Ideology, Institutional Identification, and Campus Activism

The purpose of this analysis is to determine which independent variable employed, as for example, age, sex, and religion, as well as indices of institutional and ideological identification, contributed maximally to the differences between two polar groups of undergraduates and faculty within Duke University-those that held sympathetic as opposed to unsympathetic attitudes toward a protest incident and its handling. The same variables were employed to discriminate between groups engaged in active or passive opposition to the incident and those who displayed active or passive support. A multiple discriminant function analysis revealed that ideological position (whether one perceives himself as a conservative, "middle-of-the-roader," liberal, or radical) and attachment to and satisfaction with the University were the two variables that discriminated most strongly between the two polar attitudinal groups and also between the groups who, by their actions, either opposed or supported the incident. Duke University, a recent paper points out (Kornberg and Smith, 1969), is not an institution in which one would expect to find student activism. The student body is relatively small and overwhelmingly white, the majority are Protestant and upper-middle class in origin, and approximately half come from small and medium-sized cities and towns of the Old South. Further, the popularity of fraternities and sororities, intercollegiate sports, and Joe College and Homecoming weekends makes clear that value is still ascribed to traditional American campus activities; the stately Gothic and Georgian architecture suggests a less complex and troubled time and affords a rather incongruous setting for radical behavior. Nevertheless, during the week following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, well over 1,000 students took part in a demonstration on the Quad termed a "Silent Vigil." The principal goals of the Vigil were higher wages for nonacademic employees and University recognition of the union (Local 77) favored by the predominantly black nonacademic service workers. Not quite a year later, February 13, 1969, to be specific, a group of about 30 black students occupied the records office in the administration (Allen) building, issued a list of 13 demands that they stated had to be met before they would leave, and, it was alleged, threatened to burn the University's records if any attempt were made to evict them by force. At approximately 5:30 p.m. the black students left voluntarily, the records still intact, but in the tragicomic sequence of events that followed, the police (who had been summoned earlier in the day by the administration) moved in from their assembly point in Duke Gardens and surrounded the a4ministration building; the crowd of several hundred students, almost all white, who had begun to leave the area around the building turned around; several police cars drove through the crowd; the students, angered by the police action began to shout at the police; the police fired a barrage of tear gas; and in the general melee that ensued, 45 people, 2 of them police, were reported to have required emergency treatment at the University hospital. Other events followed: the establishment of an ad hoc faculty committee to look into the problems of black * We are grateful to Kurt Back, Virginia Gilmore, and Harold D. Clarke for a critical reading of an earlier draft of this paper; to Ronald Steensland for coding the original data; and to Joanna Morris for her assistance in preparing these data for analysis.