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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 69 indoctr ination.” 17 BYU’s student newspaper added: “Most of us who have been around for a while realize that President Wilkinson is a conservative Republican. We know these things because he has told us many times.” Another student wrote, “Can we claim intellectual honesty for ourselves ... when we present only one side of an issue while the other is disparaged or at best neglected?” Not all students were dissatis- Royce Swenson received a fied, however. More than a few expressed plaque honoring him as the one shock when the director of the American thousandth graduate of the BYU Association of Marriage Counselors claimed Air Force ROTC Program, May 26, that “Soviet families are happier and more 1972. stable than American families.” One undergraduate commented, “It would appear [the speaker] is in actual essence a socialist at heart and chooses to support his views with what he saw in Russia.” Still, many, perhaps most, students remained politically neutral.18 By 1963, political topics occupied much of Wilkinson’s time, sometimes taking 70 percent of his meetings with LDS officials.19 Running for elected office became increasingly attractive as Wilkinson regularly toured the country in defense of free enterprise. Amid the call for more opinions on campus, Wilkinson announced in May 1963 that Soviet journalist Gyorgi I. Velikovosky would appear at a university assembly. Wilkinson uncharacteristically explained, “We have had so many references to communism this year, it seemed well that students should have the opportunity to hear from a real communist.”20 Two-thirds into his well-attended address, Velikovosky dropped the Russian accent and announced that he was George Velliotes, a California businessman and former history teacher, who had adopted the masquerade to dramatize “the evils of communism.” 21 Dismissing the 17 Jim Duggan, Letter, Daily Universe, April 19, 1962. According to my calculations from speeches printed in BYU Speeches of the Year, 1952-53, and succeeding years. 18 “Same Old Stuff? Maybe,” Daily Universe, June 21, 1962; S. George Sundal, Letter, Daily Universe, May 22, 1963; “Home Life Happy in Soviet Union,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1961; “Student Initiates Critique Series,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1961; and “Campus Political Balance,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1962. 19 Wilkinson, Memoranda of Conferences with David O. McKay, January 19 and March 7, 1962, Wilkinson Papers. For more, see Gary James Bergera, “‘A Strange Phenomena’: Ernest L. Wilkinson, the LDS Church, and Utah Politics,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26 (Summer 1993): 89-115. 20 “Communist Will Speak at Wednesday Assembly,” Daily Universe, May 10, 1963. 21 “Forum Speaker Strikes Blow at Communism,” Daily Universe, May 16, 1963. 69 L. TOM PERRy SPECIAL COLLECTIONS STudENT POLITICAL ACTIVISM |
