Gannon University - Lance Yearbook (Erie, PA)

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YEARS OF CRISIS, YEARS OF CALM BY ELIZABETH BUCARELLI A chilly October rain fell upon Erie that Monday night in 1970. Msgr. Wilfrid Nash, president of Gannon College, was relaxing in his residence on West Sixth Street when he re- ceived a call from the director of student living. There were serious rumors a group of students wanted to take over Old Main. Could he get over there right away? It was going to be a long night. How does one prepare for such a confrontation? For the chanting and the anger and the threats, for those impossible demands — we want 24- hour open dorms drinking privi- ledges equal representation on all the standing committees and the board of trustees more electives less philosophy less theology more pass fail options an end to all re- pression in the Third World an end to the R.O.T.C. Program an end to the war in Vietnam and what are you going to do about it?— for the rumbling and shouting and pushing and shoving, the air tense, electric, ready . . . ready for that one rock to be thrown, ready for chaos, pandemonium, trouble . . . serious trouble. What if someone gets hurt? What if a building gets ripped apart? What to do to make them . . . go home. Well, you do what you have to. It turns out that the confrontation at Old Main wasn't nearly as dramatic as this. Msgr. Nash recalls it almost matter- of-factly: Well, what happened was, I got a call in the evening from the director of student living. The rumor was that a group of students were going to take over Old Main. So we all came down here and spent the night. But for a while there . . . who knew what to expect? Better round up the student per- sonnel officials. Get Dick Dunford over here. And Joe Pisoni, Bruce Payette. Call Mario Bagnoni. And alert the cops. Get a few over here. Barricade the building. Lock and chain the doors. Ready? Set? . . . Wait. This was around 11 or 12 o'clock. And when about 30 students marched up the front steps of Old Main at about 2 a.m., they quickly found that the administration build- ing was not for the taking. Standing on the other side of that door was Msgr. Nash, Security Chief Mario Bagnoni, and the student per- sonnel officials. Did they want to talk? Well, yeah, they guessed, no use getting this demonstration all to- gether and not doing something with it. So the students were let in out of the rain and they talked. By then the cops were all over the place, Msgr. Nash recalls. And they were angry because I called the cops. I finally said, 'Well, gentlemen, we've been at this long enough — either you leave now or I will expell all of you. They left peacefully. 14

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On the way out, one walked over to Msgr. Nash and asked for a light for his cigarette. He got the light and turned to join his friends. End of crisis | f it makes any difference, these students were protesting a friend's being expelled for repeatedly dis- obeying the college rule against freshmen under 21 living outside the dormitories. This is what the account in the Gannon Knight says. Ask Msgr. Nash what it was all about and he'll tell you he can't even remember. Who can blame him? He faced so many of these confrontations, demonstrations, rallies, protests, marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and the like that they have all sort of lumped together into one big murky stew. Certain incidents stand out, to be sure. Like the time a few hundred students jammed into his office (or at least tried to— most of them wound up pouring out into the secretary's anteroom and the lobby outside) to demonstrate their soli- darity on a few current com- plaints—listen to this— Pass fail (the Gannon Knight account does not specify what they wanted done on this point), raising the Student Acti- vities Fee for fulltime students to $5, and the Student Union problem (whatever that was). And an uglier, more serious inci- dent occurred in 1971 when a resi- dent adviser was attacked by five students. He was so badly injured that doctors feared he would lose his eyesight or worse, his life, as a result. (Luckily, he did not lose either.) But because the R.A. was white and his attackers black, serious racial tensions erupted on campus and spewed forth a whole week of threats, accusations, rallies, and demands. And Msgr. Nash, as president, stood at the center of all this: Calm down the whites. Reassure the blacks. Listen to the demands. Withstand the pressures from the faculty, trus- tees, parents, alumni. Answer to the angry local news media. Restore order. It was a very bad time for Gannon; Msgr. Nash calls it the worst. Or course, these turbulent years, from about 1969 to 1972, are going to stand out. But there were good years, too. And they all started back in 1933 with the founding of Cathedral College. Perhaps a measure of the success of such a young college — Gannon is only 33 years old — can be found in the sheer guts and determination of its humble beginnings. Gannon's founder and first presi- dent is the late Msgr. Joseph Wehrle. Back in 1933 the depression was still on, and Msgr. Wehrle, a much-loved teacher at Cathedral Preparatory School, was getting very frustrated. Here he had all these bright boys- talented students, diligent students — and he couldn't get them into the college. They had no money. Well, this just wouldn't do. So he said, Well, I'll start a college. And he did. The new school for these boys was Cathedral College, a two-year Erie extension of St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, Pa. This isn't even the half of it, though. Dr. Wehrle managed this planning and negotiating — all of the business that goes into Founding a College— while the bishop was off on a trip in Europe. PROTEST! March 3, 1971. The mood of the crowd was polite and friendly as they filed into the office and overflowed into the Old Main lobby. — The Gannon Knight, March 6, 1971. Meeting the students along with Msgr. Nash was Richard Dunford (left), now Vice-President for Student Personnel Services. 16