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Chapter 5. Temple: The Urban University
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f i v e Temple: The Urban University January 2, 1970, was a cold, windy morning in North Philadelphia. I left my car in the parking lot and walked across Broad Street to the corner of Montgomery Avenue. It was 7:45 a.m., and hundreds of students and faculty were streaming out of the subway station a block away and getting off buses at the doorstep of Conwell Hall, Temple University’s primary administration building and nerve center. This scene presented a sharp contrast to Lincoln’s rural campus, where I had lived only a hundred yards from my office, with not a single high-rise building in sight. At the outset I perceived few similarities between these vastly different institutions. My new job as vice president for academic affairs bore little resemblance to my former position as president of Lincoln. For example, at Temple the English Department alone numbered well over one hundred professors , more than Lincoln’s entire faculty. Lincoln had exactly 1,131 students when I left; Temple, when I arrived, had 30,000. Yet I quickly discovered one common characteristic: At Temple, as at Lincoln, student activism was the order of the day; the main difference concerned the scale and complexity of the activism. Temple students couldn’t invade my home as Lincoln students had, but within one week of my arrival at Temple I was confronted with two sit-ins, one in the hall right outside my office door and the other in a small gymnasium, one floor above me. The issues were the university’s expansion into surrounding neighborhoods and displacing residents , and demands for the admission of more black students and the hiring of more black faculty. Imagine my surprise to discover a familiar face among all those in the packed gymnasium, looking determined and daring anyone to oust him. It was Tony Monteiro, a recent Lincoln graduate who had once had a face-off with my daughter, Lynn, when she ripped down some of his posters demanding that Lincoln change its name to Frederick Douglass University. “Tony, what are you doing here?” I asked. “I’m a graduate student at Temple,” he replied sheepishly. “It’s good to see you again.” temple university [95] Webanteredabitaboutthecomparisonbetweenthetwouniversitiesand noted that some of the issues and tensions between students and administration were similar. Despite the great difference in the size of the institutions, we agreed that, with good will, the disputes at Temple could be quickly resolved. Tony Monteiro later ran for Congress on the Communist Party ticket but soon gave up politics entirely and resumed graduate studies. Eventually he received a Ph.D. at Temple and became a professor in social science at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science (now University of the Sciences ) and, for one year, a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The other sit-in, outside my office door, was led by Milton Street, a parttime student who owned one of the many lunch trucks that sold cheesesteaks and hoagies on campus. He later became a controversial elected member of the Pennsylvania House and Senate – “the Chutzpah King of Philly politics,” the Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Tom Ferrick called him. And, of course, Street’s less contentious brother John, a Temple Law School alumnus, went on to become president of Philadelphia City Council and, in January 2000, mayor of Philadelphia. Milton Street and Tony Monteiro were good examples of students who led sit-ins and other types of protests in the ’60s and ’70s on issues ranging from advocating civil rights and opposing the Vietnam war to objecting to cafeteria food and dormitory rooms. Though some issues were more significant than others, there was never a shortage of causes to rally around. The sit-in led by Monteiro was temporarily settled by an agreement brokered by my staff and me to have a joint student–administration group clarify the issues and recommend changes in university policy. More serious and lengthier demonstrations occurred later in the spring of 1970, after U.S. troops invaded Cambodia, and especially after National Guardsmen in Ohio killed four student demonstrators at Kent State University on May 4. In the midst of one of these protests, an Army Reserve unit drove a tank down Broad Street, the main thoroughfare running through Temple’s campus, prompting demonstrating students to climb on the tank and take it overforashorttime.Thatincidenthadcomicovertones–somestudentstaking themselves seriously, others joking about the entire affair. Fortunately no one was injured...