Man in the Middle

Hardly anyone seemed more dazed by the killing of four students at Kent State University than President Robert I. White. He was speechless even when an Ohio grand jury blamed the tragedy on Kent's "permissiveness" rather than the National Guardsmen who did the shooting. But he had reason for silence: the presiding judge forbade him and 300 others who testified from making any "critical comments." Last week, six days after a federal judge removed his legal gag, White spoke out with a blast at what he views as a new threat looming on U.S. campuses.

"The time has come when we must begin saying some of the things that were said in the 1950s, come hell or high water," White told a national meeting of educators in Washington, D.C. Clearly incensed by the grand jury's conclusionsdisputed by both a Justice Department report and the Scranton CommissionWhite called them a "local manifestation of a brewing national disaster." They reveal a "frightening misunderstanding of higher education." Colleges cannot shelter lawbreakers, said White, but neither can they become places "where ideasno matter how offensiveare to be suppressed."

No Hearing. Until now, crusading was hardly White's style. He was noted more for prudence and hesitancy. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago, White, 61, was dean of Kent's College of Education for twelve years before becoming president in 1963. At first he tried to inform Ohioans about the new realities of youthful alienation and black militancy. But the town of Kent (pop. 30,000) grew increasingly impatient with protests. White leaned toward a harder line.

Two years ago, Kent's black students and S.D.S. members staged a sit-in to protest recruiters from the Oakland. Calif., police department. White branded the action "intolerable." In the spring of 1969. he suspended officers of the S.D.S. chapter. When angry students responded by occupying a building, police made 58 arrests. Before any of the accused were tried, White suspended them without a hearing.

During last May's fateful weekend. White remained away from the campus until two nights of disorder had passed. When he finally returned, he shrank from meetings with students. He made no attempt to dissuade the National Guard from breaking up the potentially volatile noon demonstration on the third day of turmoil. By the time the Guardsmen began shooting, White had retreated to lunch in a restaurant a mile away.

White has since lost 50 Ibs. and shown signs of intense emotional pressure. Well aware that Ohioans generally approve the grand jury's findings, he declared in a letter sent to parents this fall, that "all forms of undesirable behavior can no longer be tolerated." He has refused to move ROTC off campus or curtail Pentagon-funded research.

Even so, the grand jury report was more than White could sit still for. Compounding his reaction was a flood of depressing mail, such as a recent letter from a Cleveland woman who declared: "They should have killed 400 of them." Backed by votes of confidence from his faculty senate and trustees, White resolved to speak out against "extremists."

White is not alone. At the same meeting where he spoke last week, Notre Dame's President Theodore M. Hesburgh said much the same thing. John C. Weaver, president-elect of the University of Wisconsin, warned that punitive anti-student legislation "can very quickly become control of the thought process." Last month Duke University's President Terry Sanford told the American Council on Education that colleges "must assume the offensive" against those who turn their "confused resentment" against higher education.

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