From Tumultuous Events, Emerges a Redefinition of University Governance

The Columbia faculty used to joke that raiding Low Library in the 1960s was like storming the Winter Palace, the notoriously grandiose residence of Russian czars. Peering onto Low Plaza through their office windows as they look back on that time today, some veteran professors say that, in that respect, we have indeed come a long way.

After the heat of the April protests, May 1968 saw a cool-down of resolutions, complaints, and deliberations about issues highlighted by the violence. Before the existence of the University Senate and the Student Governing Board, administrators, faculty, and students were forced to examine their relationships with each other and the University’s code of conduct. Students and professors of 2008 can thank their counterparts of 40 years past for helping to inspire the creation of the University Senate, a body which joins them with officials monthly to make University-wide decisions.

Following the night of 700 arrests amid campuswide protests, a number of professors pushed for the establishment of the Executive Committee of the Faculty, a group which appointed a five-man fact-finding commission to investigate the roots causes of the “disturbances.” Headed by Watergate investigator and Harvard professor Archibald Cox, the Cox Commission reflected what many Columbians of the era thought of their University, and paved the way for structural changes.

In the eyes of many, the Columbia of the 1960s was disunited, its faculty splintered, its administration distant. As then-provost David Truman wrote in a June 4 message to all of Columbia’s instructors, both the graduate and undergraduate schools of the University and its affiliates “are the core of the University, and yet, as the events of the past weeks have revealed almost tragically, they have no means of collective deliberation and have no voice.” Its edges yellowed and frayed, the 40-year-old document reveals how disinterested the different faculties were in banding together.

“Normally the representatives of the Faculty of Philosophy do not have the slightest interest in ... proposals emanating from the School of Engineering,” Truman wrote.
A similar gap existed between the administration and the people it served, some claim. “People who came here from other comparably good universities were always struck by the remoteness [of the administration],” said Allan Silver, a sociology professor who has taught at Columbia since 1964. While Silver agreed with certain findings of the Cox Commission, he called it an example of “schadenfreude.”

“It was basically Harvard looking at us down its nose,” he said, recounting that during the uprising, universities of a parallel caliber told Columbia “to hold up the line or we’ll all go under.”

But despite this pressure from other schools, Columbia was the first to found a University Senate with the power that it now has.

In May 1968, law professor Michael Sovern proposed that to deal with the situation at hand—the disciplinary hearings of students—it would be valuable to form a collaborative “faculty entity.” Apart from a university council, whose inefficiency some reminiscently compared to that of the pre-French Revolution Estates General, Columbia lacked an “institution-wide body with the capacity to make recommendations,” Sovern, who became University president in 1980, said.

The conflicts produced by the absence of a cohesive entity were apparent in Columbia’s way of disciplining its students and gathering student opinion, Sovern continued. “The idea of due process ... of beating out justice was foreign.” That changed with the installment of the Rules of University Conduct, which currently govern student discipline.

Others expressed the need for more unity and more accessibility. “I was expecting more democracy from the University toward its students,” said Maristella Lorch, former director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, who was at the University in 1968. Her opinions mirror the observations of those on the Cox Commission who published a report stating, “The administration of Columbia’s affairs too often conveyed an attitude of authoritarian and invited distrust.”

The report also attributes some of the separation to geography. Columbia’s location in the city did not allow many professors to live in the neighborhood, nor did it allow an insulated campus community to solidify, the report states.

Yet current-day professors are quick to counter that. “Columbia was all-powerful. Everybody was on the scene—it was all here,” said Patrick Gallagher, a professor of mathematics who worked on the Ad Hoc Faculty Group, designed to formulate responses to the protests. “If anything, more people live outside of the city now,” he said.

Gallagher also maintained that the administration should not be seen as shouldering all the blame. “The administration was in an impossible situation,” and he said. Today, “the administration of the school is more cognizant of the need to be in contact with students than it was then.”

With the approval of students and trustees, the University Senate convened for the first time in fall 1969. “When an institution is in crisis ... you get all sorts of excitement,” Sovern said. “So the University Senate was really a high-powered body.”

But the same disconnect from administrators that inspired the founding of the University Senate was exactly what student groups wanted in their governing body. Like many universities at the time, Columbia’s student groups sat under the control of the class councils, who, along with the administration, made decisions about funding and recognition.

Those involved in politics, activism, and religion dreamed of a board free of administrative control. Their needs materialized into the Student Governing Board, organized in 1968 through the Office of the University Chaplain. “They were the most needy,” former Student Governing Board Chair Jonathan Siegel, CC ’08, said. The SGB saw modifications in the 1980s when it began to shelter community-service organizations. These ultimately branched off to become the conglomerate board known as Community Impact.

Since 1968, some nuances of University life have changed, too. A glance at the 1968-1969 bulletin shows that fall classes began Sept. 26, ending on Jan. 30, and that spring classes commenced Feb. 5 with finals wrapping up on May 29. In 2007-2008, classes began on Sept. 4 and spring finals conclude on May 16.

Due to a number of protests in the 1960s and ’70s that took place in the spring, “someone got the idea that something was wrong with the spring,” Gallagher explained.

The bulletin also lists a one-day Election Day holiday, which today lasts two days.
As the University Senate and the Student Governing Board live on, questions emerge as to whether they fulfill their initial goals.

Siegel is confident that the SGB upholds its original mission of working in students’ best interests. But because more groups have joined, the student-run caucus has lost some of the “small town-hall feel” it used to have, Siegel said with a sense of lament.

“I felt and I still feel that it gives the illusion of significant participation whereas students and faculty have other things to do,” Allan Silver said of the University Senate. “I don’t believe universities are democracies.”

“A good question to ask would be, ‘Does Bollinger find the Senate useful?’” Sovern said. He paused a second to smile and reflect on his 13-year tenure as University president. “I did.”

scott.levi@columbiaspectator.com