Viking_Yearbook_71

One of the Originals I was one of the original teachers. I was here the first day of classes in 1946. The "college" wasn't a college then and it didn't have a name. Unless you could call "The Day Class Program of the Extension Division of the Oregon System of Higher Education" a name. We called it Vanport, which came naturally because it was in what had been the W.W. II Vanport housing project on the Columbia River. It was across from Vancouver and I drove 15 miles to get there. The school was established to take care of W.W. II veterans. All of the students were veterans. I looked out over my class the first day and there were about 100 to 120 veterans. There were only one or two women and, I think, they just had come along with the boys for the fun of it. They were wives, or sisters, or sweethearts. That's the way it was. The veterans were good students, really ambitious people. They worked like the devil. They wanted to get back into civilian life as fast as they could . I wish I could remember all the good men that were there who later became leaders in the community. It's kind of hard to recall them all. There were about 1,400 students then and about 50 to 60 instructors. I taught general psychology mostly. First year psychology was all we had. Dr. John Cramer was the head of the whole Extension Division which included us, and Dr. Stephen Epler was the di rector of the Vanport operation. In 1955, when we became a college, Dr. Cramer became the first president. God, he was a good guy. Cramer Hall was named after him. What I like to remember about the early time was the camaraderie with the boys, the students. We were all veterans. And we went through a great deal to get a school started . What later became Portland State was, at that time, a poor kind of an excuse for a school of higher education, according to many people. The universities were around and they didn't look very kindly at somebody starting a college in Portland . In 1948 Vanport was flooded out completely. Everything the school had was destroyed , including the records . So that was the year all the students received good grades . Nobody knew if the flood was the end of the school. There was a lapse of a few months. But before long they started looking around for more bu ild ings, and they found them . The school shifted from Vanport to another set of W. W. II buildings-part of Kaiser's Oregon Shipyards in Portland. Later, we moved to Old Main. The whole college was in Old Main. The student body changed from being just a veterans' organ ization to representing the community of Portland. Courses were upgraded, in the sense that there were more of them. 1 The college became more complicated and more academic. It paid attention to degrees and to being more like a big university . At first, the administration and faculty didn't know what kind of status the institution should have. Portland State then was strictly a two-year college. But the administration realized that the school could constitute the nucleus of a university. So that's what they worked for. There was this constant struggle, one might say a power struggle, between the proponents of a full -scale college in Portland and those who wanted the school to be a feeder for the universities. Of course, college professors couldn't agitate too strongly. But there were a number of students who were very able and outspoken, and they pressured the legislature very effect ively. Some ran for the legislature and got elected too. Then there were a few very influential Portland legislators-the late Senator Neuberger and former Governor Bob Holmes were two of them-who led the battle to make Portland State an autonomous college in the state system. That was the way it was organ ized. The whole thing was really a point of agitation in the community. I might be making too much of it, but you can see how it could be, since universities that had money and the support of the legislature, at first anyway, had an investment in the thing. They didn't want to have another university here. In fact some are opposed to it even now, because this could be a center of education for the state. For a time, the University of Oregon and other institutions would send their poor students down here to get better grades in our classes. Finally, it changed, and we were sending our students there to get better grades before they came back here .. . Naturally, Portland State started out as a conservative organization. It was pretty well dedicated to carrying on the rules of the Establishment ; the rules of what would be just an ordinary, practical college. No frills, no radicalism, no outstanding movements of any kind . That also changed . The college community tended to more rad ical, or maybe it is more accurate to say less conservative, activities. It is an accepted fact that administration changes much more rapidly than the professors. I've watched many administrators come and go over the years. I've gone to teas and met president so-and-so, and the next year met another new president. I've always liked them. But their tenure is notoriously short. There are the deans, and they go through the same feints . The professors always smile at each other because they're the same old dogs hanging around. I've really felt a great sense of freedom here. I'm not one of those to deride a school system because it doesn't do more for you, and then just not try to accomplish things on your own. I like to work within the system. I don't feel handicapped at all. I think I'm more friendly now and sympathetic-! use more of a personal touch with students than I ever have before. I spend a lot of time talking to students. I get to know some of them extremely well. The distinction between student and faculty seems to be breaking down in many ways. Students are getting to know the faculty better, and the faculty are getting to identify more with the students than they did before. I think it's part of the changing times. _ I used to teach what was in the textbooks. Now I teach what the students seem to want to find out for themselves. I teach a class called "Hallucinogenic Training," which has really been an idea of mine for a long time. It's about projects or goals or activities that the students would like to accomplish. I think the whole university should be organized along this line. It's a radical idea because it would do away with much of the teaching we have today. I think students want to do serious things. They don't want to spend all their time protesting, or doing anything other people think they -want to do .. . Students want to get along better with people, to be more successful in their own right, to see what life is all about, to fall in love and be happy about it, to be part of the community in which they live. They're more interested in that than they are in writing essays for English or studying chemistry, though those are important things they have to do. I think these are the best students we've ever had. They're constantly getting better. Person for person, they take a very mature attitude toward the country's problems. I think our nation is safe with the students we have. They're not going to make any radical mistakes. Whichever direction things go, they'll be able to go with them. They're more flexible than they used to be. The university now, it's just like any other time. It's a process that requires fulfillment. Education is going through a period of transition. And I think it probably should. We won't be able to see what the benefits will be until several years from now. Many years ago we couldn't tell what the culmination was going to be, but it was Portland State University that we were heading toward. 21