University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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1787 1987 20 Bicentennial

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had seen in America Litchfield’s desire to carry Pitt into the class of the academic elite progressed into the 1960s. In April 1962 the University began a drive to win a share of the billions of dollars that were being sluiced into the nation's aerospace program. Litchfield set out to sell the region's preeminence in metals and nuclear energy, its complex of research laboratories, and the need for an institution that would channel the ''spin-off' of space technology into industrial and commercial use. He obtained NASA grants of several hundred thousand dollars. Univmily Archive However, Litchfield's numerous capital projects caused a need for greatly increased finances. The money never came in as Litchfield had projected. In a ten-year plan unveiled in 1961, Litchfield had forecast for the fiscal year 1963-1964 a surplus of $730,000. On January 21, 1963, he revised that figure to forecast a deficit of almost $1.4 million. On May 14, 1963, he made another revision and forecast a deficit of nearly $2.1 million. This crisis eventually brought about Litchfield's resignation in July 1965. On September 24, 1959, Dr. and Mrs. Litchfield had out-of-town guests for lunch on the campus. Pittsburgh was the last city Nikita Khrushchev visited on his eleven-day transcontinental tour of this country before he returned to Washington to spend three days in conference with President Eisenhower. The Khrushchev party, arriving at 10:45 Wednesday evening, entered Pittsburgh by way of Mount Washington in order to sec the brightly lighted Golden Triangle. Khrushchev said, ''Wonderful! Wonderful!” and other members avowed that it was the finest thing they Btcenlrnnial 19

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In ihe 70» commuters started to become a greater part of the student body. Ijtft: Students protested across America against US involvement in Vietnam. The University, in the mid-1960s, embarked on the road to financial recovery. On January 30, 1966, the appointment of David H. Kurtzman as acting chancellor was announced. It was not a unanimously popular choice with the faculty. Kurtzman had been on the campus only seven months. He was not a physically impressive man, standing only five feet three inches. He was a financial man, an accountant type. However, Kurtzman's financial expertise proved beneficial. The Budget and Audit Committee, with a $1,426 million operating surplus for 1966-1967, began to return the funds borrowed from endowment accounts, with back interest so that they could be reported as income-producing. As Kurtzman was getting the University on track financially, the search went on for a new chancellor. After a long, discouraging search, a break was made in December 1966, and an appropriate candidate was found. A news release was given to the press on Friday, January 13, 1967: The University of Pittsburgh’s Trustees announced today that Dr. Wesley Posvar, 41, a political science professor and former Rhodes Scholar who is Chairman of the Social Sciences Division of the Air Force Academy, will become the University's 15th Chancellor on June 1 this year. The Posvar administration began at the onset of the most turbulent era in collegiate history. The country had never known anything like it. During an eight-year period beginning in 1965, students on several hundred U.S. campuses erupted in protest demonstrations. They denounced the power structure, the establishment, a corrupt society, the character of an entire culture. Their demands ranged from the ridiculous to the long-overdue reform of educational and social practices. They wanted an end to economic injustice, racism, political oppression, the draft and the war in Vietnam. To combat the student unrest, in October 1968 Posvar held the first of several Speak Your Peace conferences in the Student Union Ballroom. He said, The essence of the University is the relation between faculty and students. When this relationship is faculty, the institution breaks down. Still there were protests. Confrontation at Pitt began on Wednesday, January 15, 1969, shortly before one in the afternoon, when some seventy black students crowded into the chancellor’s outer office and the hallway on the first floor of the Cathedral of Learning and demanded a meeting with Dr. Posvar. When the secretary-receptionist told them he was not in, they said they would wait. The students placed guards at the outer door. Posvar returned to his office from a meeting downtown at 3:00 pm and talked with the students for a half-hour behind closed doors. At eight-thirty that evening, thirty students wearing black berets went quietly to the eighth floor of the Cathedral of Learning and there burst into the machine room of the University’s Computer Center. They ordered everyone to leave but permitted the operators to shut down the machines properly, thereby avoiding erasure of computer data. They then blockaded the elevator doors, barricaded the glass door of the center, and settled down for a lock-in.” On March 11 an all-white group that called itself -Concerned Students and Faculty announced that it would conduct a round-the-clock fast in Lawrence Hall for three days but that its action would be peaceful and non-disruptive. Some 200 members of the group met in the Commons Room at noon to discuss their plans, and about 180 of these marched to Lawrence Hall and occupied the lobby of the building. They remained there for three days. The University Committee for Women’s Rights staged a teach-in” in the chancellor’s office on May 18, 1970. Arriving at 9 am, only to find that Posvar had a dental appointment, the women settled down to wait. He arrived at 11:15 and immediately held a meeting with them that lasted until shortly after noon. By 1973 it was clear that the University had survived the years of violent protest without loss of life, without physical harm to any person, and with minimal damage to property. Btcrntcnnial 21