by Rick Wirt
1969 – a year transformed through rebellion and wars of ideology, an age immersed in the dawn of new technological achievements, heralded by the lunar landing and the invention of the microprocessor. Nineteen Sixty Nine hosted the end of the legacy of the world’s most popular band, The Beatles, signaled by their Rooftop Concert in London. In March, 250,000 people rallied at the foothills of the nation’s capital to protest the Vietnam War. Free love, hippies, drugs, violence, protests - it was within this epoch of turbulence that Longview Community College was birthed.
Through September 26, 2009, MCC-Longview’s Cultural Arts Center hosts an interactive exhibit to bring viewers back to the year the college began. The exhibit is a celebration of 40 years of preparing students for future careers and education. A wealth of photos, news articles, vintage gadgets, and histories take visitors back to an era of vinyl records and groovy headbands. Themes represented in the display include war, politics, technology, pop culture, and Longview History.
“The Beatles song ‘Get Back’ came out in ‘69 and my hope was that people could ‘get back’ to the sixties,” said Terri Kelley, director of the exhibit. “Our hope was that people would sit down —not just walk around and leave, but to look at the Viewmaster and play the records and just get back.”
Kelley, along with co-organizer Debbie Callahan , spent over three months collecting items for the show. “There was a lot of scanning and looking for the items over and over again until we hit the jackpot,” Kelley said. “We got the newspaper from the library archives. Debbie and I both would go to thrift stores looking for anything corresponding to 1969….It was fun, but we ended up being obsessed with [it]. We found the big faculty photo from the president’s office. Album covers, LIFE magazines, national newspapers, some of the images were loaned from other people who dug stuff out of their attic.”
Longview Community College actually predates Longview Lake, and many other changes have occurred throughout the years. Some things however have not changed, though. One of the largest photos in the exhibit is a faculty photo from the year Longview opened its doors. Two of the original professors pictured in that photo, John Kaczynski and Harold Baggerly, still actively teach at Longview. Kaczynski said he has taught just about every class the chemistry department offers. This is why he’s stayed put for so long.
“I like it. I’m comfortable. I was with the district since before Longview was created,” he said. “I suppose initially I thought I wanted to go on to other things, but pretty soon I realized I was happy with what I had. I had good students, and teachers like to teach.”
The first Longview students were tasked with conceiving a school mascot, and they chose the Slug.
“The name of the school paper was originally The Slug Line,” Kelley said. “The president and faculty hated that. It was a part of the rebellion at the time. Hatley, Longview’s first dean, felt that this would change as the two-year students graduated, and it did get to change, as he expected.”
The school cheer, “Stick it to ‘em, Stick it to ‘em, Stick it to ‘em Slugs!” could be heard from the sidelines of sports games, as Kaczynski recollected it. “Years later, Santa Cruz college was elected as having the best mascot —the Banana Slug. So I thought that it was shame that we had given that up, and I would tease people that we were the Lakers, but didn’t have a lake.”
The buildings that Longview consists of today are not the ones used 40 years ago. The original buildings were often likened to chicken roosts, but Kaczynski began teaching in the chapel down the road from the campus, due to his “chicken roost” being unfinished.
“It was a strange feeling, teaching chemistry behind a preacher’s pulpit. We had a strong make-do attitude – we’ve got to make do with what we’ve got,” Kaczynski said.
In the original buildings, “You could hear everybody’s lecture because the walls were particle board. You didn’t have a lot of privacy, but that wasn’t all bad,” Kaczynski said. “There was a closeness —if not just because the campus was so small. You were forced to intermingle and that was a good thing. It was kind of exciting. Here we are out in this famous horse ranch, putting up contemporary buildings for a college.”
Among other changes in the school, the original tuition price was only $9 per credit hour in 1969, significantly cheaper than today (about $20 dollars cheaper in today’s value).
Horse Management was a course offered by the Physical Education program, which had to be creative to account for the lack of a recreation center. Longview also, for a time, offered an extensive pilot’s training program.
“Some programs, they come and they go,” Kaczynski said. Beyond classes, Kaczynski pointed out that “there are more resources available to help students today and there are greater expectations on the educational system for their success.”
As the college was founded in the Vietnam era, peace movements sponsored by the youth were common and Longview students were no exception.
“The student government was very active in the early years,” Kaczynski said. “There was pressure by the student body to display the UN flag on campus. The pursuit of world peace was big. I had students coming back from four years in Vietnam. They were good students. They just wanted to get on with their lives.”
Callahan agreed. “The protests seem silly now, but they really overturned everything in how society works. Today’s students come in with the assumption that the administration cares. Today there is a lot more freedom and representation than in 1969.”
Updated 9/15/09
September 2, 2009
Campus