This is the second in a three-part series on the history of student government at SF State. The story titled "Student Gov't: deja vu all over again" which ran on page one of last Thursday's Gater was part one. Part three will run in next Thursday's Gater.)
After a struggle for legitimacy spanning three decades, student government at SF State was firmly established as part of the establishment it was soon to do battle with in the most divisive decade in the history of the school.
By the time President John F. Kennedy was sworn into office, Associated Students, Inc., had been collecting mandatory fees from students for nearly 10 years with the blessing of the California state legislature.
Much of the coverage traditionally given to student government by the school paper, the Golden Gater, had centered around money.
During the years from 1940-1951, when student government fees were voluntary, endless budget crises and stop-gap fund-raising proposals made AS a steady source of stories.
Then, as now, Gater reports on where that money was being spent were regular features.
But within weeks of Kennedy's inauguration, a story that ran in the Gater suggested the nature of student government was changing.
Three days after the launch of the doomed "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Cuba, an unknown person or persons lowered the American flag flying at 19th and Holloway to half-staff, the Gater reported. A sign beneath the flag made it clear how those responsible felt about the attempt to topple Fidel Castro's revolutionary government:
"In memorium of the Organization of American States Pact No. 15, died April 15th, 1961," it read.
The Gater reported that the "strongest theory as to who had committed the offense is that this was a SCOPE activity." SCOPE, the Gater explained, was the "Student Committee on Political Education," described by the paper as "the student liberal political party."
Students -- and student government leaders -- had been taking stances on political issues such as civil rights, nuclear testing and fee hikes for years. But SCOPE, according to the Gater, was a campus political party that had also succeeded in electing three of its members to the student legislature.
The era of slate politics at SF State had begun.
The outspoken positions taken by SCOPE on the issues of the day moved some students to call for its abolition, and similar voices would soon be raised against succeeding slates in the Vietnam era -- and not only by students.
Strong objections to slate policies by officials of both the school and the state of California would lead to government interference and new threats to the continued existence of student government itself.
Did student government contribute to student activism, or did student activism radicalize student government? Unlike the chicken-and-the-egg question, there is probably an easy answer: Yes.
Student government gave student groups a place to meet and in some cases money to spend, sponsored speakers from all points on the political compass, provided a forum for debates and even funded the media that covered campus events.
Student activism gave student government its leaders, and those leaders set new and demanding goals of student government.
It was the civil rights movement, and not U.S. intervention in Cuba and later Vietnam, that galvanized student activists.
In December of 1962, the AS Human Relations Commission sponsored a speech by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Chairman Charles McDew made the trip to SF State to raise funds and inform students of the group's efforts to register black voters in Mississippi.
The following May, over 300 SF State students turned out for the first of what were to be five days of peaceful marches in San Francisco in support of Birmingham, Alabama demonstrators. The Alabama demonstrations, in response to the fire-bombings of the home and church of the Reverend A.D. King -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s brother -- were brutally suppressed by police.
When 128 demonstrators were arrested in March of 1964, while picketing San Francisco's Sheraton Palace Hotel for an end to discriminatory hiring practices, 40 were SF State students.
The campus leader of the fight that autumn against Proposition 14 -- a voter referendum to repeal California's fair housing acts -- was elected AS president in the spring.
California voters passed the measure, but it was eventually declared unconstitutional by the California State Supreme Court in 1966.
Putting money into the civil rights cause proved to be more difficult. In May of 1964, the AS legislature voted to spend $3,000 for a "Summer Involvement Leadership Training Program." The "SNCC Bill" -- vaguely worded to avoid a conflict with the California Educational Code -- was an attempt to get SF State students involved in SNCC's Mississippi voter registration drive that summer.
AS's own lawyer ruled against most of the bill's provisions, citing, among other reasons, education code prohibitions against spending money on political causes. The lawyer, Joseph B.K. Smith, also said that two existing programs went beyond AS's mandate: a student-run tutorial program for children with underdeveloped reading, writing and math skills, and AS's membership in the National Student Association (NSA).
The following April, AS introduced a bill to put a new attorney on retainer.
"The bill is intended to end the occasional services of attorney Joseph B.K. Smith," the Gater reported.
An explosion in the quantity and kind of services offered by AS was soon to follow:
In the fall of 1966, the Daily Gater reported that 1,030 students had signed up for Experimental College classes such as "Jazz: Twelve Innovators," and "Black Writers: From Rebellion to Revolution."
Two years later, the AS Budget for the Experimental College had risen to $16,000, the tutorial program was scheduled to receive $14,000, and funding for the Black Student Union (BSU) had been upped to $22,000 from $4,400.
According to the October 31, 1968 Phoenix -- a new paper created and funded by the school's journalism department -- six programs, including the debate team, had been eliminated, and the budget for athletics had been pared down from $48,000 to $12,800.
Although the budget changes were not welcomed by all, AS President Russell Bass pointed out that his winning Community Action slate had made its intentions clear to voters in the spring.
A new rule relaxing oversight of the budget allowed AS to change non-salary budget items with the approval of only two people: the AS Treasurer and the signature of AS business manager George Yamamoto.
SF State's business manager, Orrin DeLand, indicated that there were at least no legal problems with AS's ambitious plans and the relaxed budget policy known as Rule 22.
"The AS is a corporation," he told the Phoenix. "The administration doesn't have any control over the money either. There probably is some point beyond which the Trustees won't tolerate actions of the AS. A persuasion of common purpose among the student body, the administration and the faculty might move them," he said of Rule 22.
Before the trustees were moved to action, Governor Ronald Reagan's deputy attorney general moved to seize all AS funds.
From 1965 onwards, large scale demonstrations against the war in Vietnam were commonplace events on campus. Race relations at home again eclipsed U.S. foreign policy as an issue in the fall of 1968, when a lack of response to BSU demands that included a call for a black studies program at SF State led to the November 6, 1968 student strike that eventually closed the campus.
On February 17, 1969, state Superior Court Judge Edward F. O'Day froze all AS funds at the request of Deputy Attorney General Joanne Condas.
Condas put together an AS budget proposal that attempted to divert funds into "some of those old activities that always used to get money," she said.
The Phoenix reported: "asked...if it wasn't traditional for a student government elected on a campaign platform to decide on its own budget, replied, 'When I read over their platform it was innocuous.'"
Condas' budget proposal was rejected by Judge O'Day -- as was the budget proposal tendered by AS. In the meantime, AS fees were ordered reduced from $10 to $1 a year.
The state legislature revised Title V of the education code to give university presidents final authority over student governments, and S.I. Hayakawa used that authority to remove voting machines from campus the night before AS sponsored elections scheduled for May 21st and 22nd 1969. Administration sponsored elections were held the next week, and their results upheld by a California State Superior Court Judge.
In the fall of 1969, the state of California and AS were still arguing over the frozen funds. "Student funds aren't spent on the Young Republicans; there's no reason to give money to other organizations that advocate various political systems," Condas told the Phoenix in October.
In January of 1970, the Phoenix reported that $40,000 of the $230,000 in seized AS funds had been spent for accounting, attorneys and service charges by court appointed trustee Bank of America.
It was 1972 before AS fees were reinstated to their pre-strike levels and an elected student government made budget decisions.
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