The physical and psychological transformation of the university, begun in the late Fifties, was all but complete ten years later.

The 1960s, a decade that began naively optimistic with the inauguration of John Kennedy, ended with the local Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) trying to interrupt the Kent Army ROTC common hour, getting arrested and having their "trials" broadcast on TV-2.

There was an ugly, unpopular war in Vietnam, angry and passionate battles for the rights of African Americans, women and students. Bob Dylan was right; the times were changing and many people believed it was not necessarily for the better.

At Kent, even with all the post-World War II and Korea growth, the university always had been a small-town college masquerading as a big school. In the Sixties, reality caught up. The cohesive, cozy atmosphere that characterized the university for so long disappeared for many students and faculty during the Sixties.

Nationally, and at Kent, clamor and contentiousness replaced collegial civility. Some sense of "normalcy" would not return for more than a decade.

University changing rapidly

For Bill Taylor, attending President Bowman's annual reception for faculty in 1959, it had to strike him that the university had undergone some severe modification. As he looked around, two major changes were evident. First, there were so many faces, and, second, there were fewer faces that he recognized. He wasn't wrong. Enrollment was creeping upward, new faculty were being hired, and the "old guard"--those hired in the Thirties and Forties--was disappearing. By 1959, Taylor was one of only five department heads who had been in office before World War II.

Physically, Kent State was about to explode. The beautiful ivy-covered halls of Merrill, Kent, Lowry, Moulton, Engleman, Franklin were in need of renovation. And the geographical epicenter of campus was being tugged hard to the south and east.

Heading up the Daily Kent Stater in Winter Quarter 1963 were Bob McGruder, editor, and Tony May, managing editor.

By 1968, the campus had expanded so materially that the traditional 10 minutes between classes had to be lengthened to 15. A campus bus system was developed to move the mountains of students from

place to place on campus and to and from Kent and Ravenna.

The university could not build facilities fast enough to keep pace with the number of students that began pouring onto campus. There were large numbers of "war babies" and "baby boomers" and first generation college students. In 1960, Kent State's enrollment was about 7,500. By 1970, Kent had almost 21,000.

The School of Journalism and the Division of Radio were not untouched by the radical transformations that were sweeping across the campus and the country. It seemed as though it was only a few years earlier that Taylor had joined the faculty and started to build a journalism program.

However, when classes began in fall 1960, Taylor was starting his twenty-fifth year at Kent. During the tumultuous Sixties, Taylor would not only resign as head of Journalism, he would leave the university.

Dramatic changes in offing

The Photo Short Course, on which Taylor had built much of the school's reputation, would be unceremoniously jettisoned. The physical surroundings of Merrill Hall that four decades of journalism students had come to know were not just altered; they were abandoned and transported, literally, about two hundred yards southeast into a stark new environment that may have carried the old director's name but never captured the cramped-but-homey ambiance of Merrill Hall.

By the end of the Sixties, the news sequence might still be the core of the program, but other disciplines in public relations and advertising quickly were attracting significant numbers of journalism majors. During the Sixties, the philosophical orientation of the School was expanding. The world "journalism" still might mean newspapering, but there was an increasing emphasis put on the "role" of journalism, the "effects" of journalism, the "processes" of journalism. Across the country, and at Kent, what had been minor disagreements over what "journalism" was and how it should be taught, turned into divisive, mean-spirited battles.

The role of student media was debated, argued and changed in the Sixties. To defend unfettered rights of freedom and exploration for a student newspaper could--and eventually did--result in personal trauma for faculty and administrators.
On the other hand, the transformations taking place also could mean unparalleled positive technological change.

The university's commitment to broadcast communication, started in 1935 with Harry Wright's foray into Radio Speaking, was further strengthened as more academic and service units in television were initiated. Walt Clarke was busy preparing plans to further expand the role of "broadcasting" at Kent. And, he did so in his office in the recently opened $3.4 million state-of-the-art facility for music and speech--and broadcasting.

The 'pool' is drained...

Surprisingly, most journalism programs in the country, including Kent's, did not share in the enrollment boom of the early Sixties. John F. Kennedy's call for personal, youthful, liberal involvement and activism through such programs as the Peace Corps helped drain the pool of bright, altruistic students who might have chosen journalism. The great adventures in space infatuated a generation of students who preferred to enroll in science or engineering instead of journalism.

In the fall of 1963, there were only 79 majors in the School of Journalism. An emergency recruitment plan built around high school visits and student visitation was hurriedly implemented, and a year later the number of majors had jumped to 150, close to the School's peak of 175 in 1951. By 1967, there were 325 majors, and faculty had to institute the bane of students, "controlled registration," for beginning newswriting and photography classes. By 1968, some 360 students were majoring in journalism: 185 in news-ed, 143 in public relations, 16 in photography, 10 in advertising and six in radio/tv news. In addition, 13 students had been admitted to the School's recently approved master of arts program. The only worries the School would have about enrollment over the next decade would involve having too many students.

Alumni program a strength of School

One constant during the concerns over rising and falling enrollments was the continued, and undeniable, health of the School's alumni program. Taylor boasted in 1963 that the School had more than 550 "trained journalists" in "high levels of responsibility" throughout the world. "No department in the university, if I may brag just this once, can anywhere match our alumni-related activity," he declared. A year later the School reported having an "active Journalism Alumni Association with more than 600 members."

The school's alumni have always been a major strength of the program, including the alumni association, now called Friends of JMC @ KSU. This is a photograph of the first meeting, in 1946, of journalism alumni in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1957, the Association initiated an annual Outstanding Alumnus Award, and that year selected as the first recipient Helen (Westcott) Dix, 1937 editor of the Kent Stater. Four years later, the present William Taylor Distinguished Alumnus Award was initiated.

Journalism toughens up

Journalism students in the early Sixties could choose from one of five sequences: news-editorial, public relations, business-industrial editing, radio/tv news, and photography. The School and the university had made the commitment to try for professional accreditation by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism (ACEJ) in 1965.

The effort was successful, and in 1965 Kent State's School of Journalism was accredited for the first time, through the news-editorial sequence.

Once the enrollment growth spurt began, the School had to move to put faculty in the increasingly crowded classrooms. Veteran faculty members included Fisher, Beck, Bentley, Taylor, and the inimitable Powers who was entering his third decade. During the Sixties, new faculty were added: Charlie Brill in photojournalism, Ralph Darrow in public relations, Richard Goodrick in business-industrial publications, Harvey Saalberg, Irene Sarbey and Glenn Himebaugh in news, Richard Schreiber in advertising, and Harold VanWinkle in educational public relations.

Irene Sarbey

Sarbey was the first full-time, tenure track female faculty member in either journalism or radio. She held an MSJ from Northwestern and had worked on the copydesk at the Beacon Journal. She joined the faculty in 1965 and resigned in 1976. And, there was one more new faculty member. In summer 1963, Murvin H. Perry, his wife, Rita, and their children packed up in

Kansas, and headed east. Perry would be the new director of Kent State's School of Journalism.

Taylor 'suspends' the Photo Short Course

Probably the second most surprising announcement of the Sixties was the "suspension" of the venerable Photo Short Course.

After World War II, the Short Courses were packed, and ideas and new technologies and photographic methods were discussed and debated.

More than 5,000 professional and amateur photographers attended the 21 Short Courses. Its reputation was national. By the early Fifties, it was the dominant photography outreach program in the country.

Still, by the late Fifties there were signs of problems: atten-dance, living and laboratory spaces, the introduction of television and its visual impact on news coverage, inability or refusal to change the Short Courses, and the use of alcohol.

By the end of the Fifties, the Short Course was fighting for its life. Just 151 photographers registered for the 1959 workshop, and only 115 for the 1960 workshop. Taylor had been forced to move the Short Course date from the traditional March to June, when fewer students would be on campus and housing would be easier to obtain.

As early as 1953, KSU President Bowman had told Short Course head, Jim Fosdick, that the Short Course was becoming a "liability" because of the drinking, even though the Short Courses themselves brought national publicity to Kent. The last Photo Short Course was held June 10-13, 1962. Kent never revived it.

Bill Taylor moves on...and then out

Bill Taylor was not yet 34 in 1936 when he took the reins of the new journalism department. He had mapped out a bold and ambitious plan for development and watched as his handful of majors grew to number in the hundreds.

By the early Sixties, Taylor had achieved more than even he might have thought possible. A respected member of the academy and an important part of the university's institutional memory, Taylor was well-known academically and professionally. Outside the university, he continued his commitment, unabated, to history and the arts, and he remained enthralled with travel, antiques and old books.

This is a picture of a man at the apex of his career. Yet, there were disquieting whispers. Taylor was pushing 60 in the fall of 1962. For more than a quarter of a century he had been fighting, politicking, building his program. Something inside him now obviously said it was time to step aside as head of the program and return to what he had always loved to do, teach and study and do public relations. On March 1, 1963, the Kent Stater published a page 1 unbylined, dispassionate story:

Ralph Darrow came to Kent State in 1967 to teach public relations.

"Prof. William Taylor will resign as head of the school of
journalism at the end of the academic year, he announced Thursday. After serving as head of the school for 27 years, Taylor will devote full time to teach-ing, writing and research
.... Taylor said he now looks forward to 'the pleasure and
satisfaction that comes from the classroom, other creative work, and, of course, to service to the university in any way I can.'"

On May 18, more than 150 people honored Taylor at a banquet at Twin Lakes Country Club. And, in the fall, Taylor became a full-time classroom teacher.

For three years after his resignation as director, Taylor taught and traveled and researched. Then, in July 1966, he told the Kent Stater he was thinking of retiring "next year" after the School was moved from Merrill to its new home. Plans never were real definite, however, until, just a few weeks before classes were to begin for Fall 1967, he an-nounced he was leaving the University.

An era was ending.

Murv Perry takes over

When 41-year-old Murv Perry received word in the summer of 1963 that he had been chosen to head the Kent State journalism program, he immediately began packing up family and belongings in hurried anticipation of the job ahead. Since 1959 he had been teaching at Kansas State University. He previously had served as assistant to the director of the School of Journalism at Iowa State, where he earned his masters and Ph.D.

Perry was born, reared and educated in the midwest, and he said he had learned traditional values of honesty, family, fair play there. Perry was nothing if not a man of strong principles. He was as devoted to the School of Journalism as Taylor or any faculty member.

Yet he also was distinctly different from Taylor. While his deep and abiding interest was in professional newspaper journalism, he also understood the increasing number of calls to broaden the scope and mission of journalism education, the desire to see journalism as one part of a larger field of "mass communication," and the challenge to more thoroughly study and appreciate the role the media played in society. That was a broader vision than Taylor had brought to the program. Perry strongly believed that journalism needed the "brightest young people," and he was devoted to the notion that journalism had to play what he called "a primary role in a free society."

Top priority for Perry was students: getting more of them. And he set about to increase flagging enrollment. He got busy meeting area professionals and alums. He served as president of the Buckeye Chapter of SDX and helped produce one of its infamous gridiron shows. He attended Cleveland SDX, PRSA, IABC meetings, and he worked closely with the Ohio Newspaper Association, lobbying for open meetings laws and against judicial restrictions on trial coverage.

Bill Taylor in 1968 in front of his architectural namesake, Taylor Hall.

Perry became director of a highly visible unit with close connections to an even more highly visible student newspaper during a time when student activism -- some called it contentiousness -- was beginning to bloom at Kent and across the country. At the start of only his second quarter as director, Perry found himself defending Stater actions.

The paper had published a front page story about a KSU female student who had abandoned her newborn baby and who had been charged by police. The Stater used the student's name, which created a major ruckus and lots of letters to the editor charging sensationalism and lack of compassion. The Stater had responded with a fairly weak editorial that satisfied no one and did nothing to quell the outcry. Perry finally wrote his own letter to the editor that clearly set forth his belief in the watchdog function of the press and the importance of the press in a democracy:

"The press must publish...names of persons charged with
crimes so that society may determine whether some priv-
ileged persons received favored treatment from those del-
egated to dispense justice....It is not the role of the news-
paperman to condemn, to acquit, nor to mete punishment;
it is to provide full information."

A year later, the Kent Stater again was embroiled in a controversy, this time over publishing a story about a group of campus protesters who apparently fought with police trying to arrest them. Perry wrote another letter-to-the-editor defending the paper's coverage. The protesters had set themselves up as "campus opinion leaders," he argued, and therefore what happened to them became legitimate news for the Stater.

Keeping student goverment out of Stater

Perry's most important, and prolonged, battles involving the Kent Stater, however, involved real or perceived attempts by student government or university administrators to dictate content or policy of the paper.

The relationship of student publications such as the Stater and Chestnut Burr to the School of Journalism prior to the Sixties had been fairly clear. They were open to any student, but they were labs for Journalism students. The university was the "publisher," the Publications Board the "oversight committee" with power to appoint and remove editors.

In the Sixties that relationship became very murky. Pub-lications were independent and there was no prior censorship; journalism students filled most positions and journalism classes wrote and edited stories for the publications. The university was the publisher, but "operational responsibility" for the publications was given to the School of Journalism, which assumed that responsibility by appointing a faculty member as adviser.

The university publications committee was granted the right to appoint editors-in-chief and to recommend annual budgets to the office of student life and from there to a university vice president.

Perry rarely refused to defend the Stater or other news media during his years as director. His battles with student life administrators and members of the Student Publications Policy Committee anticipated those of later journalism directors, such as Joe Harper.

The journalism School's fuzzy "operational responsibility" for the paper would claim a victim. More than one director of the School of Journalism after Perry found it difficult to explain to angry students or irate administrators why they could not tell Stater editors what stories or editorials to publish or exclude. The Kent Stater for

Murv Perry

60 years has been an independent publication, yet it also has been closely, perhaps too closely, identified with the School of Journalism and its director.

Early on, Perry had drawn a line in the sand. The news media have a right to publish, unfettered, information necessary to allow the public to make informed decisions. It was a traditional and logical argument, but a potentially fatal one.

Merrill Hall has no more room

Journalism facilities in the east wing of Merrill Hall never were overly spacious, and certainly not palatial. Although many graduates carried away warm memories of the place, the truth was that no one had had journalism, and the facilities peculiar to it, in mind when they built the place in 1912.

When journalism was deposited in Merrill in the early 1930s, requirements for space and facilities were at least marginally acceptable: a classroom, two or three faculty offices, and some space for student publications. By the early Sixties, with its enrollment surge, larger numbers of faculty, and increased publication and support staff, Merrill just wasn't satisfactory.

Specific configurations varied over the years, but, by the late Fifties, journalism was occupying three large rooms that had been subdivided over and over.

At one time or another, there also were nooks or crannies for editors of various publications, as well as for the university editor and the university news bureau. Other student publications and their editors were in the dank basement of Kent Hall, also home for a time to Radio-Speech, as well as photographic facilities.

'Adequate, but never pretentious....'

In a report on the School of Journalism in 1964, Perry wrote, most likely with tongue in cheek, "The facilities have been adequate, but never pretentious." Perry could afford to joke a little; he had only recently learned that the School of Journalism--like its sister program in Radio-Speech--was going to get a new home. As part of the campus construction boom, university trustees had voted to erect a $1.4 million journalism and architecture building.

Construction was begun on the building in spring 1965 atop what the Kent Stater called "one of the most popular areas on campus, 'The Hill.'" A description of the building published in early 1965 must have sounded too good to be true to the denizens of old Merrill Hall. Not 6,000 square feet, as they had there, but 22,000 glorious square feet, the entire bottom floor of the new neo-classical behemoth that came to dominate the old blanket, nee toboggan, hill. There would be modern classrooms and labs, a 54-seat lecture hall, exhibit areas, photographic studios, spacious administrative and faculty offices, as well as offices for the Stater and Chestnut Burr.

Journalism moved into Taylor Hall on January 28. The formal dedication on April 15, 1967 was a grand affair. More than 1,000 people attended. An open house and reception honored Taylor, and the plaque naming the building after him was unveiled.

Shortly after the move into Taylor Hall, Perry was writing another report on the School and this time, unlike in the 1964 document, he wrote: "Facilities for the School of Journalism are excellent."

And, they were. For the first seven or eight years, when, again, the School of Journalism was running out of room.

'Make sure the studios are air conditioned!'

There had been few such problems when the massive Music and Speech Center had opened in 1960. The Radio-Speech program enjoyed what the Stater had called "one of the nation's finest facilities for educational radio and TV broadcasting."

Along with offices and classrooms, the broadcasting studios were state-of-the-art. New equipment alone cost between $40,000 and $65,000, "more than three times the total value of present (Spring 1960) radio equipment." As was the case with Taylor Hall, however, within a decade or so, space became a critical problem and political turf wars erupted over possession of "classrooms" barely larger than storage closets.

The open house for the MSP building was held in January 1961, with more than 2,000 people attending and touring facilities. A closed circuit TV demonstration highlighted the radio/tv segment of the tour. Students with TV cameras "shot" visitors and let them see themselves on television, no small treat in the still-infant-days of TV.

As in the School of Journalism, the "Broadcasting" program experienced surging enrollment, new faculty and an expanded curriculum. By the end of the decade, the academic side was called "telecommunications," reflecting the emphasis on radio, television and cable.

New faculty in broadcasting program

And by 1969, Broadcasting professors Walt Clarke and John Weiser were boasting (and hosting) 350 Telecommunications majors. Helping to relieve not only the advising load, but also the teaching and professional service responsibilities were new faculty members. Dr. Phil Macomber was hired in 1960 to develop the television curriculum. And in 1969, Gene Stebbins, who had just received his Ph.D. from Ohio State, joined the faculty, also to work in the area of television.

Richard (Rick) McDonald was an instructor and worked with WKSU-FM. At Macomber's job interview, Clarke and Weiser asked him how to properly equip the television studios then being built. Macomber reportedly replied, "Just make sure the studios are air conditioned." Clarke was assured by the university administration that the studios would be air conditioned. But, as Stebbins notes, "after the building opened, they found that the studios were air conditioned only between May 15 and October 15, just like the rest of the building...It was not uncommon to have the temperature in the studio above 90 degrees during a production."

Even as new faculty members were being hired in Broadcasting, however, the program lost one of the first true believers. G. Harry Wright, professor of theatre and founder of the first Radio Speaking class in 1935 and the Radio Workshop in 1940, died in 1964 after almost 30 years on the faculty.

'A protracted squabble'

In May 1962, the Kent Stater carried a story about President Kennedy signing a piece of legislation providing $32 million for educational television. Broadcasting professor, Phil Macomber, told the Stater that was probably the greatest impetus to date for development in that field.

The Stater story also reported that Kent State had "one of the most modern television studios in the U.S. and is moving rapidly forward with a closed circuit television program." That was true. The Broadcasting division of the School of Speech and the Office of Television Services had been doing closed circuit broadcasting almost from the time they moved into the new MSP building.

The key part of the Stater article was further down in the story: "The university is also examining the possibility of becoming a broadcasting station." There was that word again: station. The last time it had popped up in such an important context was in the late 1940s, when faculty had begun talking about starting a community radio station, a station that turned into WKSU-FM.

Now the talk began anew. There was a proposed educational channel available in the area, channel 55. But, Kent wasn't the only university interested in claiming squatter's rights. Starting in 1962, Kent State and the University of Akron engaged in what the Kent Stater dubbed "a protracted squabble" over rights to the channel. By May 1963 the two sides had agreed the conference table should be rectangular and made of wood. Concluding that it would be "impractical to run the station on a joint basis," Kent State reactivated its FCC application for sole control of the station.

Undaunted, Akron University administrators filed their own application asking for rights to channel 55. Besides the cat fights over channel 55, Northeast Ohio universities argued about channels 45 and 49. Kent applied to the FCC for use of 49; Akron objected. Kent applied for use of 45; Youngstown University objected. That's about the time the Board of Regents played hardball.

Gene Stebbins says the three universities were told to come to some agreement regarding the channels or the Board would establish its own station and repeat the programming of Ohio State's WOSU. Not surprisingly, a short time later, presidents of the three schools established the Northeast Educational Television of Ohio (NETO) agency and that or-ganization successfully applied for use of channels 45 and 49.

TV-2 takes shape

Internally, television at Kent State was growing rapidly. Since 1960, it had been used in instructional classes, a teaching tool. It also had done some programming of its own, however, such as a weekly interview program with football coach Leo Strang that was provided to the three Cleveland VHF stations. Macomber began to push hard to do more student produced material, but it wasn't until 1968 that campus-wide closed circuit programming was available. On October 1 of that year, WKSU-TV Channel 2 inaugurated closed circuit television to 22 campus buildings and dorms from the Kent State Television Center. Macomber's idea had come true, just six-plus years later. TV-2, as the station increasingly was called, began original local programming two hours a day, five days a week.

That first show, however, on October 1, was the one student participants remembered. Bill Sattelmeyer wrote a first person story for the Stater (October 4) and described what it was like to make university communications history. Talking about the dress rehearsal, here's some of what Sattelmeyer wrote:

"Our newsroom is five desks and five chairs. The phone
line isn't in. There are only two typewriters. One film
camera is in, but no processor; Polaroids are unavailable;
no portable VTR's; the regular equipment is not fully
operational, and the cable to the dorms is not completely
installed. We sighed, chose our assignments and went
to work....There is no set yet. Two half-completed benches
in front of curtains make a temporary set...."

When the first real newscast was broadcast, the staff learned that audio had been out for much of the campus. Somewhere the late Harry Wright smiled as he recalled the primitive beginnings of Kent State radio almost 30 years earlier.

The contentiousness of the Sixties exploded into the 1970s, and Taylor Hall became the visual backdrop for all of it. Read more

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