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| Postcard of UA protest, courtesy of Arkansas State Archives |
Thirty-six University of Arkansas
students met in 1912 to discuss their concerns about what they thought was an
oppressive disciplinary culture on campus. The group agreed to create an
underground newspaper to make their voices heard.
Tensions over discipline had been
building since the beginning of the spring semester. At issue was the faculty’s
issuance of sanctions against students, often without hearings. Consequently,
many students felt faculty members were being irrational and dictatorial.
In February, students met and formed
the Iconoclast Publishing Co. with the goal of exposing what they considered to
be unfair treatment by faculty. They created a newspaper, called X-Ray, and
decided to use the motto “Turn on the Light.” The newspaper would take aim at
UA’s policies and inform readers about how faculty acted with tyranny against
students.
In the X-Ray’s first publication on Monday,
Feb. 26, the lead article said, “This paper has as its aim the tearing down of
the old and flagrant abuse at this institution and to help her enter upon a new
era.” In another article, editors mocked faculty in a parody of Hamlet’s
soliloquy, “We scorn the danger of being flunked, or fired, or the hundred
other punishments meted out to a rebel by a monarch.”
The paper was published on green paper
and included all the editors’ names on its masthead. Its editors took on issues
the faculty-controlled campus newspaper couldn’t, including favoritism among UA
scholarship and discipline committees.
Faculty response was quick. The
morning of the paper’s release, members met with the Board of Trustees to
discuss the X-Ray. Faculty said the X-Ray’s publication was an “unwarranted and
mischievous attack upon the school administration.” Then university President
John Tillman cited a 1905 law that prohibited unauthorized publications, then expelled
all 36 members of the editorial committee.
The student body was aghast at the
severe response. About 300 students signed a pledge that morning to walk out
unless the university agreed to reinstate the students. When the first bell
rang, more than 300 students walked off campus, led by the university marching
band. As they marched, townspeople along the route cheered the students. More students
joined the cause, and by the end of the day, more than 500 students had walked
out in protest. Classes were canceled and tensions quickly rose between
students and faculty.
In support of the strike, many
businesses in Fayetteville decked out in green, the color of the X-Ray. People
in town rushed to get a copy of the student newspaper to see what had outraged
the faculty. Outside of Fayetteville, parents and friends of the expelled
students watched the unfolding drama anxiously.
Many of the expelled students were
from prominent families whose members came to Fayetteville to plead their
children’s case before the Board of Trustees. David A. Gates, a state tax
commissioner, and E.B. Kinsworthy, a former state attorney general, both had
sons on the X-Ray’s editorial staff and both came to Fayetteville.
The Arkansas Democrat weighed in on
the controversy, saying the whole matter was “a tempest in a teapot.” In the
paper’s view, the X-Ray was not as controversial as the response would make it
seem. “We had expected to find the publication literally reeking in a spirit of
insubordinate anarchism,” Arkansas Democrat editors wrote. “Instead ‘The X-Ray’
seems to be considerably along the lines of milk-and-water journalism.”
Faculty demanded protesting students
return to class and set a Feb. 29 deadline. On the morning of the deadline, not
a single student returned. Instead, they met at the Ozark Theater for a rally
in support of the ongoing student strike. During the rally, students passed a
resolution defending the X-Ray and
its editors on First Amendment grounds and wrote “the action of the faculty in
expelling the promoters of the ‘X-Ray’ was ill-advised, intemperate and
unjust.”
Neither side was willing to budge. Threats
to expel the protestors went unheeded, so Gov. George Donaghey, who also was chairman
of the Board, called a public hearing for March 3. The expelled students were
invited to make their case and told the board the X-Ray was intended to make
the university a better institution for students.
The Board repealed the 1905 rule,
saying it was “unduly oppressive and operates so as to deny to the student body
the right of a free and public expression of an honest opinion upon matters
pertaining to their own rights as students.”
The 36 students were reinstated.
Protests ended, and students returned to campus having learned a valuable
civics lesson about the power of free speech, civil disobedience and public
opinion.
For more information on Arkansas
history, visit the Arkansas State Archives at 1 Capitol Mall, Suite 215, or
call 501-682-6900. Information is also available online at http://archives.arkansas.gov/.
