An abstract of John R. Aiken's book - History of Community, State University College at Buffalo: 1871-1996. Virginia: BookCrafters, 1996.

World War II brought vast socioeconomic changes to America. The greatest economic boom in American history took place in the decades following the war. This expanding economy needed large numbers of well-trained people. This need, in turn, brought a degree of prosperity for working class families. And for the first time in American history, the children of working class families, including war veterans, entered higher educational institutions in large numbers. Some became faculty members.

Dramatic and, at times, violent changes have affected institutions of higher learning. The riotous campus activities of 1960s and early 1970s are well known: the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and youth rebellion, the protests the closing down of colleges. Through these activities, students learned the politics of confrontation. They destroyed the existing campus culture and the community supporting it. Consequently, the 1970s and 1980s became a community rebuilding time at Buffalo State and other higher educational institutions.

But how did these forces of change alter the faculty, administrators, students, curriculum, and college governance. How did they lead to a new community? How did these forces reshape the culture of colleges from the well-ordered communities of pre-1960s, through the disordered communities of the 1960s and early 1970s, to the vastly changed college communities of decades following the mid-1970s? This study, using Buffalo State College as an example, seeks to answer these questions, concentrating on the decades following 1970.

Students

Students played a key role in shaping the Buffalo State community. By the early 1970s Buffalo State had a new student body. The well-behaved, neatly dressed students of earlier days had passed from the campus. Levis, athletic jackets, 'T' shirts and military-style fatigue clothing replaced skirts and trousers. Frequently, as a political statement, the clothing was torn or soiled and footwear untied. In winter, some students were still wearing athletic footwear. Men frequently wore long hair. A unisex appearance pervaded the student body. Obscenities became a common speech characteristic.

The student enrollment at Buffalo State increased to over 12,000 in the 1990s from over 10,600 in 1972 and 4,490 in 1962. This expansion made it all but impossible to recapture the intimacy of the college community of the pre-1960s.

The current student body is more diverse than in the earlier period. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Equal Opportunity programs brought racially based and later class-based programs that encourage students from these origins to enter college. Some of these students were trained in the civil rights struggle. They added their knowledge of confrontational politics to the political acts already taking place in the wider student body.

By the mid-1970s students with an independence of spirit challenged the administration and faculty over issues of concern to them. Though not reacting with the intensity of the protests of the 1960s, they were quite willing to occupy buildings and oppose the administration over campus issues as they did in 1974 by occupying Cleveland Hall, the administration building.

This willingness to act led the students to assault the existing curriculum. Students initiated special interest programs such as the various studies: women's, African-American, religious, Polish, Soviet and Eastern European, and American. Besides the studies programs there were also the course 'clusters.' These were courses grouped about special student interests, for example, Native American. If an anthropology, a literature or a history course dealt with Native-Americans, a student could select these courses to support the student's interest in Native Americans. In addition, students demanded that the content of traditional courses be altered to emphasize student interests. A history course would have to emphasize ethnic, racial, or political interests or face possible protests. It is still not uncommon for students to protest that a particular professor is not sensitive enough to teach a course. Not being an African-American, for example, they said the professor lacked the sensitivity to teach about African-Americans. This is a charge made against other professors who were not of the right ethnic or racial background in the view of students interested in the subject.

How did students accomplish the successful battering of the curriculum? By campus protests, strikes, boycotts of classes, and sometimes violence. Sometimes they would get non-campus organizations to support their cause by protesting to the press, which, in turn, exerted pressure on the college administration and faculty.

The students also changed the faculty and administration. By constant accommodation to student challenges, overtime, the faculty and administration themselves became more politically active. The students acted as a catalyst to pressure on the faculty and administration produced a college community different from what released faculty special interests which, in turn, also altered the curriculum and college operations. The continual had existed before the 1960s.

Students attacked the administration, demanding and receiving more participation in campus governance. At Buffalo State not only did they get a more powerful student government but they also placed some 15 students on the College Senate. Students serve on all important committees, including faculty and administrative search committees and academic committees of various sorts.

In the face of student activism, the administration also loosened up restrictions on social behavior. One indication of this behavior change is the kinds of organizations students formed. Unlike the traditional student clubs or speakers catering to these interests, the students organized ethnically, nationally and sexually oriented organizations such as the Black Liberation Front Board, Adlante Estudiantes Latinos, Nigerian Students, Organization of African Students, Native-American Students Concerns Committee, the Gay Alliance, and Human Sexuality Center.

Faculty and Professional Staff

The origin of the current faculty and staff, like that of the students, generally, is lower middle income working class. Some 85% in a survey proudly identified themselves with this class, most indicating a "blue collar" background. The college is located in a unionized area and the college faculty and staff are organized in an AFL-CIO union, the United University Professions. They bring their socioeconomic and working class backgrounds to the campus. They have a realistic view of themselves as workers doing professional jobs. As subject matter specialists, they possess a high degree of self-confidence. This confidence leads them to see administrators, including the president, as equals just doing different jobs. However, interviews and surveys of faculty members, generally, indicate genuine regard for the presidents.

The faculty, according to the 1992 Middle States accreditation report on the college, is 'outstanding' whether measured by degrees, publications, research, advisement, or service. The Middle States team called it "caring and dedicated." According to the report, the faculty and staff take pride in the college and the role they serve. The faculty was able to bring in some $24.5 million in external funds for research and other activities between 1990-1992.

College Governance

Two basic systems of governance and decisions making are evident in the history of Buffalo State. One, the argumentative, debating, challenging matrix type matured in the 1970s and 1980s. The other is that which existed before 1960 and which, in a less autocratic form, President F. C. Richardson (1989-1995) sought to establish in the 1990s. Matrix management or governance is found in the College Senate, United University Professions, departments, unit, academic faculties and the general faculty and staff. It is a disorderly form of governance that is loose and does not fix responsibility clearly.

The main campus source for this for the matrix management and governance is the College Senate. Beginning in the early 1970s, the Senate developed a smooth running governance that covered nearly all aspects of college operations. Its committees research, investigate, and recommend actions on all kinds of problems of concern to the college and to its operation. The Senate has pushed interpretation of the bylaws to the limit in seeking more control in the workplace. It is a dedicated and experienced organization. It is built on a foundation of open debate, independence and a sense of equality with the administration. Its committees cross disciplines and cut down through various levels of college organization to solve problems or indicate a course of action for the administration. This same spirit exists in the various faculties of the college.

According to the Middle States evaluation team, this form of governance requires a stable community and good working relations across departments, divisions and faculties. These conditions exist at Buffalo State. Matrix management at Buffalo State accepts freedom of debate and speech as essential elements of college intellectual life and academic freedom.

The second form of governance in Buffalo State's history is operating prior the pre-1960s. It governed a well-ordered community that was cohesive, obedient, and tightly bound together. The campus was a place of order, decorum and authoritarianism. In the period of the well-ordered campus community, the faculty had to battle to serve on personnel search committees, including departmental appointments.

The present faculty and staff reacted with suspicion, distrust, bewilderment and anger at attempts to reintroduce such a governance in the 1990s. The result of attempts by faculty and administration to overcome this conflict with better communication failed. According to the Middle States Report, "e;the actual content of communications seems to have deteriorated rather than improved."e;

The evidence of history suggests that trying to alter the matrix system of the 1970s has caused much turmoil. Given the transforming forces brought by World War II, it might well be, at best, very difficult to change the current system. Today it is highly questionable whether any authoritarian system of governance could work effectively with the "new' faculty, staff, and students that make up the communities at large public colleges and universities.

The Administration

A matrix form of management and governance at Buffalo State developed under Presidents Paul Bulger (1959-1967), E. K. Fretwell, Jr. (1967-1979) and D. Bruce Johnstone (1979-1989). Fretwell and Johnstone, in particular, welcomed open discussion, debate, consultation, and argument as a method of testing ideas, although with some constraints.

President Richardson, who followed Johnstone as president, had a different idea about campus governance, one often in conflict with what already existed at Buffalo State. He believed the lack of a strong sense of community and the entrenched tenured faculty opposed to change were major problems facing the college. His perception of governance was one in which input by faculty and students came at various levels but always through an orderly process and only when requested by him. Essentially, how the information was used was up to the president. He had a concept of a well-organized college with the same mindset and with himself as leader. This idea of governance did not leave a place for the sometimes irreverent debates common at Buffalo State. He touched on the source of the trouble in managing Buffalo State when he criticized the form of matrix governance that developed in the 1970s. The College Senate, particularly, he saw as the center of this opposition to greater unity and sense of community.

Clashes and a degree of paralysis developed in the operation of Buffalo State under Richardson. Ultimately, Richardson resigned, several vice presidents left and two associate vice presidents took administrative leave as did the chairperson of the College Senate. Some changes were made in College and College Senate Bylaws.

Mission, Physical Plant, and Curriculum

Since the 1960s Buffalo State has had a major mission of providing access to college for minorities and other disadvantaged young people with the ability to do college work. President Fretwell and Johnstone worked toward this end. But neither worked harder than Richardson to achieve this mission.

The building program in the 1960s and 1970s tripled the number of buildings at the college. The result was a spreading of the faculty and functions that increased isolation of the faculty members from one another, so undermining the sense of community of the earlier day. Computers and faxing equipment further reduced the one-on-one contact necessary for a close-knit community.

As might be expected at a working class college, the curriculum was always strongly oriented toward post-college employment. The Middle States team noted that Buffalo State's programs were 'very good to outstanding.' Buffalo State is only one of three institutions in the country offering an art restoration program. Its Creative Studies Center has a national reputation and as do its teacher education programs. It has a Great Lakes Research Center with vessels for doing research. The extensive College Camp also provides opportunities for environmental education and research. However, ethnic and political content of many courses still remains.

What kind of a community does Buffalo State now have? The turmoil of the early 1990s has left an element of instability. Buffalo State now has to build a new community, one consistent with recent changes that have taken place. So, Buffalo is a college in quest of community.






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