SLATE
SLATE took its name from something plain: a slate of candidates running on a shared platform. When the Daily Californian refused to print a non-acronym in all-capitals, SLATE struck back. It declared itself an acronym for "Student League Accused of Trying to Exist." That mix of defiance and dry humor defined a campus political party at the University of California, Berkeley, alive from 1958 to 1966. It would be called a pioneer of the New Left and a precursor of the Free Speech Movement. But what made a student club worth banning from campus? Why did a university announce that an entire class of students could no longer vote? And how did a group that once won only a sliver of the student vote come to seed political parties at campuses across the country? The answers run through fair housing fights, an execution at San Quentin, and a course catalog that dared to grade its own professors.
Ralph Shaffer, a graduate student representative on the ASUC Senate, mounted an early challenge against discriminatory practices in fraternities and sororities. That came as the Civil Rights Movement first stirred in the mid-1950s. The deeper aim went further: to end the legacy of McCarthyism. The group hoped to do so by calling for the abolition of the House Un-American Activities Committee, seen as one of the biggest obstacles to student rights. In 1957, a campus party called Toward An Active Student Community, or TASC, was organized by Fritjof Thygeson, Rick White, and others. Modeled on the British parliamentary system, TASC required its candidates to be accountable to the party. The Daily Californian attacked that requirement fiercely. TASC ran on a liberal platform and was substantially defeated. The next semester, Mike Miller, an undergraduate ASUC representative, resigned to organize his own slate. His candidates backed racial equality, free speech on campus, voluntary ROTC, and joining the National Student Association. At the time, ROTC participation was mandatory for freshman and sophomore men. The slate doubled the electorate and pulled between 35-40% of the vote, a result strong enough to keep going.
In February 1958, the encouraged candidates formalized their effort as SLATE. Thygeson, White, Peter Franck, Marv Sternberg, and Wilson Carey McWilliams joined the founding. The university administration approved SLATE as a student organization, but pointedly not as a political party. In the spring of 1959, David Armor was elected as SLATE's first and only student body president, alongside four other representatives. Their winning margin leaned heavily on graduate students. The administration's reply was swift and surgical. It announced that graduate students would no longer count as members of the Associated Students, stripping them of the right to vote in student elections. Berkeley Chancellor Clark Kerr spent 1959 drafting directives that governed which speakers student groups could host and barred them from taking stands on "off-campus" issues. SLATE led the opposition to the Kerr Directives, insisting students could speak on racial discrimination, capital punishment, civil liberties, war and peace, and farm worker organizing.
A Berkeley fair housing ordinance in 1959 drew SLATE's support, one of the public stands that defined its early years. The group opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings held in San Francisco in May 1960. It backed the national Woolworth-Kress boycott called by civil rights organizations. It opposed the execution of Caryl Chessman at San Quentin, and it opposed continued nuclear weapon testing. On campus, SLATE pressed for an end to compulsory ROTC, the elimination of the Communist speaker ban, and academic freedom. It mounted an idealistic critique of Kerr's instrumental vision of the modern University. Ken Cloke and Michael Tigar, two SLATE representatives elected to the ASUC Senate in the early 1960s, gave voice to these positions. Michael Myerson, who served on SLATE's executive board almost from his arrival in 1958, became president in 1961.
As Mike Miller put it, SLATE followed a politics of the "lowest significant common denominator." The group sheltered students whose politics ranged from Young Democrats to Trotskyist, and never became the property of any single sect. It held together a multi-issue student organization committed to democracy, human rights, and peace. As word of the Berkeley protests spread, campus political parties sprang up at San Francisco State, Michigan, Iowa, UCLA, Riverside, Chicago, and Illinois. Public reaction proved sharper than the spread. UC students joining the demonstrations against HUAC, the pickets against discrimination, and the vigils against capital punishment pressured the Regents and administrators. When SLATE members kept insisting on the right to take stands on off-campus issues, the administration banned SLATE from campus. The ban was later reversed.
Beginning in 1960 and running for four years, SLATE sponsored a series of summer conferences. The 1962 conference, "The Negro in America," featured Charles McDew, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and led to the formation of Bay Area Friends of SNCC. The 1963 conference, "Education in the Multiversity," took aim at Clark Kerr's vision of the university and the role of universities in the Cold War. It argued for an expanded concept of student rights and academic freedom in university reform. As an educational reform project, in the fall of 1963 SLATE began publishing The SLATE Supplement to the General Catalog. The Supplement evaluated campus departments, courses, and instructors, putting student judgment on the record.
In the fall of 1964, the right of students to place tables at the campus entrance came to a head. Those tables solicited members and contributions for a variety of issues, the very off-campus causes SLATE had defended since its founding. Leading that defense were students who had gone to Mississippi for Freedom Summer or joined civil rights protests around the Bay Area. The Free Speech Movement grew out of the University's attempt to arrest and expel the protest leaders. It proved even broader than SLATE's coalition, drawing in Young Republicans and supporters of Barry Goldwater for President in the 1964 election. SLATE members were active in the FSM but generally not its leaders. The group won five Associated Students positions in the fall 1964 election, then elected only two representatives in the spring of 1965 and lost the race for student body president. SLATE tried to draft a new student government constitution, but the document was voted down in a referendum in April 1966. With many feeling student government was a hopeless arena for change, SLATE voted to dissolve itself in October 1966. The SLATE Supplement to the General Catalog lived on, folded into the student government, and kept publishing until 1971.
Some 150 former members gathered at the Berkeley campus in June 1984 for the first reunion, drawn from an estimated 850 one-time dues-paying members. A survey found most attendees still active in left-of-center politics, with exceptions. David Armor, the only student body president, did not attend; he had made an unsuccessful run for a Los Angeles Congressional district in 1982 as a Reagan Republican. Rick White did attend, and found his neoconservative views treated respectfully but not shared. In an emotional session, SLATE women recalled the sexism they had encountered from male leaders in the organization. Two attendees had risen in California electoral politics. Jackie Goldberg served on the Los Angeles school board and city council, and later sat in the California Assembly from 2002 to 2006. Bill Lockyer was then deep into his 25 years in the California State Legislature; he would go on to serve as Attorney General of California from 1999 to 2007 and state Treasurer from 2007 to 2015. A second reunion followed at a retreat center in 2000, and a third half-day gathering joined the 40th anniversary reunion of the FSM in 2004.
Common questions
What was SLATE at UC Berkeley?
SLATE was a campus political party at the University of California, Berkeley, active from 1958 to 1966. It is described as a pioneer organization of the New Left and a precursor of the Free Speech Movement. The name stood for a slate of candidates running on a common platform.
When was SLATE founded and when did it dissolve?
SLATE was formally established as a campus political party in February 1958. It voted to dissolve itself in October 1966 after a proposed student government constitution was voted down in a referendum in April 1966.
Why does the SLATE name read as an acronym?
The name was not originally an acronym; it simply meant a slate of candidates on a shared platform. When the Daily Californian refused to print a non-acronym in all-capitals, SLATE declared its name an acronym for "Student League Accused of Trying to Exist."
What issues did SLATE at Berkeley support?
SLATE supported racial equality, free speech on campus, voluntary ROTC, and a Berkeley fair housing ordinance in 1959. It opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee, the execution of Caryl Chessman at San Quentin, and continued nuclear weapon testing.
How was SLATE connected to the Free Speech Movement?
The Free Speech Movement emerged in the fall of 1964 over the right of students to place tables at the campus entrance for off-campus causes, the issue SLATE had promoted since its founding. SLATE members were active in the FSM but generally were not its leaders, and the FSM coalition was even broader, including Young Republicans and Barry Goldwater supporters.
Who were notable members of SLATE?
David Armor was SLATE's first and only student body president, elected in the spring of 1959. Later figures connected to SLATE included Jackie Goldberg, who served in the California Assembly from 2002 to 2006, and Bill Lockyer, who served as Attorney General of California from 1999 to 2007 and state Treasurer from 2007 to 2015.