cars, and in interclass dorms.” They affirmed, “All customs, rules, regulations, and practices must be ultimately judged by the standard: Does this hinder or further the academic-intellectual development of the student.”[27] Here Joint Board addressed some of the same issues that Cartwright raised and grappled with what they meant for Oberlin’s system of social rules, but this formulation of community was in line with the faculty notion of responsibility for student development, not the student notion of community. While Cartwright thought democracy was essential for community, many faculty members believed that they should be the ones to decide what was best for students’ education. This was motivated not by a desire for power, but by a parental sentiment that they knew what was best for students.

In addition to discussions of community, students talked about individualism, which was one of the substantive community values activists sought. Many radical students had chosen Oberlin over large universities like Berkeley because they wanted to be more than a number, and they valued the Oberlin tradition of dissent. The experience of alienation and dissatisfaction expressed by Berkeley students in the Free Speech Movement provided additional evidence for students of why the corporate model was bad for Oberlin and why participatory democracy was necessary to the true Oberlin community.

Were these issues something relatively unimportant distracting Oberlin students from work on issues like civil rights, as President Carr might have argued, or were they intimately related to activism in all spheres? Paul Potter argued that issues like dormitories were relevant and meaningful because they opened up alternatives that students did not see before. They got people moving in ways that could lead to radical change. Potter argued, “Dormitories and dress should have little enough to do with what we are really concerned with. They do have something to do with it, in that they are the elements through which the students perceive their environment.”[28] For example, dormitories were relevant because they led students to question the power structure of the College, and once they questioned that structure it might have led them to question others.

Working to change the College power structure was the major radicalizing process at Oberlin during this time period, even more so than civil rights activism, which was fully accepted. Social rules put students in conflict with local authorities in a way they had not experienced before. Through this conflict, students’ understanding of their relationship with the administration was altered, which made possible the development of new criticisms of the College power structure. At the same time, civil rights had paved the way for agitation over social rules by alerting students to issues of community and democracy and teaching them organizing skills.

The idea of community was the basis for demands for student power at Oberlin in the early sixties. Once students asked why the decision to construct large dorms had been made without them, they began to question exactly what community should mean for Oberlin students. The answer was participatory democracy. At this point activist students wanted their ideas to be heard, but they respected and valued the ideas of administration and faculty as well.

* * *

In April 1962 Oberlin hosted a National Conference on Campus Political Parties. At this point Oberlin had two relatively new political parties, the Progressive Student League (PSL) and SCOPE. PSL was formed to “provide Oberlin College students with a framework for greater participation in politics, broadly defined,”[29] and SCOPE was formed essentially as an opposition party. PSL embodied the values of the New Student Left at this time, and it promoted the ideas of community, free speech, and particularly student power in campus debate.

The beginning of PSL was shaky. When in 1959 a group of ten students began considering starting a political party, they found little student support and much opposition to the idea. Many students felt Oberlin was small enough that everyone could know all candidates as individuals; many also harbored a mistrust of party politics. Five of the original students were convinced, but five persisted into the following school year. Gradually the opposition faded as the party became more inclusive, and within a year PSL became a substantial force in campus politics. In 1961 SCOPE formed through the efforts of both PSL leaders and conservatives to provide an alternative voice in campus politics.[30]

The major issue of contention between PSL and SCOPE was whether student government should take stands on national and international issues. SCOPE represented many of the more conservative students on campus who did not want Council to take stands, essentially representing the student body to the world, with which any significant percentage of the student body disagreed. One SCOPE member recalls, “[Taking stands] seemed highly inappropriate for the student government in effect speaking for all the students, they weren’t.”[31]

To PSL this debate was essentially about the role of the student in society. PSL believed that students should be concerned about national and international affairs and that student government, as representatives of the student body, should take action on these issues. Their platform in 1960 stated, “We cannot accept the assertion that the student, especially the Oberlin student, is a lesser being in society, relegated to the role of mere observer in world affairs and passively accepting the environment imposed upon him.”[32] This debate about the role of students in off-campus issues was extremely relevant to activist students at the time who, as we have seen, were involved in a variety of off-campus concerns not the least of which was the civil rights movement, which drew heavily on student support.

PSL was not unconcerned with the on-campus situation. It advocated change in social rules, small dormitories, expanding the co-op system, and changes in educational policy. David Finke remembered, “PSL helped develop the ideology of local control, of student control, of opposing the doctrine of in loco parentis,” which argued that the College acts for students’ parents in their absence, and it was the first campus group to put forth a counter-ideology of community control and student power.[33] Candidates who PSL endorsed argued that, “If Oberlin is a community, then all of its members, including students, must have some voice in matters that affect the community as a whole.”[34] Early PSL members, including Rennie Davis, Paul Potter, Bliss Cartwright, and Jonathan Seldin, put forth a conception of community and student power that the campus would debate for years to come. They argued that community was intimately tied to participatory democracy and that students had a right to be involved in College decision making.

PSL also functioned on campus as a multi-issue organization much as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) did on many campuses. In fact, all members of PSL were automatically members of the national SDS.[35] The significance of multi-issue organizations was that they were able to put forth a more complete analysis of problems in society, and give their members an understanding of the interconnections between, for example, civil rights and nuclear disarmament. As PSL member and Student Council president Bliss Cartwright put it, “If Oberlin students ever hope to break the cycle of the car issue, the liquor issue, and the privacy issue, then this must be the year in which the entire student body does some serious thinking about its long term interests and how they can be achieved.”[36] This type of analysis often led liberal students, who supported the individual issues, to a more radical position in which they saw these issues not as isolated but as part of a system. This process of radicalization was articulated by Paul Potter, who later challenged students across the nation to “name the system.”

PSL was part of a movement of “new campus political parties” that included SLATE at University of California at Berkeley, ACTION at Columbia University, and VOICE at the University of Michigan. These parties came together for the Campus Political Parties Conference at Oberlin in April 1962. A theme of the conference was creating political communities within colleges and universities by strengthening students’ identity as students and “educating an entire college community to commitment to its values and to action in behalf of them.”[37] These ideas laid the groundwork for later student power initiative at Oberlin. The conference also gave students from around the country a chance to meet with other people who were doing the same things, discuss the problems they faced, and share successes. This meeting allowed active students at Oberlin to have a real sense of the national character of their movement and their power as students.[38]

Rennie Davis, a member of the class of 1962 who would go on to fame in the national anti-war movement, chaired the conference. In the introduction to the working papers he wrote,

The much stated purpose of the new party politics is to bring about a fundamental change in the student government world which would rather neglect than face the critical issues confronting the university and society . . . They [politically aware students] have argued that training citizens for an ever more complex world takes practice, that colleges and universities and the students in them must recognize the duty to demand responsibility and power in the world they know best -- the college community.[39]

Davis firmly believed in the ability of students to change the world, at least partly because of his contact with Kwak Il Hoon, a leader of the Korean student movement, which had forced change in the government of that country.[40] Jonathan Seldin remembered, “One of the ideas that started circulating in the early period when I was at Oberlin was that there were places where student movements could change governments.”[41] This view had a large influence on the direction of PSL and the student movement at Oberlin.

The conference was also important to leftist students at that time because for many of them, it was their introduction to SDS, the major New Left organization. Seldin recalled, “That was the first time I really had a chance to find out what SDS was, I’d seen the name SDS, but I didn’t have any idea what it really was.”[42] Al Haber, an SDS organizer, spoke at the conference, and many students were impressed with the organization, which seemed fresh and different compared to other leftist groups. Probably as a result of this exposure to SDS, two Oberlin students, Tim Craine and Dave Newburger, were at the next SDS National Convention when the historic and influential Port Huron Statement was written.[43]

Campus political parties provided the organization that allowed radical students to develop a multi-issue program and analysis of the campus situation. PSL was crucial in bringing to the forefront of debate values instead of grievances. These values included community and student power, and the organization allowed radicals to push these values effectively.

The debate over the proper role of Student Council ended with the collapse of SCOPE in March 1965. Oberlin continued to have a two-party system, but both agreed that Council should take stands on national and international issues. The new party, VOICE, was formed to be an activist party.[44] The following year, PSL collapsed and was replaced by SLATE.[45] These parties were much less ideological than PSL and SCOPE and served more as a mechanism for getting people elected to Student Council. From this point on competition between campus parties was no longer a significant site of political debate.

Organization was a difficult issue for a movement built on the idea of participatory democracy, which essentially opposed formal power and representation. Could a movement based on this idea work within given power structures and achieve the kind of community that Oberlin students hoped for? Oberlin students in the early sixties were still working within these given structures. The fact that political parties were a major vehicle for organization indicates that these students had not discarded the old structures.

In the 1963-1964 school year, the Mock Republican Party Convention took the energy of many of the politically active students on campus. The Mock Convention was part of an Oberlin tradition held every four years; over two semesters of work went into the preparations for the event. In 1960, the Convention had spurred activism around a variety of issues. In 1964 some radical students, including Dennis Hale, were beginning to question the usefulness of spending so much money and energy on studying the two major political parties when “it is doubtful that they have that much to say that’s new.”[46] The school year in which the Mock Convention occurred was a relatively quiet year for campus activism, however. Many students still felt that the political system did have something to offer.

In the conflict over social rules, students had begun to come into direct conflict with administrators over the meaning of community. But what mattered was that students were beginning to question the power structure of the College. In response to actions by the administration that seemed to be moving the College toward a corporate model, students put forth a conception of community based on participatory democracy, which they enacted in the co-ops and attempted to implement in the College as

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[1]David Finke, interview.

[2]John Kingdon, “The XEX Affair,” Oberlin Review, 29 Sept. 1962, 2.

[3]“42 Students From Committee to Present Petition Criticizing Administration Policy,” Oberlin Review, 12 October 1961, 1.

[4]Jon Lipsky, “Group Seeks Views of Entire Academic Body Concerning Major Decisions Affecting College,” Oberlin Review, 12 Oct. 1961, 1.

[5]”College Social Perspective: Past and Present,” parts 1 and 2, Oberlin Review, 19 April 1963, 3-4; 23 April, 3-4.

[6]Albert J. McQueen, interview by author, tape recording, Oberlin , OH, 5 Dec. 2001.

[7]General Catalogue, II-27.

[8]“College Social Perspective,” 3-4.

[9]Susan Kerr Chandler, telephone interview by author, tape recording, 6 Dec. 2001.

[10]“50 Years of OSCA History,” Oberlin Student Cooperative Association, n.d., Oberlin College, 15 April 2002, http://www.oberlin.edu/~osca/about/history.html.

[11]David Finke, interview; Isabel Chang, telephone interview by author, tape recording, 10 Dec. 2001; Bernie Mayer, telephone interview by author, tape recording, 7 Nov. 2001; Peter Blood, interview.

[12]“50 Years of OSCA History,” http://www.oberlin.edu/~osca/about/history.html.

[13]Tim Craine, telephone interview by author, tape recording, 7 Nov. 2001.

[14]“Report of the Co-op Advisory Committee,” 24 March 1962, Student Life Files, Carr Presidential Records, Box 17, OCA, 2.

[15]“50 Years of OSCA History,” http://www.oberlin.edu/~osca/about/history.html.

[16]“Agitation Lead to Open Houses,” Oberlin Review, 17 September 1963, 9.

[17]Roberta Martin, “Group Cancels Planned Protest,” Oberlin Review, 15 February 1963.

[18]“Agitation Lead to Open Houses,” 9.

[19]“150 Students Storm To President’s House in Midnight Protest,” Oberlin Review, 2 April 1963, 1.

[20]“President’s Talk Focuses Protest,” Oberlin Review, 17 September 1963, 9.

[21]Press conference held by Pete Guest, Bob Ellickson, William Schechner, Daniel Gomez-Ibanez, Dan Kosman, Anne Mathers, Ken Mostow, and Georgia Tufts, 18 April 1963, Student Life Files, Carr Presidential Records, Box 5, OCA, 1.

[22]Bill Zeiger, “Hour Talk Outlines Views On Social Issues, Duties,” Oberlin Review, 19 April 1963, 1.

[23]Press conference, 2.

[24]Bliss C. Cartwright, “The Other Side of Community,” Assembly speech given on 14 Feb. 1962, Student Life Files, Carr Presidential Records, Box 7, OCA, 2.

[25]Ibid., 1.

[26]Joint Board was the College committee composed of faculty, students, and administration that was responsible for overseeing social rules for both genders. Women’s and Men’s Boards dealt only with the rules for the associated gender and structurally were beneath Joint Board in the hierarchy of power.

[27] “Major Philosophical Issues,” Joint Board Report, 1962-66, Student Life Files, Carr Presidential Records, Box 1, OCA, 1.

[28]Paul Potter, “Revolution, Dormitories, and the Student Movement,” The Activist, Winter 1963, 24.

[29]Student Affairs Committee Minutes, March 13, 1962, Student Life Files, Carr’s Presidential Record, Box 3, OCA.

[30]Barbara Bovee, “The Development of a Campus Political Party: A Case Study of the Progressive Student League,” National Campus Political Parties Conference, Oberlin College, 13-15 April 1962, C-13-19.

[31]Tom Mitchell, interview.

[32]Platform of the Progressive Student League, 1960, copy sent to the author by Jonathan Seldin, Lethbridge, Alberta.

[33]David Finke, interview.

[34]Jonathan Seldin, “Why vote for me?,” copy sent to the author by Ann Stromquist, Iowa City, Iowa, 1.

[35]David Finke, interview.

[36]Bliss Cartwright, “Oberlin Today and Tomorrow,” PSL Newsletter, 11 Oct. 1962, 2:1, 1.

[37]Barbara Bovee, “Campus Political Leaders Study Problems of Student Movement” Oberlin Review, 17 April 1962, 1 and 6.

[38]Ibid.

[39]Rennard Davis, “Introduction,” National Campus Political Parties Conference, Oberlin College, 13-15 April 1962, document in the possession of author, 1.

[40]Jonathan Seldin, interview.

[41]Ibid.

[42]Ibid.

[43]Tim Craine, interview.

[44]“Scope Kicks Bucket, Activist Party Forms,” Oberlin Review, 19 March 1965, 1.

[45]Mike Poxon, “Slate to Seek Social Reform,” Oberlin Review, 18 March 1966, 1.

[46]Dennis Hale, “And With A Cast Of Thousands,” Counterclockwise, Oberlin, OH, Spring 1964, p.11.