The 'Death' of the Daily Bruin: Part 3

In just this way, the non-aligned liberal, Martin McReynolds, was nominated by the Bruin staff for editor in May 1954. Greenstein recalled McReynolds as an "active, energetic" happy-go-lucky fellow . . . Always a hard worker." (Questionnaire.) And McReynolds remembered that
 

 I entered UCLA with a fairly typical WASP middle-class set of values, weighted a little more heavily than average on the side of straight-laced morality -- politically naive, believing in Freedom and Democracy in a fuzzy sort of way, sympathetic to [the] Working Class which I knew nothing about . . . Against racial discrimination and prejudices but raised in [an] almost lily-white environment . . . my brother David . . . was a campus activist . . . His influence on me was very strong although it also had its limitations . . . David's influence tended to imbue me with some of the anti-Communism he had acquired in his dealings with left-wing groups -- the sort of contempt bred by familiarity which was much more convincing than blind right-wing red-baiting . . . David was something of an outsider at college, a bit of a bohemian . . . I was drawn to the mainstream, a rabid football fan in typical college fashion, continued to live at home and remained a non-smoker and teetotaller on what I thought were my own principles but really represented my close ties with my parents. (Questionnaire.)

McReynolds claimed that outgoing Editor M.E. Vogel, in a fashion considered reprehensible by Bruin standards, worked against his appointment even after the staff nomination. The published record, however, shows that, when the chips were down, she warned the Student Council editorially to "hesitate long before taking action they will regret and The Daily Bruin will resent . . . Its candidates for the fall semester have the confidence and backing of those with whom they work." (DB, 5/19/54.)

Nevertheless, the reputation of Martin McReynolds' Socialist brother, David, who had graduated by this time, came back to haunt the candidate.

Student Council member Ron Garabedian questioned McReynolds on his political affiliations "because I don't think a person with Socialistic tendencies should head the Bruin." (DB, 5/26/54.) He was also asked pointedly about his policy on running political advertisements and printing front-page editorials. He said he would do both. With that, the Council sent the nominations back to the Bruin staff for reconsideration. [David McReynolds became chairman of the national War Resisters League, headquartered in New York City. Martin McReynolds was photo editor for Latin America with United Press International in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and later was on the Miami Herald.]

McReynolds decided to compromise. He agreed to the adoption by the Council of a stricture against any form of political advertising, a requirement that the editor should check the content of the feature page each day "and be directly responsible for its content" and a ban on front-page editorials without the consent of the ASUCLA president. He was thereupon appointed editor with only one dissenting vote.

It was to be the last semester for the Bruin's slate system. It opened with the Bruin and other college newspapers combining to form a National Association for a Free College Press, hoping to do battle against censorship of the student press wherever it might appear. (DB, 9/21/54.) To begin the battle at home, McReynolds swiftly put the no-political-advertising rule into effect, but coupled it with a series of three editorials that attacked the reasoning behind the policy and invited students to pressure the Student Council to overturn it.
 

 It is true that somebody might get excited about an ad in The Bruin announcing a meeting with a Communist speaker. The LA Herald and Express might even write an editorial about it. A rich alumnus might decide to stop buying football players for us. So, is this going to make Royce Hall crumble and the Art Bldg. turn to dust? Much better that they should than that UCLA should become only a beautiful factory manned by intellectual cowards and producing blank-minded robots. (DB, 10/1/54.)

At about the same time, a new controversy flared on the campus. A federal law required all ROTC students to sign loyalty certificates. Since these courses were required of virtually all freshmen and sophomore men, the effective result was a loyalty oath requirement for about one-fourth of the student body. Reporter Fredy Perlman was assigned to do the story.

Once again, the Bruin's independent and aggressive attitude in covering news and printing opinion contributions aroused concern at the highest levels. Regent Victor R. Hansen, who was a brigadier general in the National Guard, complained to President Sproul on Oct. 1, and Assistant Dean of Students Byron Atkinson on Oct. 5 asked Ivan Innerst, the Bruin advisor, to make an "analysis of this semester's Bruin, with respect to the general level of reporting and to the particular problem of the coverage of the R.O.T.C. certificate situation." (Chanc, Folder 246-DB, 10/5/54; Sproul, Folder 338, 10/1/54).

Innerst, who was operating in what Richard Hill of the Dean of Students' staff called an "essentially hostile atmosphere," took the occasion to unburden himself of his feelings about the Bruin. He said he agreed with an administration suggestion that non-staff comment should be printed only in the Grins and Growls column (with a 150-word limitation), but that

 For what it's worth, it's my opinion -- and I wish to state this with all frankness -- that the tighter control envisaged is not the answer . . . While I fully agree that such instances of extremists taking over the Bruin for their own ends occur much too often, I honestly feel that the remedy need not be so sweeping as planned, at least for the present time. (Chanc, 1954, Folder 246-DB, 10/12/54.)

What was being planned? At that point no one knew for sure. Innerst met with Andrew Hamilton and Charles Francis of the UCLA public information office and Richard Hill in Hill's office the next day to decide. First, the feature-page limitation was to be put into effect. Second, Innerst agreed to survey other universities to determine their "patterns of administrative control." (Chanc, 1954, Folder 246-DB, 10/13/54.) The same day, a new thorn was pressed into the Bruin's flesh. The Beverly Hills News-Life, a daily newspaper, criticized the Bruin's open-feature-page policy in an article headed "Few Misguided Youths at UCLA Abuse Privileges."

 Can you tell the difference between the unrestrained outpourings of misguided youth and a parallel Communist line? . . . the vast majority of UCLA students, though loyal Americans, at present have no way to enforce responsible journalism on their own campus newspaper. (Quoted in DB, 10/15/54.)

The Beverly Hills newspaper attacked a feature article by Mel Albaum, who had urged students to "Join the Un-American Club" because "Un-Americans are true Americans. [They] . . . do not think of their country in terms of existing institutions and practices but rather in terms of progress and humanity." (DB, 9/27/54.)

Without waiting for Innerst's survey, on Oct. 18 Dean Hahn submitted to Chancellor Allen a tentative draft of a plan to keep the Bruin from "capture by isms, left or right." He urged that the editor-in-chief, the managing editor and the feature editor be elected by a student vote, and that only the editor be required to have any former Bruin experience -- and that for only one semester. Other major staff appointments would be filled by Student Council appointment from a list of names "made jointly and unanimously by the board of elected editors and a representative of the University appointed by the Chancellor." No advertising would be permitted for organizations on the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations.

 Articles of a highly controversial nature, such as political and religious matters, must be matched by materials with an opposing viewpoint of approximately equal quality and length in the same issue of publication. It is an editorial responsibility to balance viewpoints during his term of office. (Chanc, 1954, Folder 246-DB, 10/18/54.)

Dean Hahn's long-range goal was the establishment of the Bruin as a part of the Department of Journalism, "with final responsibility in the Chairman." (Chanc, 1954, Folder 246-DB, 10/18/54.)

Allen agreed to Hahn's plan. On Oct. 26, in an amazing letter to Regent Hansen, fairly dripping with political paranoia, he commented on Communism at UCLA:

 Dean Hahn and others agree that the Communist infiltration on campus is limited to a very few students -- probably 20 to 25 -- who, in line with current Party doctrine, are almost completely undercover. The group of "actionists," agitators who came here with specific tasks to perform, changes from year to year, almost from semester to semester. They can hardly be identified before their task is done and they are sent elsewhere. Our information services are improving, however, and we are increasingly better able to head off left-wing drives on this subject or that. (Sproul, "Special Problems" Folder.)

Allen did not explain how the Communist Party was so successful in assisting these agitators to obtain the required "B" averages in high school to get into UCLA in the first place nor how the actionists differed from the other students, who also drifted in and out, and sometimes even succeeded in graduating.

The final draft of the plan for Bruin control was submitted to Allen by Richard Hill on Nov. 9, 1954, accompanied by this prophetic and pugnacious memo: "Boom! Here are Dean Hahn's proposals . . . They will precipitate a lovely fight, but . . . I am convinced that a good fight is what we need at this juncture. . . . The gloves are off; we have no choice but to fight." (Sproul, 11/9/54.)

Allen approved the proposal and sent it to Sproul, whose staff gave it a quizzical but approving look. Robert O. Berdahl, an administrative assistant, summed up the Berkeley opinion about the election of an editor by popular vote:
 

 We rather doubt that the general student electorate will have the knowledge . . . to be able to make an intelligent choice, [but] . . . the Los Angeles administration believes it imperative to remove the present co-opting clique from the Daily Bruin . . . We believe the experiment is worth a trial. (Sproul, 11/19/54.)

Dr. Sproul, beset by conservatives within and without the Legislature and the Board of Regents, perhaps tired by his struggles over loyalty oaths and academic freedom, only four years from retirement, abandoned his support for student editors' "freedom of expression in spite of the mistakes." He granted approval for the disastrous student-election plan in a telegram sent from Berkeley on Nov. 23, 1954. (Chanc, 1954, Folder 246-DB.)

The Administrative directive changing the Daily Bruin constitution was dated Dec. 7, a date whose significance was not lost upon the newspaper's staff. Presumably, it was released to selected student leaders on that date, a Tuesday, but the Bruin was kept in the dark.

Like the Japanese air flotilla moving toward Pearl Harbor 13 years previously, the Administration directive crept up on the Bruin while negotiations were going on at another level. A Student Council committee was working openly on a plan to provide an Advisory Board as a buffer between the Bruin and the Student Council. Editor McReynolds caught wind of the student-election plan and wrote editorially on Wednesday, Dec. 8, that "Someone, probably the Administration, has been planning this change for at least six weeks. The planning has all been kept secret from The Daily Bruin and the students at large."

That evening, the plan was submitted to the Student Council by Dean Hahn: There were to be student elections for editor, who would name his own editorial board, subject to approval by the Student Council and veto by the Administration. Because of lack of time, elections would not be held in the spring semester, but an editorial board would be chosen by a two-man committee composed of Student Body President Skip Byrne and an Administration representative. Non-staff opinion pieces would be limited to 150 words in Grins and Growls. Controversial articles would be "matched" with an opposing opinion. And,
 

 The editorial columns shall be used by the editor-in-chief in any manner consonant with journalistic practice and the wishes of SLC subject to the contribution that contributors be bonafide staff members or members of SLC.

The Daily Bruin had been handed over to the Administration and the Student Council, but the staff was not giving up easily. Trusting in an Editor & Publisher article quoting President Sproul as supporting the principle of free student newspapers, unaware that Sproul had approved the Hahn-Allen plan in the first place, staffers and their supporters circulated a petition asking the President to nullify the directive.

The petition garnered 3,000 signatures, about a thousand more than the number of students who had voted in the preceding ASUCLA election, but the petition-signing ritual was only part of the last act of a Greek tragedy, played out with a final staff nominating meeting, decorated with black borders on Page One and punctuated with the drum beat of a mock funeral cortege.

It was virtually "foreordained that the appeal will be denied," Robert Barthell, an administrative aide, wrote to Sproul on Dec. 30, 1954, though he urged quixotically that "the appeal process should remain open." (Sproul, 12/30/54.)

The staff nominated Fern Victor (now Fern Seizer) as editor, Barry Tunick managing editor, Jerry Farber city editor, Steve Wayne associate editor, Eric Shuman news editor and Jean Fox feature editor. The selecting committee rejected all of them and selected Irv Drasnin, Lee Cake, Marty Sklar, Joe Colmenares, Tom Spiro and Curt Owen in their place.

Drasnin was no friend of the Bruin staff or its slate system. Yet, he was a good sportswriter until he dropped off the Bruin because he disliked its "degenerate" atmosphere. He became a copyboy with the Los Angeles Daily News and in 1953 had presented himself as a non-staff candidate for the post of managing editor. At the time of his appointment as editor he was serving on the Student Council, as Men's Athletic Board chairman. He recalled in 1969 that his relationship with the Bruin had been

something like a man who marries and divorces the same woman a few times. You don't know whether to love her or hate her; you just know that you care too much to leave her alone. I questioned her virtue but defended her honor. (Ackerman.)

For the second time within three years, the Bruin proclaimed its own "death." And in April 1955, President Sproul announced he was denying the request of the 3,004 petitioners -- one-fifth of the student body. He asserted in an unpublicized memo to Allen that it was a "local matter" for UCLA authorities alone to decide, though he did not mention the series of memoranda in the Berkeley office nor his own telegram of Nov. 23.

It was a bitter Martin McReynolds who foreshadowed the independent spirit of student leaders of the 1960s and later when he wrote to President Sproul that

Students and faculty members who felt that you would defend a free student press on the basis of some of your past statements now know that they must rely on themselves and stand up for their own privileges. (Obs, 4/13/55.)