Tension At the Gates

The height of student activism and protest would culminate in Touch of Spring Protests within May of 1969. These joined protests of faculty and students highlighted a number of issues within Pratt Institute such as lack of representation, faculty salaries, hiked tuition, and Willoughby Walk. However a unifying theme within these series of protests, is debate of the hierarchical structures of power within Pratt Institute.

Except from the section “ABOUT STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS

AND THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY”

Each participating student has expressed his dissatisfaction of the day to day routine of the prefabricated, programmed, rigid, standardized life in a dead structure that is slowly falling apart. Each of them in their particular school felt that education could not be a dead formula in a dead book, a stereotyped experience acquired from a bored teacher in a dull classroom. Education could not be a four-year-long state school schedule which provided all the expected behavior and preconceived ideas of a society that never chose, a society which asked to confirm and consume without question….We believe that ‘answers,’ ‘truths’ ‘conclusions,’ because of the changing nature of society and the appearance of unprecedented experiences, must be considered as relative, tentative and meaning only in their particular context in time and space. We become conscious of that the values of the older generation, established twenty years ago under a totally different environment cannot determine our life today.

Except from the section “Students Meet With Board of Trustees”

Looking at it from the perspective of President Donovan in this disruption of campus and classes, how do you acknowledge the student protests while creating access for students wanting to attend class?

“Donovan does not recognize the strike and will keep Pratt fully operational, with instructions to the teachers to report to their classrooms. Interested students will be taught, and those absent will be marked as such. Also, if any lawsuits by students or parents are filed against him because of disruption in their education. Donovan would vouch as codefendant in the action with any that can be legally held responsible.”