In February 1958, a group of students at the University of California, Berkeley, formed a political organization that would eventually dismantle the university's power structure, yet they began with a name that was not an acronym. They called themselves SLATE, simply standing for a slate of candidates who ran on a common platform, but the university administration refused to recognize them as a political party. The Daily Californian, the campus newspaper, followed its policy of not printing in all-caps a name that was not an acronym, so SLATE declared its name to be an acronym for "Student League Accused of Trying to Exist." This bureaucratic squabble masked a far more dangerous reality: the university administration viewed these students not as a club, but as a threat to the established order. The group's origins were rooted in the aftermath of the McCarthy era, where the House Un-American Activities Committee had cast a long shadow over American campuses. Ralph Shaffer, a graduate student representative, had already begun challenging discriminatory practices in fraternities and sororities, but the true spark came when Mike Miller, an undergraduate representative, resigned from the ASUC Senate to organize a slate of candidates. Miller doubled the electorate and received between 35 and 40 percent of the vote, a stunning result that proved the student body was ready for change. The group, which included Fritjof Thygeson, Rick White, Peter Franck, Marv Sternberg, and Wilson Carey McWilliams, formally established SLATE as a campus political party, setting the stage for a decade of conflict that would redefine the role of students in American higher education.
The Ban That Backfired
The university administration's response to SLATE's growing influence was swift and severe, culminating in a ban that would ultimately fuel the fire of student activism. In 1961, after SLATE members insisted on the right to take stands on off-campus issues, the UC Regents and administrators banned SLATE from the campus. The ban was later reversed, but the damage was done. The administration, led by Chancellor Clark Kerr, developed a set of directives governing the rights of student organizations to sponsor speakers and prohibiting taking stands on off-campus issues. SLATE led the opposition to the Kerr Directives, arguing that the university was becoming an instrument of the Cold War and that students had a right to engage with the world beyond the campus walls. The administration's attempt to silence SLATE only made the group more visible and more determined. The ban was a direct response to SLATE's support for a Berkeley fair housing ordinance in 1959, their opposition to the hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in San Francisco in May 1960, and their support for the national Woolworth-Kress boycott called by civil rights organizations. The administration also opposed SLATE's stance on the execution of Caryl Chessman at San Quentin and their opposition to continued nuclear weapon testing. The ban was a clear signal that the university was no longer willing to tolerate student activism that challenged the status quo, but it also set the stage for the Free Speech Movement that would emerge just a few years later.