A Crafty Hackney Wins Again

At the time, it was hard to disagree with him. On one side there were a growing number of student leaders and prominent faculty members who were clamoring for the removal of all Locust Walk fraternities. On the other side were the entrenched fraternities and their powerful and wealthy alumni who were ready to go to war to save their privileged positions on the main campus thouroughfare. Their differences, as they say, were irreconcilable. And as Hackney announced his plans to diversify the Walk, the two sides almost came to blows right on College Green. Protests, counter-protests, rallys, name-calling, mudslinging and out-and-out shouting matches erupted almost every week. The campus was helplessly polarized and it seemed to be tearing apart. And smack-dab in the middle was a tall, gangly man with a southern drawl and graying hair who, so it seemed, would be forced to choose sides. Which ever side he denied, so the argument went, would call for his resignation. And both sides had a lot of clout. But all of us who like to read the tea leaves and espouse the conventional wisdom forgot one small detail -- Sheldon Hackney, if he is anything, is the consumate politician. And, with hindsight being 20-20, his political manuvering now appears to be on par with that of Mihkail Gorbachev. · Put yourself in Dr. Hackney's shoes in April 1990. A committee you yourself commissioned, headed by one of the most respected professors on campus -- History's Drew Faust -- was preparing a report on University Life that would include a scathing condemnation on the white, male, fraternity-dominated Walk. And as news of the report began to filter out, minorities, women and a good many white males -- including, I might add, a healthy number of fraternity members -- saw the idea of a diversified Walk as one that is not only reasonable and admirable, but equitable and just. And so the rallys began, the most fabled of which being the "Take Back the Night" gathering that turned into a "Take Back the Walk" protest, which came to an inauspicious ending when fraternity members and rallyers started flinging epithets at each other. The writing was on the wall. Clearly those who backed a diversified Walk had a reasonable request. And clearly those people now had the support of a good many powerful people on this campus. So you make a decision: you throw them a bone. · With dramatic flare at an April University Council meeting, President Hackney declared that the "current mix of student residences along Locust Walk must change." Did that mean the fraternities would go? Hackney would not say. "We're trying not to rule anything out," he said at the time. "I want the task force to look at this in an unconstrained manner." And then he did what any good politician would do -- he waited. He knew the longer he waited, the more the furor over the issue would die down. After all, it was April, and finals were coming up, and then the summer . . . And he had experienced this all before. Whether it be the University's unpopular alcohol policy, adopted in the summer of 1988, or the diversity awareness programs proposed in the fall of the same year, the longer he waited, the less people wanted to talk about it. And in an issue dealing directly with students, waiting is even more politically expedient; if you wait long enough, students tend to graduate, and their opinions graduate with them. So in September 1990, when everyone was still adjusting to returning to campus, he made his decision -- the frats would stay. And, just as he had planned it, there were no protests. Gone were the shouting and swearing. Gone were the rallys and letters to the editor. Everyone seemed to make a collective nod and turned to the crossword puzzle. Some leaders still fought valiantly. Even the Faculty Senate, in an almost unheard of stab at the president, voted to condemn Hackney's decision. Senate Chairperson Almarin Philips joined the heads of the graduate and undergraduate governing bodies in a threat of mass resignation from the committee looking into the diversification plan. But the movement had lost its momentum. The masses no longer seemed to care. Hackney brushed off complaints with almost Bush-like deftness. "Wouldn't be prudent." At that point, exactly 12 months ago, everyone could predict what the Committee to Diversify Locust Walk report would look like -- a few offices moved for student residences, a proposed dorm on the site of the current Book Store, and little more. Last week, that is exactly what the report said, but nowhere on campus was there even a whimper of protest. The storm that had raged so violently 19 months ago is gone. Hackney's bone throw is now seen for what it really was -- a brilliant political manuever. It quieted the masses long enough for them to forget what they were fighting about. Half of the students that were here fighting for a diverse Walk in the spring of 1990 are gone. Those students who have replaced them are sick and tired of hearing of the issue. Chalk another one up for Sheldon Hackney. Peter Spiegel is a senior History major from Phoenix, Arizona and managing editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Laughter and Contempt appears alternate Wednesdays.

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