Wichita State University has existed for 130 years and America has gone through many political and social movements during that time. Politics have always been prevalent on campus, so I wondered – what side have the students stood on regarding different issues throughout all that time?
The later half of the 20th century was a time of a lot of change and there was a lot of movement on WSU’s campus for many issues. Through a lot of reporting done by The Sunflower, it is shown that students at WSU have always held a very wide range of beliefs. I found the information for this story by going through The Sunflower’s archives, looking back to 1950.
In 1951, an opinion poll conducted by The Sunflower showed the student body’s preferences for the President of the United States to be Dwight Eisenhower. One student said, “… whether Republican or Democratic, should take office, and it should mean a more intelligent administration,” when asked why he picked Eisenhower.
During the 1950’s through the 70’s, there were a lot of different radical christian groups, including Christian Scientists, in which followers believe material things are illusions and that illness and diseases are mental errors that can be treated via prayer. The Peace Corps was also a very active group in the 1960’s and 70’s, a group which was created with the intention of assisting developing countries with things like education and health care.
In the 1960’s there was also a large presence of both Young Democrats and Young Grand Old Party (GOP) groups. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was also prevalent on campus. One specific instance that brought all these groups together was a march for free housing held in 1962, sponsored by the NAACP. Representatives from both the Young Democrats and Young GOP voiced their support.
Also in 1962, on October 12, The Sunflower ran an editorial critiquing a response some students had to a “minor dilemma” that was never described in detail.
“The recent hanging and burning of an ‘effigy’ on the University campus belongs in the class with the Ku Klux Klan ‘fiery crosses’,” the editorial reads. “It is not the kind of thing with which any thinking student should associate himself.”
Many letters to the editor in 1968-1969 contained back and forth arguments about how to refer to the Black student body at WSU after The Sunflower published an article that misspelled the word “negro.”
The discourse started with a letter from the Black Student Union on October 29: “The usage of the word, Negro, is anathema to Black people, for it is a word pregnant with connotative images of degradation. Coined by white society, it represents a deliberative attempt to dehumanize the Black race.”
The next issue on November 5 had a letter from WSU student Ron Garcia which read, “I feel the only logical conclusion to be drawn is that the WSU Black Student Union is interested in raising Hell instead of seriously representing Negro goals.”
In a 1972 issue, it was reported that there was a decline in political groups on campus. The first group to be discontinued was the Young People’s Socialist League. There was also a decline in right-wing group Young Americans for Freedom and their faculty advisor Dwight Murphy told The Sunflower, “conservatives tend to be active when the left is stimulating them.”
LGBTQ pride events first started to be held and promoted on campus in the 1980’s. In 1985, National Gay Pride Week was recognized, where associations offered educational resources to support the LGBTQ community at WSU. Also, in a letter to the editor, a straight male student at WSU lamented that “gays suffer from a lack of understanding” and asserted that being gay isn’t a choice.
Protests against the Apartheid in South Africa were also held on October 7, 1985 and a study that was published in The Sunflower claimed the class of 1989 held “more liberal views” than previous classes.
Diversity week started being held in the 1990’s, where students would have the opportunity to learn about stereotypes, gay rights and multicultural issues.
Letters to the editor in 1994 contained a lot of back and forth between political groups on campus arguing about if there should be more Republicans or Democrats in the government.
In the 2000’s, there seemed to be another decline in political groups at WSU. In one letter to the editor on February 5, 2003, the writer asked why there were no war protests on campus, because they used to be very prevalent.
Views from students at WSU have always been all over the political spectrum. It seems like left-wing movements have always had more of a distinct presence on campus where right-wing ones were more quiet.
The amount of political activism at WSU seems to align with what is happening in the rest of America, specifically who the president was. During periods like the civil rights movement, there were mostly democratic presidents, and there were a lot of student groups in support of progressive views. Back in the early 70’s, Richard Nixon was president and there was an obvious draw back in political student groups on campus.
We see the same thing in the 90’s, with a democratic president, Bill Clinton, lots of progressive change on campus. Then in the 2000’s, George W. Bush was president, and there was another noticeable decline in student activism.
I think more consistently WSU has been a progressive campus, but the existence of conservative groups has always been there. What side of history WSU has been on doesn’t have a clear answer because for most of recent history, it has been on both.
