Seven Days that Shook the Campus

In 1968, Grove City College saw a very different kind of student uprising

By Nick Hildebrand

Calderwood Hall, demolished to make way for the Hall of Arts and Letters in 2002, was a center of academic life in 1968 when a union organizing effort on campus was frustrated in part by student activists. Former Dean of Men Fredrick S. Kring reported on the event in a memo entitled “Seven Days that Shook the Campus.”

In the spring of 1968, America seemed to be a nation on the brink, and, to many observers, college students were among those most intent on pushing it over the edge.

They were the shock troops of the protest movement, rising up on campuses and flooding the nation’s streets to demonstrate against the Vietnam War, civil rights abuses, and the social and political mores of American society. The “silent majority” lamented a generation seemingly intent on tearing down what they had built up. In one of the most shocking incidents, students occupied buildings, took administrators hostage, and effectively shut down Columbia University in New York City.

Columbia was the outlier, but students across the nation were feeling the revolutionary spirit and demonstrations over real and perceived grievances broke out at other colleges and universities. Colleges that had long held an “it can’t happen here” stance, girded for potential protest and tumult.

was a very different kind of demonstration. It was just a few days before Parents’ Weekend and the student body was massing outside of Crawford Hall. Passions were high and the students were firmly committed to their cause. They had a message for College leaders, but it was anything but threatening. They weren’t there to occupy the administration building. They were there to help.

In May 1968, Grove City College saw the beginning of its own student uprising, but it Grove City College’s maintenance, custodial and kitchen workers had become the target of a union organizing campaign by the Carpenters’ Union out of Youngstown, Ohio. Promising higher wages and better benefits, the organizers declared a “strike” on May 15 and set up picket lines at campus entry points to disrupt operations. Less than half of the College’s employees favored unionizing, but others weren’t willing to cross the pickets. That put serious pressure on the College’s efforts to prepare campus for the big weekend.

J. Stanley Harker ’25, the College’s fourth president, took a hard line against the union organizers. The unlikely student uprising at Grove City College made headlines in 1968.

“There were lines of students in Crawford volunteering to help make sure the grass was cut and everything was clean for Parents’ Weekend,” recalls Roger Towle ’68, retired Vice President for Financial Services. “It just blew me away. The students said, ‘Can we help you in any way? What can we do?’”

Then-President J. Stanley Harker ’25, in a contemporary report to the Board of Trustees, said “students rose up in mass support of their alma mater. The union organizers had circularized our entire student body, urging them to riot and demonstrate against the administration. They demonstrated, but it was solidly against the union.”

Students volunteered to cut grass, clean buildings, help out in the dining halls, do laundry and whatever else was needed. Towle said he and his fellow Phi Tau fraternity brothers attempted to do their part, but their efforts backfired. Aware that the women who worked in the cafeteria in Hicks Hall weren’t interested in joining the union, the Phi Taus made an early morning visit to the picket line to encourage the women to cross the line and come to work.

“Fifteen or 20 of us were there to help them,” Towle said. While there were only two or three men manning the picket, the influx of fraternity men created another impression. “We found out there were a number of ladies who saw all those people out there and got scared and turned around and went home. We wanted to help them, and we wanted to get food, but it didn’t work out that way,” Towle said.

That anecdote aside, the student labor pool did its job, and the administration held its ground against the union (reportedly issuing an ultimatum to the no-show workers: “Come to work on Monday or don’t come back at all”) and within a week, the organizers gave up on Grove City College. Harker described the chief union organizer as “the old goon type … but he found 2,000 young Americans hard to bluff.”

The story made headlines in a year when campus protests and rioting students were the norm. One wire service report highlighted the success of the student counterstrike: “When thousands of parents arrived on campus for Annual Parents’ Day, they found reasonably well maintained buildings and surroundings thanks to the ingenuity and well-intentioned support of their children.”

“When your problems and my problems become ‘our problems,’ together we can achieve great things.”

A reference also made it into that year’s commencement speech, delivered two weeks after the pickets were abandoned by future President Gerald R. Ford, then a Congressman from Michigan: “I was informed on my way here that the only demonstration that has occurred on the

Grove City College campus this year was a demonstration by the students in support of the administration. I’m not too clear what the controversy was about but I certainly commend this kind of student power – the student power that springs from willingness and work.”

Harker’s report to the board and other accounts suggest an epic struggle on campus in May 1968. Towle remembers something a little less monumental. “It was just a weird little thing,” he said.

Then-Dean of Students Frederick S. Kring referred to the incident as “Seven Days that Shook the Campus” in a tonguein-cheek memo to campus that included some humorous details, including: “Students take over dormitory custodial jobs, invite pickets to see a clean dorm”; “Sennholz freeenterprise lectures become ‘free enterprise in operation’”; and “President packs his pistol at main gate – no casualties.”

Harker said later: “As I look back on the struggle, it was a lot of fun, but it was no fun while it raged. However, of this I am certain: if a college treats its students as partners in a great educational adventure, no Reds or Parlor Pinks are going to take it over.”

Kring echoed that thought in his memo. His summation speaks to the spirit of community that has always been a hallmark of Grove City College: “When your problems and my problems become ‘our problems,’ together we can achieve great things. Over the years I shall cherish this week as perhaps ‘our finest hour.’” n