Students take a more proactive role in campus policy
Reflecting the cultural changes that were occurring, the students wanted to take an active role in the renegotiation of school policies. Lane remembers how their demands were accommodated.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mary Turner Lane, September 9 and 16, 1986; May 21, 1987; October 1 and 28, 1987. Interview L-0039. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
So in this committee—I remember,
we were meeting one night, oh, several days before the Duke-Carolina
game—we had been told, the committee had been told, that
there would be a sit-in, or a sleep-in. That's what it was
going to be. It was going to be a sleep-in, or a sit-in, whatever, after
the game. And we were urged to hurry with our
recommendations so that we could take care of everything. Well, we had
just begun working, and there was no way that we could get our
recommendations out in that time. We were meeting on the second floor of
Lenoir Hall. That was the dining area at that time. And we suddenly were
aware that there was chanting going on outside the dining room. You have
to remember that this was the time of marches and protests, and students
felt very free to make placards and march on anything. So we went to the
windows, and there must have been 500 or 600 students, outside our
window, chanting something. We had a hard time figuring out what they
were chanting, and we finally discovered they were saying, "The
arb is closed," meaning the arboretum.
[laughter] So that was their message to us. That the
arboretum is cold, and that's the only place that we have to
go right now to visit. So Dean Cansler, as I recall, was chair of the
committee, and he talked to the students. They said, "We want
something by this weekend." That was a good example of our
being able to say, "We're working on this. Give us
time. We understand what you're saying. So, please, stay with
the rules a little bit longer, and then we'll see what will
come out of that."
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
But you were able to indicate that the University was taking their cause
seriously.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
Yes. And again, you see, we had students on our committee who went to the
window, as well, and said, "Now, just ease up. We know what you
want. We understand it, and we're working on it. So give us a
little bit more time."
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Who chose the students, do you know? What was the selection process?
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
I don't know whether Dean Cansler as part of the Student
Affairs Office—I don't know where the
recommendations for all of these committees came from.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
I'll see if I can find that. I would think that the
credibility of the student representatives of these committees would be
crucial.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
Yes, that was very important. One of the great benefits to me was getting
to know the students from across campus, both the young men and the
young women that I met throughout these four or five years of committee
work. We learned a great deal about each other. We learned to respect
each other. Frankly, the one to one knowledge or experience made us all
much more aware of the sincerity, and the intensity, and the reality of
the students' feelings.
I would also say that, at this time, a number of student-faculty retreats
were established. I remember going, oh, for at least four years in the
fall with different students that had been selected. By whom,
I'm not sure. But again there would be people from the
administration, people from faculty, and people from different student
groups who would be there. And we talked about problems. This was the
time that many students were also going to a communications center up in
Maine—I can't remember what that
was—and they were learning confrontational techniques. This
was the time when they were rebelling against
authority, and they decided everybody had to be on a first name basis.
Remember that?
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Absolutely, absolutely.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
So when we went to these retreats, we were all on a first name basis, and
most of us operated pretty much under the student—the way
they wanted them run.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
That's very interesting.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
But anyway, there was a lot of very positive interaction. As a follow up
to our being marched on—and that was really a unique
experience—we turned around from the window to go back to our
meeting, and we realized that ten students had slipped into our meeting
room [laughter] and were sitting there
waiting with their own questions. They asked if they could stay, and as
it happened, we said, "Yes." So they stayed and heard
what we were doing. But after two years of that
deliberation—and believe me, we did deliberate—we
listened to a variety of people and we examined the pros and cons.
Needless to say the recommendations by the students ranged from complete
openness of all dormitory rooms….
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
That's right, to no openness. There were people who wanted the
privacy of their rooms. In all of our deliberations that really was
something that we had to take into consideration. That there were young
women who wanted to be in a room with women and did not want someone
else's boyfriend being entertained, and the same is true of
young men. So we tried to make recommendations concerning that.
I'm not sure we did it so well.
I'm not sure how well we handled it. I think that still
remains a problem from what I've heard from students over the
last twenty years—that that still is a problem. But we did
make the recommendations, that within given time frames, there should be
some opportunity for students to visit. One of the great questions that
we spent weeks on was the "open door" policy.