The Real Stephen C. O’Connell
Posted on 01. Oct, 2008 by Jessica Newman in Campus
there are some key facts commonly overlooked when discussing the term of Stephen C. O’Connell. In fact, there are eight boxes in the University Archives filled with documents dedicated solely to the controversies that erupted during his administration.
For those who don’t know the story of Stephen C. O’Connell, the man not the center, and even those who think they do, here is a little history on his presence at UF.
O’Connell was the sixth president of the University of Florida and served from 1968 to 1973. He is lauded for improvements made in the school’s academic programs and the physical plant during his administration. While he was in office, UF’s enrollment went from 19,004 in 1967 to 23,570 in 1973, according to records in the University Archives.
But there are some key facts commonly overlooked when discussing the term of Stephen C. O’Connell. In fact, there are eight boxes in the University Archives filled with documents dedicated solely to the controversies that erupted during his administration.
For starters, O’Connell and his administration were never very fond of “demonstrators” or those who stepped a little out of line. You can imagine how many students and faculty were pushing his buttons during the 1960s and 1970s, a time of intense political and social upheaval in America.
One example of this is found in the tale of the Alligator’s road to independence in the early 1970s. Before becoming the Independent Florida Alligator, as we know it today, it was controlled by the university and officially affiliated with UF. But as editors and staff writers became more and more outspoken, President O’Connell became less and less fond of the main outlet for the collective student voice.
In letters written to other faculty members and administrators at UF, O’Connell said the Alligator was “irresponsible, embarrassed the university and hurt its public image with its editorials and slanted news stories.”
After the paper published an ad with the addresses of abortion clinics and birth control information as a form of protest in 1971 (abortion was still illegal at the time), O’Connell was fed up. He attempted to bring the Alligator under direct administrative control by establishing a position known as the editor-publisher, who would be appointed by the administration and control all editorial content.
When the courts ruled that the Alligator was protected under the First Amendment free speech and free press clauses, O’Connell pushed to get the paper off campus. In the end, all parties were happier this way, and the Alligator has been independent ever since.
Another shining example of O’Connell’s distaste for activists and demonstrators can be seen in the Black Crisis of 1971, when 66 students were arrested for protesting in the president’s office.
There is a lot of talk lately on campus about the integration of the university, which happened in 1958. But by 1970, there were only 343 black students at the University of Florida out of about 20,000, according to the archives. In April of 1971, the Black Student Union staged a sit-in at President O’Connell’s office to demand the formation of a Black Cultural Center, or at least a department of minority affairs to gauge the effectiveness of integration and the amount of true equality at the university.
Law enforcement officers arrested 66 students at the nonviolent sit-in. Only after the students were arrested did violence break out in a completely separate incident outside of the building. When O’Connell refused to grant amnesty to the protesters, a third of the black student population and a number of black faculty members left the university.
Even after extensive pressure from organizations around the state and city, as well as from students, faculty and staff, O’Connell refused to take the students and faculty members’ demands seriously. Instead he insisted the protesters were “used by others to bring about this confrontation,” according to archived Gainesville Sun articles.
What others did he mean? The established radicals and activists of the day who were “disrupting” things on campus. This is clearly evidenced in the case of Dr. Kenneth Megill, a philosophy professor and chairman of the union, American Federation of Teachers. He applied for tenure in 1972, which O’Connell denied in direct opposition to the recommendations of Megill’s department head, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) and the university personnel committee. Basically, he disagreed with anyone who mattered in the determination.
So what did O’Connell see that the others didn’t? Maybe it was Megill’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Or maybe it was his support of the Black Panthers. Or maybe it was a speech Megill gave in 1969 in the Plaza of the Americas when he told students, “I feel that the only people in this country who are talking in a relevant way are the radicals.” Or maybe it was when he suggested “the students and faculty should take over the university.”
In fact, O’Connell specifically cites these statements in a letter to Dean Herman Spivey of CLAS to explain why he didn’t promote Megill that year. At the end of 1972, O’Connell made Megill aware of the non-renewal of his employment. Megill left the university in 1973 and bequeathed to UF a sense of disgust and confusion surrounding his case.
Soon after the Megill incident subsided, O’Connell resigned, exhausted and worn down by a term filled with upheaval. Less than 10 years later, UF dedicated the Stephen C. O’Connell Student Activities Center, or what we now know as the O’Dome.
