Founded by Friends : the Quaker heritage of fifteen - Scarecrow Press

Haverford College 15
In 1961, Hugh Borton concluded that the college needed to expand from
450 to 700 students over the next ten years. Accommodating this change
would require replacing, enlarging, or renovating outmoded facilities, especially
science laboratories and the library. The issue of adequate compensation
for faculty had to be solved. While the previous ten years had not
brought many changes to the curriculum, there were some significant shifts
in emphasis. These included an African studies program, cooperation with
Bryn Mawr College in academics, and a postbaccalaureate fellowship for
students who wanted to attend professional or graduate school.
Two underlying tensions were the growing involvement of the United
States in the Vietnam War and expansion of the draft. The college turned
down government tuition loans that would obligate filing an “antisubversive”
affidavit and loyalty oath, presaging the college’s policy toward
student activism during the Vietnam War. Alumni and others contributed
against the loss of financial aid. For a time in 1966, peace vigils were held
on campus every week. There were few dissenters to the generally antiwar
position. That year, some faculty refused to pay federal income tax in
protest, others sent telegrams to various government leaders against “indiscriminate”
bombing policy in Vietnam, and more than $650 was sent
for relief of civilian victims of the Vietnam War to be used for medical relief
in both North and South Vietnam. Over the period 1964–1972, perhaps
250 articles or editorials relating to the Vietnam War or to war-and-peace
issues appeared in the student newspaper.
Some students and faculty were also involved in the civil rights movement.
Several students had gone to Mississippi to protest segregation and
marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Haverford was primarily white upper-class
Protestant until the end of the 1950s. Unfulfilled desires for diversity
yielded to frustrations by the end of the 1960s. Tendrils toward diversity
also found their way in protest against compulsory Fifth Day
Meeting. President Borton recommended it be ended, and the decision to
do so came in 1967. Other changes evolved. The Students’ Association by
the 1950s was practically self-governing. There were no proctors for exams;
by 1963, self-scheduled exams were in place. The honor code’s current
structure of parallel academic and social responsibilities emerged in
the 1970s, “and all other rules governing students faded.” The last vestige
of discussion on the issue of dress code appeared in the 1963 student
handbook: no gym suits, short shorts, or bare feet in the dining room.
JOHN R. COLEMAN (1920– ),
THE EIGHTH PRESIDENT, 1967–1977
John Royston Coleman, a Ford Foundation executive and a noted economist
who had taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the