Contra: In Loco Parentis

Contra: In Loco Parentis

Several years ago, a number of students at Southern University in Baton Rouge were expelled for demonstrating against local segregation practices. In his letter of expulsion, President Feltin Clark invoked Rule 16 in the Southern University Student Handbook. The rule reads:

Lack of University Adjustment. The University reserves the right to sever a student’s connection with the University for general inability to adjust himself to the pattern of the institution.

For expelling these students whose fervor for freedom was inadjustable to the university pattern, President Clark was sharply criticized. Indeed, the attack on Negro college presidents generally has increased since student direct action began in 1960. The Negro college president, a recipient of state funds and an agent of the racial status quo, is loudly attacked by integrationists as a tyrant, a moral weakling, and an enemy of the hopes of a struggling generation.

Curiously, the attack on Negro college presidents is concentrated upon the issue of racial integration alone, and not on the issue of education that is also involved in Rule 16. Dr. Clark’s actions are symptomatic of an educational philosophy and practice quite as undemocratic as, though less brutal and spectacular than, the philosophy and practice of racial superiority. What has “general inability to adjust to the pattern of the institutions” to do with acquiring a higher education in a democratic system? Why are our stylish social reformers, many of them college presidents and professors, not as critical of the paternalistic educational habits as they are of the “Uncle Tom” racial practices of President Clark?

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