A Trip to The Bulletin Archives Becomes a Prescient Union Experience
I’m no neurologist, but I believe that people are hard wired to navigate uncertainty by seeking out patterns. We find reassurance, or seek solutions, by reflecting on similar events or patterns in the past. I think this is one of the reasons why the ritual pattern of the academic year persists in higher education. Our students may be experiencing a new campus during orientation or preparing to graduate and embrace the unknown, but universities support them through the process with the familiar campus traditions, such as commencement ceremonies or new student festivals.
Our need for reassuring patterns is probably why movie reboots are so popular. It’s comforting to experience a familiar narrative arc with fresh faces and a contemporary setting. This is why I have been emailing all my Hollywood friends recently pitching a “Thelma & Louise” reboot featuring Timothée Chalamet and Chappell Roan. It’s what the world needs right now.
Some people are especially hard-wired to look for meaning in the past. For anyone familiar with Gallup CliftonStrengths, you may know that some people may have a strength theme related to context. People talented in the context theme enjoy looking to the past for answers and understanding the present by looking for answers in the past.
But even if you don’t have context as a Clifton strength, it’s natural to find reassurance knowing that what we’re experiencing is not totally unprecedented.
It goes without saying that colleges and universities in the United States are experiencing a great deal of “unprecedented” change and uncertainty. As such, for the annual “Steal this Idea” issue of the ACUI Bulletin, I would encourage all of us to indulge our need for reassuring patterns by revisiting the history of our own Association and its member institutions by exploring the recently archived Bulletins. I think we can definitely steal some ideas from the history of our Association to help us navigate this period of change.
Personally, I know that reading through articles written by my “colleagues” from the past, such as Porter Butts or Edgar Whiting, has provided a great deal of comfort as I respond to current events. Just knowing that student union staff (like me and my staff) persisted in supporting students and advancing campus community during depressions, wars, and civil unrest has helped me respond to current changes while remaining focused on our mission.
Take for example the November 1933 edition of The Bulletin. The United States was entering the Great Depression, prohibition had just been repealed, Franklin Roosevelt had just become U.S. president, and newly appointed chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, had begun laying the foundation for the rise of the Nazi regime. As these momentous world events transpired, The Bulletin reflected that the good work of ACUI persisted, of the Annual Conference to be hosted by then president, Edward S. Drake, and held on his campus of The Ohio State University. The Bulletin notes that the conference was specifically hosted at Ohio State, the “geographic center or the United States,” because of “the many problems brought about by the economic condition of the country, it is important that we have a large attendance and a frank and open discussion in our efforts to seek the solutions to our many problems.” It was also noted that “one of the most outstanding features” of the planned conference was the addition of shared governance opportunities within the conference schedule for student delegates. The Association “urged more strongly than ever” the elevation of the student voice in matters related to unions and the work of community building.
Other fascinating items in the November 1933 Bulletin included an article describing moves by the regents of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Bowdoin College, and Dartmouth College to serve 3.2% beer in their unions, as well as steps taken by unions to communicate their relevance and cut costs for students in light of the Depression.
As I read the Association updates from 92 years ago, I feel like I could be reading updates from earlier this semester. I find significant solace knowing my colleagues from the past successfully navigated similar patterns to the change and uncertainty we see today: financial stressors for our unions and students, international unrest and threat, social change impacting our students. I think we can steal some important ideas from this era, like making financial and programmatic changes to maximize student engagement, ensuring the student voice is present during important decisions, and enhancing existing programs in response to student needs.
1968 was a painful year in the U.S. history, witnessing the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal, violent protests outside the Democratic Convention, and the continuation of the Vietnam War and the associated escalation of campus and civil protests. Looking at The Bulletin from another important period in United States history, December 1968, reveals even more reassuring patterns, including instructional resources on managing demonstrations in the student union, a description of a ACUI/Housing Association partnership to address demands for student housing, details about possible action by the U.S. Congress to prohibit federal funds from supporting students charged with protesting on campus, and a description of the newly created college student personnel master’s program at the University of Iowa. Digging into this issue, however, I found it remarkably compelling as it offers detailed hour-by-hour descriptions of how union professional staff supported student protests and sit-ins at unions and student centers at New York University, University of Illinois, Colorado State University, and others. The editor of The Bulletin, Porter Butts, shares a fascinating editorial, calling on universities to address the unrest of the day through a “joint power” structure represented by union governing boards, rather than “separate power” structure in which the faculty and student voices exist in isolation. Advocating for a student-staff partnership to address the uncertainty of the day, Butts writes, “union governing boards themselves … composed of student, faculty, and administration members (sometimes, also, alumni) … have for some years now served as useful and viable models of how one can go about creating a joint board that can take initiative and assume responsibility of a major kind.”
Once again, while this Bulletin edition was published 57 years ago, Porter Butts could be calling on union staff today to ensure that our students are at the table as we address our challenges and navigate change. The detailed description of how union staff supported student protests literally provides ideas that we can steal and apply on our campuses in 2025!
I look forward to continuing to read through the ACUI Bulletin archives to appreciate our past and to steal ideas that help enrich and enhance my community building in 2025.
