Ohio University - Athena Yearbook (Athens, OH)

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Decisiveness or Inaction? OU Turns to Crewson for Help Dave Williams ABOVE: Crewson in the President ' s office in Cutler Hall. OPPOSITE PAGE: Crews on takes the oath of office on September 1, 1974 in the president s house. 12

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After the students had regathered in the lounge, SGB control of the crowd eroded. An increasingly restless group, sensing that the protest was leading nowhere, favored the alternative of facing Crewson. They overruled an SGB plan to end the sit-in and hastily planned a march to the president ' s home on Park Place. About 100 students braved the sub-freezing temperatures and arrived at Crewson ' s house at around 2:30 a.m., only to find the front door ajar and the house apparently empty. One student pulled the door shut and the crowd moved on to Cutler Hall where the lights were suddenly extinguished. The crowd soon dispersed. The next day, 23 referrals were drafted and sent to University Judiciaries. Nine of the 11 SGB members present were referred while other students were chosen on the basis of recognition by residence life staff members who patrolled the halls during the sit-in. Not all of those students referred were active participants in the protest. Only two SGB members, Mitchell and Andy Karp, were found innocent by a three-student hearing board, which every student was given the option to appear before, instead of Director of University Judiciaries Bruce Gaynor. Sentences ranged from one to two quarter probations to disciplinary warnings. No one was suspended from the university. Internal difficulties affecting the cohesion of SGB prevented the board from maintaining their involvement in the FRP issue. With the year more than half over, freshmen apparently lost interest in keeping up the battle for a change in visitation hours. Realizing that they would only be forced to comply with the rules for another few months, most became content to let the issue die. Without the pressure from SGB and the freshman class, university administrators also allowed the issue to fade; no changes in policy were made and the FRP remained intact. 11

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BY JAN JOHNSTON Harry Crewson ' s term in office will be remembered by students, faculty and members of the community as a period that was not marked by decisiveness, but rather by the calm dialogue that he created at the university. The many unrests that his predecessor, Claude Sowle, faced in his administration seemed to come to a standstill when Crewson entered office, whether the reason being his failure to explore those issues further, or just the manner in which he approached them. Crewson seemed to have had admiration and service from both the students and the community when he became interim president in the summer of 1974. Because of his long involvement with university-community relations and 25 years experience as an economics professor, his face was familiar to Athens. Crewson was chairman of the Athens County Democratic Executive Committee from 1966-68 and the Athens City Council president for 10 years. He held the position of county commissioner for six months, resigning at the time he became the university ' s president. His associates have noted him for his rare ability to listen to all sides of issues, objectively, and then take actions. Naming an interim president for a one year period as the university approaced a crisis situation was no easy job, but the Board of Trustees decided on June 20, 1974, that Crewson, the only politician out of seven nominees, was to take over the duties of the resigning Sowle. He entered the office faced with the decreasing enrollment, more budget cuts, demands by the Concerned Black Students for increased minority entertainment, a potential strike by the university ' s non-academic employes and a campus that turned its eyes toward Crewson in hopes that he would have the answers to the university ' s problems. The fact that he was selected as an interim president had no adverse or any other type of effect on the way that he approached matters, in his opinion of his own administration. He did everything with authority and complete independence, he said. Crewson said he never dreamed of holding such a position, especially when he began teaching at the university in 1949. His initial goal in office, he said, was to keep his total attention on the educational missions of OU. He wanted to encourage and sponsor the academic quality of the institution because, that ' s what we ' re all about. Keeping his total attention on the academic quality, Crewson made reductions in the 1974-75 budget and gave faculty contracts without salary raises. In the non-academic areas, he continued enforcement of the freshmen visitation hours policy, which caused much controversy. He made no decision in the grapes-lettuce United Farm Workers conflict; he simply had the salad bowls in the cafeterias marked United Farm Workers or Teamsters ' Union. He discontinued weekly press conferences, open budget hearings and Open Line, the weekly radio-telephone talk show that Sowle had had. He said he felt he was not as well qualified as the former president, who had started the Open Line program, because 13