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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 82 uTAH HISTORICAL QuARTERLy During the next few years, administrators initiated a program of covert surveillance of the university’s “radical” students. 111 For example, at Wilkinson’s insistence, BYU Security maintained a close watch on activist and Vietnam veteran Jerry L. Owens, a participant in November 1969’s moratorium demonstrations in Salt Lake City, as well as on some forty other people involved in the weekend demonstrations. BYU’s Chief of Security reported, “Heretofore some of our students with radical political views have floundered about rather aimlessly; however, it appears now that they are being used by some rather skillful agitators, some of whom are what we might call ‘known communists.’” Wilkinson instructed Security to continue its surveillance to prevent any “entanglement” between BYU and possible communist sympathizers and, in early 1970, asked trustees for a supplemental appropriation to cover “additional security protection”112 Increasingly defensive, Wilkinson issued a special statement in March 1970 on “campus conduct”: “Any person who participates in or supports illegal or disruptive action designed to subvert the purposes of the university and its sponsoring institution will be subject to immediate arrest and criminal prosecution.”113 Wilkinson also asked the Director of Public Relations to brief him regularly on “disturbances or riots” at other American universities.114 That May, Wilkinson applauded BYU’s “cool” reaction to the expansion of the war into Cambodia and the deaths of four demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio. To his diary, however, he confessed, “There is certainly a spirit of unrest throughout the country and while it is manifest only slightly at the BYU it is nevertheless manifested here.”115 When specific instances of student protest occurred on campus, BYU officials tended to act swiftly. For example, undergraduates were told to remove peace signs from their dormitory windows with the curt explanation, “You don’t need a reason.” 116 More drastically, students who publicly questioned BYU policies were sometimes quietly investigated by the Office of Student Life to determine if grounds existed for disciplinary action.117 After the appearance of one student’s letters to the editor in the Daily Universe, Wilkinson complained to the Deans of Fine Arts and Student Life, “I wish [the dean of Fine Arts] would see to it that no further letters of [this student] go into the Universe, and I wish [the Dean of 111 Faculty were not immune from such surveillance. See Bergera, “The 1966 BYU Student Spy Ring.” Swen C. Nielsen, Memorandum to Wilkinson, November 17, 1969, Wilkinson Papers; Board of Trustees, Minutes, January 7, 1970; Board of Trustees, Special Executive Committee, Minutes, February 19, 1970. See also “Dissent at BYU,” Seventh East Press, February 20, 1982. 113 Bulletin, March 13, 1970, reprinted in J. Wesley Sherwood, “Emergency Operations Plan, Brigham Young University,” September 1979, E2, Perry Special Collections. 114 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Edwin Butterworth, March 16, 1970, Perry Special Collections. 115 “Y Pres Lauds ‘Cool’ Students,” Daily Universe, May 11, 1970; Wilkinson, Diary, May 11, 1970. 116 Bob Anderson and Glenn Blake, Letter, Daily Universe, May 16, May 1969. See also Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliot Cameron, December 11, 1969, and attachment, Wilkinson Papers. 117 See, as an example, David W. Child, Letter, Daily Universe, May 6, 1969; Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliot Cameron, May 12, 1969, Wilkinson Papers. 112 82 |
