Dan Cummins
Highline
Community College and The 1970s:
A
Decade of Pain and Triumph
The
1970s, Highline Community College’s second decade of existence, were years
of both turmoil and wondrous exploration. At the dawn of the 1970s
a war continued to rage in Southeast Asia, a conflict (its official designation)
that had already taken many thousands of young American lives.
This undeclared war was becoming increasingly unpopular, with protests and unrest erupting at college campuses across the nation. In the spring of 1970, at Kent State University, troops of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on protesting students, killing four and wounding many. It was another black eye for President Nixon.
On a more positive note, NASA’s Apollo Program was still going strong in the early 1970s. Immense Saturn V rockets, each carrying three men, were thundering into the sky on pillars of fire, headed for the moon. Those lunar explorers were blazing a trail to the stars; I watched every mission and footstep in the lunar dust with awe.
However, the evening news footage of the ongoing war detracted from my sense of wonder. In 1970 my older sister, a Highline alumnus, was briefly detained by the Seattle Police during an anti-war protest march. My father was furious; I was proud of her.
A Few Events in History: Highline and the World of the 1970s
In July 1970, after much deliberation, the Highline Board of Trustees developed some rules and regulations for students to abide by while at school. A new state regulation for conduct at community colleges had made it a requirement for said colleges, including Highline, to have written regulations that could be handed out to students, so if an infraction occurred there would be no doubt (Unknown, 1970). I am guessing that the campus turbulence of the 1960s was not to be allowed to spill into the next decade. However, it does amaze me that there was not some written code of acceptable/unacceptable behavior before this.
In the summer of 1972 a wrestling match was going on between the Washington Education Association and the Washington Federation of Teachers. They were fighting each other for the support of community college instructors. Then things went from bad to worse, as the State Board for Community College Education entered the fray. The state board authorized pay increases of 3%, but some colleges offered more than that, using so-called “local money.” The state board found this practice rather irritating, so it threatened monetary cuts to the colleges that dared to challenge their authority in this matter.
On the other side of the coin, the community college instructors were afraid of a state-wide salary schedule being put into effect if the State Board won the battle (de Yonge,1972). I could not find data on the conclusion of this issue, but similar arguments are happening today, with the struggle of part-time college instructors for better pay and recognition an ongoing battle.
The following three years were apparently barren of exciting events at Highline, but in May, 1974--two years after the Watergate debacle--Richard Nixon resigned. In 1975, with the fall of Saigon, the last American troops left Vietnam and the war was officially over. We lost. I found little about those years in the musty news clippings of the Highline archives (what a mess that is).
In the fall quarter of 1976, a young man by the name of Daniel Cummins enrolled at Highline (yes, I was a student here way back then) and got to witness perhaps the most important event of that decade for Highline Community College: the groundbreaking ceremony for Highline College’s new library on the 18th of November, 1976. The brief ceremony was attended by then acting president of Highline Dr. Shirley Gordon; the members of the Board of Trustees; various members of the Washington House of Representatives; Dr. Junius Morris, Head Librarian, and the rest of the library staff (Thunderword, 1976).
Why build a new library? The old one was a small building with a collection of books numbering about 3,050 fifty (“Ground Broken”, 1976). I do not recall ever using it.
When 1977 rolled around I decided that I was wasting my parents’ money and, after winter quarter, I left Highline for a job in construction. However, I do remember an energy crisis that winter, and thermostats were lowered. It was cold in those classrooms. The Arabs were upset with President Jimmy Carter, and decided they would not allow their oil to flow and sustain America’s fleet of enormous cars. Gas prices jumped from under fifty cents to over seventy cents a gallon. Ouch!
Later in that year, the college decided it had enough totem poles, and thought about commissioning a sculpture that would be the premier work of art on campus--a central piece for the plaza planned in front of the new library. Designs were solicited from local artists, and in July 1977, artist Larry Beck was chosen out of five finalists (WSAF, 1977). His sculpture is still out there, sitting in rocks and mud. It cost $20,000 back in 1977, and I am sure it is now worth much more. I hope it is not forgotten.
In 1978, seventeen months after the groundbreaking ceremony, the new library was finally ready to open. First came a large dedication ceremony and open house party on May 19, 20, and 21 to show off the tallest building on campus. Then self-guided tours were offered through the six-story gem of a building (HCC, 1978).
Nowhere in the description of the functions of those floors is the word computer mentioned. Cell phones, pagers, palm pilots, and the World Wide Web were years in the future. The younger students of Highline would probably be lost in that decade, but there are many parallels also. Space shuttles routinely ride on tails of fire to the International Space Station. American troops are involved in another war, albeit a different one than Vietnam: this war on terrorism is much more popular. And I am back here in school, amazed by it all and wondering: whatever did happen to all those mimeograph machines?
Works Cited
Author unknown. No title. Highline Times. 1 July 1970
Highline Community College HCC Library Open House: Highline Community College, May 1978.
deYonge, John. “Fair Wages Sought For College Instructors”. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, (8 June, 1972), F1.
Author unknown. “Ground Broken, Library Started”. Thunderword. 10 December 1976 Vol.16, No 6.
Author unknown. No title. Western States Art Foundation: WSAF, Edition 25. May/June 1997.