Back in 1959, I applied to three colleges, Oberlin, Lawrence and Northwestern.

Oberlin, because it was ranked Number One among co-ed colleges of just over 2,000 student with fraternities and sororities…and, it is where the Mock Political Convention was instituted.

It also was the first college to admit women and blacks.

Today, going through my electronic Chicago Tribune, I found that women were admitted in 1837 on this date.

While I was there, the Young Republicans (now called College Republicans) was the largest political group.

Not because those right of center dominated the campus, but because the liberals could not agree on one group.

There were Young Democrats,The Progressive Student League, the Student Peace Union, the NAACP, Fair Play for Cuba and, I’d guess, probably a Communist cell at the most radical co-op.

We had over 200 members.

Our goal was to control the Mock Convention, which would be held in my senior year.

To do that, we had to control the Student Council.

In my sophomore year, we had a shot, but the liberals stuffed the ballot boxes.

Sound familiar.

My junior year, we had people watching the counting of ballots and ran on a party called SCOPE. (The liberals said it stood for “Sandy Campbell Opposes Practically Everything.” Campbell was out leader, a year ahead of me.)

Not all who won, ran on our slate, but six were YR’s.

There were twelve members of the Student Council.

We won six seats.

Dennis Bathory, a liberal Republican from New Jersey, wanted to be President.

We told him that was fine, he could trade anything he had to obtain the post, but he had to make sure we had the votes to designate the Mock Convention Republican.

He did and I was named its Chairman.

That allowed us to bring more conservative voices to Oberlin, although one, New York Senator Jacob Javits, certainly was a liberal Republican.

The speech I remember most was by Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Hugh Scott. Once a week there was a speaker in Finney Chapel (Finney being a famous 19th Century Christian Evangelist).

The liberals started hissing shortly after Scott began speaking.

“There are a lot of noisy radiators in here,” he commented, breaking the audience into laughter.

We also brought in National Review Publisher William Rusher and former Illinois Governor William Stratton and Congressman Bob Wilson of Southern California, who was Chairman of the National Republican
Congressional Committee.

Now, Oberlin is known for falsely labeling Gibson’s Bakery as being racist.\

After refusing to apologize, the Gibson’s sued and gained a $32 million judgment against the college, whose Dean of Students, Meredith Raimondo, used college resources to assist protests of shoplifting arrest of a black student (who plead guilty to the charge a year or so later).

Legal Insurrection covered the controversy better than any other publication. The articles can be accessed here.