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

Page 24 text:

INTERVIEW: RICK TUTTLE How did you get involved with the Programs and Activities Office? Well, I was interested, I ' ve been interested in students — I taught here part-time as a teaching assistant while I was doing Graduate work — and when an opportunity opened in this office as an Assistant Dean, I learned of the position and interviewed for it. The reason I went in for the interview is that the chance to work in Kerckhoff Hall with people who are interested in student government and in the various projects associated with student government, and with people who are also simply involved with social-political questions, all seemed interesting to me. I thought I might have something to contribute, and I also thought I would have an opportunity to learn a good deal. It ' s certainly true that from the people with whom I work I ' ve learned a great deal. I hope I ' ve contributed something. You ' re in the rather unusual position of having worked both as an and as an administrator. Can you contrast the two roles? Well, let me emphasize first that I only taught part-time — I was a teaching assistant with the History Department. That was an awful lot of fun for me. I essential ly taught courses in Modern United States and it was fun first, because I knew something about that field, and secondly, because the students seemed to relate to the subject matter which, I think, was inherently to them . . . events, many of which, took place within their lives or the lives of their parents. I usually opened discussion section by asking students to research the day they were born. So you got people looking back eighteen years — and I found peope related to that, and found it quite interesting. I know I found it interesting when a professor had me do that . . . I tried to teach the course the same way. Of course there were also some basic essentials — fundamentals — which I tried to relate in the course of teaching, and also a series of books assigned by the faculty in charge of the course. So I was often following that. It was a good learning experience for me, and I had the freedom and flexibility to work with students pretty much as I chose. In this work I, first of all, find my- self working primarily in a area — that ' s one difference. Secondly, there is no fixed syllabus, though there are a few things which are guidelines with which one works — for example, the constitutions and by-laws of organizations, the ground rules which are laid out or elections and so on — and an awful lot of the learning and relationship between me as a person and the people with whom I work, the students with whom I work, is very situational, where I do not expect to see them on a regular class schedule. But rather, I tend to see them in situations where they either need to see me, or for some reason wish to see me, or where I simply bump into them, and I think part of this work is to be able to relate to people ' s needs and aspirations from where they ' re coming, not necessarily by any pre-set syllabus. Now I tried to do that in my teaching . . . but I think it ' s even more so in this work. There are similarities. Many of the students working in and around Kerckhoff Hall are interested in questions. I am too, and one of the most enjoyable parts of this work is the informal minutes to discuss matters of, I think, mutual interest having to do with some substantive question; what ' s

Page 23 text:

But I guess . . . when you talk about change, basic kinds of changes in the way people look at things or perceive them, you ' re pretty hard put to it. Students now, I think, worry pretty much about the same things we worried about. They are concerned about the same things we were concerned with. Example: Students today complain bitterly about the University ' s parking problem. And properly so, because not everyone who wants to park here can. It was precisely the same thing in 1935. We had exactly the same kind of parking problem — it was just of a different dimension because there was no parking of any sort. Not Parking Lot 1, nothing. In fact the first parking lot that the University developed, I think, was in my Sophomore year, when Mr. Ackerman and the ASUCLA people managed to get a strip of what is now the Intra-mural Field set aside for parking on the other side of Westwood Boulevard, which was, of course, then a through street. They threw some gravel on that, and that was the only University parking lot. If it rained you might lose your car, because it would disappear almost out of sight. If it was a convertible and the top was down, you might not find it till the next day. So we had parking problems which were of precisely the same dimensions of students now, with parking structures which will accomodate upwards of 18,000 people, is it? So I guess it ' s the old story — plus ca change, plus c ' est la meme chose — the more things change, the more they remain the same. They ' re not that different, they ' re just different in time, different somewhat in style and definitely in dimension, but the same problems still remain . . . the problems of how you support whom you ' re going to marry, what kind of a job you ' re going to get, whether you ' re going to get a job . . . other than that I don ' t see much change. Well . . . how about tradition? We have very little of a traditional nature left here at UCLA — except, perhaps losing to SC every year in football and beating them in basketball. But that hasn ' t always been the case. Well for a long, long time we concentrated very strongly on traditional activities. Where they did not exist we created them. We were thought of among American Universities as the Purveyors of Instant Tradition. If we wanted a tradition for something and we had no tradition for it, we created a tradition, and a tradition was anything that was done more than once. We didn ' t have a Founder ' s Rock — all schools had to have a Founder ' s Rock. So when this campus was being leveled and prepared for construction, we dragged in that big rock you see out there and put it on that corner for a Founder ' s Rock. It didn ' t actually belong there at all. It was not UCLA ' s tradition not to have a tradition. Rather, the reverse; we were very anxious to have it and to create it where it was not there. And perhaps it is true, when I was talking about differences in students — that is one considerable difference. But that didn ' t die until recently. It is not the case that it never existed. It existed very strongly until about 1966 or ' 67 — the middle of the years of protest. I date the years of protest from the first year of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, which is a convenient date, ' 64, and lasting until ' 71 or ' 72, probably ' 72. Right about in the middle of that time was when our students and, I think, many of our faculty as well, began to veer away from tradition because it was not fashionable. The key words were relevance, compassion and concern. These concerns were largely absent earlier, but not just here, almost everywhere. And when a whole generation of students — in college generational terms — begins to move in that other direction a lot of things go by the board, and these went by the board. It ' s quite simplistic. I don ' t think relevance, and the criterion of relevance, is altogether a bad idea. But what is relevant has to be defined in unambiguous terms. You can ' t just say something is irrevelant because it ' s difficult, and that was all too easy to do during the Years of Protest. Hard courses were irrelevant, and easy courses became relevant suddenly. But then there was some real relevance too. The kind of power which the University now delegates to students and to student groups and to the ASUCLA and to things of that kind — I think that ' s good, I think that ' s desirable, I think that ' s relevant. I think the trick is always to find the balance between the necessity for students to have something to say about the kind of education they ' re having and the place where they ' re getting it, and the absolute necessity for there to be a professional corps of teachers, masters, and administrators who are able to take the long view because they are not transient. I think that ' s a very good thing. What are your plans for the future? I ' m finding a kind of turnaround in my role in the last couple of years since the Years of Protest ended, which is very encouraging for me in fact, it ' s very heartwarming - of students especially undergraduate coming to this office to find out . . . they ' re interested in the historical process, they want to find out how it was, and how that can be applied to how things can be. That elder statesman kind of role is one that I am the right age for to begin with, and it ' s one that I like. I enjoy talking to people about it, and being part of it. As long as I feel useful in that sort of role . . . then I like it and I ' m going to stay around — as long as I ' m useful and the job is fun. The day it ceases to be, then I ' ll go do something else. That ' s it.

Page 25 text:

going on in Congress, what ' s going on in university governance, this kind of thing . . . sometimes events on the international scene, some events which have brought us to where we are. I have a tendency to be willing to discuss these things, though I try to be sure the initiative is coming from the students, through their questions on these matters. Of course one difference is that in this particular work I ' m being asked to interpret and enforce University rules and regulations, as pertains to non-academic areas. That is not part of the teaching assignment, and it is something which I do have to keep in the back of my mind in my work in this office. On the other hand, in the teaching role one also has to keep in the back of his mind as he works that at some point he must give grades. And in both enterprises, at least for the time being, these are necessary conditions of the employment. Many of us who are involved in extra-curricular projects — student government, publications and the like — are fond of saying that the to be had outside of class is the more significant. Exactly how valid is that rationalization? I think the primary education you will get is in the classroom. This is a great university, both in the quality of its faculty and the scope of the material — primarily books, but also other kinds of information in the libraries, and it seems to me that the time a student spends here should be primarily devoted to the enterprise of learning in the classroom, of being a critical and involved student in the academic enterprise, and also having time not ony for classroom studies, but making the time to do reading beyond classroom reading in one of these great libraries. Now on the other hand, I think there ' s also a really splendid opportunity here at UCLA, for students who wish to avail themselves of it, of a chance to participate in co-curricular or extra-curricular activities, which include Student Government. I think there can be a lovely chance to mix the two, to do academic work and also have a chance to do something in the student government area. And I think the reason it can be a very fine experience is that there are people who are able to budget their time adequately to do both. It ' s a chance for people to work in an extra-curricular or co-curricular arena they find interesting. One of the payoffs, aside from the inherent interest itself, is that it can provide an excellent preparation for people who, in some vague general sense, have some idea of into public service later. It also gives a chance to work cooperatively in a whole variety of ways; programmatically, fiscally, in a parliamentary way with peers . . . very often having to learn how to negotiate across the table on various issues — sometimes when there ' s a scarcity of resources to do a job that ' s fairly large — to learn how to carry on those with tools and skills which can be somewhat helpful on the outside. We come back to emphasize, though, that the primary mission of anyone who is going to campus is to . . . get their academic work done first. And one of the more productive things I ' ve been able to do here from time to time is to encourage some students whom I see spending too much time around here to get back to their schoolwork. You went to a small school in the East (Weslyan University Middletown, Connecticut). How has that experience affected your outlook at a giant Western school like UCLA? I guess what it did combine in my own formation and my own was to give me some sense of the importance of every student, which was an available position one could take at a school that small. But I think it has partly carried over to my own outlook even at a place as large as UCLA, though obviously the sheer number of people here makes it impossible to get to know almost every student, whereas at Weslyan you could know pretty much every person in your class, and in the class before you and the class after you. This place is quite different. Here we have a problem of size. We should remind ourselves that not only are we one of the two largest campuses of the University of California, but in terms of the acreage for the campuses, our 411 acres, if I ' m not mistaken, makes us not only smaller, but significantly smaller than any other campus. Hence, we ' re very crowded. But all that notwithstanding, there are a lot of very good things which go on here. I think part of our work in this office and part of the work of students in student goverment and students in many of the various interest groups which we advise, is to make this place a more hospitable for fellow students, and also for those staff and faculty who wish to become involved.