Gerry Goldstein: A protest derailed, in different times 

The recent demonstrations on college campuses produced varying opinions on how administrators can respect freedom of speech while keeping protesters from trampling the rights of others.

The issue was more straightforward decades ago, when as a crusading student newspaper editor I tested the waters of protest at our state university in Kingston.

It did not go well.

The issue that enflamed us in my junior year of 1960 was women’s rights. Male students had no nighttime curfew, while women did; women were also subject to other restrictions not applicable to men.

This reflected what was deemed at the time a university’s debatable responsibility to act in loco parentis – in place of parents.

We viewed any such role as outrageous, and under the newspaper’s banner prepared a petition demanding change.

Looking for signatures, I took this document into a logical area – a women’s dormitory.

While I confined my visit to a public lobby, the skittish housemother feared an insurrection was afoot, and telephoned alarms that made their way to the stoic dean of men, John Quinn.

His advice to the housemother was succinct: “Tell him I said he should leave.”

This order I unwisely defied, gathering supportive names and later departing for my fraternity. There, a message awaited from Quinn, a no-nonsense administrator with a dim view of insubordination: Report to me post haste.

When I arrived, the dean, who had done some homework, produced a copy of the agreement all students made with the University: to abide by its regulations. Running a finger to its bottom line, he asked, “Is that your signature, Mr. Goldstein?”

So it was, and at Quinn’s order it earned me a trip to the office of University President Francis H. Horn. 

Horn was of contradictory demeanor, a defender of free speech who took delight in shaping young minds but disdained noncompliance. 

Contemporary in how he steered URI through years of explosive growth, Horn was by his own admission “Neanderthal” in some of his thinking about women.

In later years, when we became friends and I occasionally interviewed him, he asserted that in conflicts involving the careers of married couples, priority belonged to the husband’s work.

As for the co-ed dorms that sprang up after his tenure, Horn abhorred them, declaring, “They make it too easy to kick over the traces and have hanky-panky.”  

That day I got called onto his carpet as a student, we sharply disagreed on whether my defiance of the dean was an infraction. But Horn won the argument – by telling me to pack my bags and spend the following week on suspension at home, contemplating the wages of revolt. 

Word of his verdict spread fast on campus, and that night scores of students crowded the Memorial Union to protest it. The speechmaking was boisterous, but evaporated – not coincidentally – just when late-night vendors would be entering housing units with their cries of “Sandwiches, grinders, pie and milk.”

In those very different times, my week at home in Cranston brought contrasting events.

My dad, who was spending a significant percentage of the family’s modest income on my education, was furious that I had compromised it. He said so in resounding decibels.     

But circumstance tilted in my favor: A major snowstorm closed the University for three days, making my suspension of little academic consequence. 

Ever since those snowflakes began to fall, I have stuck with the not-so-humble opinion that despite administrative and parental admonitions, my side of the story had merit – and the blessing of a significantly Higher Authority.

Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.