ONE INSTITUTIONAL GOAL had been at least partially achieved by the end of the Wessell administration. The student body was more widely representative of the nation geographically than earlier, although the concentration continued to remain from the New England and Middle Atlantic states. The percentage of students from Massachusetts fell from more than 60 percent to less than 35 percent. Half a century earlier, 80 percent of the student body had come from Massachusetts. The number of veterans in the student body was still an appreciable 600 in 1957 although the peak had passed several years earlier. The Jackson students by 1960 were 85 percent residential, while less than half of the engineering students lived on the campus. More than 60 percent of the students in Liberal Arts were residential. Approximately 10 percent of the male students lived in fraternities. Altogether, Tufts students were housed in forty different residential facilities and a few individuals expressed some doubt about whether the institution should be "in the landlord business." A house specifically for commuters was provided by the university and proved to be of much value.

The percentage of admissions from private schools rose from 30 percent to almost 40 percent between 1953 and 1967 and had exceeded slightly that percentage by 1969. It testified to the

In the 1960s Tufts responded to a national phenomenon which was to have a significant effect on admissions policy and to bring a change in both the character of the student body and to create

Tufts had been a preponderantly white institution from its beginning, and only occasionally had admitted Negroes before Wessell's time. There was only one Negro in the entire Jackson student body between 1920 and 1924, and even as late as 1955 there were only two. (A word of explanation and clarification about terminology seems to be in order at this point. Well after World War II the term "Negro," which had largely replaced "colored" except in the South, was in turn superseded for the most part by the term "Black," capitalized as a noun but used with a small letter as an adjective. An alternative is either "African-American" or "Afro-American" in order to stress their historical roots.) Most Negroes had been local residents, many coming from a Negro neighborhood in West Medford, near the campus. Among them were members of the Dugger family, four of whom attended Tufts. "Eddie" Dugger, a graduate of the College of Engineering in 1941, had been a nationally known track star as an undergraduate, and a person of whom the school was very proud.

Another member of the family became an alumni trustee. Wessell immediately sensed the changing climate of opinion regarding minorities (especially Blacks) and created an ad hoc President's Committee on Negro Education composed of faculty and headed by Bernard W. Harleston, a member of the Psychology Department and at the time the only Black on the faculty. (Harleston later became the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.) The committee began its work in 1964. Its purpose was to investigate the ways in which the institution could contribute to the enlargement of educational opportunity for the nation's largest minority. The goal of the program was to identify capable students who would not

In the spring of 1965 the committee voted to undertake a summer pre-college enrichment program for forty entering high school seniors from low-income families in the Greater Boston area (specifically, Medford, Somerville, Cambridge, and Roxbury), and from the state of Mississippi. Supported by a combination of private grants and university funds, the 1965 program brought the students to the campus for work in English and mathematics as well as a general introduction to college life. A grant from Project Upward Bound, part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, enabled Tufts to expand the program for 1966 to include a new group of forty entering high school seniors from the Greater Boston area and to bring back eleven of the students from the 1965 program for a pre-freshman summer experience. The program included extensive counseling service and assistance in the preparation of college applications and briefings on admissions procedures. Upward Bound continued to expand in the summer of 1967 by the addition of twenty entering juniors and twenty entering seniors to the forty returning students. Although the program was funded only for that academic year, plans were projected for 1968-69 for thirty-eight returning students and forty new entering high school juniors.

The success of the program up to that point had been very gratifying. All of the thirty-seven who completed the program at Tufts in 1965 were accepted by two or more four-year colleges and were offered sufficient financial aid to enable them to attend. As of the fall of 1967 there were eighteen enrollees in the program attending Tufts or Jackson, nine of them from the 1967 summer program. All were receiving some amount of financial aid.

It was at this juncture that Burton C. Hallowell assumed the presidency, after an interim period of more than one year. The new president immediately found himself in the midst of a problem of growing magnitude and seriousness. The faculty agreed in the fall of 1967 to place the direction of the Upward Bound program in Arts and Sciences, a decision which called for an advisory committee as well as an executive director, and a project director who would devote at least one-fourth of his or her time to it. The ad hoc Committee on Negro Education became the standing Commiteee on Equal Educational Opportunity in the spring of 1968, an indication that the faculty was taking very seriously its efforts to broaden its student base. The faculty also voted to increase enrollment of Blacks substantially and to add black staff members to the Admissions Office

One of the immediate results was the awarding of eighteen scholarships to black students, averaging $3,150 each. Student and faculty contributions amounting to $26,000 were supplemented by federal Equal Educational Opportunity (OEEO) grants and trustee scholarships. The scholarship budget was increased to $112,000 for 1970-71 to meet commitments to minority students. Over 90 percent of the Blacks enrolled were receiving aid of some type by then. Although the percentage remained higher than for white students, it never again reached that percentage. Providing the resources for financial support became a serious problem after enthusiasm waned and faculty concerns were diverted elsewhere.

Tufts' official association with the Upward Bound program, which had started with such promise, was brief and beset with difficulties. After a lengthy search, Robert L'H. Miller, a member of the faculty, was made the director and responsible to a nine-person advisory committee, but the executive director was not a member of the faculty and there were bothjurisdictional conflicts and personality problems. By 1968 the Committee on Negro Education officially disassociated itself from the program; and after a series of "agonizing reappraisals" the Upward Bound program was abandoned and the proposal to the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) for further funding was withdrawn.

The faculty advisory committee had found itself caught between the university commitment to Upward Bound and growing dissatisfaction with its staff, among the parents involved, and with the program itself. The advisory committee was unable to reach an agreement on the future development of the project and submitted four different recommendations to President Hallowell, who had appointed the committee. The solution was to sever all Tufts connections with the program by mutual agreement. Upward Bound thereupon moved to Northeastern University.

Just as these unhappy events were taking place, the Tufts community as well as the nation at large was galvanized by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), the apostle of civil rights for Blacks. As the woman who headed the Committee on Negro Education expressed it, "all hell broke loose." The work of the committee was almost totally absorbed in the campus fervor to meet the demands of a spontaneously organized group known as "Students

The policy of increasing the enrollment of minorities (read Black) was stressed by Wessell and continued by his successor, and the Committee on Negro Education concurred. The next task was to take concrete action. Effective in 1968-69, a record of the racial/ ethnic background of all students was required by the federal government. Hence the "numbers game" became a popular indoor sport. By the time Wessell had made his annual report to the trustees in 1965 calling for greater minority representation in the student body and on the faculty, the number of black students stood at twenty-five. By 1967-68 the number had doubled. A vigorous recruitment program had resulted in the enrollment of ninety-two Blacks in the undergraduate student body by the end of 1968-69. A black undergraduate (then a junior) was commandeered by the Admissions Office to serve as a member of its staff. A goal of o percent minority enrollment was set by the faculty-student Committee on Undergraduate Admissions in 1969 and became a generalized and more or less accepted figure. It had reached 8 percent by 1970, with more than 11 percent minorities in the freshman class that year. High points of 11 percent minority enrollment in the entire student body during the Hallowell years were reached in both 1972 and 1973. (Note should be made that the total undergraduate enrollment had continued to rise during these years, so the number of minority students increased proportionately.) After Hallowell became president in 1967 he rejected the idea of a strict quota system, then much talked about, and emphasized the fact that the policy of diversity which he fully supported was not to be limited to Blacks. However, the number of black students continued to increase steadily. Sixty-two Blacks entered in 1969-70, and within two years there were approximately 250 on the Medford campus, including some who were graduate students. Seventy-five more were scheduled to arrive in the fall of 1972-73. Although the number of minorities increased (especially of Asian and Puerto Rican heritage), the focus was still on Blacks in the 1970s and 1980s. They constituted over half of the applications from minority students in 1976-77.

The university rushed in to provide remedial work in reading and writing for all students with SAT verbal scores below 560, beginning in the fall of 1968. It was under the general supervision of the Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity. So as not to create a negative image for the program, the course, operated on a one-to-one

There were sufficient Blacks on the campus by 1969 to result in the establishment of an Afro-American Society which immediately created an interlocking Afro-American Cultural Center headquartered in a former fraternity house near the campus. Almost as soon as it had been organized the Society made five requests of the administration, all of which had already been anticipated and were at some stage of implementation. The one unanimously rejected by the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions was "that black students presently enrolled at Tufts determine admission policy for incoming black students." The Society also presented a list of requirements for the Center which originally totalled some $30,000 but which was pared down to slightly over $18,000. It called for funds for a library collection, a lecture series, and travel and operating expenses. The personnel was to consist of a director, two assistant directors, seven library assistants, and three secretaries. Much to the disgruntlement of the Society, impatient as it was to create almost overnight a completely staffed and generously funded program, it obtained far less than expected. Nonetheless, the university did what it could during a period of particular economic stringency to satisfy black needs and desires.

One of the principal expectations was the creation of an Afro-American Studies program. Among the curricular results of the 1968-69 efforts to recruit black students had been an inventory of existing courses which presumably appealed particularly to Blacks. Offerings of new courses in the next three years in such fields as Afro-American history, literature, and racial and ethnic minorities increased rapidly. By the end of the 1971-72 academic year there were at least a dozen courses which were considered directly relevant to the black experience, about half taught by black faculty, but which were tied together in no coherent fashion. Some were offered as a part of the regular program, while others were offered through the Experimental College, including several taught under the auspices of, or through arrangements with, the Afro-American Cultural Center.

The Afro-American Studies program never went into effect. It was never worked out in detail and its existence was not even acknowledged in the university catalogue. The only notice that there was such a program appeared for a year or two in the student handbook and then quietly disappeared. The futile search for a director who the dean insisted must come from outside the institution, lasted for about three years. A promising young black scholar (and a Tufts alumnus) was offered the position but declined it. There was scarcely a ripple among black students when the program disappeared. The personnel of the Society and the Center soon changed completely, and no one seriously attempted to revive the idea. It remained however as a serious and conscientious effort on the part

The Afro-American Society became deeply involved in a controversy which had much more widespread ramifications than an academic program that died aborning. The need for another dormitory for women had become evident by 1967, and the following year the institution undertook to meet that need. But the circumstances of its construction and the uses to which it was actually put made the building unique in Tufts' history. The erection of the structure became involved in a dispute over the hiring of minorities by the contractor and sub-contractors which resulted in both a legal suit and a counter-suit, and in physical confrontation among students, construction workers, and police. These largely unforeseen events stirred up the campus and delayed the completion of the building. By the time it was opened in the fall of 1970 the original plans to house Jackson students, young married faculty, and graduate students, had been abandoned in favor of making the building a coeducational dormitory for undergraduates - a decision which caused considerable perturbation on the part of some parents and much eyebrow-raising on the campus - and most certainly had no precedent in the history of the institution. The Committee on Student Life spent many an hour discussing the pros and cons.

Tufts was concerned, when the project of building the new dormitory was planned in 1968, that the Volpe Construction Company (which was awarded the contract) as well as the institution itself, carry out the provisions about the hiring of minorities involving federally funded projects. In the spring of that year, when the contractor submitted a program of affirmative action, Tufts considered it inadequate. A revised program was not approved until a year later, and full-scale construction work was further delayed until mid-summer of 1969 by a series of obstacles. A local resident filed a suit complaining that the height of the proposed building exceeded Somerville's zoning ordinances. After that was settled, there was a carpenters' strike which lasted several weeks.

Under the affirmative action program agreed to by the contractor and sub-contractors, Tufts considered the actual employment of minority workers to be disappointing. In September of 1969 the Afro-American Society complained to President Hallowell about the absence of significant numbers of black workers. He thereupon appointed two members of the administration to investigate the situation and develop a course of action to insure that appropriate employment practices were being followed with regard to both legal obligations and university policy opposing racial discrimination in

Meanwhile, there were consultations between Tufts and the New Urban League in Boston about the possibilities of increasing the number of black and other minority workers on the job. The Afro-American Society simultaneously set a two-week deadline, expiring in November 1969, for fulfilling their demand for employment of a minimum of 20 percent black workers. Among their other stipulations was employment of a black student to monitor the treatment of black workers, with complete access to the construction site. They also wanted assurances that fair employment practices be followed in the construction of the proposed $75 million Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston.

Tufts had first brought federal officials to the campus in October, and had taken the initiative in calling a meeting of representatives of several universities and colleges in the Greater Boston area to develop a concerted policy regarding minority hiring. Tufts had already attempted to demonstrate their willingness to employ minorities when, in September, a fire in West Hall had resulted in an estimated $70,000 in damage. The Clemente Construction Company, a black firm in Roxbury, was hired to work on the renovation.

Tufts also enlisted the aid of the compliance staff of the mayor of Boston as well as additional federal compliance officers, but with no immediate results. The university then considered the possibility of court action as a last resort after the contractor refused to consider the hiring of 20 percent or any other minimum number or percentage of minority workers. (By mid-November, fourteen of the ninety-seven workers were minorities. The total number obviously varied from day to day.) The result of the contractor's failure to hire the desired percentage was a brief student occupation of the construction site, followed by the cessation of all work. Up to 180 police were present to maintain order at the height of the confrontation. There was no violence, and after most of the police who had been called by the university had been withdrawn, work was resumed. During the controversy the students, both black and white, held a series of

Even though most of the work had already been completed late in the fall of 1969, Tufts filed suit in the state courts asking for a declaratory judgment to determine whether the construction company had been complying with its employment obligations under the law. It was believed that this was the first time a university had taken such legal action. The principal purpose of Tufts' litigation was achieved when the federal government developed procedural guidelines making such action unnecessary in the future; but at the same time the courts made possible the hearing of such cases.

The Volpe Construction Company filed a countersuit against Tufts seeking financial reimbursement related to the closing of the construction site for thirteen weeks. However, both suits were dropped by mutual agreement in 1974 when disputed financial claims were balanced out and Tufts paid the remaining $35,000 it owed the construction company for work performed. Tufts had handily survived what could have been an even more serious crisis exacerbated by local media anxious to create headlines.

There was a lighter side to the building of the controversial new dormitory. Many of the students were impatient because the trustees had delayed for so long the naming of the building, so took matters into their own hands. In what seemed to be a straightforward news article in the Tufts Observer in April 1970 there appeared the "news" that the building was to be named "Freefer Hall." It seemed that one Quentin P. Freefer, a wealthy publisher and alumnus of the Class of 190l, who had died in 1941, had bequeathed a sizeable sum of money to Tufts. He and his wife (also a Tufts graduate) were portrayed as champions of equality of the sexes. The only indications that the article had been a fabrication were the by-line (the piece having been written by "Ima F. Rawde"), and the concluding note that the new dormitory would "consist of suites alternating horizontally and vertically." Virtually no one on the campus questioned or challenged the authenticity of the contents of the article or bothered to identify or verify the presumed author by checking the student directory (or the trustee's office). Students who resided in the building for the next few years seemed to be perfectly satisfied with the name, and when it was rumored that the trustees were about to name the edifice officially, a group of students petitioned that the name "Freefer Hall" be retained. But the trustees thought otherwise. Lewis Hall was dedicated on Alumni Day, 3 June 1972. The individual honored was Leo

[] John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (N.Y.:Alfred A. Knopf, 3d ed., 1967), p. 635.