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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 83 STudENT POLITICAL ACTIVISM Student Life] would see if there is anything we can do with respect to [the student].” The Dean of Student Life replied that his office had been “watching” the student “very carefully during the entire year.” He admitted that he did not “have anything that would justify taking any action against [the student] at this point” but promised that after the student’s graduation, his office intended “to tag [the student’s] records so that he will not return to BYU.”118 In May 1970, when several students asked permission to collect signatures on a petition calling for the withdrawal of congressional funding for the war, officials responded by banning all petitions.119 Wilkinson explained that with the approach of the end of the school year, “students need all of their time to adequately prepare” for final exams.120 One student replied, “If my memory is correct, a few years ago a petition circulated at BYU was sent to Washington supporting the war in Vietnam. How can this apparent double standard be rationalized?”121 Another wrote, “I am angry. Angry because of the invisible iron glove that keeps us in our place; angry with the kind of education that teaches us to ‘accept’ rather than discover; angered by words praising us for our silence, words that have undertones of warning.”122 Five days later, administrators reversed their decision to allow “individual students [to] circulate petitions on campus which do not violate the fundamental objectives of BYU.” Still, “all petitions would be submitted to the dean of students for approval.”123 Students responded, in part, to such measures by electing in 1969 and in 1970 Kenneth T. Kartchner and Brian F. Walton as student body presidents. Kartchner, who campaigned that “the policies of student ‘government’ are essentially decided by the administration,” won by more than a thousand votes.124 Seeing himself as an “interloper in student government,” Kartchner later termed his victory “a cruel satire on student elections that had backfired” and recalled his year in office as “not a particularly satisfying time, but it was endlessly interesting.”125 At one point, Wilkinson suggested that Kartchner 118 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Lorin F. Wheelwright and J. Elliot Cameron, April 20, 1970, Perry Special Collections; Cameron, Memorandum to Wilkinson, May 20, 1970, Wilkinson Papers. The student, William Marshall Cowden, was a sociology major and a member of Students for a Democratic Society (Cowden, Letter, Daily Universe, April 1, 1970). See also the anti-SDS editorial in the Daily Universe, April 13, 1970, and Wheelwright, Memorandum to Wilkinson, April 14, 1970, Perry Special Collections. 119 “War and Riot Messages Sent,” Daily Universe, May 8, 1970. See also “Election, War Spark Five Petitions,” Daily Universe, May 21, 1970, and Wilkinson, Diary, May 11, 1970. 120 “Draft of Statement on Decision Not to Have Political Petitions Circulated at the Present Time,” Perry Special Collections; “Petition Ban Explained,” Daily Universe, May 14, 1970; “BYU Bans Student Petitions,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 14, 1970. 121 Paul S. Carpenter, Letter, Daily Universe, May 14, 1970. 122 Linda McKenzie, Letter, Daily Universe, May 21, 1970. 123 “BYU Eases Restraints on Campus Petitions,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 16, 1970; “Petitions Okay with ‘Order,’” Daily Universe, May 19, 1970. 124 Campaign advertisement, Daily Universe, April 17, 1969; “Kartchner Wins by One Thousand,” Daily Universe, April 28, 1969. 125 Kenneth T. Kartchner, E-mail to Bergera, November 19, 2011, and attachment. 83 |
