ALMOST CRIMSON
One of the privileges of being on the executive board of my college daily was a meeting every week in the office of the President of the University, attended also by the Dean of the Faculty. Sessions were on the record. At the age fo 20, we’d ask our earnest questions and the President would give his solemn answers. Then, often, the Dean would add, in his smooth way, “what the President means to say is….”Often the revised version would differ greatly from the original statement.
It became a jpke among the executives. In cases of disagreement in the newsroom, of which there were many, an editor would intone, “what the President means to say...”
Considering that the Dean was soon whisked away to the White House to serve as National Security Adviser to JFK, I wondered whether he employed the same trick there. But listening to the tapes of Kennedy’s Executive Committee during the Cuban Missile Crisis, of which the former dean was of course a member, I gather that he defined his job then more as presenting cases for consideration r than as interpreting Presidential pronouncements.
On the college paper, iIt was a challenging job, writing for thousands of highly intelligent readers who, over their scrambled eggs and coffee, would read some of the stories delivered at sunrise. Letters to the editor could be fierce, though the guidance that counted even more was contained in “comment books” located in the newsroom. Every article was quickly pasted in these ledgers, soon accompanied by critical notes from any of the staff members. In a recent parade of scientists a placard read: “What do we want? Data. When do we want it? After peer preview.” The difference was that a reporter deals in material more ambiguous than “data” and the peer review, in our case, came after daily publication. If there was a mistake, it was not made twice.
Part of the fun of being on the paper (probably a 40-hour-a-week job) was getting the idea fora long article, reporting and writing it. We called these pieces “features.” As an executive it was my job to solicit and edit them. Along with news stories and editorials, I loved writing features. I showed an early interest in both educational policy and international relations.
In the former area, I heard about some professors in the center of the state who wrote a proposal for what became Hampshire College. I interviewed authors of a report of what they then called “new college,” realizing that their reflections on teaching at Amherst, Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts were also a commentary on the teaching at my own institution. This awakened a curiosity in me that led to assisting the Dean of my own college in teaching a freshman seminar on expository prose and later to joining the staff of Davis Riesman’s course of “American Character and Social Structure.”
For my “thesis” in history, I chose to write on the extent to which Woodrow Wilson’s policy toward Mexico set the pattern for his intervention in Europe. This project got started with a visit to Princeton, where Wilson had been President and where, after he’d served in the White House, the University named after him its school of international affairs.
At the time of my own graduation ceremony, I wrote a thing called “In Praise of Academic Abandon,” about how colleges might better encourage proficiency in learning (in contrast to test-taking and grade-getting).
Probably the most consequential of my little projects came from meeting JFK, who had been an editor on the same paper during his college years, and who was working, with Senator Clark, to remove from the National Defense Educational Act, a McCarthyite “loyalty” oath and affidavit requirement. I wrote a long critique of the requirement. The history and critique was called “Worse Tan Futile” and was sent around the U.S. to every college president and and every college newspaper editor. I suppose the critique was my way of claiming, “what the bill means to say…” In any case, JFK and his colleague succeeded in Congress.