University of California Los Angeles - Bruin Life / Southern Campus Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

Page 21 text:

When the editors of the 1963 Southern Campus dedicated that edition of the yearbook to Dean of Students Byron H. Atkinson, another man, Frederick Tuttle — later to become an Associate Dean in the Campus Programs and Activities Office — was an undergraduate at a school in Connecticut. Life was different then. John Kennedy was President. The massive commitment in Southeast Asia was still around the corner. Loyola of Chicago was the nation ' s best college basketball team. And the yearbook was making money at UCLA. But as the world changed and UCLA changed with it, Southern Campus stayed the same, more or less. And when the nation ' s universities exploded in the early seventies and America drifted away from itself for a time, Southern Campus was one of the casualties. And when it went out of business for a brief time, it seemed for a while that no one would notice. Tuttle and Atkinson noticed. And when a group of students realized that the yearbook was not necessarily an anachronism, that it could be molded and revitalized to continue as a successful publication, these men were there to provide direction and guidance. For while it was true that UCLA had grown too large and become too complex and diversified to be within the limited of a yearbook, it seemed an arbitrary measure to throw the away. It was definitely worth saving. And so, largely due to their efforts, Southern Campus lives today. But if it is to continue on its own in the years to come it must keep pace. It must seek to combine what is old and with that which is new and challenging. The best of two worlds. That is not an easy task, for there are so many contradictions. But it ' s not an impossibility, and it has been our goal this year to achieve just this sort of blend. In their own special ways, Barney and Rick represent what is good and valuable and worthwhile in each of those worlds. And it is fitting that they should have combined in such a significant fashion to sustain the life of a publication that is so close to the heart and so essential to the history of this University. So it is with respect and with that we dedicate Southern 1975 to Barney Atkinson and Rick Tuttle.

Page 20 text:

Yet, there are problems - many problems. And this is just a sampling. But that ' s really no different from what exists on the out side. And it is here that the real value of the University is found. UCLA, for all its flaws, is simply a microcosm of the world around, and survival here is supposed to be an indication of potential for the future. So the questions arises: Why are these people here? How do they What are their motivations, their perceptions, and their aspirations? It is to do adequate justice to these questions in this or any yearbook. But we can go part way, and, in the process, perhaps capture a piece of this year that is, in its way, representative, and will someday warrant examination in retrospect.

Page 22 text:

INTERVIEW: BARNEY ATKINSON How long have you been at UCLA? I ' ve been here forever is the answer to that . . . back to where the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. I started here in 1935 as a Freshman, so if you want to count my undergraduate time, that ' s about 40 years. How did you become Dean of Students? Well, I came out of the service in August or September of ' 42 and then came right back to the University, like a homing pigeon. You see, with a Bachelor ' s Degree in English Literature in wartime, I was not a saleable commodity. So I started back in the Graduate School in English. The Dean of Students at that time was Earl J. Miller. His secretary was the fiancee of a fraternity brother of mine . . . and she happened to be telling him that the Dean ' s administrative assistant had just been drafted, which was something that happened all the time . . . everybody went — being in a university wouldn ' t keep you out of the Draft. So he called me up one night and said, Why don ' t you get over there and talk to Earl Miller about this guy ' s job? It was kind of an everything job: being fraternity advisor, loan officer, scholarship counselor — generalist. There were only about three people in the whole student services operation in those days. All of what we now have as specialty departments were essentially done faculty part-time. So I came over and talked to Earl Miller, and Earl Miller was delighted to find a warm male — there weren ' t many warm males walking around; everyone else was in the service — so I think that ' s probably the reason .I got the job. So I went to work for Earl Miller late in 1942, and then sort of stayed with the University ever since. Needless to say, the school has changed a great deal in the last 40 years. But how have the students changed from your days as an undergraduate? Or is it just the issues that have changed? Students are fond of saying now that academic attitudes of current students are more serious than they were of students of my generation. I think that is not true. There was a very great seriousness of purpose among students of my time. For one thing, we were in the depths of what, at least up until recently, was the most bitter recession this country had ever felt. We were not at all sure that with Bachelor ' s Degrees we could find work. We were very work-oriented. The discussion among Seniors wherever you sat down was, What are you going to do after you graduate? And it was never, What Graduate School are you going to go to? which is now what Seniors talk about. It was Have you got any leads on a job? I think it ' s true that we didn ' t have the same kind of interest at all in such present fashionable terms as relevance of the curriculum or student input to decision-making. We assumed that the curriculum was relevant because it was there, and we didn ' t care much about student input. Our idea of the student role outside the classroom was primarily social. We were not concerned with altering academic decision-making processes nor with the uses of the Registration Fee or anything of that sort. I was not even aware until years later that the fee which I paid as an undergraduate was called a Registration Fee and was, by law, segregated for certain non-academic purposes. I just assumed that everything went into one big pot and the University made its way with that.