Bethel at War 1914 – 2014

<< Previous Essay || Next Essay >>

One of the most significant issues negotiated during the Vietnam era by the Baptist General Conference and Bethel College was the concept of youth. Although an ancillary problem in relation to the Vietnam War itself, how the Conference and College understood contemporary youth is important because their reactions have bearing on the legitimacy of the Vietnam-related activities which took place on Bethel’s campus. In other words, how the Conference and Bethel variously understood and, importantly, judged the value of youth culture and action during the sixties helps us understand from a different vantage point how war-related activism on campus was viewed by different Bethel constituencies.

The sixties brought youth to the foreground of American culture to an unparalleled degree. Even the fifties — a decade which saw the emergence of the teenager as a separate social group with distinctive dress, habits, and culture — did not approach the extent to which the sixties dramatically reshaped the idea of youth. The cultural shifts of the sixties are well known, among other things encompassing changing sexual mores, increased independence from parents, and skepticism toward authority figures. As the decade progressed, youth developed a distinctive culture defined by new music forms of music, notably rock and roll and the protest song, a greater acceptance and participation in recreational drug usage, and an anti-establishment style of politics, summarized generally as the New Left. While these attitudes were hardly descriptive of the vast majority of young people in the sixties, they did come to permeate society in significant ways. Likewise, although the new style of youth consciousness was more prevalent on America’s secular campuses, Bethel did not escape entirely. In 1967 president Lundquist expelled seventeen students for alcohol consumption; a few years later, six more were nearly expelled for marijuana usage.¹

Although “The Sixties” are often thought of popularly as an uniquely-American phenomenon, in reality much of the world experienced similar social unrest and upheaval. Some historians, such as Jeremi Suri, have suggested that the global social unrest and cultural change in the sixties was largely due to the post-war population boom and an attendant expansion of higher education opportunities unavailable to previous generations.² In 1960, the first cohort of post-war baby boomers turned fifteen and over the course of the decade millions more followed. The baby boom was not limited to the United States only, nor was the social unrest which followed roughly two decades later when boomers came of age. Both affected the Eurasian continent just as much as the United States. Indeed, 1968-69 saw not just the infamous Washington Mall protests against the Vietnam war, but also mass unrest and demonstrations in many of the world’s capitals: from Paris rippled a wave of massive strikes which swept across the country (in protest against capitalist exploitation), in London youth demonstrated against the war, in Mexico City students fought a quasi-war against the government, and in Moscow, Soviet teenagers flaunted a subversive symbol of decadent capitalism: blue jeans. The relationship between population booms and civic unrest is not coincidental. As the German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn has noted, particularly large population explosions produce a ‘youth bulge’ which strains existing institutions to accommodate the excess population. When inevitable failures occur, unrest spills out into the social square, prompting cultural change and a reordering of society.

Against this backdrop of increased youth independence, American colleges and universities were forced to reevaluate one of their traditional prerogatives, the legal concept known as in loco parentis (in the place of the parent). Rooted in the English common law tradition, the concept allowed American colleges and universities from the colonial era to the 1960s to assume near total responsibility over their students — responsibility which extended far beyond academic matters into issues characterized by administrators as “character building” and pertaining to moral formation.³ The courts regularly ruled in favour of educational institutions dismissing students summarily for such infractions as having “offensive habits” or “interfering with the comforts of others.”⁴

All of this changed in the sixties. Motivated in part by the courts’ increased sensitivity to equal protection as a result of civil rights litigation, courts began finding in favour of students. The landmark case in unravelling in loco parentis, Dixon v. Alabama, was decided in 1961. Ruling in favour of a group of African-American students expelled for participating in a civil rights protest, the court relied on the fourteenth amendment’s equal protections guarantee, finding that public universities (such as the defendant Alabama State College) constituted state actors and were thus subject to constitutional strictures regarding freedom of speech. The next few years saw a bevy of cases which echoed the logic of Dixon v. Alabama, permanently expunging in loco parentis from the public university administrator’s arsenal.⁵

At the same time students at public universities gained constitutional protections, the courts robustly supported the continuance of in loco parentis for private institutions; in the case of privately-funded schools, there was no suggestion that a state actor was involved. Thus, schools like Bethel retained (and still do) the right to exercise a high degree of control over students’ lives, despite their sporadic legal and emotional challenges.

Throughout the sixties, Bethel maintained a variety of rules for students. Dorm visitation hours (defining certain times in which male students were allowed in the women’s dorm) and a women’s curfew were two of the most visible social rules; male students, in contrast, had no such restrictions. In addition, Bethel prohibited a variety of recreational activities largely through implied agreement. The 1950-51 academic catalog included this provision on student conduct, using language virtually identical to that which had appeared in the mid 1930s:

The faculty do not believe in voluminous legislation. It is expected that students who do not find themselves in sympathy with the general Christian emphasis of the school as evidenced in daily chapel services, Bible instruction, a life free from tobacco habits, abstention from questionable amusements, etc., will not seek admittance.⁶

A decade later, the same section was altered slightly to recommend that students for whom a “Christian emphasis” would be disagreeable “prefer other more strictly secular institutions.” The catalog also adopted language that recast Bethel’s lifestyle rules as enhancing students’ Christian witness, arguing (with a nod to the Conference) that “the founders and constituency of the school have been traditionally non-conformists and have adopted certain patterns of behavior which were intended both to challenge and to leaven their secular environment,” including abstaining from alcohol and tobacco.⁷ To those two specific behaviours was added drug usage in the 1969 catalog; otherwise, this social regulation language played a set of minor variations upon itself throughout the decade.

Through the sixties, the catalogs suggest that only three activities — smoking, drinking, and getting high — were forbidden. However, later evidence strongly suggests that there were other unspoken social restrictions operating at the time. When a more fully enumerated lifestyle statement appeared in the early eighties, the new three-page discussion included “social dancing, indiscriminate attendance at the theatre, and indiscriminate use of card games” (a prohibition aimed at gambling).⁸ For Bethel to have added these additional restrictions later in the century is out of character with the whole sweep of evangelical history. More likely, such pastimes would have been widely understood as forbidden in the earlier era, obviating the need to spell them out in the catalog. By the 1980s, the school’s student base had expanded far beyond the Conference; such students might have been less familiar than those who had come from families steeped in the morality of BGC churches.

Bethel’s restrictions during the sixties compared favourably with its peer schools. Wheaton College’s code of conduct excluded the same types of behaviour and added others, including a campus ban on theatrical performance and a prohibition against attending movie theaters.⁹ No such blanket restriction existed at Bethel. Interestingly, Bethel’s standards drew praise from at least one contemporary non-sectarian observer. Writing in 1973, Carleton College historian Merrill Jarchow observed that

With parietal rules all but eroded in contemporary academic circles, one cannot help feeling a certain amazement at the college’s efforts, grounded in scripture though they may be, to maintain bans on student smoking, drinking, social dancing, gambling, and the use of drugs. … It may be that a losing battle is being fought, but it is difficult not to commend the fighters and to admire an institution which dares to proclaim the standards it believes in — especially when those in positions of leadership recognize the pitfalls of “moralism, escapism, Pharisaism, perfectionism, and legalism.”¹⁰

❧

Over the decade, the Baptist General Conference exhibited two distinct reactions to the advent of youth culture. From 1960 to around 1968, the Conference reaction was fairly uncomplicated: condemn nearly all aspects of youth culture — music, protest, dissent, and activism. For Conference leaders, youth protesters and activists had engaged their energies in a highly dubious enterprise. Youth culture, including the new styles of music coming into popularity, was worse. Ironically (or perhaps predictably), it was Gunnar Hoglund, the Conference Youth Director and 1944 graduate of Bethel Seminary, who offered the most hardened opposition to restless youth. Writing in early 1964, Hoglund echoed the comments of a Seattle woman in uttering an ancient complaint about the quality of the young generation: “your parents do not owe you entertainment. Your community does not owe you recreational facilities. The world does not owe you a living. You owe the world something. Develop a backbone, not a wishbone and start acting like a man or lady.”¹¹

Evidently, the pursuit of education — at least when it produced certain effects — did not constitute developing a backbone for Hoglund. University students were treated with equal scorn:

… your rebel may be the boy who went off to the university. Now he’s back on home ground, a giant academic chip on his shoulder, all but daring anyone to knock it off. His complaints and outbursts of criticism seem endless. He grates on the pastor’s nerves, has his Sunday school teacher at wits ends, may even take to drinking and galavanting into the wee hours. Nothing pleases him more than to lampoon and ridicule the “institutional church” as he has been taught to call it.¹²

Hoglund was joined on occasion by the Standard’s Editor, Donald Anderson, who, although he displayed somewhat of a reactionary streak, was usually more level-headed than the Youth Director. Neverless, Anderson still participated in the Conference’s generally critical and dismissive reaction to youth culture. In response to the Beatlemania which swept the country in 1964, Anderson brought a stinging rebuke to young fans: “Wise Solomon said, ‘The babbling of a fool brings ruin near.’ Ruin to whom? The Beatles won’t last long. What about the hordes of dupes, being cheated out of realistic spiritual and emotional experiences?” After several sharp jabs at mod youth, Anderson concluded: “It is incongruous, yea, well-nigh impossible to squeal at the Beatles and praise God, plaster the bedroom wall with the Beatles’ pictures and hide the Word in the heart, emulate the Beatles and have a Spirit-refreshed personality.”¹³

During 1968 and 1969, Conference reactions to youth and youth culture shifted; instead of condemning them monolithically, BGC authors began to distinguish more fully between those whom they considered radicals — a small, hardened cadre of hippies, protesters, activists, members of Students for a Democratic Society, and the like — and a much larger group of well-meaning young people (perhaps echoing Nixon’s Silent Majority) whom they characterized as thoughtful dissenters. Conference youth were, of course, included in the latter group. Hoglund set up the new approach in a January 1968 editorial, describing the first form of youth dissenter:

the bearded, unkempt hippies, boisterously protesting everything from Vietnam to sex standards, so disorderly and violent that at times the police must use night sticks and tear gas to disperse them. They are the ones who say, “to [hell] with authority of all kinds,” who demand equal voice with the school board in running a school and whose unbathed bodies provoke contempt by all reasonable people.”¹⁴

Almost exactly a year later, Hoglund reprised his favourite subject, lambasting hippies once again as a core constituency of radical youth:

…hippies and yippies are, in our judgment, nothing more than a sick part of a sick society. They are first class phonies. Declaring themselves to be critics of social hypocrisy, they are themselves the worst hypocrites around. Pretending to be mature adults, they dread nothing more than the disciplines of responsible adulthood. They say they are non-conformist, but hippies are radically conformist in dress, conduct, thought and odor — and any assembly of them on the street resembles nothing so much as a flock of dumb sheep.”¹⁵

Youth protest movements were likewise denounced within the Conference. In a July 1968 article, G. Aiken Taylor made a connection between communism and protesters, both of whom he claimed were concerned with converting the whole person. While “liberal church[men]” were “fully committed to confrontation, to the demonstration, to the picket line, to the pressure tactic,” Taylor suggested that conservative clergy were collaborating with the enemy when they partook in such things as the fair labor practice movement. Taylor concluded “the Christian approach to social problems is through conversion, not through coercion!”

In the Conference’s typology then, the first of his two categories of youth was defined by a small core of radical young people whose mannerisms, culture, and goals ought to be condemned in the harshest of language. Thankfully, a much larger section of young people existed, typified by

the fellows and girls who have been away from home and learned the art of constructive criticism, of thoughtful analysis and temperate examination. Better educated and more sophisticated than perhaps any generation in history, these dissenters are frequently disturbed by what they see in our congregations: the gap between what professing Christians preach and what they practice, the surrender to materialism, the bland indifference to a lost world where 10,000 people die every day of malnutrition and where the vast majority have never heard — even once — that Christ loved them and died for them.¹⁶

Even as the Conference came to see youth as members in one or the other of binary groups, the BGC continued to apply a model which had served it well throughout the entire decade. In other words, as its sophistication in categorizing different styles of youth activism changed, the Conference’s diagnosis of the underlying conditions for youth unrest and its solutions to those problems did not. And in continuing to expound this model even as their distinctions between “good” and “bad” youth hardened, the BGC replicated in their youth-discourse a rhetorical strategy commonly employed elsewhere in their in the mid-century rhetoric.

The Conference model for responding to youth unrest had three components. First, Conference leaders were careful to acknowledge that the problems young people were concerned with were real. Feelings of loneliness and depersonalization in an increasingly bureaucratized society, the search for meaning, and a sense of uncertainty were all youth issues BGC leaders showed sensitivity toward.¹⁷ Second, Conference leaders suggested that at root, two issues were at fault for these feelings: individual sin and parental/church lapse.

Donald Anderson identified sin as the root of the “perennial problem” of youth protest: “rebellion against any legitimate authority is part of the inclination of the natural heart to shake the defiant fist in the face of God and shout a stubborn “No.” Furthermore, civic propriety and decorum reflected one’s relationship with God, Anderson suggested, writing that “a man who is submissive to the law of God is naturally submissive to the God-ordained laws of men.”¹⁸ The theme of parental (and to a lesser extent ecclesial) failure as a major cause of youth unrest was, interestingly, repeated far more often than the sin explanation in a kind of literary self-flagellation. In the same editorial, Anderson demonstrated the logic, writing that “[t]he blame for nuisance demonstrations and lawless riots does not fall upon youth alone…. [they have been] betrayed by an older generation that now stands by to gape and pick up the pieces and offer a return protest, albeit an ineffective one.”¹⁹ Bethel campus pastor Al Glenn also argued this point, suggesting that “[t]he fault lies in part with those of us who are parents, God’s vicars on earth who mold the habits of our sons and daughters.”²⁰ Even Gunnar Hoglund admitted that youth were not entirely at fault and that parents and ecclesial figures had a responsibility “to guide these young rebels and help them move sure-footedly through the swamps and pitfalls of these difficult years.”²¹

The final component in the Conference’s method of responding to student unrest and activism was to suggest that Jesus Christ was the answer to the underlying issues of student heart-rebellion and parental lapse. Jesus, Conference leaders argued, could calm the mind, provide a surety of purpose, and give life meaning and direction amid a tossing and turning world. The September 22, 1969 Standard contained an eighteen page clip-out evangelistic tract that illustrates the BGC’s logic. Making extensive use of social unrest to motivate a faith commitment and titled “Insecurity, frustration, fear, violence — dear God… do something!,” the tract was liberally illustrated with images from Vietnam, protests, riots, and newspaper headlines trumpeting the various disasters of the age.  The opening statement (“I find my world/ is bits and pieces/ with no thread/ of meaning/ To tie it together./ What can I do?”) anticipates the answer: “you can be sure that you are a Christian!”²²

When it first encountered the youth culture of the sixties, the Conference’s first reaction was to condemn in toto all elements which were not in line with the conservatism of the 1950s. As the legitimacy of dissent deepened, opposition to the war grew, and a broadening menu of causes — environmentalism, feminism, pacifism, — attracted support from increasing numbers of young people, the Conference was forced to distinguish between the “bad” youth (those caught up in the worst aspects of the counterculture) and the “good” youth — those who, for all of their concern and restlessness, remained basically quietistic and eschewed socially disruptive behaviour. At the same time, the Conference was careful to acknowledge the validity of many of the causes championed by youth. The next step for the Conference was to hesitatingly, haltingly, adopt the style of youth to further evangelistic outreach. This final shift occurred in the second third of 1969 and marked the final stage in the BGC’s moderation toward youth culture.

Conference attitudes towards even the worst exemplars (in Hoglund’s mind) of youth culture — hippies and anti-war protesters — evinced a softening in 1969; the earlier unanimity of opposition to these young people had splintered. In a joint letter, Richard Johnson and John Anderson of Illinois rebuked an earlier author who had criticized protesters. Together, Johnson and Anderson refused to denounce the protest movement as lawless and indeed, saw a role for the Christian in protest movements:

Furthermore, we think it terribly presumptuous to imply that those who rebel in our society are rebelling against “Christian principles.” Since when is poverty a Christian principle? Or compassionless affluence? Or ghettoism? Or racial discrimination? Or the loss of human lives in a prolonged war? Or the impersonalism of the modern university? Are these Christian principles? Despite the fact of some obvious excesses, no one is entitled to condemn the generation involved in rebelling against these social evils.²³

By July of 1969, the Standard had begun to co-opt and subvert the iconography of the hippie aesthetic to promote an evangelistic message, much as the Conference had done with other issues before. The “groovy” cover of the July 28 Standard depicted young people with guitars, sitting on the grass and singing, all over a headline proclaiming, “Their Cause is Christ.”

While most Conference leaders (such as Gunnar Hoglund) likely still disapproved of the hippie movement, the Standard’s use of recognizably hippie-themed iconography suggests that the BGC was willing to appropriate the movement as an evangelistic tool. Indeed, such a response was in line with broader evangelical tactics in the sixties, many of whom “seized upon the iconic language of the era to combine the challenge to the “status quo” with the promise of individual spiritual change. These negotiations,” a recent anthology on evangelical responses to the sixties argues, “suggest that evangelicals, far from condemning the sixties, sought to engage with and to contain revolutionary sentiment.”²⁴

The Conference’s reaction to the rise of a distinctly youthful style of politics in the sixties was conflicted at best. Although they did their best to ignore, minimize, and dismiss the student activism of the early sixties, the BGC was forced to make increasing concessions to the movement. By the end of the decade, the Conference had assimilated much of the iconography and language of the counterculture, instrumentalizing it in order to evangelize youth. That tension between condemnation and co-option was displayed in other ways, particularly in how the Conference viewed students. Although education was seen as a gateway to radical thinking, BGC leaders also saw thoughtful students — by their own definition — as an important counterbalance to the excesses of the student movement (one senses, though, that in this context ‘thoughtful’ meant ‘quietistic’). Finally, the Conference displayed conflicted attitudes towards the causes youth advocated for. While most of the Conference was undoubtedly not in sympathy with anything smelling of the New Left or student power on campus, some Standard writers displayed a degree of nuanced thinking of the subject, often recognizing that many activist issues — such as world hunger, poverty, urban blight, and race relations — were ones upon which their faith demanded action.

❧

Bethel leaders faced the most significant challenges of any of the three groups in responding to student unrest during the decade. Placed between the denomination and the student body, Bethel’s administrators (and to some extent, faculty) walked a fine line. With regard to the former group, campus officials knew that altering campus rules or appearing to be too friendly with the counterculture would provoke from the Conference another of the periodic outbursts of suspicion and outrage which had marked the school’s relationship with its denomination. Furthermore, the financial support the BGC rendered to the college during the sixties was still considerable; offending the sensibilities of the Conference and negatively impacting Conference tithing were the last things president Lundquist and the brace of men occupying the Deanship during the decade wanted, particularly in light of the increased level of funding needed to support the move of the seminary to the new Arden Hills campus in 1965 and the occupancy of the new college in 1973. However, as people placed in everyday interaction with students on campus, school administrators were much better positioned than the Conference to take the pulse of youth culture — a familiarity which might have impelled a moderation. And in addition to these external constraints, Bethel’s administrators had their own beliefs on the value of the country-wide unrest.

President Lundquist’s writings demonstrate that trio of tensions which his job forced him to negotiate: the BGC’s desire to hold the line against the counterculture, the student body’s desire for more liberal policies, and his own beliefs which inclined toward a balanced consideration of all factors involved. Lundquist’s sympathies for a more refined style of student activism were on full display in the 1967-68 Annual Report to the Conference:

Who can say which student demonstrates the most concern about the issues of the day — the one who abandons his classes and the orderly processes of law to engage in riot and destruction or the one who seriously pursues his studies in preparation for a more constructive eventual contribution to society. … In the long run, the quietest may be the most powerful.²⁵

While Bethel’s Dean for the first half of the sixties Clifford Larson would have no doubt agreed in substance with Lundquist, he was somewhat more willing to consider students’ motives when evaluating their actions. Writing in the Standard, Larson argued that “most of the [campus] “revolters” were not wild-eyed radicals but well-meaning youth motivated by surprisingly old-fashioned values. They [were] concerned to work directly on political and social matters in order to alleviate rapidly what [seemed] to them great evils.” In fact, Larson’s entire article read as a cautionary warning to the Conference not to pre-judge the ongoing campus unrest across the nation. These youth, he warned, were not communist dupes or spoiled, selfish brats (as Hoglund might argue). Instead, their concerns reflected deep problems in American society, and while their methods of correcting them might suffer from the characteristic brashness and overeagerness of youth, their causes should not be discounted automatically as antithetical to Christianity. Indeed, their concerns were often the concerns that Christians should care to address. Unfortunately, Larson argued, the church often stood in the way of such young people. For although Bethel had experienced some “resentment against the traditional ‘parent-concern’ which Christian colleges have exercised,” the church’s reaction to the crisis was far more important. Youth were “[rebelling] against the local church and “organized Christianity” as an increasingly complex enterprise, run by a few people who “don’t understand us,” working with out-moded rules, smugly self-sufficient, providing no message or program of meaning to contemporary college youth.” If the church was to avoid alienating a generation of youth, it “must understand them and realize that here is a great new dynamic that could ‘turn the world upside down’ for Christ, even as our spiritual forefathers did when the world saw them in “revolt.”²⁶

It is clear that Lundquist too, actively wrestled with the causes of student upheaval, and at times, extended empathy to such students, writing in 1968 that “[i]t is thought provoking to hear a student like Strobe Talbott, a 1968 Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar, insist that ‘on the whole, students do not riot out of sheer destructiveness. They riot against the inattention, intransigence, and condescension of administrations with which they have lost patience.’” Lundquist was quick to point out that Bethel was “in a particularly strategic position to ward off some of these problems which admittedly characterize mass education in our nation,” arguing that smaller campuses were better able to cultivate “a wholesome concern for the student as a person,” “an ability to make flexible arrangements in the light of individual differences, and a genuine appreciation for student opinion and action.” Still, “eternal vigilance” was needed, because “the forces of depersonalization” could threaten even a small school in an age of “cybernetic revolution.”²⁷

Thus it was that Lundquist admitted one consequence of student unrest was “the need for a more median position on the leadership continuum that moves from authoritarianism on one extreme to permissiveness on the other,” while also remaining firmly committed to preserving Bethel’s evangelical heritage “in a style of life that is distinctive in higher education today,” arguing in the case of alcohol, that “the Pauline observation still seems timely — that not all things which may be lawful for us are wise.”²⁸ It is not clear what Lundquist felt about issues like visitation hours and the women’s curfew although it is perhaps telling that both persisted through the decade (and in the case of visitation hours, to at least 2015 with no signs of change). Still, Lundquist pushed back against the pressures he felt from the Conference, admitting that

To be sure, Bethel has not been without criticism among our people. Some of it we deserve and indeed profit from; some of it is based upon misunderstanding and simply calls for more information; some reflects legitimate differences of opinion. Some, unfortunately, arises from sources outside of our own fellowship concerned with an extreme emphasis upon separatism that is foreign to our heritage.²⁹

Ultimately, the Bethel administration held the line, moderating only slightly on key issues for students and doing so in token ways, as we shall see. Still, Bethel leaders exhibited a nuanced understanding of the youth unrest which was largely lacking in the pages of the Standard. It is telling that Larson and Lundquist, who were perfectly willing to enforce Bethel’s standards of conduct with vigour and resist calls for more student involvement in decision-making on campus, were keen to present a carefully balanced view of student upheaval to the Conference in the pages of the Standard and in the Annual Reports. Indeed, the Standard is a particularly illuminating — if fraught — space as it allowed Bethel leaders to speak to the Conference on issues they were better acquainted with, sometimes pushing back on the BGC’s tendency to demonize students. At the same time, writing for the Standard required carefully navigating the expectations of a constituency predisposed to distrust college students and university leaders as ‘liberal.’ It is thus revelatory to find Lundquist and Larson staking out a balanced middle position in their communications with the Conference: students were neither demons nor angels, and while their protests and riots might be brash and unrefined, their motivations were often consonant with Christian activism. Even so, it is hard to ignore the fact that the student power movement at Bethel resulted — for for all of its talk — in a few token concessions that came at little cost to the administration.

❧

Regardless of the confessional stance of the school and the fact that the majority of its undergraduates came from Conference churches, students at Bethel were deeply affected by broader social developments. Throughout the decade, students cultivated a language of youth which participated fully in the sixties. However, there were disagreements in the student body over the implications of their generation’s newfound age-consciousness; having become aware of student power, Bethel students were not always sure what they should do with it, or even whether it should be pursued at all. And as with most of the issues relating to the Vietnam War, it is important to remember that the majority of Bethel students appeared relatively disengaged from the issue. Nevertheless, debate over youth power took place in three distinct arenas: the role of the Student Senate, membership in the National Student Association, and a series of debates on the issue of student power, i.e., to what extent should students seek a voice in the administration of their schools?

Bethel’s Student Senate came under existential threat in 1966 when a motion to disband the body was made at the February 21, 1966 Senate meeting. The Senate had been looked down upon for years. It was seen as an ineffective body, choosing to deal only with minor matters such as the planning of welcome week for incoming freshmen and the execution of the school’s social calendar. As the 1966 Senate president noted in a Clarion article, “student opinion of Senate has waned. Unfortunately, a group of upperclassmen who are close friends, call it a clique if you wish, have carried the ball in Senate for several years.”³⁰ The Senate was also, at times, accused of being a puppet of the administration. In part, the Senate’s moribund role was the result of student apathy; in the minutes to the discussion on whether or not to disband the Senate, apathy was mentioned by three different speakers. After lengthy debate, during which most of the discussion revolved around methods of generating greater involvement in student government, the motion to disband the Senate was defeated, fourteen to two.³¹

Part of the reason for the Senate’s unwillingness to tackle important issues on campus or to push for greater student involvement in administrative affairs may have been its relative familiarity with top-level administrators. While hinting that relations between the two might have been rockier in the past, Senate president Bill Madsen revealed that at least in 1966, the Senate had monthly luncheon meetings with administrators.³² Furthermore, the Senate minutes reveal that most meetings took place in the President’s dining room, a location possibly indicating the body operated with Lundquist’s imprimatur. Regardless of what this arrangement might indicate, it appears that for most Bethel students, the cause of the Senate’s ineffectiveness was lack of student interest. As an inspirational corrective, the Clarion editorial of March ninth put forward a plea for students to

become actively motivated and involved. … The perennial cry is that student Senate is powerless in important policy making. Give it power. Make the administration aware that today’s student deserves the right to sit in on the Board of Education meetings, plow through at least a few acres of administrative red tape,  become involved with some of the important but unattractive aspects of school policy, and sit in on some of the policy-making committees.³³

Despite Editor Halvorsen’s plea, the Senate remained a largely powerless body through the 1960s, confining itself to minor matters of student life such as the remodeling of the coffee shop, the funding of a college radio station, the provision of hockey equipment for the school’s team, and most importantly, the planning of banquets.³⁴ In spite of attempts by a few energetic senators who attended the school later in the decade, the Senate failed to materialize as an institutionalized nexus of support for student rights. Whether due to a tight leash or student apathy, the Senate as a whole never seriously challenged the administration during the Vietnam era.

The next locus of youth culture controversy at Bethel was the issue of National Student Association (NSA) membership. The NSA was founded in 1947 at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Active during the civil rights era in the training of southern student leaders, by the mid 1960s, the organization had developed a reputation for radical politics and was commonly accused of harboring communist sympathies — in spite of the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency underwrote much of the group’s funding from the early fifties through 1967. Unfortunately, the record does not permit much more than a brief snapshot in time of the Bethel membership controversy; it is not clear when Bethel joined the NSA, nor when membership was dropped. What is clear is that in 1966, students were sharply divided on the merits of continuing their membership in the organization.

The first time the Senate voted on a motion to withdraw from the NSA was on January 5, 1965. During the debate, an unidentified Mr. Johnson (presumably one of the several senators with that surname) argued that the NSA was too well known for “representing the doctrinaire leftist position,” and that furthermore, its printed materials were “not pertinent to Bethel’s particular situation.”³⁵ Those criticisms were echoed nearly two years later during a similar debate, although as Senator Kathy Harvie pointed out through the note-taker’s record, “although the NSA is controlled by activists, this may simply mean they’re idealists, not Communists.” Most of the comments on the NSA recorded in the Senate minutes were negative. One of its only verbal defenders was G. William Carlson, longtime professor of History and Political Science at Bethel — then a student — who felt that the scholarship opportunities, the availability of student travel tickets, and the foreign study and work-study projects were worth the membership dues.³⁶ It is unclear then, exactly why Bethel continued its membership in the NSA for as long as it did. At each of the three junctures in 1965-6 when motions were called to withdraw, the proposition was voted down. Evidently, the organization enjoyed some measure of support, even if its proponents were not particularly vocal.

Finally, and most significantly, Bethel students debated the extent to which they ought to have a say in campus governance (particularly in light of a rather powerless Senate) and the administrative direction of their school. In three distinct outbursts of activity beginning in the fall of 1966 and culminating in the fall of 1968, Bethel students challenged each other to assume more responsibility for the governing of their school. This two year narrative also corresponds well with the general level of campus unrest and thus provides an arena, aside from the Vietnam War itself, to study how involved Bethel students were in the tenor of their times.

The first outburst of Student Power at Bethel was more notable for its lack of traction than for the debate it provoked. Included here more for the contrast it provides to later (successful) efforts to stimulate discussion, the incident was launched with an impassioned October 27, 1966 Clarion editorial. Quoting from a Stanford University study, John Halvorson argued that throughout much of the country, “students have arrived as a new power, a fourth estate which is taking its place beside the traditional estates of faculty, administration, and trustees.” These students, Halvorson continued, were active participants in their own institutions, reading the current education literature and inviting prominent reform speakers to their campuses. And “above all, they have experienced success in making their presence felt and in extracting concessions.”

The situation for “Mr. Bethel Student 1966” was almost the exact opposite, Halvorson lamented:

Bethel students today remain relatively powerless in molding ultimate policy for their institution, taking their traditional estate far behind the estates of faculty, administration and board of education. They are rather satiated in their complacency, quite unconscious, by virtue of choice, of any potential power they might possibly wield. … They take seminars on Campus Crusade and How to Lead a Bible Study, but are generally unconcerned about administrative and academic problems, except in areas where their social or recreational life might be extended…³⁷

The cause of the student plight was partially of their own making. “Call it apathy,” Halvorsen wrote, “Many have.” But beyond students themselves, the Clarion editor blamed the administration itself for acting on the principle of in loco parentis, the effect of which was to

[mother] the student through the ‘turbulent’ college years, [protect] him, [decide] in a large measure for him. With this attitude, the student has not been regarded as either mature enough or responsible enough to make decisions. Should he want the opportunity, his opinion or decision would carry relatively insignificant merit.³⁸

Halvorson’s piece met with near instant rejection. The next week’s Clarion bore a piece by student Nancy Applequist, who argued that while “[i]t is ‘in’ right now to be intense, serious and issue minded … to be a poly sci enthusiast and to articulate at the top of your voice[,] the cry is not come to the head of the class but come to the head of the rally and show you care. Young American, taking an active role in its own (school) (state) (national) government — isn’t it wonderful, the torch is being passed!” Bethel students, Applequist argued, needed to focus on their academics as too many of them “[couldn’t] write acceptable papers for any course.”³⁹ Aside from the following issue’s editorial in which Halvorson claimed he’d been “grossly misunderstood,” the discussion ended there.⁴⁰ At least in the fall of 1966, it appeared that Applequist was right: “incredibly, a few people may be satisfied with [the current state of affairs] (emphasis hers).”⁴¹

Over the following spring and fall, three incidents provoked the second campus-wide response to the question of student-administration relations at Bethel. The first was a February 1967 letter sent by the acting Deans, Webster Muck (psychology) and Walter Wessel (New Testament) concerning off campus students hosting opposite sex guests in their apartments (Clifford Larson had departed to take a post at the Seminary and was replaced as Dean for two years by the professors until Virgil Olson was hired in 1968). The original letter has been lost, but its contents are roughly known from the three angry student reactions printed in the Clarion. Phrases such as “abstain from the appearance of evil,” “intimate and private atmosphere,” and “lighting a fuse” suggest the letter’s concern was that by hosting opposite sex guests in private dwellings, students would be tempted sexually. Student reaction was universally negative. Among other objections, students pointed out that off campus lodgings were often used for Bible studies, that refusing to allow entrance to one’s guest was “abnormal” and rude, and that dating students should be allowed to “have every possibility to try on marriage roles (I am not advocating sexual license).”⁴² But most galling to students was the insulting nature of the letter. One writer pointed out that the use of the phrase “boys and girls” seemed “rather immature.” And in a letter signed “Bethel Students,” the author(s) expressed themselves succinctly: “The lack of trust in the imposition of petty rules is an insult to our Christian principles.”⁴³ No other reaction followed the initial flurry of response, although the Clarion did note with some indignation in May that the Student Personnel Committee reserved the right to approve all student marriages during the school year.⁴⁴ It also ran a piece by Janet Appelquist criticizing the women’s curfew as “humiliating, ineffective, archaic and inequitable with the non-existent curfew of [male] students.” “I didn’t ask for a mother-substitute when I came to Bethel,” concluded Appelquist, “I left home to learn to make my own decisions.”⁴⁵

The second impetus toward an organized response took place at the start of the following semester and was also prompted by a letter to the student body, this time by Acting Dean of Students and Chair of the History Department Roy C. Dalton. Unlike the acting Dean’s letter, Dalton’s has been preserved. What it shows is a fairly conservative dress code, albeit one with no sanctions attached. In the context of Bethel’s culture at the time, the letter does not seem exceptional with the possible exception of its last sentence: “Unkempt beards and an uncouth personal appearance have become symbols of a part of our generation that is not particularly Christian in its outlook or manner of living. Need we be imitators?”⁴⁶

Perhaps because the tone was offensive, or perhaps because he felt uncomfortably close to Dalton’s description, the letter sent senator Leonard Ray Sammons into a flurry of action. (Sammons was probably the most radical and energetic of Bethel students in the sixties who left a documentary trail.) At the September 19th, 1967 Senate meeting, Sammons brought a motion which acknowledged that the letter had raised a number of questions among the student body as to its genesis and the appropriateness of the letter coming from the Dean of Students. Sammon’s motion resolved that the Senate affix its signature to the letter (thus co-opting it) and emphasize that the letter’s principle were mere recommendations and bore no sanctions. Furthermore, the motion proclaimed that all decisions involving student attire were reserved to the Senate and that the Dean’s letter “was a usurpation of [Senate] prerogatives which is hereby forgiven.” Ed Soule, another senator, amended the motion to delete the language reserving power to the Senate and accusing the Dean of overstepping his bounds. The amendment carried, ten to one (the lone dissenter’s identity is obvious). Sammons them attempted to table the motion several times during the rest of the debate but was overruled. The amended motion passed, six to four in favour.⁴⁷

Sammons next turned to the Clarion, urging students to look up the Senate minutes. They revealed, he said, that “our Student Senate, the body which we have commissioned to protect our interests, will not dare take a stand against the Office of the Dean of Students even after such a stand has been initiated” (referring to his own motion). Continuing, Sammons argued that “[w]hen what are naturally and morally the prerogatives of students are encroached upon, the Student Senate turns into backers of heretical doctrines like paternalism and in loco parentis because Senators play “chicken,” “brownie,” etc. at the expense of their constituencies.” The administration, Sammons concluded, “cannot help but look at the attempts (how few and mild they are) of students to assume moral rights as adult human beings with contempt and disregard.”⁴⁸ Dalton responded in the next Clarion, arguing that Sammons mischaracterized his role in the letter.⁴⁹ Dalton’s response was then attacked by two other students, who picked up on Dalton’s revelation that the Senate had been told to act in passing a previous dress code “or the Dean and the Committee would be compelled to act.”⁵⁰ “If this is student power at Bethel college, why have a Senate,” they asked. “The Dean of Students is a puppeteer holding the strings of a puppet it will discard if it does not yield to its commands and wishes.” The solution, they argued, was to sever the strings between the Senate and administration; the only question was whether “the puppeteer [will] cut the strings or [would] the puppet [have] to make the move before he is strangled?”⁵¹

The final spur toward an open debate on student power came when the student discount cards (a type of coupon book for area businesses) sold by the campus Bookstore were edited to remove all cinemas and alcohol-serving restaurants.⁵² The cumulative effect of these three incidents — the off campus housing letter, the dress code, and the coupon book edits — was to bring into being a significant campus-wide debate on the nature and future of student power at Bethel. As the newly-installed Clarion editor Jonathan Larson noted, “[i]f the discount card controversy is allowed to fester without immediate attention, the future of student power at Bethel will be in serious jeopardy.”⁵³

In response, the Clarion organized a campus-wide Forum on Student Power, held in the Fieldhouse on November 30th.⁵⁴ Four speakers were slated to appear: Lynn Bergfalk (Clarion assistant editor), Jim Hammar (President of the Student Association), Robert Holyer (senior Philosophy major), and Jonathan Larson, the Clarion’s editor. The event itself and its aftermath vividly illustrate the limits of student power at Bethel. Only about one hundred students and a handful of faculty attended, and while the Clarion serialized excerpts from the speeches given, more revealing (and frankly, interesting) are the columns of student and faculty reactions, as well as the Clarion staff’s attempts to characterize the Forum after the fact.

From the outset, the Clarion staff sought to make clear the link between student power and student responsibility. “Student power is inextricable bound up with responsibility. Without power there can be no responsibility, and without responsibility there can be no real power,” wrote Jonathan Larson nearly a month before the Forum.⁵⁵ Yet most students still walked away from the forum believing that student power was an attempt to dethrone the administration, a cause they rejected handily, even though Robert Holyer’s talk explicitly rejected such a characterization. Holyer’s position was taken directly from the Bethel college catalog:

[Quoting from the catalog] “The program at Bethel is designed to develop in each student the personal qualities which will help him to:

• Become a mature Christina person in motivation, conviction, and conduct
• Become capable of stating his thoughts and emotions clearly and effectively
• Become broadly intelligent in the major areas of human knowledge.”

The previous assertions are, I think, basic to a discussion of Student Power in its Bethel context. The negative connotations attached to the concept at other colleges and universities need not set the tone of student power on this campus. … I would define Student Power as a position of respect and responsibility earned by the student body in relation to the administration whereby we, the students, participate in decision-making.⁵⁶

Still most students were against the idea. “We’re not always responsible and the deans, faculty members, and others who make decisions now are far wiser than us,” said one Bodien sophomore. An Edgren senior said that he didn’t “think students ought to take over the campus because this would result in narrow decisions — without the block of information available to the administration.” Another Edgren student, this time a freshman, summed it up best: “I don’t go for it too much. I don’t understand what it is they want. I’m not interested because I’ve got studying to do. Most of my friends are against it too.”⁵⁷ Others resented the name ‘student power’ because it sounded too radical or liberal; Jonathan Larson pushed back against this critique, arguing that power and responsibility were inextricably linked. Furthermore, “it [was] politically unrealistic to expect any normal human being to rally to the call ‘student responsibility,’ just as it [was] impossible to picture the French workers storming the Bastille to the cry, ‘Duty, Obligation, Maturity!’”⁵⁸

In contrast, the faculty were mostly supportive, although they recognized how weak the movement was on campus. Mary Sodergren, an instructor in English, sad that she thought “it could be carried off well if it [was] done in a cooperative manner.” Max James, another English faculty member, was even more supportive: “I think it’s a very good thing. … I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t trust the students most deeply involved in the movement.”⁵⁹

This second of the three outbursts of student power issues at Bethel demonstrates most clearly the limits of interest on campus. From the reaction to the forum, it is clear that most Bethel students did not regard student power as an issue with much relevance to their lives. The prolific coverage in the Clarion speaks more to the involvements and sympathies of those publishing the paper than to the general student population; two of the four speakers were Clarion staff. The example reiterates a larger theme of this project: most of the activism at Bethel occurred amongst a small coterie of committed students — Bethel’s political class. In contrast, the majority of the undergraduate population had little interest in broader issues and was more inclined to tend to their studies than take a stand against the school administration.

In the fall of 1968 the last of the three student power outbursts occurred. It came on the heels of the dismissal of seventeen students for drinking alcohol, one of the few issues, Lundquist indicated in the annual report for that year, which resulted in instant expulsion.⁶⁰ With the mood thus set, the semester saw an intensification in the language used to describe student power. ‘Responsibility’ gave way to ‘rebellion.’ The new intensity culminated in a provocatively titled editorial, “‘The Student as Nigger’ finds Application Where?”

That title — “The Student as Nigger” — was a reference to a 1967 essay by the San Diego State University professor Jerry Farber. In his original essay, Farber compared the relationship between students and their school administrations to that between black and white people in mid-century America. Both, he argued, were characterized by an undue deference to the supposedly ‘superior’ partner. The essay sparked controversy across the nation and locally was banned from use in class at the University of Minnesota. At Bethel, members of the Peace Club included copies of the essay on their literature table, only to have them confiscated and banned by president Lundquist.⁶¹ Bergfalk, following Farber, argued that the same power dynamic which existed between black and white prevailed at Bethel: “the rule of thumb is to talk and work with students in a paternalistic and condescending way. Treat a student as a man only when it’s no longer possible to treat him as a schoolboy.”⁶²

Bergfalk’s provocative rhetoric incensed the newly-installed Dean, Virgil Olson. Responding in the following Clarion, Olson accused the Editor of “[firing] a torpedo of misunderstanding and misrepresentation that [could] practically sink [Bethel].” Concentrating on Bergfalk’s decision to use such provocative language, Olson suggested that Bergfalk was minimizing the horrifying experience of millions of African-American people. Bergfalk fired back in the next issue, accusing Olson of ignoring the “significant” number of students on campus who felt the editorial had described them. He closed the response with great chutzpah (and a touch of disingenuousness) by counseling Olson to not go off topic in “emotional tirades which [obscure] the real issues.”

In terms of real results, these three periods of outburst over the issue of student power — the first in the fall of 1966, the second in the spring and fall of 1967, and the final in the fall of 1968 — accomplished little. In the spring of 1969, two students, the president of the Student Association and the Clarion Editor (by now Margie Whaley; curiously, Lynn Bergfalk’s editorship only lasted one semester in contrast to his contemporaries who had served the full year) attended for the first time a quarterly meeting of the Board of Education. The experience impressed the students, who came away feeling that the trustees were “men of exceptional ability.” Also impressive was how eagerly the trustees sought their advice.⁶³ This token and fairly painless concession on the part of the administration (neither of the students had any kind of voting power) marks the limits of what student power at Bethel achieved. In general then, the school administration (likely under pressure from the Conference) succeeded in resisting the clearest expression of the sixties’ youth culture.

Bethel students were not unaware of the connection between the Conference and their administrators. Responding to the criticisms of the “Student Power” moniker as being too redolent of the dictators of the 1930s and 40s, Jonathan Larson acknowledged that the Conference was a conservative group — “It fears the violence that it associates with the syndrome ‘power.’”⁶⁴ And in May 1968, the Clarion responded to criticism Seminary students received from the Conference for penning a letter of concern in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination. On the Conference, Lynn Bergfalk wrote:

Sometimes the often criticized youth is struck with the unhappy feeling that if the rich young ruler were to walk into a modern Conference Baptist church, he would not be turned away — instead he’d be drinking coffee with the deacons, playing golf with the minister, soon to be elected to the trustee board, and the church would have a new carpet in the foyer. And while the church slips another soul into its attendance charts, countless people the world over will continue living, or more accurately, existing, under discrimination and poverty…⁶⁵

❧

So how did each of Bethel’s three constituencies — the Conference, the administration, and the students — respond to the youth culture of the sixties, typified as it was by an inclination to challenge authority structures? As we have seen, the Conference largely resisted youth culture, characterizing it first as uniformly ungodly, then by distinguishing youth into two camps — one good and one bad. Its response to both never varied, however: acknowledge the reality of the problems youth sought to address, then suggest that Jesus was a more compelling answer than the methods youth had been employing. Bethel administrators were caught between a student body that generated significant resistance (albeit with a limited base of support and confined almost entirely to the school’s political class) to traditional patterns of in loco parentis governance and a sponsoring denomination that expected them to hold the line against the excesses of sixties youth. They were largely successful, preserving nearly all of the campus and social rules which were in place in the previous decade. Aside from a few token gestures (and being forced to respond to a significant amount of flak from an active Clarion leadership), the Lundquist administration was never forced to materially adjust its operations. Finally, students galvanized around three distinct periods of ‘student power’ unrest on campus, culminating in a Forum on Student Power and a number of heated exchanges with Bethel administrators. However, the number of students committed to the movement was small, even if their presence was not, thanks largely to key political class actors’ involvements in Senate and the Clarion. Ultimately, without more support from the student body, student power never realized material gains.

I’ll give the last word to the ever-indefatigable Mr. Sammons, in many ways the most prominent face of the student power movement at Bethel (measured, at least, through the amount of documentary evidence he left). In a wry and pointed comment in the fall of 1968, Sammons wrote:

It is interesting to note the differences of opinion regarding what constitutes an endorsement by Bethel between this year and last. Whereas last year the student discount cards were carefully edited by the Administration to remove all cinemas and liquor-serving restaurants, this year not only were the discount cards sold uncut, but, more significantly, the Bookstore is now giving away (through the Gift-Pack) an offer of free pipe tobacco. Is tobacco less sinful than the cinema? Or is the Bookstore less an instrument [of Bethel] than the Student Association? Or have we seen an evolution of thought over the last year and a readjustment of ourselves to our values.⁶⁶

— Fletcher Warren

<< Previous Essay || Next Essay >>

---

Citations

¹ Carl Lundquist, “Annual Report of the President,” 1967-68 BGC Annual Report, 126; The History Center: Archives of the Baptist General Conference and Bethel University (hereafter HC), Lundquist Presidential Papers, Box 29A, Folder 1 “Advisory Administrative Council, 1971-1972,” Administrative Council Meeting Minutes, May 11, 1972, 3.
² Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 3.
³ Philip Lee, “The Curious Life of In Loco Parentis at American Universities,” Higher Education in Review 8 (2011): 66-90, 67.
⁴ Ibid., 70.
⁵ Ibid., 70-4.
⁶ Academic Catalog, 1950-51, 7.
⁷ Academic Catalog 1960-61, 17-18.
⁸ Academic Catalog 1980-83, 56-8.
⁹ Paul M. Bechtel, Wheaton College: A Heritage Remembered 1860-1984 (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1984), 236-7.
¹⁰ Merrill E. Jarchow, Private Liberal Arts Colleges in Minnesota: Their History and Contributions (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1973), 279.
¹¹ Gunnar Hoglund, “Ah, Those Young People,” The Standard 1964-01-20, 2.
¹² Gunnar Hoglund, “The Rebellious Years,” The Standard 1964-05-11, 29.
¹³ Donald Anderson, “The Effects of the Fuzzy Four,” The Standard 1964-09-28, 4.
¹⁴ Gunnar Hoglund, “The Dissenters,” The Standard 1968-01-15, 2.
¹⁵ Gunnar Hoglund, “The Hippies are Phonies,” The Standard 1969-01-13, 7.
¹⁶ Ibid.
¹⁷ Donald Anderson, “Changeless Laws for Changing times,” The Standard 1966-01-17, 5; Lee Stobbe, “Youth… in Search of Meaning,” The Standard 1966-03-14, 15-16; Richard Young, “An Answer to the College Student,” The Standard 1968-01-15, 6.
¹⁸ Donald Anderson, “Rebellion and Responsibility,” The Standard 1965-01-18, 5.
¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ Al Glenn, “Rebellion or Responsibility,” The Standard 1966-01-03, 6.
²¹ Gunnar Hoglund, “The Rebellious Years,” The Standard 1964-05-11, 29.
²² Insert, The Standard 1969-09-22.
²³ Richard Johnson and John Anderson, “Letter to the Editor,” The Standard 1969-02-24.
²⁴ Axel Schäfer, Introduction to Axel Schäfer, American Evangelicals and the 1960s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 9.
²⁵ Lundquist, “Annual Report,” 127.
²⁶ Clifford Larson, “The Student Viewpoint on Campus Revolts,” The Standard 1966-02-14, 6.
²⁷ Lundquist, “Annual Report,” 126-7.
²⁸ Ibid., 126.
²⁹ Ibid., 128.
³⁰ Dave Fredins, “Interview with Madsen Shows Political Outlook,” The Clarion 1966-03-16.
³¹ HC, Lundquist Presidential Papers, Box 1, Student Senate Minutes 1961-1971, Minutes to February 21, 1966 Meeting, 1.
³² Fredins, “Interview with Madsen.”
³³ John Halvorsen, Editorial, The Clarion 1966-03-09.
³⁴ Fredins, “Interview with Madsen.”
³⁵ HC, Lundquist Presidential Papers, Box 1, Student Senate Minutes 1961-1971, Minutes to January 5, 1965 Meeting, 1.
³⁶ Ibid.
³⁷ John Halvorson, “Student as “New Power” Molds University Actions,” The Clarion 1966-10-27.
³⁸ Ibid.
³⁹ Nancy Applequist, “Student Reformers Miss Real College Experience,” The Clarion 1966-11-03.
⁴⁰ John Halvorson, “Misunderstood Editorial Merits Reconsideration,” The Clarion 1966-11-10.
⁴¹ Applequist, “Student Reformers.”
⁴² Marie Weigum, et al, “Letters to the Editor,” The Clarion 1967-02-09.
⁴³ Ibid.
⁴⁴ Susan Gilberg, “Student Personnel Group Holds Key To Marital Whims of Collegiates,” The Clarion 1967-05-11.
⁴⁵ Janet Appelquist, “Bethel Woman Dislikes College Role As Her Mother Substitute,” The Clarion 1967-10-19.
⁴⁶ HC, Lundquist Presidential Papers, Box 1, Student Senate Minutes 1961-1971, Letter from Roy C. Dalton dated August 15, 1967.
⁴⁷ HC, Lundquist Presidential Papers, Box 1, Student Senate Minutes 1961-1971, Student Senate Minutes No. 2 [September 19, 1967].
⁴⁸ Leonard Sammons, “Writer Deplores Isolation of Students from Vital College Decision Making,” The Clarion 1967-10-19.
⁴⁹ Roy Dalton, “Dalton Rebuts Senator’s Charges As Deliberate Disregard for Actual Facts,” The Clarion 1967-10-26.
⁵⁰ Ibid.
⁵¹ Arnie Bergstrom and Tom Mesaros, “Writers See Senate Taking Role of Puppet to Administration,” The Clarion 1967-11-09.
⁵² Leonard Sammons, “Changing Values?” The Clarion 1968-10-25.
⁵³ Jonathan Larson, “Campus Forum Imperative to Student Power Future,” The Clarion 1967-11-09.
⁵⁴ HC, Lundquist Presidential Papers, Box 1, Student Senate Minutes 1961-1971, Forum on Student Power announcement flyer.
⁵⁵ Jonathan Larson, “Student Power Demands Responsibility of Campus,” The Clarion 1967-11-03.
⁵⁶ Robert Hoyer, “Student Forum: A ‘Power’ Definition,” The Clarion 1967-12-07.
⁵⁷ “Students Say… Student Power at Bethel?” The Clarion 1967-12-07.
⁵⁸ Jonathan Larson, “Power Slogan is Currently Only Viable Alternative,” The Clarion 1967-12-07.
⁵⁹ “Faculty Say… Student Power at Bethel?” The Clarion 1967-12-07.
⁶⁰ Lundquist, “Annual Report,” 126.
⁶¹ Lynn Bergfalk, Misunderstood Editorial Merits Closer Examination,” The Clarion 1968-12-06.
⁶² Lynn Bergfalk, “‘The Student as Nigger,’ Finds Application Where?” The Clarion 1968-11-15.
⁶³ Greg Taylor, “Students Attend Board Sessions,” The Clarion 1969-03-27.
⁶⁴ Larson, “Power Slogan is Currently Only Viable Alternative.”
⁶⁵ Lynn Bergfalk, “Conference Reaction to ‘Letter of Concern’ Raises Doubts About ‘The Older Generation,” The Clarion 1968-05-16.
⁶⁶ Leonard Ray Sammons, “Changing Values?” The Clarion 1968-10-25.

Further Reading

Back to Top

<< Previous Essay || Next Essay >>