The Governor v. the University

California's Governor Ronald Reagan has just announced that he will seek a second term in November. Though his campaign will surely be concerned with other issues, the voters are certain to weigh Reagan's handling of campus disruptions--a performance that has national and even international significance. After studying the record, TIME's Los Angeles Bureau Chief Don Neff reports:

As the 1960s began, Californians regarded their vast university with particular pride. U.C. campuses were strung like jewels throughout Eden-on-the-Pacific. U.C. faculties rivaled those of Harvard or Stanford; the halls and labs teemed with past and future Nobel laureates--and tuition was free. Many educators regarded U.C. as the world's best public multiversity.

Today suspicion has replaced trust. U.C.'s own regents are curbing the university's traditional independence. The state's open hand with funds is clenching into a fist. For the first time in U.C.'s 102-year history, the regents have imposed tuition; by fall 1971, students will pay more than $600, twice the current so-called "fees." In 1968, the voters rejected U.C.'s request for a building bond issue. A decade ago, California ranked sixth in state support of higher education; as the '70s dawned, it had fallen to 28th.

Innocent Equation. What happened? To many on campus, the answer is spelled R-o-n-a-l-d Reagan. To the public, it is campus violence--a spectacle that angered citizens well before Reagan the veteran actor became Reagan the aspiring politician. "There is a general impression that I chose the university as a whipping boy and set out to make it a political issue," asserts Reagan. "This totally ignores the fact that there already was an issue."

Soon after the 1964 Free Speech Movement turned Berkeley into a worldwide image of campus revolt, many Californians began asking hard questions: Why pay for classrooms that are going to be wantonly burned? Why support the liberalism that attracts eminent scholars if it also spawns student (and nonstudent) revolutionaries? In the minds of many campus boosters, the innocent equation that education equals the good life became suspect.

Parasites and Fascists. When Reagan promised to clean up the mess at Berkeley in 1966, he won a landslide victory over two-term Democratic Governor Edmund G. Brown. Since then his views have grown progressively tougher--and the voters apparently are still with him. The latest independent statewide poll by Mervin Field shows that Reagan is as popular as when he started out.

The distrust between campus and capital has also deepened. A whole generation now views the Governor as the instigator of mass student arrests and the teargassing of innocent bystanders at Berkeley. Today, Reagan openly admits that his mere presence on a U.C. campus is enough to provoke a riot. This month, when he began his campaign for reelection, six out of his seven days on the stump were marred by youth demonstrations. Among their more printable epithets, students at U.C. Riverside called him a "political parasite." Four students were arrested and promptly suspended from classes. Reagan applauded (though the suspensions were later lifted): "This is the type of swift action that I believe will be instrumental in solving this kind of thing." He later called protesters "cowardly little fascist bands," adding: "Our system can work, and they are damned well going to find out that it will work."

Many students and professors have accused Reagan of trying to "repeal the renaissance," of replacing "the creative society with an illiterate society." Says Fred Dutton, one of U.C.'s anti-Reagan regents: "Nixon wants the quiet American. Reagan almost seems to want the vigilante American. Reagan came into a fiery situation, but instead of dousing it he threw kerosene on it."

Yet, despite his inflammatory language, Reagan's actions have done far less damage to the university than his critics charge. And though he can normally count on a friendly majority of 14 of the 24 regents, Reagan is still unable to get his way on many issues. U.C.'s prestige and traditional autonomy remain too strong for any Governor to exert dictatorial control. The university's bureaucracy still commands a large portion of the state budget (U.C. spends around $1 billion annually), and it took Reagan three years to persuade the regents to adopt tuition. Though he opposes such professors as Communist Angela Davis and New Leftist Herbert Marcuse, both are still teaching on U.C. campuses.

Fragile Heritage. Among their troubling successes, Reagan and his friendly regents last year voted themselves the power to review all permanent faculty appointments. Critics immediately charged that Reagan & Co. aimed to fire professors with unpopular political beliefs. Indeed, such power has the potential for destroying a university's fragile heritage of free exchange of conflicting ideas. But to date, the regents have not blatantly exercised their power of review. Possibly Reagan considers the action a warning to administrators that they must police their own campuses more firmly--or else expect more interference from the regents.

As if to dramatize his distrust of campus officials, Reagan last week issued a call for a set of tough new rules that would have forced chancellors to declare emergencies during riots and suspend demonstrators. The regents passed a watered-down resolution that leaves the decision of when to declare an emergency up to the individual chancellors--in effect, preserving their vital freedom of action.

Reagan makes no secret of being a hard-liner against campus violence, but he bridles at the accusation that he has cut the university's budget to "punish dissent." Reagan points out that the operating budget has increased 46% since he moved to Sacramento. Meantime, prophecies that low budgets would force campuses to close, students to be turned away and professors to quit have all proved false. The university has continued to expand.

Scare Tactics. For all the tumult over the past decade, U.C. has added three new campuses, bringing its total to nine, and upped enrollment from 56,000 to 106,000. Its faculty now numbers 7,600 and its courses 4,000. Nobel laureates have increased from eight to 14. To be sure, some students have had to enroll elsewhere in the U.C. system when the campus of their choice was full. But all have been accommodated.

At a time when both state costs and taxes have soared to new peaks, Reagan asserts that the university has tried scare tactics to get more money. "Whenever we had to trim their budget," he says, "the first reaction of the university was 'All right, we'll have to drop 10,000 students.' And I finally asked: 'Why, if there is an economy drive, are the students the first thing that you can dispense with?'" Reagan argues that U.C. should first turn some nonteaching professors into teaching professors--an idea that many students would cheer if it came from anyone but Reagan.

Is the Governor playing politics with the university? Of course--and so is the university. How a citizenry wants its children educated is a perfectly legitimate political issue. In California, though, the combatants are so angry that few ponder the real problem: the role of today's university. "Nearly all our troubles go back to one basic difficulty," says U.C.L.A. Chancellor Charles Young. "There is no consensus as to what the university is, what its function is, and in what its importance to society consists." Until there is, universities and politicians will play politics.

Danger and Blame. Unfortunately for U.C., it has met an unexpected master at that game. By the time Reagan came to power, the university was used to having the legislature approve between 96% and 98% of its budget requests. When the new Governor began tightening the budget and exerting regental control, U.C. was aghast, and in Reagan's view it reacted like a spoiled child. Given the public temper, Reagan has made the university look all the more childish --or so many Californians see it.

The most serious charge against both Reagan and U.C. is the reckless nature of their public utterances. By tone more than substance, Reagan and the university have imperiled a venerated institution. U.C. San Diego's respected chancellor, William McGill, chosen to become Columbia University's president next fall, observes: "In this present condition of public hostility against the university because of its traditional tolerance of radical ideas and radical people, and the articulation of that hostility by the Governor, there is now some prospect of genuine damage to a very great academic community."

In any final reckoning, Reagan must accept the greater blame. As grand caliph of California, he certainly has the responsibility to advance what he considers the state's priorities and needs. But it is also his responsibility to do more than reflect public sentiment. When he should have talked in a soft voice, or not talked at all, he screamed "Bums" and "Cowards." Much of the public ate his language up. But the role of leadership is to seek common interest, preserve civility and raise the people's sights. This Reagan in his feud with U.C. has failed to do. It is his greatest failure.

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