#edpol

A couple weeks ago I was hunting around in the archives for the Wisconsin Student Association’s (WSA, precursor to ASM) Student Power Report. The usual and simple search methods weren’t working so well, so I sat down with one of my coworkers at the desk to look into the murkier depths of the internal archival databases.

We discovered a single box labeled “P. Altbach” with a few promising folders. What piqued my interest, though, wasn’t the “WSA” folders, but a few others labeled, “Student Protest Policy”, “UW-Government-Military Links”, and “E.P.S. 900″, among others. It looked good on screen, so we grabbed the elevator key and began the journey down to the archives basement.

Finding a box like this is a lot like finding hidden treasure.  Following the coordinate map of shelf location, we pulled off an old box that had been accessioned in 1980. When we opened it, it seemed like the materials hadn’t been touched since. Excitedly, anxiously, I brought it upstairs and placed it at the table like a huge present. Since I’m Jewish, I can only imagine that this is exactly what Christmas morning feels like.

Curious about the ambiguity of the “E.P.S. 900″ folder, I set it down on the table and opened it up. Inside were documents on documents regarding a class entitled “Educational Policy Studies 900: Experiments in Teaching and Learning,” an entirely student-run class created by a student group called The Center for Radical Education.

The folder contains lists of projects, letters between administrators and the students behind the Center for Radical Education, correspondence between students, a letter from a Harvard professor interested in recreating the course, class descriptions, and reports on the course itself written by students.

The folder contains a report on the first time the class was offered, as well as a report on the second time in Spring 1969, the course having been moved from EPS 900 to 350 to allow undergraduates the chance to enroll.

According to these reports, the class exists because of the activism of students and collaboration with some of the more progressive members of the Educational Policy department’s faculty (including Associate Professor Philip Altbach, the compiler of the collection for whom the box is named). According to their own report, the idea for the class came about in the summer of 1968, within a small community of Education School graduate studentsr. In Fall 1968, sixty grad students took this class for credit.

The class was structured around student-generated projects with a huge range of topics. A list published after the initial Fall 1968 class named 20 projects, including “Theater, Education, and Politics”, “High School Social Studies Curriculum”, “History of the Blues”, “Film Project”, “Black Employment Problems in America”, “Rent Strike Project” (lead by now-Mayor of Madison Paul Soglin), and a reading group on “cybernetics and technology”. The cybernetics project is described in detail in the report as gathering once a week “in one of the students apartments about eight at night and lasting until eleven or so before breaking up (and until one before total disbanding).” Though the cybernetics discussion group was one of the more successful projects, it seems like the energy of the participants was far from unusual within the course.

The second time the course was offered in Spring 1969, concurrent with the Black Student Strike, according to a letter sent out by the Center for Radical Education, the course had to be capped at 500 students because if enrollment were to be kept open, they would “end up with 1000 or more students in the course” and they simply could “not handle that number of students under our present set up.” In short, the course was wildly popular, but clearly lacked the resources that its organizers and participants needed.

The project list expanded in the course’s second run in Spring 1969. There were projects listed as “Black Studies Curriculum”, “Madison Tenant Union”, “Women’s Liberation”, “Free High School”, “Contemporary Poetry”, “Contemporary Radical Student Movements”, “New Theater” & “Community Theater”, “The Nature of Self Discovery”, “The Consumer and the Community”, and more.

As of my finding this box in Fall 2018, I haven’t found much of any secondary sources expanding on this class (though doubtless there are more materials tucked away in the archives directly related to this course and its organizers). On some of the project lists, there are names of project organizers attached, many of whom are likely still alive and could be interviewed for oral histories. With 500 students attending, this was no small phenomenon. I wonder about its impacts for student organizers and how it functioned within a greater contemporary scene of activism and student radicalism.

Not only are the research prospects of this course exciting, but its implications for the University today are enormous. As a student in 2018, what does it mean to me to know that there were student-run courses at this school just fifty years ago? It was hard-fought for, and unfortunately died away. Why? Why couldn’t this happen again? Could it?

In a moment of intense political upheaval, for me, a course like this feels like lifeblood. Could the work of these former students be a precedent or map for creating newly radical courses? I don’t know how many students have the time and energy for an undertaking like this. But there’s something electric in knowing that it is possible, that is has been done. As I continue researching this particular nook in UW’s Vietnam War-era activism, I hope my understandings can act as a talisman rather than a relic.

- Rena Yehuda Newman, Student Historian in Residence