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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 81 the university “alert some of our outstanding students to be ready to stand up for what we believe... It would be hard for the media not to recognize such students or to ignore their statements in favor of our position.”106 Wilkinson agreed, but Agnew’s appearance took place without incident.107 Hoping to improve relations with the student body, Wilkinson “subjected” himself to an “interrogation” (Wilkinson’s terms) by nearly three hundred The BYU student club Spectrum students at a campus “Free Forum” in late sponsored in 1970 a series of May 1969. Wilkinson afterwards confided skits collectively titled “Guerilla that “there is more unrest on the campus than Theater” protesting US involvethere has been in any previous year.”108 As a ment in the Vietnam war. reminder that BYU would not tolerate violent dissent, Wilkinson had the school’s Code of Student Conduct amended that fall to provide for “disciplinary action” in the event of “obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other university activities...”109 Student plans for participation in a nationwide boycott of classes in mid-October 1969 to protest the war were averted when student government officers voted instead to “support the idea that each person should write his congressman expressing his opinions either for or against the Vietnam War.” As a further compromise, several campus workshops and lectures on war and pacifism were scheduled during the national moratorium.110 106 Wheelwright, Memorandum to Wilkinson, April 24, 1969, and Wilkinson, Memorandum to Wheelwright, April 25, 1969, Perry Special Collections. For the response of Student Body President Kenneth T. Kartchner to the suggestion, see below. 107 Lael J. Woodbury, Memorandum to Wheelwright, May 1, 1969, Perry Special Collections; “Agnew Condemns Violence,” Daily Universe, May 9, 1969. 108 Wilkinson, Diary, May 9, 1969. See also a transcript of the question-and-answer session attached to Lyle Curtis, Memorandum to Wilkinson, June 3, 1969, Perry Special Collections. 109 “Brigham Young University Code of Student Conduct,” Fall 1969, Perry Special Collections. 110 “Miller, Beutler Protest War, Apathy During ‘Indoor’ Hyde Park Forum,” Daily Universe, October 9, 1969, and “The Program,” The Young Democrat, October 20, 1969; “Moratorium Motivates Collegians,” Daily Universe, October 15, 1969; ASBYU Executive Council, Minutes, October 13, 1969, Perry Special Collections; “Task Force: ‘No Simple Solution’” and “Hyde Park Sparks Heated Debate,” Daily Universe, October 16, 1969. For events at the University of Utah, see Nicole L. Thompson, “Utah , the AntiVietnam War Movement, and the University of Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 78 (Spring 2010):154-74. 81 L. TOM PERRy SPECIAL COLLECTIONS STudENT POLITICAL ACTIVISM |
