John Bernhard may have been the best president in Western Illinois University’s history. During the years that he served as president, 1968-1974, he led the university successfully through numerous difficulties in a turbulent era. The student body was not only very large, and still rapidly growing, but some regulations for it were changing, and it was also impacted by the significant problems that were taking place at that time, especially the Vietnam War.
Between 1968 and 1970, during the Bernhard presidency, the campus was influenced by student activists and reform-minded faculty members, so it underwent some profound changes. Among other things, dormitories, which had been either all male or all female, were becoming co-ed, with men and women on separate floors. Curfews in those dorms, for women, were eliminated, and so were the dress codes that female students had been coping with since the early twentieth century.
A new and more effective Faculty Senate was approved, too, and a more capable Student Government Association was implemented. Also, the campus newspaper, The Courier, was freed from faculty oversight, which in the past had limited what could be written about. Most of those changes were not instigated by President Bernhard, whom I knew well, but he generally encouraged, and quietly agreed to, many of them behind the scenes.
Also, the U. S. military engagement with Vietnam became controversial across the country, and that had a local impact. Macomb saw its first anti-war march in early 1967. So, when the ROTC program was established at Western in early 1968, that was a subject of controversy among the ever-growing student body.
During the early part of 1970, the Nixon administration expanded our country’s military involvement in southeast Asia, and college campuses across the country exploded with anti-war protests. On the afternoon of May 4th, students at Western’s campus spontaneously occupied part of Simpkins Hall. That historic building held not only the very large Department of English, but the controversial ROTC program, which students wanted to eliminate. Their occupation of Simpkins Hall lasted for several days, until late in the evening of May 8th. On a number of American campuses, anti-war demonstrations became very disorderly and even violent. Such was the case at Kent State University in Ohio, which was then in the national news. But fortunately, the tense, fourday occupation of Simpkins Hall did not generate any violence.
I felt that there were good reasons why the protests here at Western remained non-violent. For one thing, the student leaders of the Simpkins Hall occupation, such as Rich Hoppe, Paul Reynolds, and Jain Schwall, were essentially level-headed. I also noted that President Bernhard, Vice President Richard Poll, and the head of campus security, Larry Slammons, were firm in their opposition to such student actions, but they were also patient and did not overreact. Father Joe Kelly, the head of the Newman Center; Major Ted Raymond, leader of the ROTC, and Don Daudelin, from the United Campus Christian Ministry, also played crucial roles in keeping things calm—although there was tension throughout the campus and in the Macomb community.
So, the Vietnam war protest was very evident at Western, as the Simpkins Hall takeover caused much anxiety, but I and others felt relieved that our students did not turn to building damage or violent confrontation with any military figure—and that our campus officials showed patience and offered understanding for those who were involved.
