Currents of Change

CHAPTER VI Currents of Change uring the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States experienced profound social and political change. Inspired by President john F. Kennedy's call to D service, undergraduates across the country turned their attention beyond the campus, and found themselves confronting a multitude of concerns, including America's involvement in the war in Indochina, the struggles of the civil rights move ment, and the collective sense of uncertainty that resulted from the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. College students questioned the state of affairs in the nation, and challenged prevail ing assumptions about authority and tradition. At the same time, momentous events were unfolding on the international and national scene: the Bay of Pigs; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Tonkin GulfResolution; the bombing of North Vietnam and the "incursion" into Cambodia; increasingly mil itant anti-war protests; the establishment of the Peace Corps; civil rights confronta tions resulting in part from lunch counter sit-ins, "Freedom Rides," and voter regis tration campaigns; the passage of civil rights legislation, and the dawn of President Lyndon B. johnson's Great Society; the outbreak of urban racial violence, beginning with the Watts riot in 1965; the death of Malcolm X; the rise of the Black Panthers; the revolution in sexual mores; the onset of the drug culture; undergraduate rebel lions on campuses such as Berkeley and Columbia; the tragedies of Kent State and Jackson State; the phenomenon of Woodstock; the aberration of Watergate; the for mation of the National Organization for Women (NOW); the triumphs of the space program; and the innovative music of the Beatles. Student disillusionment and disaf fection gradually intensified and became increasingly radical, finding expression in action as well as in rhetoric. One of the earliest manifestos for change, The Port Huron Statement (1962), issued by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), urged young people "to break through their privatism and political apathy," as Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz has noted, and strive for a new "participatory democracy." 1t Among stu dents especially, there gradually emerged a "counterculture," which J. Ronald 328 TRINITY COLLEGE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Spencer '64, Associate Academic Dean and Lecturer in History, once characterized as "contemptuous of traditional mores, fueled partly by psychoactive drugs, espous ing a vision of uninhibited sexuality, of a 'new consciousness,' of alienation overcome through the creation of a loving community- a sort of perpetual Woodstock Nation. On every hand, conventional wisdom was questioned, authority mocked, established institutions derided."2 Despite the changing nature of undergraduate attitudes and behavior, and the uncertainties of a nation increasingly beset by unrest, President Albert C. Jacobs was unwavering in his belief that an education in the liberal arts remained of crucial importance, and that Trinity was in the first rank of America's small liberal arts col leges. Among the various documents and memorabilia sealed in the metal box that he placed in the cornerstone of the Life Sciences Center on April 6, l968,Jacobs includ ed a letter addressed to the College's president in the year 2073 (the 250th anniver sary of Trinity's chartering, and the l20th anniversary ofJacobs 's inauguration). In the letter he reflected on the turbulence of the late 1960s, and the seemingly intractable problems of the moment - "a puzzling and dismal war,'' the "tragic prob lem of race and civil rights," "the plight of the American city - the urbanization of our population ... [and] the increase of violence," and the inability of"the richest nation in the world . to abolish, or even to minimize, the plight of poverty."3 Jacobs then expressed his optimism about the future, declaring that "our students are more thoughtful in motive, more intellectually gifted, more concerned, and ofgreater poten tial for good than those of any earlier college generation. Earnest and eager, some tend to approach excess in their zeal to reshape society in a day or a week. But it would ill become us who are their elders to charge them with grievous shortcomings. It is we who have permitted wars, poverty, and political and social ills to mar their world . ... The task of the liberal arts colleges in the years that intervene before you receive this greeting must be to provide the youth of our land increasingly with the knowledge and motivation that will build a national community and a world of peace."4 Five years earlier, in the spring of 1963, on the lOth anniversary of President Jacobs's inauguration, the Trustees' Executive Committee, while reviewing his annu al compensation, discussed the matter of his tenure in office. Jacobs had just turned 63, and the question of when he should retire had not been raised at the time of his appointment. The College had no established mandatory retirement age for adminis trators, and after considerable discussion by the full Board in executive session, with out the presence ofJacobs, the vote was unanimous to establishJune 30, 1968 as the date of his retirement. 5 As discussed in the previous chapter, the remaining years of Jacobs's presidency were particularly active, marked by an intense focus on fund rais ing and the continued expansion of Trinity's physical plant. During his final year in office, his health deteriorated considerably, and twice he underwent major surgery. As his retirement approached,Jacobs could take satisfaction that, during his administra tion, the undergraduate body had expanded from 900 to l ,250, and become more Cmnnts of Change 329 geographically diverse; the number of full-time faculty had increased from 83 to 134; the College's finances had grown stronger through the raising of more than $25 mil lion, principally in two major campaigns; the facilities had been substantially enlarged and improved through the construction of four dormitories, an arts center, an admin istration building, a student center, two buildings devoted to instruction in the sci ences, an athletic complex and two service structures, plus the renovation or expan sion of several previously existing buildings; and Trinity had deepened and solidified its ties with Hartford. 6 In President Jacobs's final public address, his charge to the members of the Class of 1968 at Commencement, he exhorted them to pursue a life of service "to a nation and to a society in which the need for men of courage and conviction, of integrity and leadership is more imperative, indeed, more crucial, than ever before in our history."7 He then challenged each graduating senior, "in the year immediately ahead, in the year 1968-1969, to seek out in the community in which you find yourself a young man of the culturally disadvantaged group, a potential candidate who is equipped or who can be helped to equip himself for admission to Trinity or to another college of similar standing. Help him, encourage him, plant in him the desire for higher education .. Doing so, you will advance not only one of the causes to which this College is dedicat ed, but you will also assume the responsibility of the educated man for social progress in our land."8 Among the honors the College accorded the retiring president were the conferral of an honorary Doctor of Letters degree, election as a trustee emeritus, and designation by the Trustees as president emeritus, the first in the College's history.9t A Decade ofStudent Activism; A .New President Takes Office In 1966, three years after they had stipulated the date for President Jacobs's retire ment, the Trustees began the search for his successor. On January 19, 1967, Lyman B. Brainerd '30, the Board's Vice Chairman, announced at a special meeting of the faculty that five days earlier, one of his fellow trustees, Dr. Theodore Davidge Lockwood '48, Hon. '81 (VI-1), had been unanimously elected president. In his remarks, Brainerd acknowledged that "it is most unusual for a Board of Trustees to elect one of its own members to this high office. However, Dr. Lockwood's experience not only as a teacher and administrator, but also as an alumnus and trustee of the College makes him uniquely qualified to become Trinity's 15th President."10t That there would be a president-elect for a period of 18 months was an exceptional situa tion, but as an editorial in the Winter 1967 issue of the Trinity Alumni Magazine stressed, neither the College nor President Jacobs considered the long period an "interregnum," and there was much work to be done, particularly in meeting the Ford Foundation funding challenge. The editorial's conclusion asserted that the interven ing time would be the focus of"a new intensity of purpose as the years of one fruitful period flow with steadily increasing strength into the years of another." 11 The president-elect was the son of Harold J. Lockwood, Hallden Professor of .'3.'30 TRINITY COLLEGE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Engineering, and entered Trinity in the fall of 1942. An experienced skier, he served from 1943 to 1945 with the U. S. Army's 1Oth Mountain Division, participating in the Italian campaign, and returned to the College in 1945, graduating with the Class of 1948. Lockwood's academic achievements resulted in his election to Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Gamma Mu, and designation as valedictorian of his class. He also was involved in a number of extracurricular activities, including varsity football, the Senate and Medusa, and served as president of the Political Science Club. Lockwood received the Terry Fellowship to pursue graduate study in modern European history at Princeton, from which he received the M.A. degree in 1950, and the Ph.D.

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