Student Power and all that; B. A. Rogge

The answer to this question is of some importance. Perhaps, though, it should be made even more specific: Where does sovDr. Rogge is Chairman of the Department of Economics at Wabash College in Indiana. This article is reprinted by permission from the Wabash Bachelor, Spring, 1968. ereignty lie in a given college or university? Who's in charge around here? Rogge-type answers: (1) A college exists, in theory, in whole or in part, to serve its students. In the same way, Steck's Men's Store exists, in part, to serve the students of Wabash Col lege. But Steck's Men's Store does not belong to its customers and Wabash College does not belong to its students (past or present). "Student power," in the sense of a claim by students of a right to 520 THE FREEMAN September make decisions that relate to their college or university, is thus of no substance or standing. This is not to say that a college or university administration is al ways acting wisely if it ignores the wishes and the recommenda tions of its students. It means only that, when the chips are down, the students can rightly be told to get the hell out of the ad ministration building and to stop interfering with the conduct of college business.

(2) The faculty members of a college are employees of the col lege and, by definition, a college does not belong to its employees. Again, this is not to say that a college administration is necessar ily unwise if it delegates author ity over (say) the curriculum to its faculty. But again, when the chips are down, the college can rightly say to any faculty member for any reason whatsoever, "Go away!" A human being has a right to believe in and espouse com munism or laissez faire capitalism or any other piece of nonsense but he has no right to be paid by someone else for doing so, against the will of that someone. So-called academic freedom is in reality a denial of freedom - the freedom of those to whom a school belongs to put the resources under their con trol to the uses they believe ap propriate. Again, a school is surely unwise if it refuses to permit a wide range of views to be pre sented to its students but it is not denying anyone his natural-born right if it takes this unwise po sition.

Administration Delegated Control (3) The members of a college administration are also employees of the college - hence they cannot be the ones to whom the college belongs. In practice, they are the ones to whom control is usually delegated by the "owners" and they are the visible source of au thority on the campus. Unfortu nately, many college administra tions in this country seem to have abdicated (not delegated) their authority to some combination of students and faculty members (or athletic departments). The re sult is a kind of tragicomic an archy - although for short periods of time on some campuses it can be very exciting (even intellectu ally exciting) for everyone in volved. A college should be actu ally run by the administration not the faculty. As Sidney Hook has put it, "Give the intellectual everything he wants - but power." (4) Does it follow that it is to the Board of Trustees that a col lege or university really belongs?

In the case of a private college the answer would seem to be yes. It is this Board that has legal control 1969 STUDENT POWER AND ALL THAT 521 of the assets that the college has acquired. It is this Board that, in theory, is responsible for seeing that the assets are used for the purposes for which they were and are made available to the college. In the case of the public college, the answer is somewhat more com plex. Here the Board must ulti mately answer to those who large ly pay the piper - the taxpayers of the jurisdiction involved. When the taxpayer in California screams, "We've got to get those Lefties and Hippies out of Berkeley," he may not be evidencing much knowledge of educational proc esses - but he is exercising a right that is essentially his. After all, it's largely his money. Claims of Society Invalid (5) But what of the claims of society? Do not the institutions of higher learning in any society really exist to serve the interests of that society? In a word, No. In the first pl:t.ce, the word "society"

is filled with ambiguities and difficulties. As a matter of fact, those who use the word in these cases usually mean by "the interests of society" the interests of society as seen by their own minority group, whether it be the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Education Association, or Americans for Democratic Action. But more than that: the best ex ample of a university system serv ing the interests of its society would be the German universities under Hitler or the Russian uni versi ties of the last 50 years. Neither society nor the students nor the alumni nor the faculty is or should be in charge at Wabash College. The administration is and should be in charge, acting under the authority delegated to it by the Board of Trustees, and serv ing the purposes of the college· as defined in its charter and inter preted by that Board over the years. And if you think things probably aren't this simple and clear-cut in practice, you're right.

~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY Malcolm Muggeridge A FUTURE SOCIAL HISTORIAN is likely to decide that the most powerful instrument of all in bringing about the erosion of our civilization was none other than the public education system set up with such high hopes and at so great expense precisely to sustain it. . From an article, "On Rediscovering Jesus," Esquire, June, 1969 Freed esponsibility IN HIS INAUGURALaddress on Jan uary 20, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon declared, "The essence of freedom is that each of us shares in the shaping of his own destiny." The fact that the state ment received so little comment from the press and other news media is an indication of how in sensi ti ve the media have become to their own terminology. Appar ently it was felt that there was nothing unusual about the state ment made. But if the words are measured against the positions taken by the media with a high degree of consistency for at least the past thirty-six years, they are revolutionary.