With the recent Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in university admissions, I spent a few minutes thumbing through my college yearbook. Looking back now with so much real world experiences under my belt was an eye-opener.
I attended a small private college in Pennsylvania from 1965-69. Those were tumultuous years politically and socially. It was my first time living away from my home on Long Island, and though it was a relatively small and peaceful campus, the turmoil of that era did not escape us.
I didn’t know much about the college before I arrived, hadn’t even visited the campus. I learned it was primarily an engineering school, Presbyterian-affiliated, and all-male – diversity had not been a priority. But change was in progress by 1965. The Liberal Arts side was expanded, mandatory daily (Protestant) chapel had been abolished, and among my freshmen colleagues were every race and faith. By my sophomore year I was living in a social dorm (not fraternity) with Jews, Italians, Anglos, Blacks, Scotch-Irish, and foreign students. My college had opened the flood gates – women would come the year after I graduated (bad timing!)
But one thing I now notice from the yearbook is not one of my professors was Jewish. The faculty was mainly Scottish-American (no doubt Presbyterian holdovers). There were a couple of professors with Italian names but no Jews, Blacks, or Asians. All that has changed now.
When I moved into my sophomore dorm I was paired with another Italo named John, from New Jersey. We hit it off right away and gave ourselves nicknames – I was Cosimo, he was Bruno. We had a third roommate, a freshman who wasn’t Italic but assigned him a nickname too. Next door to us and sharing our bathroom were three Blacks. For the next three years we lived in harmony with them – great guys!
I was no stranger to diversity. My early education in Amityville, Long Island (of horror movie fame) exposed me to myriad backgrounds. Amityville was 30% Black and had every sort of Euro-American – Irish, Scottish, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Jew, Turk, Greek, et al. And the teaching staff was just as diverse.
It was at college that I began noticing how the various ethnic groups behaved. The Jews in my dorm were sharp-witted and fun to interact with. Working with them on campus skits taught me to be a bit more outrageous. Then there were the ‘Mericans, the guys with northern European roots. My first experience with them was judging new candidates for our dorm membership. I was Pollyanna, ready to welcome anyone into the inner sanctum. So, I was shocked when the ‘Mericans lambasted half the candidates as boring or bad fits. Wow! They taught me to have standards – no more Mr. Nice Guy. It’s a lesson I still live with.
Sheltered though we were on campus, the Vietnam War and the civil rights struggle were constantly before us. All feared the draft but hoped the war would end before graduating. Ironically, ROTC was mandatory in freshman year, even for the left-leaning. Most of my Black dorm mates continued in ROTC, as did I, for the next three years. The Army was always seen by them to be egalitarian. They, no doubt, seethed with discontent about society in general but never disrupted the good vibes in the dorm. Motown united us and was a fun part of every dorm party – no rap or Hip-Hop in the 60s. But I later found out that there was a simmering Black movement on the campus that went public in 1970 aiming for a “Black House” and the “liberation and unity among all Black people.”
As I reflect back, I wonder how so many Blacks came to that small college in 1965, an expensive private school. My father, a carpenter, paid for my tuition, room and board, as did Bruno’s father who was a doctor – we received no financial aid. But how did Black “Hubie” from Arkansas and the others manage? Did our fathers subsidize this open enrollment? Interestingly, when our dorm needed kitchen staff for the dining facility Bruno and I took the jobs to defray our fathers’ costs. We jobbed for three years with no Blacks joining us to serve tables or wash dishes.
Affirmative Action was officially launched at Harvard in the 1970s, but “open enrollment” and minority “scholarships” came in the 1960s. Many of us witnessed their arrival. -JLM
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