Berkeley's Peacemaker

With campus morale shattered by the Free Speech uproar, the University of California at Berkeley one year ago ap peared to be a great institution careening toward chaos. Yet this spring, while sit-in protests over draft-deferment tests swept Chicago, Wisconsin, C.C.N.Y. and Stanford, Berkeley students kept their cool, and the campus moved hopefully toward creation of a cohesive community. What made the difference? The most convincing answer appears to be the effective peacemaking of Chancellor Roger W. Heyns, a former vice president at the University of Michigan who was specifically--and desperately--hired last July to calm Berkeley's combatants.

Praise for Heyns's first-year performance comes from regents, faculty and students alike. Regent Norton Simon (TIME cover, June 4, 1965) says that Heyns has "achieved excellent balance between the rights of the students and the maintenance of the university traditions." Cal President Clark Kerr cites his "keen intelligence, great good sense, and calm but effective style." Former Student President Jerry Goldstein calls him "an absolutely fantastic individual, with warmth and humor."

Canny Blend. It is theoretically conceivable that any new boss at Berkeley might have restored some measure of order to the campus. But Heyns unquestionably brought to the task a canny and successful blend of firmness and an open mind. He first exerted his authority symbolically by moving into the former president's mansion on campus, long vacant and long shunned by his predecessors. Then he displayed it in practice by acquiring as much freedom from President Kerr, who operates out of Berkeley, as that enjoyed by chancellors of the university's eight other campuses. That achieved, Heyns began to restore the shut-down lines of communication to all factions at Berkeley.

He appointed two young F.S.M. sympathizers on the faculty as key aides: Law Professor Robert Cole as "faculty consultant" and Associate Philosophy Professor John R. Searle as "special assistant for student organizations." Heyns arranged frequent sandwich lunches with leaders of the Associated Student government, opened his office to faculty members, who paid about 25 visits weekly. He successfully pushed a proposal to give the student president the right to address the Academic Senate whenever he wished, and placed three students on the Academic Senate Committee for Student Affairs. He also appointed students to most administrative committees on campus improvement.

Spelling Out the Rules. Heyns listened to all suggestions for new campus rules that would ensure a free flow of faculty and student opinion on any topic, however unpopular. Then he spelled out the rules clearly--and insisted that they be followed. He urged Oakland city officials to issue parade permits to students demonstrating against the Viet Nam war; but after the protesters erected a sign board larger than the rules permitted, he ordered it torn down. Similarly, Communist Bettina Aptheker, an F.S.M. leader, and two Vietnik friends last February held two rallies in a week on Sproul Hall steps instead of the regulation one--and then were suspended from leading student activities. After Heyns expelled one girl who objected to the suspension, Bettina, of all people, meekly signed an oath of allegiance to the regulations.

The closest thing to a new student uprising came when antiwar protesters threatened to jam entrances to Berkeley's Greek Theater so that others could not hear a Charter Day address by U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg. Heyns quelled a potential riot by arranging a Viet Nam debate between Goldberg and History Professor H. Franz Schurmann. Although 300 students walked out on the presentation of an honorary degree to Goldberg, the spirited debate went on without incident.

No Pool of Tranquillity. The main student complaint was that Berkeley had become an impersonal, bureaucratic "multiversity." In answer, Heyns appointed a faculty committee headed by Medievalist Charles Muscatine, which proposed 42 far-reaching educational reforms (TIME, March 25), a dozen of which have already been approved. Among them: the faculty must consult regularly with students on curriculum, each student can take one course a quarter on an ungraded pass-or-fail basis, creation of a Board of Educational Development to try out new courses that students consider more relevant. Apparently mollified by the spirit of these changes, Berkeleyites in a campus referendum last April rejected a proposal to create a new and more potent student government independent of administration and faculty.

While Berkeley seems to be getting back to its main business of education, Heyns himself has no illusions that the campus is yet a "pool of tranquillity." Plenty of Berkeley students seem to be more interested in taking trips on LSD than getting A's in class, and while the radicals who created the 1964-65 rebellion may be quiescent, not all have quit the campus. Ominously enough, Free Speech Leader Mario Savio is back in town after study at Oxford, apparently intending to register for the fall semester. Berkeley, says Heyns, "will continue to be a place of tensions arising from the vigorous testing of ideas, some of which will strike sparks." But having learned how to fight fire, Roger Heyns does not fear sparks.

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