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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 90 uTAH HISTORICAL QuARTERLy Young Democrats, Young Republicans, Young Independents, Young Conservatives, Young Americans for Freedom, and Young American Independents. Petitions to organize chapters of the W. E. B. DuBois Club, Students for a Democratic Society, Americans for Democratic Action, and the Peace and Freedom Party were denied. Administrators contended that DuBois was a “communist front organization,” that SDS championed violence, and that Peace and Freedom advocated “contraceptives” and “free love.”161 Only one club, Young Democrats, provided an outlet for politically liberal students. Consequently, they not only boasted the largest membership of any official political club during the 1960s but drew repeated threats of banishment, such as in 1969 when members displayed a peace symbol on campus, distributed anti-draft literature, and exhibited books by “Che” Guevara and Malcolm X.162 Much of the drive fostering student political activism at BYU waned with Wilkinson’s 1971 resignation, the end of the Vietnam war, and an upswing in conservatism among college students nationally. The number of political clubs dwindled until administrators decided to recognize only two: Young Republicans and Young Democrats. Trustees noted that the Republican and Democratic Parties enjoy an “established record of not creating the kind of difficulties with which the board is concerned” and banned additional clubs to “avoid...excessive” politicization.163 The number of BYU undergraduates favoring a Republican U.S. President rose from 73 to 86 percent.164 By the mid-1970s, students had begun referring to BYU as a “hot bed of social rest.”165 While not as dramatic or as frequent as that taking place at some other American colleges, BYU student political activism during the late 1960s and early 1970s was nonetheless a recurring feature of student life on the LDS campus. Students, and occasionally faculty, pursued a variety of approaches in expressing a wide spectrum of political views on national and local events. Such activism speaks to the intellectual engagement with modern American life that both marks the contemporary college experience and functions as an indicator of the diversity of belief among LDS church members generally. 161 J. Elliot Cameron, Memorandum to Wilkinson, November 26, 1968, Wilkinson Papers; “BYU Refuses SDS Formation,” Daily Universe, November 21, 1968; “Sounding Board,” Daily Universe, December 6, 1968. 162 Bob Keith, Letter, Zion’s Opinion, March 25, 1969. 163 See “Minutes of the Meeting of Dean Cameron with Vice-Presidents,” March 19, 1971, Perry Special Collections; Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, Minutes, April 18, June 20, December 19, 1974; Board of Trustees, Minutes, January 9, 1975. 164 See “GOP Affiliation Vaults to Highest Level Since Eisenhower Era,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 25, 1984; “Nixon Leads Seven to One,” Daily Universe, November 3, 1972; “Political Speeches Highlight Y Week,” Daily Universe, October 29, 1976. 165 Beginning BYU, 1976-77, 43, Perry Special Collections. Not until the early 1980s did dissent again begin to surface at BYU. See, for example, “Disputes Follow Iranian Speech,” Daily Universe, February 28, 1980; “Mrs. Matheson Heckled,” Daily Universe, October 23, 1980; “‘Plowshares Not Guns’ at BYU,” Sunstone Review, April 1982, 3; “BYU Students Demonstrate Against Aid for Contras,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 18, 1986; and “Demonstrators Duel Politely at BYU,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 5, 2007. 90 |
