Fall Shutdown
Bill Taylor
— [Vanguard] was readmitted in the fall on the condition that none of the then Board of Editors could serve as editor-in-chief or managing editor. I was elected by the staff to be editor-in-chief. I hadn't written anything on the news side of things up ‘til then, but I guess they thought I was a good person for the job. I don't recall having actively sought it. I think people came to me and encouraged me to do it. I don't know. I had a very brief run. You know? We only put out two issues. We put out an issue at the end of September and one at the beginning of October.
Geri Stevens
— Bill Taylor was editor-in-chief when I was managing editor. I held office for a very brief time because that was the year we were suspended. They adopted a double editorial policy. We'd have to have a bulletin board outside the office where we had to post what that week's editorial was going to be about, so that other people on the campus would have the opportunity to write an editorial opposing that. Now, we felt that that was just giving the outside public a double podium because it had the letters to the editor. That week I was the editor in charge and I wrote the lead editorial which was in opposition to having double editorials — that was one of the topics, pro/con double editorials. And this guy named Harry Taubenfeld was like our big nemesis and I think he was president of the Student Council. We hated him. Harry Taubenfeld was a bad guy. And I think he's a judge now. And he wrote the opposing editorial. Well, he wrote a very, very, very long editorial, far exceeding the word count, and I cut it to fit the space. And that's what did it. That was the loophole that the administration was looking for to suspend us. When the paper appeared, Harry Taubenfeld immediately went to the Faculty-Student Committee on Student Affairs, or whatever it was, complained that his editorial had been cut, and they suspended us. We were locked out.
Bill Taylor
— We had been reinstated under the so-called double editorial policy where whenever we wrote on an issue that was thought to be controversial, we had to publish an editorial on the other side of the issue. And we wound up, in the second issue, publishing editorials that were in opposition to the newspaper's views that were not quite the same length — that were shorter by a small amount than the editorials in favor. And that became the basis of the administration acting to revoke our charter. One was about the suspension of the Labor Youth League and saying that they had a right to exist on campus. And we ran a shorter editorial by the president of the student council, saying that he was in favor of revoking the charter of the Labor Youth League. And then we editorialized on this double editorial policy, saying it was unfair, and printed an editorial on the other side which was not the same length. So that was the basis on which the administration terminated our charter.
Herb Dorfman
— And then they had a meeting of the faculty-student committee on publications. I was a member. There were two editorials as written, but the editor had some space he had to fill so he shortened two editorials which happened to be, unfortunately, the two editorials of the antagonists. He said it wasn't his impression that they had to be exactly equal in words. He put in everything they wrote but that left a space so he put in this thing. And the next meeting we had, they voted whether or not to revoke the charter based on that, and one of the student representatives, Harry Taubenfeld, who had written one of the editorials, voted with the faculty. And that was the end of it. And in the room was somebody I'd never seen before, somebody, I think, from the Buildings and Grounds Department. And as soon as the vote was taken he left the room. And by the time I got back to the Vanguard office it was locked. So this was our last issue.
Geri Stevens
— Officially on paper and my registration, everything, I was Gizelle Cohen. When I went to James Madison High School nobody could pronounce my name. And my friend said, "You know, we've got to get you a nickname. This is ridiculous." She is the one who came up with Geri, which I didn't care for at first. My parents hated it, everybody hated it, but somehow or other it stuck. I became Geri Cohen. My byline was Geri Cohen. When they suspended us, I did not get an official suspension because they couldn't find me. So I came home and I told my parents and for them the idea of being suspended was terrible. And I said, "Well, you know, everybody else is suspended for conduct unbecoming a student. And I just think it would be unfair..." There was just no way I could hold my head up just because they couldn't find me. So I went to the dean of students, and I revealed myself and I said, "I didn't get a suspension notice and I think you should know that this is who I am." And he was, of course, one of the bad guys that we all hated, but he was extremely nice. He told me how much he appreciated what I had done and he said, "In all fairness," he said, "I can't not suspend you now that I know who you are. But I have to tell you that what you've done was very honorable." I turned myself in and I was suspended for three days for conduct unbecoming a student.
Herb Dorfman
— Well, I was, if you'll pardon my using the expression, horribly pissed off. Yeah. We didn't use that expression then. I was angry 'cause I saw what happened. I was angry at Harry Taubenfeld for having gone over. I was angry that this guy sat in the room where he wasn't supposed to be waiting for the vote. I think of all the people involved, they were all angry, I was probably among the most angry. To me it was just a travesty. It made no sense at all. After all, as good as the Vanguard we thought were, it's just a college paper. I mean, why exercise such stupid dictatorial things. It didn't make any sense. We would have been happy to give Gideonse space for an editorial, and so forth. You know? But in his mind this was a conspiracy. He was a liberal, supposedly, but he thought, in many ways, like Joe McCarthy. I was very angry — and angry to the extent where I did not submit anything to the yearbook and I didn't go to commencement. My mother wondered why. I didn't want to tell her I was that angry. Nobody was as angry as me. In my humble opinion, nobody was as angry as me.
Bill Taylor
— There weren't mass protests, but you know, there were groups that were politically aware, and so on, who were certainly very supportive of our views. And I think there were some protests. And all that sort of fades in memory. I mean, the one thing that actually stands out was that there were these conservative groups, and they were all in favor of what the administration did and they demonstrated in favor of it.
Mike Lutzker
— A petition was circulated among the student body in defense of Vanguard or in defense of the campus paper. I recall fifteen hundred names. And there was some discussion — I was not on Vanguard but I remember discussions with other students, about publishing the masthead with fifteen hundred names as editors to give legitimacy to the publication. And then, according to one of the editors, they were summoned by Gideonse or the dean, and told that they didn't care how many names we put on the masthead, the editors of Vanguard who instigated all of this would be expelled. So that was intimidating.
Herb Dorfman
— People on campus would say to me, "What happened?" They didn't know. I was invited to a large, large meeting, sponsored by one of the liberal groups. For coming to that meeting on campus while I was on suspension they threw another two days suspension at me. But I had to do it. So I stood up in front of this group and I told them exactly what had happened and they were astonished. You know? I'm telling you there were several hundred students and the assembly was full, and that's the first time they knew what had actually happened. And this was days, weeks later, maybe. So it became a mooted issue.
Al Lasher
— When they shut down Vanguard we considered it a real First Amendment issue. So we tried to rally support and a bunch of us went around to all the universities and colleges in the metropolitan area. I went up to Fordham and over to Hunter. At Fordham I got a resolution of support from the student governing body. We thought we had a dramatic issue and, in fact, in many cases, we did manage to get that kind of response.
Bill Taylor
— We got a response from City College, from the Yale Daily News, from Queens College, from NYU. And NYU, they had a story which records the fact that Gideonse threatened me with suspension if I continued to talk to the press. The NYU Washington Square Bulletin ran an editorial called "Harry's Just Wild," referring to Harry Gideonse, which started out:
"Every once in a while events take place outside the walls of this university which are of such importance to all college that we cannot ignore them. The banning of the Brooklyn College undergraduate newspaper, Vanguard, is a case in point. President Harry Gideonse, through his administrative agents, has performed a series of ‘disciplinary actions’ on the Flatbush campus. Those actions brand him as a liberal in name only, a man who has supported and initiated completely illiberal, quasi-authoritarian moves. We consider this series of events a serious threat to student rights not only in Brooklyn College but in the schools of the entire city."
And the date on that is October 17th, 1950. And it ends: "Harry Gideonse ought to remember that Communism or any other form of totalitarianism thrives on abuse of power by either public or college authorities. His anti-Communism is nothing more than talk so long as he remains a perfect example of what a liberal should not be."