Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

uilding. Two neighbors who risked
their lives in rescue efforts were David
M. Abbott '35 and Dr. Henry D.
Humphrey, whose wife is the former
Ellen Earle '47.
A memorial service in Sage Chapel
two days after the fire brought more
than 1,500 members of the campus community
together to pay tribute to the
dead. Funds were established in memory
of Professor Finch and the students.
Arthur H. Dean '19, chairman of the
university's Board of Trustees, called for
a thorough study of fire safety on campus,
as did a New York State Senate
group. President Perkins called upon
former vice president Theodore P.
Wright to head up the Cornell study.
Two formal probes of the Residential
Club fire itself were under way, one by
governmental officials in the Ithaca area,
and another by the university. The governmental
study was to report to a
Tompkins County coroner's inquest a
week after the fire, but the inquest was
delayed at least an additional week to
allow a complete finding. No announcement
of any preliminary findings was
being made until the complete report
was presented.
The building in which the fire took,
place was of concrete and concrete block
construction, with some basement rooms
and hallways wood panelled. Its original
owner, Robert Reed Colbert '48, had described
it as "the most fireproof building
that could be built."
A Graduate Boost from Ford
The university received a $4 million
grant from the Ford Foundation last
month to support doctoral students in
the humanities and basic social sciences,
as part of Ford's $41.5 million experimental
program to shorten the length of
time needed to earn a PhD. Nine other
universities will receive similar support.
At present, the median time required
to get a Cornell PhD in those fields
(ranging from Chinese literature to anthropology)
is five and a half years.
Fields such as linguistics and philosophy
do not get the amount of corporate and
governmental support that flows to the
more technological areas of study, Associate
Dean of the Graduate School Frederick
S. Erdman, PhD '41, explains, so
that many graduate students in such
areas must teach for four or five years
to support themselves.
This is excellent preparation for the
teaching career which many follow, but
it also stretches out their academic work.
On the other hand, Erdman said, students
under conventional full-support
fellowships often do not gain teaching
experience, though they may well earn a
PhD in three years.
The new program provides full support
(tuition and fees and a living and
dependency allowance) for three years
and summer support for four years. All
students under this program will be required
to teach for at least one year,
subject to the requirements of their department,
when they will be supported
by the department. The program is expected
to provide for at least 80 per
cent of doctoral candidates in the humanities
and basic social sciences.
The Ford program aim of more students
completing their doctorates in four
years will markedly affect the rate of
growth in the number of doctorates
granted each year. Donald W. Cooke,
dean of the Graduate School, reports
that in the 1965-66 academic year, the
fields included in the program awarded
fifty-one PhD degrees out of 313 in the
whole university. By 1971, it is expected
that the number will increase to about
150 doctorates annually. There will not
be any large increase in the number of
graduate students actually on campus at
any one time; the increased number will
result from people getting through faster.
Anti-War Feelings High
Several dozen students successfully
violated an unenforced federal law, defied
various student and faculty rules and
orders, and challenged and/or insulted
the university proctor in mid-March as
part of the build-up to a national
"Spring Mobilization" to protest the US
war effort in Vietnam. Several faculty
members and persons associated with
Cornell United Religious Work also
stood with the group that violated the
law and challenged the proctor.
The law in question makes it illegal
to destroy or damage one's draft card,
for which the federal government has
prosecuted, or to encourage others to do
so, for which the government had not
prosecuted. A former student, Bruce
Dancis '69, who now lives in Ithaca,
was leader of a national effort to get
at least 500 persons to promise to go
to New York City April 15 and burn
their draft cards to protest the US war
effort. The Ithaca chapter of Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced
plans in early March to take signups in
the lobby of Willard Straight Hall for
the April 15 burning.
In a confused several weeks, a student
committee charged with responsibility
for student activities banned the
signups, students defied the ban, and
some twenty-eight students were cited
for violating the ban and failing to obey
the instructions of the proctor to desist.
A faculty committee put the ban ruling
"in abeyance" awaiting a report of another
special committee that was appointed
to look into side issues raised
by the confrontation. Several students
were put on disciplinary probation, and
others given reprimands. Final disposition
of nineteen cases was also held in
abeyance until the special faculty committee
reported.
During the confrontation, that centered
in a packed Straight lobby for
several days, anti-war demonstrators
heckled Proctor Lowell T. George sharply.
Some 450 members of the campus
community signed a petition apologizing,
including some of the anti-war group.
Faculty members took sides in panel
discussions nearby in the Memorial
Room, to debate the issues raised by advocacy,
civil disobedience, and protest.
One end result of the rhubarb was
that forty-one students were among
those who promised to burn their draft
cards on April 15.
A final twist came in the second week
of April when the Willard Straight student
board banned a cake sale to benefit
the Spring Mobilization in New York
City. The Executive Board of Student
Government ruled the decision to be
suspended until a special student committee
studies "the overall role of Willard
Straight Hall as a student union in
the Cornell community and the relationship
of that union to student government."
The student president of the
Straight said he would appeal the overruling
to a faculty committee.
Dancis, leader of the card-burning
effort, was arraigned April 10 before a
federal judge in Syracuse, charged with
violating federal law by tearing up his
draft card on campus December 14. He
pleaded not guilty and awaits trial. Another
federal court had just ruled that
the law under which he was charged was
unconstitutional, but that persons who
did not possess draft cards could be
accused of that constitutionally.
Dean Rusk Is Heard
US Secretary of State Dean Rusk
paid a visit to campus to see his student
son in the midst of the draft card arguments,
and his impending visit was an
May 1967 29