University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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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

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1787 1987 20 Bicentennial

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1787 1987 TV U nisei sit) of Pittsburgh's skyline before the storm. Right: In on attempt to improve Pitt’ appearance aging tree are uprooted to provide ample ground for new growth. Unlike the fiery decade before it, the mid-1970s marked an important turning point toward the University’s growing prestige. The University in 1975 became by invitation a member of the Association of American Universities, a select group of fifty institutions strong in graduate work, professional schools, and research. According to the perceptions of the other forty-nine members, Pitt was thus recognized as one of the top publicly supported research universities in the United States. On August 23, 1976, the University marked its tenth anniversary as a member of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. Although excellence in student scholarship and faculty teaching had been sought in various ways down through the years, after 1976 new ways of rewarding superior performance were developed and formalized. The Univer- sity Honors Program (UHP) was introduced on the Pittsburgh campus in 1977. Complementing the University's academic growth of the late 1970s was a resurgence in Pitt's athletic programs. In 1976, the Panther football team won its ninth national title, and running back Tony Dorsett won the coveted Heisman Trophy. Under Jackie Sherrill (1977-1981) Pitt had five phenomenally successful seasons. There were important developments on the campus in 1983-1985 that serve to illustrate major themes of the Posvar administration. In April, 1985, Pitt acquired the $100,000,000 Gulf Research Center as a gift. In November 1985 Pitt became the first University in the world to adopt the AT T Fiber Optics Telecommunications System — The Campus of the Future. Along with other advances in research and planning, these developments will help carry Pitt into an exciting future. The University approaches its bicentennial challenged and intrigued by an apparent duality of mission: to be a regional institution serving the communities anti people of the immediate area, or to be a national international university with a strong emphasis on research and teaching. Posvar argues that we cannot be one or the other; that to serve the needs and be a leader within the context of our region — whether defined narrowly as Western Pennsylvania or as the Upper Ohio Valley of as the Middle Atlantic — we must be a national international university ranked among the very best of the comprehensive, urban centers of research and teaching in the world.” 22 Bicentennial