At Berkeley in the Sixties: The Making of an Activist

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reappointed. The controversy did not end until 1952—after thirty-one professors had been dismissed—when the California Supreme Court declared that a state loyalty oath passed in the interim preempted a special one for university personnel. The manner in which this matter was handled by the administration left bitter memories in the minds of many faculty members and tarnished Sproul’s reputation. The special loyalty oath was one of many attempts by the university administration to avoid the wrath of red-hunting legislators through a strategy of anticipatory appeasement. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it back¤red.6 Tenney was forced out of his committee in 1949 after a committee staffer accused several legislators and prominent Democrats with being Communist “fellow travelers, dupes or dopes.” He was replaced by Hugh Burns (D-Fresno), a committee member since its inception, who was expected to be a reasonable and moderate chairman. The Burns Committee kept a lower pro¤le, no longer sponsoring anti-communist legislation or holding public hearings. But it did develop a network of informants to gather information on “subversives” and produce biennial reports. Its 1951 report “re®ected a renewed and concentrated investigation of higher education.” In his effort to shepherd the university budget, Vice President Corley developed a close working relationship with Burns, with whom he shared an antipathy to Communists.7 4 SLATE The Greek system—fraternities and sororities—survived wartime retrenchment . Most of the student political groups did not. Since the Greeks shared living quarters and gave their members points for extracurricular activities, they dominated the governing body of the Associ14 l At Berkeley in the Sixties ated Students of the University of California (ASUC) and ran most student activities. Nonetheless, as the student body grew in size and new dormitories and co-op units provided alternative housing, fewer students pledged; in 1961, Greeks were less than 10 percent of undergraduates and 6 percent of all students.1 The last hurrah of the Greek houses came in 1956 when the fraternities turned a pre-¤nals water ¤ght into a massive, destructive panty raid. Male invasions of female housing units were a campus fad in the early 1950s; over thirty colleges and universities saw their male students mount raiding parties of from several hundred to several thousand . While Berkeley students had rioted in previous years—notably in 1936, 1937, and 1948—these were largely prompted by excess football enthusiasm. On May 16, 1956, about 3,000 students invaded twenty-six women’s living groups, looking for lingerie. They caused $12,000 in damage before ¤nally dispersing. Those that could be identi¤ed were disciplined—two were expelled—and it gave the Greeks a bad name.2 One of those who was disciplined was Allan Solomonow, a freshman from Los Angeles who joined Alpha Epsilon Pi and became his class cheerleader. Allan was turned in by someone in a private women’s residence (not a sorority) who recognized him while he was prowling its corridors . He was directed to report to Alex Sherriffs, a faculty member in the Psychology Department and an advisor to Chancellor Kerr. After admitting his entry into and removal of items from four residences, he was suspended for a year. When Allan returned in the fall of 1957, the campus was a different place. Greek control of the student government was being challenged by GDIs, or God Damned Independents, as those students who did not pledge were called. Several had organized a campus political party, which they named TASC: Toward an Active Student Community. TASC was composed largely of students in the social sciences of varied, but mostly liberal to radical, persuasions. They felt that student government had become a “sandbox” where students played imaginary games that had little relation to the real world. They wanted it to address issues relevant to the current lives of students. By 1957, the children of political activists from the 1930s were going to college. Although still seriously outnumbered by the “silent generation ,” as their cohorts were called, they carried the political gene and a set of common values, which moved them to make waves. Kindred spirits found each other at Stiles Hall, in co-op living groups, and in classes taught by such professors as Wolin, Schaar, and Jacobson in Political SciSLATE l 15 ence; Kornhauser, Coser, and Selznick in Sociology; and ten Broek in the Speech Department. They brought in their friends and...