INTRODUCTION
The years from 1970 to 1976 make up a pivotal period in the story of Ursinus College. As the period began, the college was celebrating its first hundred years and the start of its second century. At the same time, tensions were rising in the college community over important institutional principles and priorities. For the remainder of the six-year period, Ursinus people gave a good deal of their time and energy to disputes over these principles and priorities. The college was trying to maintain its course in the wake of the social, political, and educational upheavals of the late 1960s. It was doing so in a climate of national crisis--the product of chronic stagnation and inflation in the economy and of the heavy clouds caused by Vietnam and Watergate.
President William S. Pettit took office on 1 November 1970 and retired on 1 November 1976. Throughout, he stood at the center of the disputes, and he steered the college through the troubled climate. He had advice in these difficult tasks from his predecessor in office, Donald L. Helfferich, '21, (1958-1970), who stayed on the scene in the newly created position of chancellor.
Although the disputes and pressures made these years unique, the events of the period also bore witness to the tenacity of traditional Ursinus life. Familiar faculty practices and student activities persisted in the face of changing times. The board of directors held to a cautious approach in education and management. The alumni remained grateful and loyal. The mission in liberal education prevailed.
This hypertext about Ursinus College in this interesting period falls into two parts.
Part One, A Chronicle of Selected Events, is an attempt to reconstruct the chronological outline of what happened in that period. Along the way, it also seeks to recall something of the flavor and feeling of the time.
Chapter 1, A Summary, presents a chronologically organized listing of selected events. A single sentence states each dated event. Read from start to finish, this assemblage of facts should give readers a concise impression of the tide of life at Ursinus in the six-year period.
The remaining chapters expand upon the one-sentence items in Chapter 1, A Summary. Following each item listed in Chapter 1, a hyperlink takes readers to an expanded note with additional information or comment dealing with that item.
Readers who jump to such an expanded note will find it in a chapter or subsection of a chapter also organized as a chronological listing. All the expanded notes in that chapter or subsection deal with the same functional topic. By reading that chronological collection of expanded notes from start to finish, readers may get an account of the major developments surrounding that topic during the entire 1970-1976 period.
The expanded notes in the various chapters do not treat events uniformly. Some are brief; some go on at length. As a whole, they no doubt omit a good deal of interesting or important information about Ursinus in this period. Sometimes they include material of slight significance to the larger institutional story. In truth, I allowed my personal recollections and experiences to influence these omissions and inclusions. I was vice president for administrative affairs throughout the 1970-1976 period. This gave me an unavoidable perspective on what took place and why.
I hope that readers will excuse whatever idiosyncrasies result from my selective approach to the chronicle. Perhaps some will even understand why I felt that the approach would have some value. It results in notes that permit a participant's personal slant without (I hope) blurring the facts too much.
All the chapter headings and their subheadings for Part One can be opened through hyperlinks from the Contents page.. Readers may find it informative to take a bird's-eye view of the whole text by scrolling through that page.
For the functional chapter headings and subheadings of the Contents, I referred to a valuable book on archival practice: Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities, by Helen Willa Samuels (Metuchen, NJ & London: The Society of American Archivists and The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992).
The departmental structure of colleges and universities changes over time. Because of this, Samuels saw the need for a different organizing principle in documenting the life of educational institutions. She studied their generic functions and found seven activities around which to organize an archival record: confer credentials, convey knowledge, foster socialization, conduct research, sustain the institution, provide public service, and promote culture. Although her field was archiving, not history, Samuels's categories seemed to serve my purposes well. I have used nearly all her major categories as my chapter headings. I modified or omitted some of her subcategories to fit the circumstances at Ursinus and the nature of the available material.
Part Two is an interpretation of the events chronicled in Part One. The idea for this essay occurred to me while I was constructing the chronology of selected events. While at that task, I thought I began to discern a meaningful pattern running through those events as they appeared in the records and as they resurfaced in my memory. The essay attempts to clarify and set forth that pattern.
The resulting interpretation may appear to readers as a conventional historical analysis. They should know, however, that it is mainly an attempt, after a quarter of a century, to organize my personal thoughts about events that directly involved me. I was vice president for administrative affairs as well as an instructor in English throughout the 1970-1976 period and became president immediately following it. The two concepts that drive the interpretation--"parochial purpose" and "professional practice"--arose originally into organizing abstractions from reflections upon my personal experiences on campus in those years. Only afterward did I consult standard histories of American higher education to give them context and, I hope, some objective validity.
While writing the essay, I told myself that the passing of years improved my insight into happenings that at the time tangled my colleagues and me in their unfolding. Doing so was quite possibly a private indulgence rather than evidence of distilled enlightenment. Whatever the case, I make this interpretation available primarily because it is from the perspective of someone who was there. It is the result of an attempt to explain to myself what I saw taking place from where I stood. I make no claim that the text gives a complete or even an "objective" account of the college in those years. Despite my attempt to be clear about the facts and to organize them thematically, perhaps readers should approach the text as an "oral history" in writing rather than as a piece of historical analysis.
This text, completed in the fall of 1998, along with its two appendices, supersedes a version finished earlier in the year and distributed to a handful of Ursinus people. They should consider this the preferred text.
I thank Ursinus College for enabling me to undertake this project. David Mill and Charles Jamison of the Myrin Library staff assisted and encouraged me in many ways. Professor Ronald E. Hess gave me minutes of faculty meetings and other relevant material from his files. President John Strassburger read the original text and offered useful suggestions for this revision. All faults in the text are my responsibility.
Richard P. Richter
Fall 1998