Reflecting Back, Looking Forward: Civil Rights and Student Affairs (review)

As noted in this book's foreword, student affairs professionals were often in the middle of civil rights discussions and upheaval on college campus in the 1960s and '70s. We were walking a very fine line between our roles as administrators and institutional loyalty and our understanding that student development does not occur in a vacuum. How 18 student affairs professionals met this challenge is at the core of this new book.

The foreword, though not attributed to any particular author, appears to have been written from the NASPA central office and provides a rationale for that organization's support of this project. The authors of the text note in the preface:

The idea for the project originated from conversations between Gwendolyn Dungy [executive director of NASPA] and a group of senior and retired chief student affairs officers. . . . [They] believed that their administrative experiences dealing with civil rights and student protests . . . and those of others like them, have lessons to offer current and future student affair administrators.

(p. xiii)

The resulting stories are rich with detailed information, photographs from a number of institutions, and a well-written historical presentation of the events of these critically important years.

The authors used a structured interview protocol to gather their data from student affairs professionals who worked at a variety of institutions during the civil rights movement. The professionals included were recommended or referred to the authors or were nominated from requests presented on the NASPA listserv. The final 18 subjects included two deans of students from institutions in the South who were responding directly to the integration of African American students; three administrators from small private colleges; six administrators from regional and commuter institutions; and six student affairs professionals from research universities.

The authors provide appropriate qualitative methodological descriptions and note limitations, including the lack of generalizability of the data. The authors point out that a number of student affairs professionals who may have had important information to offer have passed away. We as a profession have lost out by not having those stories available.

The resulting chapters are not only interesting and full of thought-provoking stories but are also filled with insights about the variety of campus-wide issues that arose during the civil rights era. In addition to the interview data, the authors were sometimes also able to conduct document reviews and included that information in the chapters.

A few of the lessons provided to current and future student affairs administrators are, I believe, extremely important. For example, M. Lee Upcraft comments: "I often felt like I was in the middle of the students and other administrators on most issues. . . . I was the person who was most relied upon to tell the administration what the students were all about" (p. 311). The role of mediator, frequently noted as a critical role for student affairs professionals, is clear throughout the interviews and is a role that we should never take lightly in student affairs administrative work.

Philip G. Hubbard's discussion of civil right issues at the University of Iowa goes so far as to state that "the president looked to student affairs to keep things under control so that the students did not embarrass the university or college and did not offend the trustees" (p 243). Hubbard comments on feelings of being caught in the middle and the challenges of helping both sides (students and upper administration) talk with and listen to each other.

While I very much enjoyed the stories of the individuals, I must admit that, as a professor and scholar, I was particularly drawn to the chapter that provided groundwork for understanding the role which student affairs administrators found themselves playing during this period. The civil rights...