This past weekend, the University of Oregon welcomed back alumni from the class of 1963 who traveled from all across the globe to attend the annual 99th homecoming. A former navy officer, Portland Rose Festival queen and the founder of Willamette Week were among numerous alumni who gathered for their 50th reunion banquet dinner.
1963 was a monumental year. It was back when the Civil Rights Movement was just gaining momentum. It was the year of the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech. It was the year President John F. Kennedy was shot. It was a time when the UO was rich with tradition and activism.
Standing in the dimly-lit Gerlinger Alumni Lounge last Friday night is former editor-in-chief of the Emerald, Ronald Buel. Originally from Tillamook, Ore., he went on to work at the Wall Street Journal and eventually founded Willamette Week in 1974 after graduating from the UO.
A lively and spry man for his age, he sports a bright green and yellow-striped tie and talks about the cultural changes he saw here at UO this past homecoming weekend.
“(Back in the ’60s), Oregon was much more homogenous and very much conformist.”
He stands up and walks over to the posters set up along the fireplace with old pasted photos of UO’s student organizations and athletic teams from his college years.
“Look here.” He points at the photo of the 1963 football team. Only three of the players in the photo are African American. “Now it’s about 50 percent.”
Buel is amazed by the increase in diversity on campus compared to when he was at the university in the ’60s.
“The UO was very white-bread place. There wasn’t diversity. Women were not on the same level as men.”
Buel explained that UO once had a policy called “in loco parentis,” which is Latin for “in place of the parents.” It gave the university a responsibility to stand in and act as parents for the students. Women had to abide by “closing hours” and could only sit on boy’s laps if there was a pillow separating them.
There was also a strict, no beer in the dorms policy. Buel said that a few people from his floor got expelled from the university for alcohol possession.
“The rules were ridiculous,” Buel said. “In a society that was changing we didn’t need to have ‘in loco parentis.’ We needed to have Equal Pay for Equal Work and the Civil Rights Movement.”
Buel stresses that it was not in fact the Baby Boomer generation that paved the way for the new and developing roles of women and minorities in society, which took place in the ‘70s, but was in fact Buel’s generation. The Silent Generation.
“Our generation broke through the glass ceiling.”