Boston State College: Power and Politics

At Boston State College, a decade-long ideological battle between the state-affiliated administration and an alliance of students and faculty members has erupted once again. This time the battle is over the faculty's hiring and firing practices, and the conflict is in the tradition of the protests of the '60s, with rhetoric on one side of "class war", "racism," and "working-class rights," and on the other side appeals to a staunch policy of discipline and academic traditionalism.

Kermit Morrissey, president of Boston State, is determined to oblige the state and the college's trustees by supplying the New England economy with a "highly skilled labor force," as defined by the state's newly-approved educational "master plan," entitled "Agenda for Renewal: A Forward Look for the Massachusetts State."

Morrissey accepts the Agenda's position that education at state colleges should be geared to supplying labor for the region's technical industries (such as communications and electronics equipment, metal products, paper products, printing and publishing), in addition to its health, education and business needs. Accordingly, it makes perfectly good sense in Morrissey's view to reduce the size of the liberal arts faculty. And, as events suggest, it makes even better sense to begin by firing the younger, more troublesome members.

Henry Allen, instructor of American History at Boston State and a political activist who opposes the "master plan," is facing dismissal for the third time. He is dangerous man.

Allen teaches history from the perspectives of minorities and of the working class. A member of a lower-class family, he studied at Boston State, and later came back to teach working-class students about working-class problems.

He was responsible for recruiting most of the black students who now attend Boston State. In 1969, when black students took over the administration building to protest racism, the administration had to turn to Allen to act as negotiator.

Allen received a one-year "terminal" contract in June 1973, and un September students and 'faculty members began his defense for the third time in five years. Half the student body signed a petition calling for renewal of his contract. The student government and campus newspaper supported Allen and censured Morrissey. Delegations from the teachers' union, the Committee Against Racism and Boston's black community have all petitioned Morrissey. There has been weekly picketing of his office, debates between Morrissey and Allen supporters, and building take-overs.

So, for the moment, the struggle for power centers most visibly on Allen.

Misfortunes are befalling Allen's supporters. In October, the student government saw the error of its previous criticism of Morrissey and tempered its support for Allen. It cut off funds for the padlocked the offices of the campus newspaper, which had continued to protest the prospective firing of Allen and at least nine other faculty members. The paper had also alleged racist and sexist administrative policies.

Student government members claimed the paper acted irresponsibly and did not adequately represent student opinion. But the editors continued to publish with funds collected from other Boston-area college newspapers. Morrissey banned the paper from the campus in February, but it has continued to circulated and to criticize.

Morrissey seems to be playing dodge with the question. He says that he senses no ill-feeling or unrest on the campus, and that this is the quietest year in a long time. He says he tries to help anyone who comes to talk to him about problems at the school. For example, he says he spoke with a student-faculty group that came to him last April to protest the second attempt to fire Allen. He promised them that Allen would be rehired. And he was: Allen received a terminal contract for 1973-74, two weeks after the summer vacation began and departed students could not protest the restricted term of his retention. Morrissey says Allen has been a "leader" at Boston State, and that Allen's efforts have been "appropriate" and his effect on the school "positive."

Morrissey says that the conflict at Boston State is characteristic of the problems of higher education today. In any "rational community" policy, decisions must be made on the evidence available and carried out accordingly. Educational ideals of the '60s, which he sees embodied in a school like Amherst, must now give way to more practical needs. Boston State must change the outlook of its English department, for example, because, Morrissey says, "while no one was looking, the college's student constituency changed. Thirty to forty per cent of Boston State's students need help with reading and writing." At the same time, however, he says that neither the curriculum nor the faculty will become more vocationally oriented.

Thus he may soon be fighting the state and the trustees of the 11-college state system who advocate a change toward vocational education a change toward vocational education, as well as those students and teachers whom he is opposing over rehiring Allen.

Allen's supporters, who are also protesting alleged racism, sexism, and rising tuition costs at Boston State, disrupted a meeting of the Board of Trustees of State Colleges yesterday in the hope of securing Allen's rehiring. Sylvia K. Burack, vice president of the board, said the group spoke "extremely persuasively," but that the issue must be referred to an appropriate committee, since the Board cannot make immediate decisions. Burack was tired. The meeting--"noisy, with banners and storm talk"--lasted two and a half hours.

Allen might win his fight. But his resistance is unusual, and his success would do little to halt what he calls the "bell-shaped curve mentality" of grading and its approach to education. He sees the program of retrenchment at Boston State and at other State colleges as an indication of that mentality's increasingly victorious "attack on liberal arts education for the lower classes."

But then, "power concedes nothing without a struggle," as Frederick Douglass said, and as long as the fight at Boston State continues, so does the hope that Allen and his supporters may do something to modify the educational "master plan" to make New England colleges into training grounds for the region's industries.